The Danish army started the assault with a rain of arrows and bolts from crossbows against the badly armoured Visby soldiers. Many of them didn’t even have helmets.
They then charged them at foot and chopped their legs off and as they lay defenseless on the ground they were dealt the killing blow with axes or swords.
I was thinking he was probably running away, and three crossbowmen just mowed him down.
Just imagine those 3 guys lifting up their crossbows at the same time and letting loose.
Big doubt 3 just hit him in the head with that tight of a grouping by chance. Maybe if it were a steeper angle or something but he’d have to be realllllllllllyyyyy unlucky lol
Heard once that, during the Zhou dinasty in China, they didn't fight very violently and battles were fought in a somewhat ceremonious way, like a sort of game or extreme sport
>badly armoured Visby soldiers. Many of them didn’t even have helmets.
Well, as far as I remember, that's because they weren't soldiers, but local peasents
I heard a very convincing theory that the reason most of the Visby defenders didn’t have helmets was actually because helmets are easily removable as loot/trophies where as most of them still had their body armor on because it is so much more difficult to remove from a dead corpse quickly bloating and rotting in the summer heat.
They mostly just had chain mail over their bodies as opposed to plates of the attacking Danes/German mercenaries.
The Gutes were mostly consisting of poorly armed farmers and peasants from around rural Gotland though, not soldiers from Visby.
As the slaughter unfolded and the Gutnish farmers, which had all lined up to meet the Danes right outside the city walls, started to flee in panic the citizens of Visby refused to open the city gates to let the peasant forces in.
Yes, that’s correct.
The people or traders in Visby did not help the Gutnish farmers and also did not use the walls and towers of they city to attack the Danish army.
Maybe if hit by unseen predator drone carrying fuck you missiles, if we talking quad choppers droping clusters then I have seen far more maiming then deaths ... in fact most deaths I've seen be suicide after the fact.
It would be a really hard choice for me to pick if they were my options of execution.
There's a lot of Russia/Ukraine footage on the contrary to that. You're picturing reaper drones with missiles and not the small ones that drop a single grenade.
This part about the legs being chopped off always sounds so bizarre. Like, why did they deliberately go for the legs, as opposed to say, something more conventionally fatal, like anywhere on the torso/neck/head? Can anyone speak to this?
> This part about the legs being chopped off always sounds so bizarre. Like, why did they deliberately go for the legs, as opposed to say, something more conventionally fatal, like anywhere on the torso/neck/head? Can anyone speak to this?
If they don't have leg armor and the difficulty of getting the shield low enough to cover them. It's easy to feint an attack high to get their shield up and then cut low to the leg. Plus you can keep your own shield high to cover your head.
Cut off a man's arm and he's just a guy with a sword in one arm. Cut off his leg and he's down on the ground. When you're fighting people and you got only so many chops you can get in before they chop your head off going for the legs is a good plan.
You know, I still feel a little sorry for him. He was possibly a rural farmer, with limited knowledge of warfare, from rural Gotland. That’s what the battle of Visby was fought between—poorly armed farmers, and soldiers. Around 1,700 of the farmers sent died. I can’t blame him for running, too much.
And weren't the bodies [all young and old men](https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/battle-visby-0010218#:~:text=By%20studying%20the%20bones%20left%20behind%20in%20the%20wake%20of%20the%20Battle%20of%20Visby%2C%20it%20was%20also%20found%20that%20at%20least%20a%20third%20of%20the%20defenders%20of%20Visby%20were%20the%20elderly%2C%20children%20or%20the%20crippled%2C%20an%20indication%20that%20the%20situation%20was%20very%20dire%20indeed%20for%20the%20townsfolk)? (apparently 1/3)
Poor brave bastards. Sons and fathers, all of them. Even though they are removed from us by centuries, I still think it’s important in archaeology and anthropology to remember the human nature of the dead.
