Were Poisoned Weapons ever used in Medieval Warfare?

Last summer, a friend asked me a question that I did not know the answer to. A nagging doubt led me down one of those “rabbit holes” all researchers, and most curious people know so well today. In this case, there was quite a payoff. What follows is an account of this journey of exploration, and what may be an interesting discovery that seems to have been hiding in plain sight. I suspect this will be of some interest to historical fencers, military history enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the period.

The purpose of this little essay is to review some of the key points that were uncovered from a wide range of different sources. First, we’ll look at some of the objections to the idea, then we’ll review some Classical authors, some from China, the perception from modern toxicologists, and then we will look at medieval and early modern sources. If you want to go straight to the answer to the key question, jump ahead to the section “Medieval Sources: Portugal”. After we look at that, I’ll take a stab at trying to figure out how this seems to have been missed, and what that says for some other similar issues related to the study of warfare and martial arts.

Did late medieval people use poisoned weapons?

Back in June of 2022, a HEMA friend from Portugal named Filipe Martins, a fencer and a fellow enthusiast for military history, asked me if I knew whether poisoned weapons were used in medieval Europe. My initial answer was “I don’t think so”, but the truth is, I didn’t know.

What we know, or think we know, right out of the gate

Right at the start, I tried to weigh the question in my mind, and considered pro and con.

Pro: “Poison may have been used”

• Various toxic chemical, biological and pyrotechnic weapons were used in siege warfare going back to the Assyrians
• Ingestible and contact poisons such as arsenic were widely used in the Classical World and during the Renaissance.
• Poisoned weapons were for sure used by some people around the world (South America, Southeast Asia, Africa)

Con: “Poison wasn’t used”

• I have read a lot of books on medieval warfare and none of them mention using poisoned weapons.

So I posed the question on some online discussion forums, polled friends, did a bunch of googling. Feedback to the question triggered a discussion, during which the layers were gradually peeled back.

Reasons why it’s impossible

Initially the responses were very much in the negative, in the sense that people suggested reasons why poisoned weapons couldn’t have existed. These reasons were examined, and gradually several people participating in the discussion began to find little tidbits of evidence that poison weapons were used.

The initial objections are worth considering, and were:

1. Poison wouldn’t stay on a projectile
2. Poison is hazardous to use (you could poison yourself or colleagues)
3. Poison ingredients were not available in Europe (For example, it was alleged that the Chinese cobra is more venomous than anything in Europe)
4. Poison does not remain poisonous long enough
5. Injectable Poisons are not fast acting
6. Poison is not needed as long as the weapon itself is effective
7. (therefore poison would only be used by people with weak weapons like weak bows)
8. They may have been used in Classical world but only because bows were weaker and soldiers wore less armor

A few of these seemed highly dubious to me right away, for example:

Poison is hazardous to use

There are certainly risks, but there are many risks associated with all kinds of weapons used from the medieval period until today. Early firearms and cannon were extremely dangerous to use and to prep. Dumping molten glass over the side of a wall in a siege is not OSHA approved, but we see this described in the 13th Century Konungs Skuggsjá, just to mention one source.

Loading a basket of snakes into a torsion powered siege weapon (or the severed heads of plague victims) is also extremely hazardous. So was just climbing a siege ladder. But we sure know it was done.

Poison ingredients were not available in Europe

But weren’t they? Chinese, Indian and other South and East Asian polities were exporting silk, pepper, cloves, various other spices and medicines, and also poisons like orpiment to Europe (used as a pigment, a topical medicine, and as rat poison), going back to the Roman Empire. This trade reached a vast scale from at least the 13th Century. If ginger and turmeric were common enough in Europe for peasants to use them in cooking (and seemingly every household in Germany had ginger cookies around Christmas time by the 15^th Century), probably they could import some poisons if they needed to

Many poisonous plants, metals, and animals were very common in Europe through the medieval and Early Modern period.  As just one example, the seeds of this strychnine producing tree from India were apparently specifically used to make poisons for arrows.

