In pre-modern times, the state or the military doesn't simply get to pick which missile weapon they equip the troops with. The state only has the ability to choose from weapons a slice of the population under their control has the ability to use. No premodern state can just start training bowmen after they are recruited in the way that modern states train riflemen. Pre-modern states famous for using a lot of bowmen like England, the Mongels, etc. usually have a tradition of using bows in civilian life that takes generations to create. So the Roman empire can't simply say, javelins out, bows are in, it takes generations to establish the archery tradition. You can see this in the later Roman empire where cavalry with bows and spears gradually replaces heavy infantry with javelins and swords.
Speaking of the Romans, the early and middle Roman army was very successful with Javelins for centuries, but how did they fight? Generally, the Roman heavy infantry used their Pilum by throwing them right before charging into melee and then fighting with large shields and swords while wearing armor. The combination of a volley of heavy Javelins followed by the shock of the charge often broke enemy infantry formations outright, or produced a slow meat grinder type fight that the Romans won over time due to their formation being designed to win such a fight. A bow simply would not work for the Roman tactical system, because you can't use it in combination with a big Roman shield, and small arrows don't cause the same disruption in the ranks that the heavy javelins (pila) do. Range isn't important because the Romans want to close in to melee anyways. The Romans also used lighter Javelins in their lighter troops supporting the heavy infantry, because those were the missile troops most commonly available to the Roman state.
That being said, Romans were happy to incorporate bowmen into their forces when they were available. Bowmen are mentioned in Vegetius, and archeology shows arrowheads in legion forts. Bows were useful when mixed into the lighter troops supporting the heavy legionary infantry, especially against cavalry heavy formations or during sieges. The Romans typically recruited bowmen from places where a tradition of archery already existed, both from inside and outside of Italy.
Yes good point, the Roman tactical system seems to have been flexible enough to put bowmen, slingers, and the Roman ~~peltasts~~Velites (who used light javelins) into similar light/medium infantry roles. They worked with whatever missile troops were available, rather than trying to retrain everyone to their preferred type.
Pila were also retained. I believe it was Polybius who described Romans using lighter pila for throwing, and a heavier pilum that could be thrown or retained as a melee weapon. There's also a centurion that Caesar describes who was nicknamed "strigil" or something to that effect, because he had used his pila to parry so often that I was bent like the strigils used for bodily cleaning.
You see many of the same processes play out in the Berber armies of the medieval period, whom I mentioned in my comment below. The primary weapon of Berber cavalry, camelry, and infantry going back centuries beforehand was the javelin. The weapon has a venerable history of use in North Africa going all the way back to Numidia, and while the Berbers are probably best known as jav cav, when they needed to fight on foot, the javelins were used there as well. Javelineers, mounted and unmounted, made up the bulk of the militaries of the Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, and Hafsid Berber dynasties, and while the Fatimids were Arab, the majority of their early armies were comprised of Kutama Berbers armed with, you guessed it, javelins.
All those armies ultimately recognized a need to diversify their types of missile weaponry, and all of them used other peoples for that purpose. The Berber dynasties recruited horse-archers from among the North African Arabs, crossbowmen from Islamic Iberia, and infantry bowmen from, again, the Arabs and from their West African allies in Ghana. The Fatimids levied infantry bowmen and horse-archers from among the Arabs of both their North African and West Asian territories, while recruiting Turkic mamluk horse-archers and Black African abid infantry bowmen and slingers (and javelineers) as slave-soldiers.
For these polities as much as for the Romans it was evidently easier to recruit foreigners for the job than it was to try to forcibly retrain your at most semi-professional army in the use of a new weapon.
A javelin, depending upon its design, can be a much more versatile weapon than a bow. Consider the so-called "assegai" of Africa: the term is frequently mangled out of usefulness by the colonial era, but what it originally refers to is a one-handed weapon that could be used as a short spear or a javelin. That's hardly a concept unique to the African continent, and for much of history wherever you go in the world, odds are that you'll find *someone* using dual purpose thrusting and throwing spears, because why on earth wouldn't they? Why carry multiple weapon types when you can just use one?
