Oh just got my roof!
Hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm back with an assassins crossbow. So
this lovely little, all steel number here, also called a balestrino. Now I've done a video on
these before, but our methods have changed, the way we approach things have changed,
so really I'm just back to revisit this. Now this particular bow, this assassin's crossbow
is 200 pounds in draw weight, 90 kilos in draw weight, so it's got some power,
we would think. But let's come all the way back to the beginning of the story, could this be used
to assassinate people? Well in 1545 Venice banned balestrini, so they banned what we know of as the
assassins crossbow; well you know a reasonable thing one would think, but then in the 17th
century it actually became a capital offence, so to have one of these you get killed for it.
But it wasn't just Venice where this was an issue, because in Elizabeth the firsts time
two conspirators, Richard Williams, Edmund Yorke were talking about poisoning her
using a small steel crossbow like this, I'll put the quote in the notes. Now the question
is did they refer to the bow being steel or the whole thing being steel. We don't really know.
Without a doubt these two gentlemen talked about assassinating Elizabeth with a crossbow of steel;
was this the sort of thing that they were talking about? Were they full of bluster and hot air or
had they really used one of these things or they just heard about it? So the first question has to
be for us, "Can it, could it kill? Could you use this for assassinating people?" So we're going
to rattle through some tests, see what we've got and we're going to talk about it because that's
what we need to know. I'm down on my miniature range, with my miniature bow, wearing my Tactical
t-shirt, Tod's Workshop Tactical t-shirt - how appropriate. You'll find them in the merch shelf.
These Balestrino, incredibly rare there's only 18 or so of them in existence, but they all work
pretty much the same way even if they look quite different, that they've got a screw jack here
and a trigger mechanism here that goes forward and then pulled back by the screw system. So i'll
just slide that forward, trigger's now in, just holding it closed and then you just wind it up.
Now as I said this is a 200 pound draw weight so you know it's, it's hard work you know to
do it again and again and again and it's not particularly fast, so you'd wonder that if
you're an assassin and you wanted a second shot you'd have to ask your target to hang out and
just hold on for a minute, but here we go, five meters distant pork joint let's see what happens.
I completely missed, right so there might be a few of these because
this is not the easiest thing to target. Oh lovely, lovely so that was nice,
right let's go look at that one. Right so scaling off here just measuring against another bolt,
so that much so what's that? 55/60 mm, so two and a half inches has gone into the flesh there
at a five meter range nice. Ready to go again at five meters.
Completely best again. Right try again. The nature of how this shoots makes it all
a little bit cranky, it's not it's not like a pistol which of course, bear in mind they could
have used a pistol there were plenty around at the time, nice ones like wheel locks too.
Well I killed the target, but that's not what I wanted. I'm going to give it another go,
but luckily my victim has obligingly decided to stand still while I reload and go
again. Right, one more, one more.
Really annoyingly in this test I only managed to get one on target, but you know that's a story
in its own right. However these ones here into a wooden door and they are, they're in
you know they're in enough that I would not want to get shot by one, but again interestingly
these are, they go at about 44 meters a second so 150 feet per second something like that and they
are in fact 6.7 joules in energy which is half of that of a paintball gun for those of you who know,
so really there's not a lot of energy in this thing, but it's a 200 pound bow,
maybe I'm lying? I'll put a little film right at the end of me weighing this very bow
and you can see for yourselves. Next up, can our assassins crossbow shoot through clothing
and into the flesh beneath because of course you're not guaranteed to hit something exposed.
I have a Tudor jacket out there, wool and linen let's try that.
Oh nice. So that's definitely in and against all the odds, I may have hit the pork again, actually
last up onto the clothes again. Right let's go have a look. Here's the top one,
just went into the foam and so we've got uh.. 45 mm sticking out the back, so inch and three
quarters and then the other one here actually missed the pork in fact, which is a shame,
but it's acting like a brooch here, so it's gone through three layers of this. So yes it is going
to go into somebody who is wearing a jacket like this. We're now going to test this for distance.
I don't mean ultimate distance because it's it's not a sniper rifle, you saw the accuracy,
you know is going to let it down, but what's its effective distance is, so I'm going to go out,
I'm going to shoot it from a distance against this wooden wall and then I'll shoot again next
to it. Now that's interesting because originally the one that I loosely based this on is it from
the Royal Armories and their information card says that one can shoot 300 meters;
well let's find out, see what we do. I'm out at 30 meters, I'm going to see if it can penetrate
that wooden wall at all, in fact I'm going to see if I can hit the wall at all.... hmm.....
