Late Gothic Crossbows and Accouterments

[David Jaumann]

Your´re welcome for the pictures, Michael!

Nice picture!
Like Micke, I did only know the painted version on Holger Richters book.
That´s also where I got the information about the Hermannsstadt crossbows. Unfortunatelly, it´s at my home right now and not here in Innsbruck, where I recently started studying archeology. But I´m also already eager to read Mickes post about the crossbows.


@Micke:
So it really seems that there were some standarts for the distance bethween the nutfingers. I noticed that there are maybe two "types" of bolts.
The first one was probably especially made for one specific crossbow or a special armoury (look at post #25). The rear end is tapered gradually.
The second type could have been a mass product for many armouries, which had to be adjusted in each case. On post #254 you can see that these bolts were probably carved with a knife to adjust them to the nut. That would perfectly match to your answer of my question.
What do you think?

Best wishes,
David

[Matchlock]

Hi David and Micke,


I asked my friend, who collects 15th-16th century crossbows and all sorts of accouterments concerning a possible standardization of the width of the recess in the center of the nut that we had been discussing.

He told me that his collection comprised 6 (!) crossbows with composite horn bows, 19 cranequins and some 200 quarrels/crossbow bolts from various provenances, including some incredibly rare incendiary arrows.

Please see
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...bow+collection

His earliest crossbow is the fine and perfectly preserved piece from the Harold L. Peterson colln. (attached here), and it can be dated as early as ca. 1430-40!!!
Interestingly, he thinks that there was no such thing like a standardized space between the nut 'fingers'. He also emphasized that a great number of the bolt shafts in his collection had oval (!) rear ends while the rest was obviously cut to shape to fit that space between the nut 'fingers'. His conclusion is that the quarrel shafts were only cut right before they were about to 'see service'.
And: not all quarrels fit the nuts of any crossbow.


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

Hi,


I found this image I posted above in a museum's book on the earliest firearms in the Brukenthal museum, which of course are highly interesting to me. The book is by Elena Roman: Arme de Foc Portative Secolele XV-XVIII, 1981. The photos are of horribly poor quality, and although the one of the weapons room at the back of the book is said to have been taken in 1934, they all look that old.
Some six years ago I made contacts with the museum staff, and getting regular responses was really extremely tough and the uncertainty was almost unbearable although I had made the contact via a high-ranking official in the Romanian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. Well, I just hung on and by and by I learned that there was only one way to get what I wanted (good photos). And that way was called money, so I finally tranferred a few hundred euro. After what seemed an eternity, at least half a year or so, I received color (!) photos of their earliest Late Gothic and Early Renaissance firearms.
O.k., so they were in color but that was about all. They were visibly taken with the utmost reluctance, extremely dark and in very low resolution, 270 kB each. The museum staff had agreed to take the images in high resolution before, 5 MB each. In fact, however, I could hardly see anything that was of interest to me. Our agreement was that they would take many detailed close-ups of the lock mechanisms amd the marks on the barrels. Nothing of all that was on what I got. When I reclaimed, the contact broke up immediately and I was told that I would not get photos of the crossbows as a female member of the museum's staff, Anca Nitoi, wanted to do her doctorate on them. So that was it. An average span of time to acquire a Ph.D. is 2-3 years. After six years now I have heard nothing about an academic study on the Sibiu crossbows, and their internet site does not provide any information on museum's publications either.
Believe me, it's experiences like that that just make me comment pejoratively as usual: 'museums '

I attached two of those photos of their guns, just for the fun and for you to judge their 'quality'. It is only with a whole lot of imagination that I can tell by these images that the guns are early snap-tinderlocks from the 1520's to 30's.

Also attached find two close-ups of the crossbows, as good as it gets. And, attached at the bottom, in my archives I found a xeroxed copy of a historic photo of the array in the Sibiu weapons hall of ca. 1880, where some Gothic crossbows can be identified.

Finally, Sibiu seems to have split up the display of the crossbows; here is an impression of the Altemberger Haus, which belongs to the Hermannstadt/Brukenthal administration.


Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

No post

[Micke D]

Hello Michael!

First you got my hope up for visiting this collection someday , but now my hope is almost gone again .

It's so sad with that kind of trouble to get some simple photos taken, and that you had to pay for them, and in bad quality at that. But that seems to be the way of many museums around the world; the objects are theirs and theirs alone. So studying the crossbows seems to be hard to arrange.

I found out about these crossbows in Egon Harmuths book , ‘Die Armbrust. He writes somewhere in the book,( I can’t find the page right now), about 24 war crossbows kept at the same place since medieval times. That started my interest and my want to see them some day.

Later I found out that Holger Richter has a chapter about these crossbows, 25 he says, in his book, ‘Die Hornbogenarmbrust’. Many of the bows covered with hunting designs and the coat of arms of Matthias Corvinus, the king of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, who died in Vienna in 1490.

I have also found an article by Dr Julius Bielz from 1934, but sadly the copy is more or less as bad as your photo.

[Micke D]

These two photos are of the crossbows on display at the Brukenthal Museum. They were taken by a Romanian guy who is into 15th c re-enactment and was shown at The Armour Archive a few years ago.

[Matchlock]

Originally Posted by Micke D

These two photos are of the crossbows on display at the Brukenthal Museum. They were taken by a Romanian guy who is into 15th c re-enactment and was shown at The Armour Archive a few years ago.

Hi Micke,


Thank you so much indeed for these documents!

I photoshoped the photos a bit, et voilà, one can at least see some details. The main problem seems to be that they were taken in low resolution.

I'm trying to talk my friend who is totally into Gothic crossbows into flying to Sibiu and taking pictures himself. Sadly, my bad health does not allow me to accompany him and do my own research on their earliest arquebuses. I will try and renew our old contact and see what actually is possible. After all, Romania is in the EU now and gets a whole lot of money from Germany. They will not want to hear of that but I'm going to tell them the facts anyway. I remember paying 400 euro (about 500 USD) six years ago, and you have seen what 'quality' the stuff was I got. That was not the kind of jokes that make me laugh.

Just a few words on Holger Richter. He is by no means the crossbow enthusiast that Harmuth was indeed. And he did not see the Sibiu crosbows.


With my very best wishes,
Michael

[Matchlock]

Having just read the 1934 essay by Julius Bielz on the Hermannstadt crossbows, I would like to know whether there is someone interested in a translation. Although this would be some amount of work I would do it as there are a number of invaluable quotations from historic sources, including workshops etc., plus information on where and when these crossbows were made. He also gives a very detailed description and measurements of the best preserved sample.

I have also been informed that a large number of those originally 25 crossbows that Bielz mentions are no longer in Sibiu but have been in the National Museum Budapest, Hungary, for at least 20 years when they were sent there for a special historic exhibition. Why they were not returned I do not know. In his essay, Bielz mentions the fact that 8 Gothic crossbows from Hermannstadt were already in the Budapest museum by 1934.


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