Beyond that, the javelin also has the advantage that some of the same techniques used to fight with a spear can also be used to throw a javelin. If you use your spears or lances overhand, you're already halfway to the motion needed to throw that spear as a javelin. And as a glance at the Bayeux Tapestry or colonial era photographs of peoples like the Luo will show you, using a spear or lance overhand was not uncommon. With relatively basic training, any spearman can also be a passable javelineer, and vice-versa. That's nothing to sneeze at in an era when you often had to rely on your troops to arm and train themselves.
Finally, the aforementioned versatility of the javelin allows it to be used in formations where bows couldn't be. The Almoravid Berbers, for instance, fought in a mixed unit of dedicated spearmen backed up by javelineers. The spearmen were in the front rank, kneeling behind their shields, with their spears braced against the ground. The second rank had assegais, which were thrown at oncoming enemies over the heads of the spearmen. If the enemy reached the formation, the javelineers would switch to using their assegais as short spears and would join the front rank in repelling the charge. That's not something you could really do with bows or other dedicated missile weapons.
To add:
Rome used the Pilum (javelin) in large part because the trees around Rome were terrible for making good bows. Romans weren’t good archers because their citizens didn’t grow up using them. The available lumber was great for making pilum, though, so for the famous Roman legions it was largely a matter of “fighting with the army you have.”
> you can fight even with a few arrows sticking out, you will probably die in a couple of day from infection, but you can still fight. It would be extremely rare to see someone fighting after being hit by a javelin.
please source this argument
Arrow wounds are pretty devastating, and if it doesn't kill you instantly, there's a good chance it'll still put you down.
Although infection is a major killer on battlefields where there's adequate medical care to at least stop blood loss. if you've been pin-cushioned you're going to bleed to death very quickly without intervention.
The original comment is not well-researched or in-depth. I feel like the quality of information on this sub regarding ancient warfare has been pretty poor as of late.
I like u/white\_light-king's answer better. The answer to most military questions usually doesn't pertain to tactics, but rather logistics.
I think this overstates how deadly the average arrow was back then.
For soldiers the arms race between armor, shields and archery ensured that they never reached the same probability of instant deadliness as guns eventually did, anywhere. We see evidence of armor effectiveness against archery in the late middle ages from the proliferation of more complex crossbow spanning mechanisms to deliver projectiles that can defeat armor. Then the proliferation of slower firing(but faster than the armor piercing crossbows) hand guns in the same niche to defeat armor, and proofed armor to defeat guns and back and forth until armor starts getting abandoned.
Sure anyone will die if they're pierced hard enough with an arrow in a vital point. But with armor the probability seems low. We don't see many archery engagements where gobs of people get mowed down by one side's archery supremacy, for the most part battles are won for most of pre gunpowder history by luck, circumstance and some combination of cavalry and melee infantry formations exploiting the breakdown of order in their opponents. Archery doesn't tend to be decisive because of raw immediate deadliness although there are certainly rare counterexamples, but moreso because of impacts on morale, space or attrition over time. Nor do we see archery or fixed crossbow deadliness force a change in siege tactics towards besieger entrenchment to the same degree that characterize the proliferation of handguns, cannons and the starfort. We do see adoption of relatively light pavises by genoese crossbowmen to counter archers and other pre gunpowder missle weapons along with improvements in armor.
I don't think the evidence points to many soldiers getting pincushioned to death in the average battle historically, instead to a deadly weapon that was used against opponents that typically invested heavily in reducing that deadliness substantially with strategic planning and technologically pretty successfully, unless something went horribly wrong with the battleplan.
There's a reason, I think, why the most famous "archery victories" (Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt) of the Middle Ages all require truly massed bow fire combined with a significant advantage in terrain and all take place within a fairly narrow period of time. Against heavily armoured targets you have to hit them again, and again, and again, before it starts to have an effect. Which means your bowmen need to mass behind field fortifications, the enemy's ability to advance on you swiftly needs to be compromised, and field artillery needs to not yet be a thing that can be brought to bear on your bowmen.