Nor were people limited to what was available in raw unprocessed form. Alchemy was quite advanced already by the high medieval period and Latinized Europeans knew how to concentrate chemicals through distillation and by other methods, and could also create compounds which were much more potent than the original ingredients.

One persistent claim that came up in one discussion was that Chinese cobra venom was needed to make strong arrow poisons such as allegedly used by the Scythians, and it couldn’t be imported to Europe all the way from China because it wouldn’t remain potent long enough. I checked into this, and apparently many types of snake venom (including cobra venom) are notoriously persistent, so much that herpetologists consider it a hazard handling long dead snake remains. Also – Egyptian cobras have very lethal venom, and are found conveniently close to Europe, within territories that were controlled by Hellenic Greek and later Roman polities, and in zones which traded heavily with for example towns in Italy and what is now Spain. These three maps kind of make that clear.

Poison is not needed if the weapon works / weak bows

Another dubious argument, in my opinion, was that poisoned arrows may have been used in distant antiquity, but fell out of favor as the efficacy of missiles increased. Roman Legions were very well protected, yet they suffered heavy losses against Hun, Parthian etc. archers (such as at the Battle of Carrhae). Clearly at least some Archers in Antiquity did have formidable bows. Though full plate harness became available in the late medieval world, most warriors in say the 14th or 15th Century Europe had armor coverage similar to Roman soldiers, i.e. torso and head, and not much more than that. The Romans also had the additional protection of a large well-made shield which wasn’t as common by the late medieval period (not unheard of though of course, some armies used a lot of pavises, they also had rotella and bucklers etc.).

For some of these other objections though, I just don’t know enough to answer them. So it was time to start looking a little deeper.

The Classical Sources

If I put my late medieval hat (chaperon?) on, I quickly remember that the ‘go-to’ source for any questions about the natural world is going to be Pliny the Elder, so I found an online translation of his treatise on the natural world, and looked for arrow poisons. I was not disappointed.

The following are a few excerpts I found from Naturalis Historia

BOOK XI.

CHAP. 20.—THE YEW.

There are authors, also, who assert that the poisons which we call at the present day “toxica,” and in which arrows are dipped, were formerly called taxica, from this tree.

CHAP. 115. (53.)—RESPIRATION AND NUTRIMENT.

The Scythians dip their arrows in the poison of serpents and human blood: against this frightful composition there is no remedy, for with the slightest touch it is productive of instant death.

BOOK XVIII.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GRAIN. CHAP. 1. (1.)—TASTE OF THE ANCIENTS FOR AGRICULTURE.

The elephant, we find, and the urus, know how to2 sharpen2 and renovate their teeth against the trunks of trees, and the rhinoceros against rocks; wild boars, again, point their tusks like so many poniards by the aid of both rocks and trees; and all animals, in fact, are aware how to prepare themselves for the infliction of injury upon others; but still, which is there among them all, with the exception of man, that dips his weapons in poison? As for ourselves, we envenom the point of the arrow, and we contrive to add to the destructive powers of iron itself; by the aid of poisons we taint the waters of the stream, and we infect the various elements of Nature; indeed, the very air even, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life.

CHAP. 81. (20.)—PORCILLACA OR PURSLAIN, OTHERWISE CALLED PEPLIS: TWENTY-FIVE REMEDIES.

There is a wild purslain, too, called “peplis,” not much superior in its virtues to the cultivated kind, of which such remarkable properties are mentioned. It neutralizes the effects, it is said, of poisoned arrows

BOOK XXIV

CHAP. 25.—TO WHAT PERSONS HELLEBORE SHOULD NEVER BE ADMINISTERED.

The people of Gaul, when hunting, tip their arrows with hellebore, taking care to cut away the parts about the wound in the animal so slain: the flesh, they say, is all the more tender for it. Flies are destroyed with white hellebore, bruised and sprinkled about a place with milk: phthiriasis is also cured by the use of this mixture.

