Longbow VS Crossbow

Which is the better medieval weapon overall: The Longbow or Crossbow?

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This is like asking which is better, a sports car or a van.

Overall though?

A van

Which is the van?

>he thinks the english longbow actually existed

Define "better".
In open field battles the longbow was superior to the crossbow because of its rate of fire. But open field battles were rare in the middle ages, the majority of the war was made of sieges. The crossbow is more accurate and more powerful, however it costs much more ; Despite a common misconception, crossbows were not easily handed over to any man of the peasantry. Longbows were also relying on a specific socio-economical and politicial system, which is why they were seen in Britain and not on the continent (Save for the late XVth Century in France, and even now the crossbow was used along with the longbow by the frogs).
In reality the men of the middle ages probably didn't take in account a great difference between the crossbow and the longbow ; both weapons were used by archers, and it's not like real life is a video game. Knights used crossbows and longbows. Massed infantry used different sorts of weapons. The english are original in their massive use of their longbows because of social rather than military reasons : The King of England relied heavily on the yeomen, this class of rich peasant landowners to make up his armies, probably because England did not have an easy access on a pool of able-bodied footmen while the French relied on the levies of communal cities (Where crossbow guilds were important since the crossbows were a pre-industrial good) and mercenary companies.

Also neither the longbow nor the crossbow could penetrate a plate armour. The longbow could not even penetrate a footman's gambeson, contrarly to the crossbow. These weapons were much more useful as a psychological factor, to wound lightly armed forces, and to kill horses who were unprotected.

It's easier to rape someone in a van so I'm going with a van.

But if you have a sports car you won't need to rape anyone.

The crew of archers interred within the sunken remains of the Mary Rose offers interesting insight into longbow culture of the period.

maryrose.org/tudor-trivia-how-tall-were-the-crew/

Killing horse from afar can change the outcome of a battle

At Agincourt the English killed French horse which forced French knights to charge on foot in heavy plate armor in the mud, resulting in most of them falling exhausted and getting captured

Also, even tho the arrows couldn't pierce their armors, the shock waves from the thousands of impact increased the exhaustion of the Fench

The English used 'air-bows' and fired 'air-arrows' by making a bow draw gesture and then exclaimimg "Twang!"
French soldiers were horrified by this spectacle with one reporting "it was as if the devil himself imbued the English with the power to strike with wind"
Chroniclers noted how hoardes of unaware French cavalry were cut down after charging seemingly unarmed English soldiers

Yes exactly.
Also at Agincourt, the longbowmen dropped their bows and joined the melee using maces, swords and axes against french knights who must have been completly exhausted, covered in mud, out of breath because of their bascinets with the visor down they had to keep for their long march, disorganized, bleeding from wounds and shaken from the rain of steel they had to wither. The longbow is an effective weapon in an open field battle ; but it is not a weapon that could cut through thousands of knights, contrarly to the myth. And contrarly to the myth, the longbow alone never won any battle, the longbowmen also had to be competent foot soldiers.

Well what's the fun in that?

I think probably laughed at the idea of an "english" longbow more than the idea of a "longbow", because the longbow is a weapon that can be found in prehistorical societies and, if anything, it is fighting against the welsh that inspired the King of England to rely on archers in his military organization.

Twang

The crossbow was more versatile. A crossbowman could fight well not only on an open battlefield but also on a ship's deck, or the walls of a castle, from a variety of positions. The weapon could be made small enough to be an effective weapon on horseback and large enough to be a mounted siege turret.

The longbow in comparison might be taken onto a ship or the walls of a castle, but at the draw weight necessary to be an effective weapon it could only be fired one way standing up. It couldn't be made more powerful without becoming impossible for most archers to use or small enough to be useful on horseback. That the weapon remained limited to a certain class of soldier in a small region of Europe means that it wasn't the longbow that was ever the better weapon, but the longbowman who was the superior soldier for a relatively brief period of time. Cultures across the Mediterranean, even those with a very old and well developed culture of archery like the Turks and Egyptians, adopted the crossbow. But almost none adopted the longbow, and instead opted to hire English longbowmen mercenaries if they bothered at all.

Wow that looks really effective

The hand cannon.

Something few people seem to consider is that the longbow relied on a supply of rather rare yew wood. The english had to source it from all over europe at considerable expense. Meanwhile, crossbows could be made from composite material (so could bows, but europeans never used it for that, apparently because those are harder to protect from water) or, later on, spring steel. Such crossbows were still expensive, but they didn't rely on any rare ressource.

It's sort of the same as all the AR vs AK bullshit today. The performance of longbows and crossbows was so similar that if step out of the weeds and look at the big picture there's almost no difference. Despite poundage differences the kinetic energy of a heavy longbow and heavy crossbow are roughly similar. Crossbows also aren't very much slower to reload and shoot than a vertical bow. Ultimately it was probably up to the user's preference, and the decision was heavily cultural. You used a crossbow because all your friends had crossbows, or the same with a bow.

>The english had to source it from all over europe at considerable expense.
People say this, but the price of bows made of the best-quality imported wood was never higher than a few shillings.