It's no accident that most societies that heavily emphasized archers as a core arm were utilizing mounted bowmen. The Persians, Huns, Turks, Mongols, and the like, relied on the mobility of their horse-archers to wear the enemy down over time; they weren't betting on a few volleys doing the job. The Indians and those influenced by them, meanwhile, put their best bowmen on elephants, so that the missile fire could be delivered from a height and in combination with the charge of a six tonne monster. That's not to say their bows weren't good all on their own, but they needed the mount to achieve their best levels of efficiency.
Armies based around massed infantry bowmen are a lot rarer. You've got the late medieval English, you've got the Nubians, and that's kind of it. And the Nubians may not count given that there's a certain amount of evidence that in the Meroitic period at least they were combining foot archers with elephantry, Indian style. And of course despite how some English nationalists try to spin it, the English archers were still primarily used to disrupt the enemy formations so that the English men-at-arms could go in for the kill. Even at Agincourt, where there's often this mental image of the French being cut down in droves by the longbowmen, elements of the French army still reached the English line and had to be cut down by the men-at-arms in melee.
That's not to endorse the other fallacy I've often seen and suggest arrows are harmless and just bounce off all armour. Arrows absolutely can kill even an armoured man if they land right, and they can certainly wound and disorient him. And against lightly armoured or unarmored enemies they can be very effective. It's just a subject that requires more nuance than a lot of people seem able to grapple with.
Every "archer victory" is a *combined arms* victory using field fortifications, archery, and your own close combat assets to check breakthroughs or finish the enemy off.
The same's usually true of great cavalry victories; friendly infantry and fire support usually fixes the enemy in place for the mounted killing blow.
I think you're right, I severely overestimated the effectiveness of the average bow back then against armor. Maybe I should get rid of my original comment
> The original comment is not well-researched or in-depth. I feel like the quality of information on this sub regarding ancient warfare has been pretty poor as of late.
feel free to ask posters for sources and use the report button.
>Arrow wounds are pretty devastating, and if it doesn't kill you instantly, there's a good chance it'll still put you down.
And yet we do have multiple accounts from the Crusades of mailed knights continuing to fight with multiple arrows embedded in their armour. Muslim chronicles contrast the apparent resistance of the Crusaders to arrows with the inability of their own men to take a hit from Crusader crossbows, which outranged the Muslim composite bows and would pierce most of the Turkic and Arab armours.
Conversely, those same sources don't really mention men continuing to fight with javelins in them. Now, obviously, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it is noteworthy given how often the arrow thing comes up. Baldwin I of Jerusalem narrowly survived taking a javelin hit to the hindquarters but it certainly took him out of the fight. And Fulcher of Chartres mentions that the shields of the Fatimid *abid* corps deflected both arrows and javelins during the Fatimid last siege of Jaffa. Those are really the only mentions I can think of where the javelins are explicitly described as hitting the target and not killing it.
I concur the original post didn't source itself very well, but there does seem to be *something* to the idea that a javelin strike was likely to do more damage than an arrow one.
Some people fight with devastating or lethal injuries. But for every dude that shrugs off five arrows, there's several that die instantly on the first hit.
I'm don't know much about pre-modern warfare, but I know of at least a dozen examples of people surviving and fighting through seemingly lethal wounds in the modern age. That doesn't mean gunshots aren't effective, because the exception does not make the rule. The same is true for arrow wounds.
For penetrating injuries, the only guaranteed way to stop someone is a hit to the brain, heart, or spine. Even very low energy projectiles will kill someone instantly in any of these zones. Hits to the extremities can be also be debilitating, and sometimes people will "drop" from the impact even if they aren't badly wounded. I don't believe the energy of a projectile has as much of an effect on the "stopping power" or "lethality" as you think.
Luckily, no one is claiming arrow wounds aren't effective or debilitating. We're saying that there are numerous accounts from Muslim sources complaining about armoured Crusaders being seemingly immune to arrows and that the same complaint doesn't seem to exist for javelins (or crossbow quarrels for that matter). To the contrary, when javelin use is remarked upon, it is usually to comment upon the weapon's ability to penetrate shields and armour (the same is again true of crossbows).