CHAP. 30.—FOUR REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE SCINCUS.

According to Apelles, the flesh of the scincus is good for wounds inflicted by poisoned arrows, whether taken before or after the wound is inflicted: it is used as an ingredient, also, in the most celebrated antidotes.

CHAP. 76.—THE LIMEUM: ONE REMEDY.

Limeum is the name given by the Gauls to a plant, in a preparation of which, known to them as “deer’s poison,” they dip their arrows when hunting. To three modii of salivating mixture1931 they put as much of the plant as is used for poisoning a single arrow; and a mess of it is passed down the throat, in cases where oxen are suffering from disease, due care being taken to keep them fastened to the manger till they have been purged, as they are generally rendered frantic by the dose. In case perspiration supervenes, they are drenched all over with cold water.

The researcher Sean Manning, who was also participating in the discussion, brought up this interesting tidbit:

“Book 11, chapter 4 of the Strategikon of emperor Maurice [he died in 602, the treatise might be a decade or two earlier or later] says that some Slavs and Antes along the lower Danube use wooden bows and short arrows which they smear with a poisonous drug so Roman soldiers should take antidotes or learn to treat poisoned wounds.”

Also in Ayulus Cornelius Celsus treatise on medicine, Book 5, Chapter 27, has the following:

“Therefore first the limb is to be constricted above this kind of wound, but not too tightly, lest it become numbed; next, the poison is to be drawn out. A cup does this best. But it is not amiss beforehand to according to incisions with a scalpel around the wound, in order that more of the vitiated blood may be extracted. If there is no cup at hand, although this can hardly happen, use any similar vessel which can do what you want; if there is not even this, a man must be got to suck the wound. I declare there is no particular science in those people who are called Psylli, but a boldness confirmed by experience. For serpent’s poison, like certain hunter’s poisons, such as the Gauls in particular use, does no harm when swallowed, but only in a wound. Hence the snake itself may be safely eaten, whilst its stroke kills; and if one is stupefied, which mountebanks effect [p. 117] by certain medicaments, and if anyone puts his finger into its mouth and is not bitten, its saliva is harmless. Anyone, therefore, who follows the example of the Psylli and sucks out the wound, will himself be safe, and will promote the safety of the patient. He must see to it, however, beforehand that he has no sore place on his gums or palate or other parts of the mouth.”

So from the above I conclude:

• It sounds like the Celts, Slavs and many others were using arrow poisons to hunt and for war.
• Pliny describes not just foreigners like Scythians and Gauls using poison, but also “we” and “us” – i.e. (arguably) the Greeks themselves.
• Remedies for arrow poisons were discussed several times, presumably indicating an ongoing hazard
• At least two distinct types of poison made from specific plants are mentioned as being used for hunting. In a way which seems very specific and as we shall see in a moment, does apparently correlate with the analysis of modern experts on toxicology (at least in the case of hellebore).

Conclusion? Yes, they did use poison arrows in Antiquity, both for warfare and, apparently, hunting.

Chinese Sources

A guy named Benjamin H. Abbott, provided a link to an page on Paul Chen’s website, to a 17^th Century crossbow manual by a guy named Cheng Zon You. This manual mentions arrow poisons.

蹶張心法 (Jue Zhang Xin Fa)

“[w]hen the arrow hits a person, he will die within a few steps. This was tested on a chicken, if you pierced the wing and it should die before it turns its head three times.” Which tells us it’s a fast acting poison indeed.

“in Cheng Zon You’s 17^th Century crossbow manual, a considerable amount of poison was soaked into silk floss around the shaft near the head of the bolt. The head was likewise broad enough to allow the poisoned section of the shaft to enter the target & deliver the poison. According to this text, the poison weighed more than the bolt without the poison: 2 maces or 7.38 grams.”