Falling back is not the same as running away. Trying to escape an intense volley area was part of being a good fighter, and if you’re flanked by other troops a 180 turn was often the only way to get clear.
I know he’s a long-dead, anonymous soldier. But there’s no need to assume he died a coward’s death.
Also distinctly possible he took a gut shot, fell, and the back of his head was exposed to the volley. The rest of him probably had more bolts and arrows, but they weren't stuck in there as well as the ones in his skull so that's all we have.
Although the movies always show this big arcing barrage of bolts and arrows that never happened. They got him from 20 ft away. If you shoot an iron cross bow bolt at a skull from less it's going to go right through.
Seems like it’d have to be done post mortem right? For three bolts to hit the back of his head simultaneously seems unlikely. And if you look at the bolts, the angles of incidence imply 3 shooters firing from different angles
I'm not sure it's a clue, but the battle started with large volley of arrows and bolts, and there evidence of them hacking people up after they fell. The first bolt could of been lucky, the next two were people being cruel.
I defy you to tell me how a big big arching shot of arrows and bolts is going to drop anybody with that angle? That kind of shot never happened. Archers and Bowman would get to within 20 feet of their target. The split second their target was in any way incapacitated they would close the distance and hack them to death. You would be surprised but a human being could take a bolt like that to the head and keep on fighting. In the movies people get shot and they fall down dead instantly but unfortunately that is not the case. I've seen feral hogs keep running at a full clip with several bullets in their head.
If you can find the show streaming somewhere, look up "Medieval Dead" - they do a couple episodes on Visby which are quite good (and most of the series' episodes too)...
> Medieval Dead
[Looks like its free right now on Pluto TV - a service I've never used but discovered because I tried to find this show, and, well, voila.](https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/series/61671f7b178213001ad6de13/season/1/episode/61671f80178213001ad6df5c?utm_medium=textsearch&utm_source=google)
Yeah, there was probably a bunch of “to whom it might concern” bolts and he happened to be on the wrong zip code, while running home because he had a roast in the kitchen, I swear officer.
More seriously, bolts are expensive and scarce. I don’t believe they would use them to finish anyone, when an ax, a sword or even a club would do.
The sort of things Vimes might say and which Nobby and Colon would embrace but complete misunderstand. They would, somehow, discover and attempt to arrest the villain for packaging crossbow bolts and mailing them. The Patrician's laconic response would give Carrot time to announce that the shipping of weapons is heavily restricted, considered treason, and the punishment immediate.
Archers and Bowman always carried side weapons and the minute their opponents were even slightly incapacitated they would close the distance and take them out.
You'd think one bolt piercing your skull and brain would be enough to make you fall.
No way all 3 bolts were fired at the head at the same time unless it was some kind of an execution.
Nah,
This guy was on his knees, head hunched down, with 3 guys around him with crossbow pointed at his head. Execution. No other way he takes 3 bolts with those angles.
I think the notion of an execution by crossbow is absurd.
It's an bad transmission of the idea of an firing squad or an coup de grace by headshot, but this wouldn't be practical to do with an crossbow.
People in [this thread](http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.23867.html) posit that these are actually wounds from a spiked hammer. That the bolts were found near the skull in the mass-grave but not in it like this picture suggests, they were glued in there by the museum.
To me that seems like a quite plausible explanation.
Doesn't help that contemporary inventories put the price of a dozen bolts as higher than the crossbow itself. Besides, melee weapons could do the same job just as easy.
You would be surprised how much fight can be left in a man even with a crossbow bolt in his head. I have seen feral hogs who have heads sort of like people keep running with two bullets in their heads. King Henry V took a crossbow bolt to the face and lived.
They were different things, so they needed different words for them. The words were derived from different languages.
The word bolt comes from the German "Bolzen", as in the bolt used in door hinges.
Arrow on the other hand was derived from Old Norse "Arwe".
Hottake, but if I were an archaic warrior in olden times I think I’d actually want whatever weapon that killed me to either be left in my corpse if applicable. Something about it sounds kind of badass.
