10 Best Youth Crossbow For Deer Hunting

Best Youth Crossbow For Deer Hunting in 2023

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Crossbows and Gunpowder: How War Found Its Modernity in the Middle Ages

In Medieval Europe, the character of warfare changed. The introduction of the crossbow and gunpowder brought war out of the Middle Ages, and into the modern era.

The Crossbow
The crossbow was not an invention of the medieval Europeans, but of the ancient Chinese; in fact, it is mentioned in Sun Tzu's The Art of War which dates to somewhere between 300 and 500 BC. It was probably introduced to Europe through trading with the Roman Empire ("Crossbow", 2020). This weapon is similar to the longbow, or traditional bow and arrow; however, the crossbow consisted of a locked string which was then loaded with a bolt, or projectile, and fired with a trigger. This allowed the projectile to be fired at a much higher speed with greater force of penetration (Nicholson, 2004). The introduction of such a weapon into medieval warfare had several effects. Firstly, it would have increased the number of soldiers who could participate in armed warfare. While it is true that the longbow was much less expensive, it was also much more difficult to operate and could require years to master. The crossbow could be learned in a matter of a week, and was easier to aim than regular bows. The main difference this technology made was that, suddenly, a knight in full armor was relatively easy to kill. An untrained infantryman could penetrate the armor of a nobleman with a crossbow bolt, ushering in the slow end of knightly warfare. Knights could no longer rely on traditional methods of cavalry warfare when they were so threatened by regular peasant soldiers.

Gunpowder
A second technological advance that drastically changed medieval European warfare was the development of gunpowder. Like the crossbow, this was not a European invention, but a Chinese one, which travelled to Europe along the same trade routes. The crossbow called for adjustments in medieval warfare, and rendered armor virtually useless, but gunpowder made medieval warfare in its totality obsolete. The first recorded uses of gunpowder in European warfare is during the Hundred Years War of the 14th century. Early on, its use was limited to cannons which fired large bolts or stones, and eventually fired large metal balls (Whipps, 2020). As cannons developed greater accuracy, the main components of medieval warfare; the knight, sword, and castle, were no longer useful. Traditional fighting between highly skilled knights on horseback defending heavily fortified castles offered no defense against the cannon. Cannons destroyed castle walls, and could kill several armored men at once, ending hand to hand sword fighting as a feasible means of fighting. The medieval knight met his end at the end of a cannon. Castles were abandoned and deteriorated. The knightly class eventually went extinct (Jackson, 2020). Cannons made war more democratic; indeed, a soldier did not need years of training or expensive armor to operate a cannon or gun. Soldiering became much more open to the lower classes as the image of knights faded.

War Comes to the Lower Class
Technological advances do not always have to be military in nature to change warfare. Electricity and penicillin revolutionized war far more than any other two developments; however, great social technological leaps were not necessarily to be found in medieval Europe. The most impressive advances were in the fields of war, and therefore the most impressive changes. The crossbow introduced an age of mechanical warfare, where skill and training began to be replaced by efficiency and efficacy. The honor and chivalry of the knight on horseback began to fade, and was completely erased by gunpowder. Any man of any class with no money or training could fight in war. Warfare became less about honor and more about outcome.

References:

Crossbow. (2020) Retreived July 11, 2020 from

Jackson, J. (2020). The Decline of the Medieval Knight. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from

Nicholson, H. (2004). Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe, 300 to 1500. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Whipps, H. (2020). How Gunpowder Changed the World. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from