Ed Ranks Medieval Ranged Weapons

The theme continues. This time... ranged weapons! For this, I will include both ranged weapons held in hand, as well as larger "siege weapons." These are all weapons that can kill you and damage your infrastructure from afar, rather than the swords and other melee weapons I most recently ranked.

I'm going to basically declare the end of "Medieval" times to coincide with the arrival of gunpowder. So this list will not include Culverins or other early Cannon, the Arquebus, etc. So that's the back end. What about the front end? I do indeed understand that some of these weapons (e.g. the bow and arrow are older than civilization itself) are actually ancient rather than Medieval. However, if they were still being used in Medieval times, I'm going to continue to include them. Just because Oog the Caveman invented the Bow and Arrow and some Greek invented the Ballista doesn't mean I won't talk about them.

6. Sling

You have to be poorer than the guys who use Quarterstaffs if you're going to resort to this weapon.

The story of David and Goliath might impress you that a Sling is an effective weapon. I am unimpressed and unconvinced though.  

5. Ballista

Honestly, I think he's just going to shoot the horse in the head.

As mentioned, this goes back to Greek times. It's essentially a big ol' crossbow that fires a bolt. A Harpax is a Roman version, and the Scorpion on Game of Thrones is basically just the same thing. It's cool, but still only #5.

4. Throwing Blades

These people were NOT playing around.

 A pretty wide category, which includes various cultures' throwing knives or throwing axes (the latter of which includes the francisca). This also inludes things like the Indian Chakram (which I call "cool, spinny kill disc"); central African Kulbeda, Pinga and Trombash; southern African Mambele; and the Japanese Shuriken (colloquially "Ninja Stars") or Kunai. The concept behind all of these weapons? It's sharp. You throw it at someone. You kill or hurt them. I guess you could add a "throwing spear" into this category as well, right?

3. Bow

Get ready for it to rain death!

The bow and arrow is as old as humanity itself, but it had an especially great and effective run during Medieval times. I'm just going to throw all of the bow and arrows together here as one type, but for purposes of medieval warfare use - know that we're talking specifically about both the Longbow (super tall, no real recurve shape to it), and the Recurve Bow (like the Composite Bow and Mongol Bow). Gather a bunch of archers. Have then shoot a ton of arrows all at once. Let gravity do the rest. FUN! You mostly had to be fairly skilled to use these things though. I'll talk more about that later.

2. Petrary (Siege Engines)

Your castle walls BOUT TO GO DOWN, SON.

You may not be super familiar with the term, but "Petrary" refers to ranged siege engines, including the Trebuchet (it uses a swinging arm and a counterweight to throw a projectile), Catapult (using a cantilever spring and a released restraining rope to throw a projectile), and the Mangonel (also called a Traction Trebuchet, and working the same way except using manpower to swing the arm rather than a counterweight). You load up these bad boys with a payload of stuff that will do some damage (big rocks typically, although dead bodies was also an option for early innovators of biological warfare. Very effective. Right now you might be wondering why the Ballista isn't included in here. Well, that's because Ballistas shoot bolts or arrows, and this would technically not fit into the definition of Petrary.

1. Crossbow

The most skilled military tacticians of all time did not kill Richard the Lionheart. An idiot with a Crossbow did.

I love me some Crossbow! Though it might have had its origins in China as well as be influenced the larger ballista and the Roman scorpio, by Medieval times the European Crossbow (and the Arbalest) really revolutionized war and the ability to quickly, effectively killing people. Why? Crossbows weren't that much different in principle than the ancient bow, which was still widely used in war. But bowmen/archers are artists. Bowmen require specialized training which takes years to develop the finesse, strength, and skill needed to operate a bow and arrow with any degree of accuracy. Because of that, bowmen were often treated as a special warrior caste, better than the other foot soldiers in war. Which means if they died in battle, you were losing a very precious and skilled commodity, as opposed to the dumb peasants who you give cheap melee weapons to. In some cultural traditions, archers were basically trained from youth. A crossbow, on the other hand, evened that playing field and essentially gave the common, poorly-trained soldier the ability to effectively (and somewhat accurately) shoot out very similar killing bolts. Were untrained Crossbowmen conscripted into the armies as effective as highly trained archers? Of course not. But if you take the comparative costs of the two, the Crossbow was a lot cheaper and allowed any military to field an insanely deadly ranged force. The jump from bow to Crossbow was probably about the same as the jump from Crossbow to gun, in terms of revolutionizing war to make it more deadly. However, I still think the Crossbow is better than the gun. Guns have big, loud, bang-ey noises that are lame and give you away. The Crossbow is still relatively silent. I'm not saying that we should all be armed with Crossbows to this day, but I am... no... wait... I am saying that. CROSSBOWS FOR EVERYONE!