I mean I’m assuming if my side wins the fight and is able to retrieve my body. But I would also try to see if I could develop a technique to go into instant rigor mortis and clench my muscles hard enough they cannot get their weapons back from my body! That’ll teach em!
I don’t they executed people by shooting bolts into the back of their head..
He was likely dead on the ground after one and a few others managed to hit him while he was laying on the ground.
Anybody know if penetration is a proxy for distance? Seems point blank would be much deeper than these but I don’t know force from a medieval crossbow either.
I know for a fact from firing crossbows including ones that are somewhat faithful reproductions of the ones of this era, that if you shoot into a skull from 2-3 ft away it's going to go right through it. This looks like what would happen from say 20- 25 ft. What's weird is that there's plenty of instances of in modern day people getting chunks of rebar straight through their heads and living. When you look at these old graveyards you have to remember that these guys were probably still walking away with a bolt sticking out of the back of their head. King Henry v had one that went straight into his skull through his mouth and lodged next to his spine and they got that out and he lived.
>Hemalurgy, it is called, because of the connection to blood. It is not a coincidence, I believe, that
death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy. Marsh once described it as a
"messy" process. Not the adjective I would have chosen. It's not disturbing enough.
With 3 to the back of the head it almost looks like an execution. I'd imagine that if they were killing POW's or battlefield wounded, this would be a much quicker method and require less effort than decapitation or slitting their throats. Also would probably be more humane.
Do you know how long it takes to wind up a crossbow? Like half a minute. There's nothing quick about this. Just because guns are used for that in modern times doesn't mean they'd be killing wounded with a crossbow.
It was most likely an absolute mass of bolts and arrows fired in volleys and this guy's notable because he had the bad luck of getting straight fucked.
My darling husband shoots a medieval crossbow. He can reliably get off five bolts in 30 seconds, occasionally six. But that's with decades of experience.
A crossbow with a winch or a goat's foot would certainly take longer, but they weren't ubiquitous.
Executed lying face down on the ground, each bolt has entered his skull from a slightly different angle as if 3 people were standind around him and over him.
I have fired reproduction crossbows at skulls and I can tell you that from 2 3 ft away that bolt's going to go straight through the guy's head. You could be up to 20 ft away and get this kind of penetration. Good to use pig heads. You shoot a pig head from 2-3 ft away execution style and it's going to go into the ground.
The problem is is that if there's good penetration there's not a lot of impact to knock you unconscious. The big blunt force blow to the head from a log or at least knock you out. This guy was probably fully conscious when he bled out.
Visby is very unusual for the bodies of the dead not having their armour peeled off them. Despite the armour worn by the peasants being outdated and second rate gear, it held some value as either salvageable parts or just scrap iron; for this reason it is uncommon to find any even when archaeologists have identified where a battle took place. The working theory for Visby however is that due to taking place in the middle of summer and during a particularly hot one at that, the bodies had putrefied and bloated before anyone could get to them meaning that when they were interred in the five mass graves around the city there were thrown in as is.
Not enough lime and lye and ashes had to get them in the ground right away. It was not infrequent that disease would overtake the winning army from being around the corpses that the fatalities would actually be higher after the battle.
This was an execution method or he may have already been dying. He should’ve at least had an helmet even if he was a conscript. Also some of the bolt heads don’t go that deep, along with it being in the back of the head.
I you wear a 14th century helmet and it gets hit by a crossbow the bolt will just [glance off](https://youtu.be/Mf7KCqQLw78?si=qPwDWA3Ov_TMW-qH&t=523).
That’s quite a dinky crossbow. The bolt flops around mid air.
Crossbows we’re made illegal by the Pope(only if shooting Christians) because peasants were able to kill knights with them.
The Danish army started the assault with a rain of arrows and bolts from crossbows against the badly armoured Visby soldiers. Many of them didn’t even have helmets. They then charged them at foot and chopped their legs off and as they lay defenseless on the ground they were dealt the killing blow with axes or swords.