Oh I did hit it, but it bounced out.
Going to go for a second shot see if we can get it to stick in.
Oh just got my roof! I've come down to 20 meters, let's see how it does.
Lovely and it's in, it's in and at last a good shot. I'm going to do a comparison
test now and obviously a very close range, point blank, but it's just to see really
get feel for how much energy is being lost over that distance, over that 20 meters.
Nice, this top one here was the one shot at distance.
23 millimeters of head is sticking out
and the one at point blank, 18 millimeters so it's lost a considerable amount of the energy,
because of course the head is flaring out, so yes it does lose energy very quickly,
so 300 meters? Not a chance. Back to answer our fundamental question about the assassins crossbow
is that actually what was it for? Can it kill? Well we saw it go into flesh very well,
we saw it go through the fabric over flesh, 20 meters it was going quite deeply into wood,
all of these things look well and it shot cleanly and well, all of these things say "yes it could
with poison, it could". Its energy is very low so the bolt itself, the seven gram bolt itself,
is not going to be the thing that kills somebody unless you've got an extraordinarily lucky shot,
so that's not it. It's poison; but the question is did they? Because you saw the accuracy problems
that I was having, it's a really difficult thing to handle, the top trigger is not intuitive like
a gun is and talking of guns, they of course they had wheel locks at the time, they had wheel
lock pistols, fantastic things that you could have concealed in your garments, you could pull
them out, you can shoot them and then these. Yes you can have them concealed just like the
Leeds Armouries card says, the information card, you can have them in your clothes, concealed,
but they don't have a bolt clip. If you don't have a bolt clip you have to pull it out
then put a bolt on and shoot it; doesn't say that to me, it doesn't say assassin, because they knew
about bolt clips, they could have put one on if they felt it needed it and boy would it need it.
Another fantastic alternative to something like the Balestrino is a lot cheaper: it's your dagger.
So this here is a nice left hand dagger, main gauche, available from Todcutler.com , it's
absolutely dated same kind of period as the balestrino, every gentleman wore them,
everybody at court had a dagger it's cheap, it's untraceable, it's reusable, you don't have to wait
to reload and shoot again, the blade is bigger, it does more damage, you could poison it if you want,
lots of other choices than this. So what is it? What is it, because I don't believe that this
is an assassin's bow, I believe more than I used to, but still not really convinced.
I think it is just a grown-ups executive toy, it is a lovely gadget that you can impress your
mates with, you can mess about after dinner. We have loved gadgets for probably as long as time,
but look at this strong box from the same kind of period as these, the whole lock
mechanism there is absolutely beautiful and it is showing off, it is not required. You know we
love to see this kind of stuff and we love to see gadgets like this and I think this whole
Doge banning these things, the Doge of Venice banning these things, is probably one of his
drunken layabout son's friends shot the Doge in the bum one day or something like that
and wham bam these things get banned. I think that's what it was about and it is you know
it's fun, it's fun. You can put an apple at the end of the table you can shoot them,
when the servant comes in you can shoot them too. How funny is that? It's not going to kill anybody
and I think that's what it is. But like every cool gadget, you need to impress your friends with it,
so let's strip this down and we'll have a look at the insides. Like every good assassins gadget you
want to be able to strip these down so there's a keyhole here, holds a pin, tap that out,
out the screw comes and then the whole mechanism
will pop out
pins come out
and there we have our trigger components. If you'd like to know more about how I made this, there is
a thread on a fantastic chat room site called Myarmoury.com , I'll put a link in the notes,
go there and check it out, check the whole site out it is amazing, but if you do like what you see
there, tip them a dollar, a euro, pound whatever; keep that place going because we all need it.
But also don't forget to visit Todcutler.com to get fantastic knives and daggers like this
Main gauche here. But just as the final point then let us put this to bed forever. Is this
an assassin's bow? I'm going to definitively answer that. Yes. No. Maybe. See you next time.
I have the balestrino bow at the front here, I have a crane scale and we're going to wind
it up. I've got verniers here with the draw length marked on all ready to go,
so just winding up showing in pounds now, yeah, so it should be drawing I think this bow about 195
which is about right, so if we do that into
kilos, 90 kilos. So it's bang on 90 kilo draw weight