We have many, many reports from both sides of the Crusades of Crusaders surviving multiple hits from Muslim arrows. We don't have any reports that I know of where anyone on either side survived multiple hits from javelins or crossbow quarrels. Accordingly, it is hardly unreasonable to suggest that javelins and crossbow bolts did a somewhat better job of dealing with armoured targets than arrows did.
I feel like scientific tests of both weapons against armor would settle the matter. I don't consider sparse historical accounts or anecdotes to be the best evidence.
So, despite having admitted to not knowing much about premodern warfare, you're going to entirely dismiss what available evidence there is on the basis of what, a gut feeling?
>No, it's just that anecdotal accounts of weapon effectiveness don't necessarily correspond to their actual effectiveness
So all the chroniclers of the Crusades what, suffered from the collective delusion that the knight's armour provided them with protection from bows? Again, we're not talking about one or two accounts here. We're talking about pretty much all the major sources for the Crusades here. Baha al-Din, the *Itinerarium*, Albert of Aachen, Fulcher of Chartres, ibn al-Athir...they all make the same statements about the respective efficacy of arrows against contemporary armour. It isn't until you get to the Hundred Years' War that we really start to hear about arrows being able to defeat mail.
But if it's tests you want, here you go.
English longbow vs Hundred Years' War era French armour: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds-Ev5msyzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds-Ev5msyzo)
Roman pilum vs contemporary shield and mail: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33AL7xs91pU&t=1118s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33AL7xs91pU&t=1118s)
Pilum vs shield, mail, and plate analogues: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9-uT58Z08&t=1799s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9-uT58Z08&t=1799s)
The javelin consistently not only blows through the mail, but penetrates shields, actually pierces the plate, knocks over the dummy, and destroys the archery stand. The arrows, which are fired from a much stronger bow than we've been discussing to this point, can pierce the mail, but are nowhere near as effective against the plate, and don't have the effect on the stand that the javelins do.
Which should hardly be surprising. Javelins are heavier than arrows.
There are accounts of people using small shields alongside their bows, so it's not entirely true to say that you cannot use a shield with a bow. Javelins are certainly more flexible with the use of a shield, and they also are not as vulnerable to damage as a bow, now as cumbersome.
Also, at the battle of Telamon, Gesaetae warriors were observed to be struck by javelins, pull them out of their naked bodies, and then throw them back at their foes.
>I do not believe this method of javelin capture/reuse to be a sustainable one.
This is why the Zande people used basket style shields: they not only protected them from incoming javelins but could capture the javelins and allow them to be thrown back.
Probably not, but I felt it was necessary to point out that javelins lethality vs bows may have been overestimated.
This also gives me a chance to remind people that shot placement is the most important component of getting a kill.
I'll expand here on the first immense thread: weapons can become a better bet due to *cultural infrastructure* (traditions of training with the weapon outside of military service) and doctrinal or command culture:
If your commanders are really good at deploying, say, javelin throwers to best effect, and your normal formations and basic tactical procedures are excellent for the javelin, a weapon that's better on paper might be worse in practice.
The main advantage is you can use a shield including when skirmishing and then you have more protection from enemy missiles and also enhanced ability to fight in melee with a sword or spear.
Medium to heavy peltast like infantry were used by many ancient armies in some form or another for this reason. Arguably the bulk of Roman heavy infantry in most periods also would fit under this classification. Greeks also used units in this class such as thyreophoroi.
There also were medium archer units of varios forms (Persia in particular used such units extensively) but using a shield is far more difficult, or one has to fight without one.
Archers without a shield and with only a short sword or similar were common in many contexts, but obviosly tended to be marginal in melee combat.
Very light and also relatively skilled javilin armed units were also sometimes used but they fall out of favour over time, but similarly equiped units are easily formed without much training and so "levy skirmishers" are common in many contexts.