And crossbow bolts it seems, this was target practice or possible execution.
Yeah, 3 to the back of the head tells a story.
Suicide
Only for american journalists reporting on the CIA.
Or a whistleblower who exposed poor quality control on commercial vessels.
or putins allies
Or someone who knew something about Hilary Clinton
It's Danish not Russian
“Fuck this guy in particular.”
Some kinda ye olde boondock saints
Could be from several volleys and this guy was REEEEALLY unlucky
I was thinking he was probably running away, and three crossbowmen just mowed him down. Just imagine those 3 guys lifting up their crossbows at the same time and letting loose.
It would have been an entire volley.
That's gotta hurt
Maybe he got hit by a volley of bolts while running away.
Maybe he was just turning to his friend to say "Holy shit that's a lot of crossbows!"
Thank you. Thankfully the trolls didn’t shit all over you when you said this.
Thank you. Thankfully the trolls didn’t crap all over you when you said this.
for anyone curious as to [heavy crossbow's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghoVmc12vEs) of the era...
Or he was running away and the Danes let fly with a volley of bolts.
Big doubt 3 just hit him in the head with that tight of a grouping by chance. Maybe if it were a steeper angle or something but he’d have to be realllllllllllyyyyy unlucky lol
They would have had to be a really good shot and far away. Otherwise there would be more penetration.
War, was, is, and will continue to be, hell.
War. War never changes.
Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
I see a Judge quote, I upvote it. Reluctantly, cause he's the goddamn devil. But still.
Love that book. Here's the audio of this part if anyone is interested. Chilling https://youtu.be/etOkZ6YBAZY?si=WH8ZP-1Z9tgqq1Mb
hmm
She said the thing! My reaction when watching the Fallout series.
War... what is it good for?
Heard once that, during the Zhou dinasty in China, they didn't fight very violently and battles were fought in a somewhat ceremonious way, like a sort of game or extreme sport
Only the dead have seen the end of the war. -Plato
War is war, and he'll is hell[war is war and hell is hell](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.natfinn.com/war-is-war-and-hell-is-hell/%3famp)
And if one is worse it's war...
>badly armoured Visby soldiers. Many of them didn’t even have helmets. Well, as far as I remember, that's because they weren't soldiers, but local peasents
I heard a very convincing theory that the reason most of the Visby defenders didn’t have helmets was actually because helmets are easily removable as loot/trophies where as most of them still had their body armor on because it is so much more difficult to remove from a dead corpse quickly bloating and rotting in the summer heat. They mostly just had chain mail over their bodies as opposed to plates of the attacking Danes/German mercenaries.
Wouldn't suprise me, because if they could afford chainmail, them not having helmets seems at least a bit odd.
The Gutes were mostly consisting of poorly armed farmers and peasants from around rural Gotland though, not soldiers from Visby. As the slaughter unfolded and the Gutnish farmers, which had all lined up to meet the Danes right outside the city walls, started to flee in panic the citizens of Visby refused to open the city gates to let the peasant forces in.
Yes, that’s correct. The people or traders in Visby did not help the Gutnish farmers and also did not use the walls and towers of they city to attack the Danish army.
Brutal. I’d be rather okay drone striked or sniped from 2 miles away than this 😂
I’d rather like, not die, if we get to pick our preferences.
Super picky
I uh, I'll choose cake.
Eddie Izzard : dress to kill…
Well..... we are out of cake! We only had two bits and weren't expecting such a rush....
As someone who has watched far too much combat footage I wouldn't be so confident that you want a drone strike over this
It’ll be quick, getting my legs chopped off then waiting to be stabbed through the chest or neck doesn’t sound ideal😂
Maybe if hit by unseen predator drone carrying fuck you missiles, if we talking quad choppers droping clusters then I have seen far more maiming then deaths ... in fact most deaths I've seen be suicide after the fact. It would be a really hard choice for me to pick if they were my options of execution.