So … interesting. I already knew arrow-poisons were used in China, but now we have some indication that fast acting, effective arrow poisons were a thing. This also gives us some idea as to how the poison was affixed to an arrow or bolt.

And yet the question remains, were the ingredients of these poisons available in Europe?

The Toxicologists

Though my normal military history, medieval history and HEMA adjacent search efforts yielded little, I found a lot of interesting references to arrow poisons in medical textbooks and in toxicology articles. These are a few excerpts:

“In about 130 BC, for example, the toxicology manual compiled by Nicander, a priest of Apollo at the Temple of Claros in Asia Minor, listed twenty vipers and cobras known in the Greco-Roman world. Descriptions by Nicander and other writers often provide enough details for modern herpetologists to identify the species. Moreover, the medical symptoms of snakebites and arrow wounds contaminated by venom are accurately described in the ancient accounts. First, necrosis appears around the wound, with dark blue or black oozing gore, followed by putrid sores, hemorrhages, swelling limbs, vomiting, wracking pain, and “freezing pain around the heart,” culminating in convulsions, shock, and death. Only a very few lucky victims recovered from snake-venom bites or arrows, and sometimes the wounds festered for years, as described in the myth of Philoctetes.3”

“The army of Alexander the Great in his conquest of India in 327–325 BC encountered a different snake-venom weapon. According to the historians of his campaigns, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus of Sicily, and others, the defenders of Harmatelia (Mansura, Pakistan) had dipped their arrows and swords in an unknown snake poison. Any man who suffered even a slight wound felt immediately numb and experienced stabbing pains and convulsions. The victim’s skin became pale and cold and he vomited bile. Soon, a black froth exuded from the wound. Purplish-green gangrene spread rapidly, followed by death.

Modern historians have assumed that cobra venom was used at Harmatelia, but the very detailed descriptions of the ghastly symptoms and deaths suffered by Alexander’s soldiers points to another snake. Cobra venom would bring a relatively painless death, from respiratory paralysis. But the common Russell’s viper of Pakistan and India causes the very same symptoms suffered by Alexander’s men: numbness, vomiting, severe pain, black blood, gangrene, and death (Mayor, 2009).”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/snake-venom

“Complex recipes for envenomed arrows are recorded in Greek and Latin texts. One of the most dreaded arrow drugs was concocted by the Scythians, who combined snake venom and bacteriological agents from rotting dung, human blood, and putrefying viper carcasses bloated with feces. Even in the case of a superficial arrow wound, the toxins would begin taking effect within an hour. Envenomation accompanied by shock, necrosis, and suppuration of the wound would be followed by gangrene and tetanus and an agonizing death.”

“According to the Greek and Roman writers, archers who steeped their arrows in serpents’ venom included the Gauls, the Dacians and Dalmatians [of the Balkans, e.g. Croatia], the Sarmatians of Persia [now Iran], the Getae of Thrace, Slavs, Armenians, Parthians between the Indus and Euphrates, Indians, North Africans, and the Scythian nomads of the Central Asian steppes. According to the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, the arrow poison concocted by the Soanes of the Caucasus was so noxious that its mere odor was injurious. Strabo also reported that people of what is now Kenya dipped their arrows ‘in the gall of serpents’, while the Roman historian Silius Italicus described the snake venom arrows used by the archers of Libya, Morocco, Egypt, and Sudan. Ancient Chinese sources show that arrow poisons were also in use in China at early dates. In the Americas, Native Americans used snake, frog, and plant poisons on projectiles for hunting and warfare.”

Victorian tests with the plant Antiaris toxicaria indicated that it could incapacitate a small to medium sized animal in 1-3 minutes and death in 9-27 minutes. The source for some of this seems to be this book.