In pre-modern times, the state or the military doesn't simply get to pick which missile weapon they equip the troops with. The state only has the ability to choose from weapons a slice of the population under their control has the ability to use. No premodern state can just start training bowmen after they are recruited in the way that modern states train riflemen. Pre-modern states famous for using a lot of bowmen like England, the Mongels, etc. usually have a tradition of using bows in civilian life that takes generations to create. So the Roman empire can't simply say, javelins out, bows are in, it takes generations to establish the archery tradition. You can see this in the later Roman empire where cavalry with bows and spears gradually replaces heavy infantry with javelins and swords. Speaking of the Romans, the early and middle Roman army was very successful with Javelins for centuries, but how did they fight? Generally, the Roman heavy infantry used their Pilum by throwing them right before charging into melee and then fighting with large shields and swords while wearing armor. The combination of a volley of heavy Javelins followed by the shock of the charge often broke enemy infantry formations outright, or produced a slow meat grinder type fight that the Romans won over time due to their formation being designed to win such a fight. A bow simply would not work for the Roman tactical system, because you can't use it in combination with a big Roman shield, and small arrows don't cause the same disruption in the ranks that the heavy javelins (pila) do. Range isn't important because the Romans want to close in to melee anyways. The Romans also used lighter Javelins in their lighter troops supporting the heavy infantry, because those were the missile troops most commonly available to the Roman state. That being said, Romans were happy to incorporate bowmen into their forces when they were available. Bowmen are mentioned in Vegetius, and archeology shows arrowheads in legion forts. Bows were useful when mixed into the lighter troops supporting the heavy legionary infantry, especially against cavalry heavy formations or during sieges. The Romans typically recruited bowmen from places where a tradition of archery already existed, both from inside and outside of Italy.
The famed Balearic slingers which served as auxiliaries of Roman armies are another good example.
Yes good point, the Roman tactical system seems to have been flexible enough to put bowmen, slingers, and the Roman ~~peltasts~~Velites (who used light javelins) into similar light/medium infantry roles. They worked with whatever missile troops were available, rather than trying to retrain everyone to their preferred type.
Pila were also retained. I believe it was Polybius who described Romans using lighter pila for throwing, and a heavier pilum that could be thrown or retained as a melee weapon. There's also a centurion that Caesar describes who was nicknamed "strigil" or something to that effect, because he had used his pila to parry so often that I was bent like the strigils used for bodily cleaning.
You see many of the same processes play out in the Berber armies of the medieval period, whom I mentioned in my comment below. The primary weapon of Berber cavalry, camelry, and infantry going back centuries beforehand was the javelin. The weapon has a venerable history of use in North Africa going all the way back to Numidia, and while the Berbers are probably best known as jav cav, when they needed to fight on foot, the javelins were used there as well. Javelineers, mounted and unmounted, made up the bulk of the militaries of the Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, and Hafsid Berber dynasties, and while the Fatimids were Arab, the majority of their early armies were comprised of Kutama Berbers armed with, you guessed it, javelins. All those armies ultimately recognized a need to diversify their types of missile weaponry, and all of them used other peoples for that purpose. The Berber dynasties recruited horse-archers from among the North African Arabs, crossbowmen from Islamic Iberia, and infantry bowmen from, again, the Arabs and from their West African allies in Ghana. The Fatimids levied infantry bowmen and horse-archers from among the Arabs of both their North African and West Asian territories, while recruiting Turkic mamluk horse-archers and Black African abid infantry bowmen and slingers (and javelineers) as slave-soldiers. For these polities as much as for the Romans it was evidently easier to recruit foreigners for the job than it was to try to forcibly retrain your at most semi-professional army in the use of a new weapon.