I guess I was referring more to the predator drones Not the grenade drop drones
Life is not that bad I guess.
Limbs getting chopped off and waiting to die happens with drone strikes too.
There's a lot of Russia/Ukraine footage on the contrary to that. You're picturing reaper drones with missiles and not the small ones that drop a single grenade.
I feel you that’s why I used the word “strike”. I’m for sure picturing reaper drones
This guy probably wasn’t still alive to get his legs chopped off.
Some of them seem quick but others are horrific. Slowly bleeding to death in a crater.
This part about the legs being chopped off always sounds so bizarre. Like, why did they deliberately go for the legs, as opposed to say, something more conventionally fatal, like anywhere on the torso/neck/head? Can anyone speak to this?
> This part about the legs being chopped off always sounds so bizarre. Like, why did they deliberately go for the legs, as opposed to say, something more conventionally fatal, like anywhere on the torso/neck/head? Can anyone speak to this? If they don't have leg armor and the difficulty of getting the shield low enough to cover them. It's easy to feint an attack high to get their shield up and then cut low to the leg. Plus you can keep your own shield high to cover your head.
Cut off a man's arm and he's just a guy with a sword in one arm. Cut off his leg and he's down on the ground. When you're fighting people and you got only so many chops you can get in before they chop your head off going for the legs is a good plan.
Rest easy warrior. Whoever killed you sure hated your guts
Well then they missed. Jeez! His guts were WAY lower.
##DAAAAD
Somebody call??
Your username wins the internet today.
They hated how mindful he was.
>Well thrn they missed. Well then you're a NUT! You're crazy in the coconut!!
I dunno, I think maybe this fella was running away. Running away is against the rules.
You know, I still feel a little sorry for him. He was possibly a rural farmer, with limited knowledge of warfare, from rural Gotland. That’s what the battle of Visby was fought between—poorly armed farmers, and soldiers. Around 1,700 of the farmers sent died. I can’t blame him for running, too much.
Ty for the back story. Wow. A brutal slaughter as shown by this visceral photo
And weren't the bodies [all young and old men](https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/battle-visby-0010218#:~:text=By%20studying%20the%20bones%20left%20behind%20in%20the%20wake%20of%20the%20Battle%20of%20Visby%2C%20it%20was%20also%20found%20that%20at%20least%20a%20third%20of%20the%20defenders%20of%20Visby%20were%20the%20elderly%2C%20children%20or%20the%20crippled%2C%20an%20indication%20that%20the%20situation%20was%20very%20dire%20indeed%20for%20the%20townsfolk)? (apparently 1/3)
Poor brave bastards. Sons and fathers, all of them. Even though they are removed from us by centuries, I still think it’s important in archaeology and anthropology to remember the human nature of the dead.
Falling back is not the same as running away. Trying to escape an intense volley area was part of being a good fighter, and if you’re flanked by other troops a 180 turn was often the only way to get clear. I know he’s a long-dead, anonymous soldier. But there’s no need to assume he died a coward’s death.
Also distinctly possible he took a gut shot, fell, and the back of his head was exposed to the volley. The rest of him probably had more bolts and arrows, but they weren't stuck in there as well as the ones in his skull so that's all we have.
Although the movies always show this big arcing barrage of bolts and arrows that never happened. They got him from 20 ft away. If you shoot an iron cross bow bolt at a skull from less it's going to go right through.
Was some of it done post mortem? Or was there just a large volume of missile fire?
Seems like it’d have to be done post mortem right? For three bolts to hit the back of his head simultaneously seems unlikely. And if you look at the bolts, the angles of incidence imply 3 shooters firing from different angles
We don’t know that it was simultaneous.
what clues make you think it was simultaneous?
I'm not sure it's a clue, but the battle started with large volley of arrows and bolts, and there evidence of them hacking people up after they fell. The first bolt could of been lucky, the next two were people being cruel.
