ANST - Slings

[Michael F. Gunter]

I sent a note to Duke Lloyd, one of the finest historical warfare scholars
I know, and asked his opinion of slinging.

Here is his answer:

> The problem is what type of slingers are you talking about.
> Rhodian slingers outranged Persian archers and used lead slugs which could
> concuss through heavy hoplite armor. Against our armor I am afraid it would
> work. Why were they not still used? Same answer to the question of why the
> French never had domestic longbowmen. Long training for little gain. Slingers
> are not as effective as crossbows which start becoming the primary missile
> weapon of the middle ages after about 1100 ad
> Only the English were able to train people in the use of a weapon requiring a
> lot of time. One thing people also forget is that the longbowmen were only
> effective in concert with the men at arms. Slingers take a long time to
> train, hence the Rhodian and Balearic slingers being so famous. In the end
> Slingers were about equal to all archers short of the power of the longbow
> are the range of the Turkish composite.
>
> Of course I have all ways held that arrows are considered to powerful in our
> fighting anyway. Roman gladiator archers were not the all time conqueror in
> the coliseums.
>
> Lloyd

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