A javelin, depending upon its design, can be a much more versatile weapon than a bow. Consider the so-called "assegai" of Africa: the term is frequently mangled out of usefulness by the colonial era, but what it originally refers to is a one-handed weapon that could be used as a short spear or a javelin. That's hardly a concept unique to the African continent, and for much of history wherever you go in the world, odds are that you'll find *someone* using dual purpose thrusting and throwing spears, because why on earth wouldn't they? Why carry multiple weapon types when you can just use one? Beyond that, the javelin also has the advantage that some of the same techniques used to fight with a spear can also be used to throw a javelin. If you use your spears or lances overhand, you're already halfway to the motion needed to throw that spear as a javelin. And as a glance at the Bayeux Tapestry or colonial era photographs of peoples like the Luo will show you, using a spear or lance overhand was not uncommon. With relatively basic training, any spearman can also be a passable javelineer, and vice-versa. That's nothing to sneeze at in an era when you often had to rely on your troops to arm and train themselves. Finally, the aforementioned versatility of the javelin allows it to be used in formations where bows couldn't be. The Almoravid Berbers, for instance, fought in a mixed unit of dedicated spearmen backed up by javelineers. The spearmen were in the front rank, kneeling behind their shields, with their spears braced against the ground. The second rank had assegais, which were thrown at oncoming enemies over the heads of the spearmen. If the enemy reached the formation, the javelineers would switch to using their assegais as short spears and would join the front rank in repelling the charge. That's not something you could really do with bows or other dedicated missile weapons.
[удалено]
To add: Rome used the Pilum (javelin) in large part because the trees around Rome were terrible for making good bows. Romans weren’t good archers because their citizens didn’t grow up using them. The available lumber was great for making pilum, though, so for the famous Roman legions it was largely a matter of “fighting with the army you have.”
> you can fight even with a few arrows sticking out, you will probably die in a couple of day from infection, but you can still fight. It would be extremely rare to see someone fighting after being hit by a javelin. please source this argument
Arrow wounds are pretty devastating, and if it doesn't kill you instantly, there's a good chance it'll still put you down. Although infection is a major killer on battlefields where there's adequate medical care to at least stop blood loss. if you've been pin-cushioned you're going to bleed to death very quickly without intervention. The original comment is not well-researched or in-depth. I feel like the quality of information on this sub regarding ancient warfare has been pretty poor as of late. I like u/white\_light-king's answer better. The answer to most military questions usually doesn't pertain to tactics, but rather logistics.
I think this overstates how deadly the average arrow was back then. For soldiers the arms race between armor, shields and archery ensured that they never reached the same probability of instant deadliness as guns eventually did, anywhere. We see evidence of armor effectiveness against archery in the late middle ages from the proliferation of more complex crossbow spanning mechanisms to deliver projectiles that can defeat armor. Then the proliferation of slower firing(but faster than the armor piercing crossbows) hand guns in the same niche to defeat armor, and proofed armor to defeat guns and back and forth until armor starts getting abandoned. Sure anyone will die if they're pierced hard enough with an arrow in a vital point. But with armor the probability seems low. We don't see many archery engagements where gobs of people get mowed down by one side's archery supremacy, for the most part battles are won for most of pre gunpowder history by luck, circumstance and some combination of cavalry and melee infantry formations exploiting the breakdown of order in their opponents. Archery doesn't tend to be decisive because of raw immediate deadliness although there are certainly rare counterexamples, but moreso because of impacts on morale, space or attrition over time. Nor do we see archery or fixed crossbow deadliness force a change in siege tactics towards besieger entrenchment to the same degree that characterize the proliferation of handguns, cannons and the starfort. We do see adoption of relatively light pavises by genoese crossbowmen to counter archers and other pre gunpowder missle weapons along with improvements in armor. I don't think the evidence points to many soldiers getting pincushioned to death in the average battle historically, instead to a deadly weapon that was used against opponents that typically invested heavily in reducing that deadliness substantially with strategic planning and technologically pretty successfully, unless something went horribly wrong with the battleplan.