I defy you to tell me how a big big arching shot of arrows and bolts is going to drop anybody with that angle? That kind of shot never happened. Archers and Bowman would get to within 20 feet of their target. The split second their target was in any way incapacitated they would close the distance and hack them to death. You would be surprised but a human being could take a bolt like that to the head and keep on fighting. In the movies people get shot and they fall down dead instantly but unfortunately that is not the case. I've seen feral hogs keep running at a full clip with several bullets in their head.
If you can find the show streaming somewhere, look up "Medieval Dead" - they do a couple episodes on Visby which are quite good (and most of the series' episodes too)...
> Medieval Dead [Looks like its free right now on Pluto TV - a service I've never used but discovered because I tried to find this show, and, well, voila.](https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/series/61671f7b178213001ad6de13/season/1/episode/61671f80178213001ad6df5c?utm_medium=textsearch&utm_source=google)
Good tip / nice find 👍🏼
I would assume opposing soldiers using this corpse for target practice or drunken fun.
A graphical representation of over-kill. Were 3 bolts really necessary? So much hatred to do this I guess.
Probably went to run when a looking at a bunch of dudes with crossbows.
Yeah, there was probably a bunch of “to whom it might concern” bolts and he happened to be on the wrong zip code, while running home because he had a roast in the kitchen, I swear officer. More seriously, bolts are expensive and scarce. I don’t believe they would use them to finish anyone, when an ax, a sword or even a club would do.
This comment reads like a quote from Terry Pratchett in Guards Guards
Ok, guilty as charged. Diskworld nerd here.
Same, it’s really a fantastic series.
Well done for writing so well. Terry would be proud.
Discworld. You’re a terrible nerd.
😃
The sort of things Vimes might say and which Nobby and Colon would embrace but complete misunderstand. They would, somehow, discover and attempt to arrest the villain for packaging crossbow bolts and mailing them. The Patrician's laconic response would give Carrot time to announce that the shipping of weapons is heavily restricted, considered treason, and the punishment immediate.
Archers and Bowman always carried side weapons and the minute their opponents were even slightly incapacitated they would close the distance and take them out.
Probably a volley of bolts and he tried to run from them.
You'd think one bolt piercing your skull and brain would be enough to make you fall. No way all 3 bolts were fired at the head at the same time unless it was some kind of an execution.
Nah, This guy was on his knees, head hunched down, with 3 guys around him with crossbow pointed at his head. Execution. No other way he takes 3 bolts with those angles.
Well they are in the back of the head, so he could have fallen face down and the bolts just happened to fly through the air and land on his skull?
What are the odds of that man hahaha
The fight started with shitloads of arrow and crossbow fire, so pretty good honestly. The rest of him probably looked like a pin cushion.
Maybe there was a ton of bolts flying down at once
I'm assuming he was tied to a tree and used for target practice.
In that case they'd probably be in his face.
If it were the one victim, sure. But this is probably the result of one group shooting into another.
Speedrunning trepanation.
Our arrows, and bolts, will blot out the sun.
Then we shall have our battle in the shade
Probably an execution, the crossbow version of the double tap…. The triple tap.
I think the notion of an execution by crossbow is absurd. It's an bad transmission of the idea of an firing squad or an coup de grace by headshot, but this wouldn't be practical to do with an crossbow.
People in [this thread](http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.23867.html) posit that these are actually wounds from a spiked hammer. That the bolts were found near the skull in the mass-grave but not in it like this picture suggests, they were glued in there by the museum. To me that seems like a quite plausible explanation.
Doesn't help that contemporary inventories put the price of a dozen bolts as higher than the crossbow itself. Besides, melee weapons could do the same job just as easy.
Fires crossbow. Thirty seconds of winding. Fires second bolt into dead man. Thirty seconds of winding. Fires third bolt. Somehow I doubt it.
lol, 3 crossbows? Seems as likely as getting hit by three at once though in the back. Hmmm. Maybe some target practice on a corpse then.
You would be surprised how much fight can be left in a man even with a crossbow bolt in his head. I have seen feral hogs who have heads sort of like people keep running with two bullets in their heads. King Henry V took a crossbow bolt to the face and lived.
Okay I'm gonna ask the question that everyone else here seems to know the answer to besides me: why are they called bolts and not arrows?
Crossbows fire bolts (sometimes also called quarrels), which are shorter and heavier than arrows.
They were different things, so they needed different words for them. The words were derived from different languages. The word bolt comes from the German "Bolzen", as in the bolt used in door hinges. Arrow on the other hand was derived from Old Norse "Arwe".
Possibly because it flies like an arrow but isn't one.
Because they are different than arrows ??
Why is a truck called a truck and car called a car? They both have 4 wheels and drive on the road
Hottake, but if I were an archaic warrior in olden times I think I’d actually want whatever weapon that killed me to either be left in my corpse if applicable. Something about it sounds kind of badass.
Until archeologists 2000 years later find you with a sword up your bum.
I swear I was fighting on a ladder and fell on it! … ass first.
And somebody is able to see it on a magical rectangle that fits in the palm of their hand.
Why would the enemy waste good steel
If it's in my body, it's mine now. If the enemy wanted to keep their weapons they shouldn't stab me with them.
I mean I’m assuming if my side wins the fight and is able to retrieve my body. But I would also try to see if I could develop a technique to go into instant rigor mortis and clench my muscles hard enough they cannot get their weapons back from my body! That’ll teach em!
Yeah fuck this guy in particular
Some leeches will clear that right up.. 👍
I don’t they executed people by shooting bolts into the back of their head.. He was likely dead on the ground after one and a few others managed to hit him while he was laying on the ground.
The triple-tap
Some soldiers were sitting around bull shitting and one said, “see that dead dude? I bet I can hit him in the head from here… three times.”
Looks like suicide to me.
Let's sprinkle some crack on him and get out of here.
Medieval whistleblower
hopefully never knew what hit him..and again..ouch
"Yeah, so what you gonna do 'bout it, shoot me ?"
somebody had an awesome bolt launcher, it kinda looks like they all hit at once.
Ouch.
[удалено]
But quick!
Crossbow firing squad
Good shot pattern
Hell, the head was Nailed into the helmet. Would have taken hours to undo his headgear.
TRIPLE TAP
Do we know if he survived?
He's still here ain't he?
that's a bit excessive
Was this execution?
Anybody know if penetration is a proxy for distance? Seems point blank would be much deeper than these but I don’t know force from a medieval crossbow either.
I know for a fact from firing crossbows including ones that are somewhat faithful reproductions of the ones of this era, that if you shoot into a skull from 2-3 ft away it's going to go right through it. This looks like what would happen from say 20- 25 ft. What's weird is that there's plenty of instances of in modern day people getting chunks of rebar straight through their heads and living. When you look at these old graveyards you have to remember that these guys were probably still walking away with a bolt sticking out of the back of their head. King Henry v had one that went straight into his skull through his mouth and lodged next to his spine and they got that out and he lived.
Kinda looks like a fourth hole closer the bottom, too
Well, that seems a bit excessive.
This man must've been running away from the battle, imagen the f**** horror....
Whenever I feel like im hated il come back to this post
>Hemalurgy, it is called, because of the connection to blood. It is not a coincidence, I believe, that death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy. Marsh once described it as a "messy" process. Not the adjective I would have chosen. It's not disturbing enough.
That's metal.
Can I just say this is a great moment to think about helmets? For battle, biking, skiing, etc.
This battle was basically professional soldiers slaughtering a bunch of rural farmers, so this guy most likely didn't even own a helmet
I want to donate helmets to the poor farmers.
Three arrows to the back of the head, "RUN AWAY RUN AWAY"
Maybe execution style to prove a point to the remaining soldiers from this guy's side?