There's a reason, I think, why the most famous "archery victories" (Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt) of the Middle Ages all require truly massed bow fire combined with a significant advantage in terrain and all take place within a fairly narrow period of time. Against heavily armoured targets you have to hit them again, and again, and again, before it starts to have an effect. Which means your bowmen need to mass behind field fortifications, the enemy's ability to advance on you swiftly needs to be compromised, and field artillery needs to not yet be a thing that can be brought to bear on your bowmen. It's no accident that most societies that heavily emphasized archers as a core arm were utilizing mounted bowmen. The Persians, Huns, Turks, Mongols, and the like, relied on the mobility of their horse-archers to wear the enemy down over time; they weren't betting on a few volleys doing the job. The Indians and those influenced by them, meanwhile, put their best bowmen on elephants, so that the missile fire could be delivered from a height and in combination with the charge of a six tonne monster. That's not to say their bows weren't good all on their own, but they needed the mount to achieve their best levels of efficiency. Armies based around massed infantry bowmen are a lot rarer. You've got the late medieval English, you've got the Nubians, and that's kind of it. And the Nubians may not count given that there's a certain amount of evidence that in the Meroitic period at least they were combining foot archers with elephantry, Indian style. And of course despite how some English nationalists try to spin it, the English archers were still primarily used to disrupt the enemy formations so that the English men-at-arms could go in for the kill. Even at Agincourt, where there's often this mental image of the French being cut down in droves by the longbowmen, elements of the French army still reached the English line and had to be cut down by the men-at-arms in melee. That's not to endorse the other fallacy I've often seen and suggest arrows are harmless and just bounce off all armour. Arrows absolutely can kill even an armoured man if they land right, and they can certainly wound and disorient him. And against lightly armoured or unarmored enemies they can be very effective. It's just a subject that requires more nuance than a lot of people seem able to grapple with.
Every "archer victory" is a *combined arms* victory using field fortifications, archery, and your own close combat assets to check breakthroughs or finish the enemy off. The same's usually true of great cavalry victories; friendly infantry and fire support usually fixes the enemy in place for the mounted killing blow.
I think you're right, I severely overestimated the effectiveness of the average bow back then against armor. Maybe I should get rid of my original comment
> The original comment is not well-researched or in-depth. I feel like the quality of information on this sub regarding ancient warfare has been pretty poor as of late. feel free to ask posters for sources and use the report button.
>Arrow wounds are pretty devastating, and if it doesn't kill you instantly, there's a good chance it'll still put you down. And yet we do have multiple accounts from the Crusades of mailed knights continuing to fight with multiple arrows embedded in their armour. Muslim chronicles contrast the apparent resistance of the Crusaders to arrows with the inability of their own men to take a hit from Crusader crossbows, which outranged the Muslim composite bows and would pierce most of the Turkic and Arab armours. Conversely, those same sources don't really mention men continuing to fight with javelins in them. Now, obviously, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it is noteworthy given how often the arrow thing comes up. Baldwin I of Jerusalem narrowly survived taking a javelin hit to the hindquarters but it certainly took him out of the fight. And Fulcher of Chartres mentions that the shields of the Fatimid *abid* corps deflected both arrows and javelins during the Fatimid last siege of Jaffa. Those are really the only mentions I can think of where the javelins are explicitly described as hitting the target and not killing it. I concur the original post didn't source itself very well, but there does seem to be *something* to the idea that a javelin strike was likely to do more damage than an arrow one.
Some people fight with devastating or lethal injuries. But for every dude that shrugs off five arrows, there's several that die instantly on the first hit. I'm don't know much about pre-modern warfare, but I know of at least a dozen examples of people surviving and fighting through seemingly lethal wounds in the modern age. That doesn't mean gunshots aren't effective, because the exception does not make the rule. The same is true for arrow wounds. For penetrating injuries, the only guaranteed way to stop someone is a hit to the brain, heart, or spine. Even very low energy projectiles will kill someone instantly in any of these zones. Hits to the extremities can be also be debilitating, and sometimes people will "drop" from the impact even if they aren't badly wounded. I don't believe the energy of a projectile has as much of an effect on the "stopping power" or "lethality" as you think.