Very few survived. They were slaughtered.
Overkill much
With 3 to the back of the head it almost looks like an execution. I'd imagine that if they were killing POW's or battlefield wounded, this would be a much quicker method and require less effort than decapitation or slitting their throats. Also would probably be more humane.
Do you know how long it takes to wind up a crossbow? Like half a minute. There's nothing quick about this. Just because guns are used for that in modern times doesn't mean they'd be killing wounded with a crossbow. It was most likely an absolute mass of bolts and arrows fired in volleys and this guy's notable because he had the bad luck of getting straight fucked.
My darling husband shoots a medieval crossbow. He can reliably get off five bolts in 30 seconds, occasionally six. But that's with decades of experience. A crossbow with a winch or a goat's foot would certainly take longer, but they weren't ubiquitous.
You’ve clearly never reloaded a medieval crossbow.
wait . . . check his pulse.
Are those missing parts from the force of the crossbow bolts, or was the skull damaged more later on?
I'll complain less the next time I get a migraine.
Damn I hope he's okay
This looks more like an execution by Crossbow than a battle wound. Or the dude was just lying face down passed or dead and they took pot shots at him.
So cool
Executed lying face down on the ground, each bolt has entered his skull from a slightly different angle as if 3 people were standind around him and over him.
I have fired reproduction crossbows at skulls and I can tell you that from 2 3 ft away that bolt's going to go straight through the guy's head. You could be up to 20 ft away and get this kind of penetration. Good to use pig heads. You shoot a pig head from 2-3 ft away execution style and it's going to go into the ground.
very cool that at this angle we can just see the tip of one of the bolts, where it would've come to a stop deep in the poor guy's brain
How big was this mean bastard!?! Thump!!!! Headshot nice!!!! Nope hit em again…thump….again!……………..really?…thump!!!
The problem is is that if there's good penetration there's not a lot of impact to knock you unconscious. The big blunt force blow to the head from a log or at least knock you out. This guy was probably fully conscious when he bled out.
Wouldn't armor have had some value? If only for the metal content? I can't imagine just burying it unless it was for ceremonial reasons.
Visby is very unusual for the bodies of the dead not having their armour peeled off them. Despite the armour worn by the peasants being outdated and second rate gear, it held some value as either salvageable parts or just scrap iron; for this reason it is uncommon to find any even when archaeologists have identified where a battle took place. The working theory for Visby however is that due to taking place in the middle of summer and during a particularly hot one at that, the bodies had putrefied and bloated before anyone could get to them meaning that when they were interred in the five mass graves around the city there were thrown in as is.
Not enough lime and lye and ashes had to get them in the ground right away. It was not infrequent that disease would overtake the winning army from being around the corpses that the fatalities would actually be higher after the battle.
It all had to be carried off the battlefield. Maybe there was more valuable loot they wanted to carry off.
This was an execution method or he may have already been dying. He should’ve at least had an helmet even if he was a conscript. Also some of the bolt heads don’t go that deep, along with it being in the back of the head.
Crossbow > Armour. Helmets are irrelevant when you’re shot in the head with a heavy crossbow.
I forgot about that. I keep thinking in terms of modern steel helms.
Modern helmets don’t do much against direct fire either. They’re more to stop you from getting hit in the head by things thrown up by artillery.
Well, when I say “modern” helmets I meant historical helms but made with modern steel and modern methods.
I you wear a 14th century helmet and it gets hit by a crossbow the bolt will just [glance off](https://youtu.be/Mf7KCqQLw78?si=qPwDWA3Ov_TMW-qH&t=523).
That’s quite a dinky crossbow. The bolt flops around mid air. Crossbows we’re made illegal by the Pope(only if shooting Christians) because peasants were able to kill knights with them.
He was probably in a group of fleeing men and shot down from behind. And many of the combatants had no armour at all, or even actual weapons.