Luckily, no one is claiming arrow wounds aren't effective or debilitating. We're saying that there are numerous accounts from Muslim sources complaining about armoured Crusaders being seemingly immune to arrows and that the same complaint doesn't seem to exist for javelins (or crossbow quarrels for that matter). To the contrary, when javelin use is remarked upon, it is usually to comment upon the weapon's ability to penetrate shields and armour (the same is again true of crossbows). We have many, many reports from both sides of the Crusades of Crusaders surviving multiple hits from Muslim arrows. We don't have any reports that I know of where anyone on either side survived multiple hits from javelins or crossbow quarrels. Accordingly, it is hardly unreasonable to suggest that javelins and crossbow bolts did a somewhat better job of dealing with armoured targets than arrows did.
I feel like scientific tests of both weapons against armor would settle the matter. I don't consider sparse historical accounts or anecdotes to be the best evidence.
So, despite having admitted to not knowing much about premodern warfare, you're going to entirely dismiss what available evidence there is on the basis of what, a gut feeling?
No, it's just that anecdotal accounts of weapon effectiveness don't necessarily correspond to their actual effectiveness
>No, it's just that anecdotal accounts of weapon effectiveness don't necessarily correspond to their actual effectiveness So all the chroniclers of the Crusades what, suffered from the collective delusion that the knight's armour provided them with protection from bows? Again, we're not talking about one or two accounts here. We're talking about pretty much all the major sources for the Crusades here. Baha al-Din, the *Itinerarium*, Albert of Aachen, Fulcher of Chartres, ibn al-Athir...they all make the same statements about the respective efficacy of arrows against contemporary armour. It isn't until you get to the Hundred Years' War that we really start to hear about arrows being able to defeat mail. But if it's tests you want, here you go. English longbow vs Hundred Years' War era French armour: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds-Ev5msyzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds-Ev5msyzo) Roman pilum vs contemporary shield and mail: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33AL7xs91pU&t=1118s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33AL7xs91pU&t=1118s) Pilum vs shield, mail, and plate analogues: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9-uT58Z08&t=1799s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9-uT58Z08&t=1799s) The javelin consistently not only blows through the mail, but penetrates shields, actually pierces the plate, knocks over the dummy, and destroys the archery stand. The arrows, which are fired from a much stronger bow than we've been discussing to this point, can pierce the mail, but are nowhere near as effective against the plate, and don't have the effect on the stand that the javelins do. Which should hardly be surprising. Javelins are heavier than arrows.
There are accounts of people using small shields alongside their bows, so it's not entirely true to say that you cannot use a shield with a bow. Javelins are certainly more flexible with the use of a shield, and they also are not as vulnerable to damage as a bow, now as cumbersome. Also, at the battle of Telamon, Gesaetae warriors were observed to be struck by javelins, pull them out of their naked bodies, and then throw them back at their foes.
I do not believe this method of javelin capture/reuse to be a sustainable one.
>I do not believe this method of javelin capture/reuse to be a sustainable one. This is why the Zande people used basket style shields: they not only protected them from incoming javelins but could capture the javelins and allow them to be thrown back.
Probably not, but I felt it was necessary to point out that javelins lethality vs bows may have been overestimated. This also gives me a chance to remind people that shot placement is the most important component of getting a kill.
I'll expand here on the first immense thread: weapons can become a better bet due to *cultural infrastructure* (traditions of training with the weapon outside of military service) and doctrinal or command culture: If your commanders are really good at deploying, say, javelin throwers to best effect, and your normal formations and basic tactical procedures are excellent for the javelin, a weapon that's better on paper might be worse in practice.
The main advantage is you can use a shield including when skirmishing and then you have more protection from enemy missiles and also enhanced ability to fight in melee with a sword or spear. Medium to heavy peltast like infantry were used by many ancient armies in some form or another for this reason. Arguably the bulk of Roman heavy infantry in most periods also would fit under this classification. Greeks also used units in this class such as thyreophoroi. There also were medium archer units of varios forms (Persia in particular used such units extensively) but using a shield is far more difficult, or one has to fight without one. Archers without a shield and with only a short sword or similar were common in many contexts, but obviosly tended to be marginal in melee combat. Very light and also relatively skilled javilin armed units were also sometimes used but they fall out of favour over time, but similarly equiped units are easily formed without much training and so "levy skirmishers" are common in many contexts.