Apparently snake venom was not always needed though, as they were also able to use local plants:

https://www.insectomania.org/biological-weapons/toxic-tactics-and-terrors.html

“The Greeks and Romans had a botanical arsenal at their disposal, including extracts of belladonna, hemlock, monkshood, and yew berries. In addition, they were well acquainted with rhododendron, a shrubby tree possessing gorgeous pink and white flowers—along with neurotoxic sap and nectar. This plant flourished throughout the Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, and into Asia, where its poisonous properties were widely known. Although the sap was used as an arrow poison, killing one enemy at a time is a laborious way to secure victory. For the crafty military mind, an intriguing property of rhododendron gave it the potential to become a weapon of mass destruction.”

A little more on this vein :

“About 24 toxic Eurasian plant species, often employed as medicines in tiny dosages, were collected to make arrow poisons or other biological weapons used in historical battles. One of the most popular plant drugs was hellebore, identified by the ancients as black hellebore (probably the Christmas rose of the buttercup Ranunculaceae family, Helleborus niger) and white hellebore (the lily family, Liliaceae). The unrelated plants are each laden with powerful chemicals that cause severe vomiting and diarrhea, muscle cramps, delirium, convulsions, asphyxia, and heart attack. Hellebore was one of the arrow drugs used by the Gauls, among other groups, and it was also used to poison wells.

Another favorite biowar toxin was aconite or monkshood (also called wolfsbane). Aconitum (buttercup family) contains the alkaloid aconitine, a violent poison, which in high doses causes vomiting and paralyzes the nervous system, resulting in death. Aconite was employed by the archers of ancient Greece and India, and its use in warfare continued into modernity. For example, during the war between the Spanish and the Moors in 1483, Arab archers wrapped aconite-soaked cotton around their arrowheads. Nepalese Gurkhas poisoned wells with aconite in the nineteenth century, and during World War II, Nazi scientists created aconitine-treated bullets.

Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), a sticky, bad-smelling weed containing the powerful narcotics hyoscyamine and scopolamine, was also collected as arrow poison in antiquity. Henbane causes violent seizures, psychosis, and death. Other plant juices used on projectiles included hemlock (Conium maculatum), yew (Taxus baccata), rhododendron, and several species of deadly nightshade or belladonna, which causes vertigo, extreme agitation, coma, and death. The fact that the Latin word for deadly nightshade was dorycnion, ‘spear drug’, suggests that it was smeared on weapons at a very early date, as noted by Pliny the Elder, a natural historian of the first century AD.”

So apparently there is ample evidence of arrow poisons used by the Greeks and Romans in Antiquity, and there is a claim for at least one documented case of the use of poisoned arrows in warfare in medieval Europe, by Moors in 1483, though they don’t give any kind of direct source.

Medieval and Early Modern Sources

Initially I only found one medieval source which mentions arrow poisons, but he was a particularly good one. The wonderful Strasbourg surgeon, alchemist and botanist Hieronymus Brunschwig, who published a book Liber de arte distillandi de simplicibus (aka Kleines Destillierbuch). Brunschwig, who specialized in treatments for gunshot wounds, mentions arrow poisons in his book, though fleetingly. He mentions that gunshot wounds (which were often contaminated by saltpeter from the gunpowder) were poisonous, and like poisoned arrow wounds should be treated by cauterization.

Once we get into the 16^th Century, many published works seem to mention arrow poisons, or at least accusations of their use.

“further report and say, that they [the French] did thinke that the English Archers did vse to poyson their arrowe heads;* because that of great numbers of the French Nation that many times had been wounded or hurt with arrowes, verie fewe had escaped with their liues; by reason that their wounds did so impostume, that they could not be cu∣red. In which their cōceipts they did greatlie erre; be∣cause in troth those impostumations proceeded of no∣thing els but of the verie rust of the arrowe heads that remained ranckling within their wounds; and there∣fore by the common experience of our auncient Ene∣mies, (that we haue so often vanquished) not onlie the great, but also the small wounds of our arrowes haue been alwaies found to bee more daungerous and hard to be cured, than the fire of anie shot vnpoysoned.

-John Smythe’s Certain Discourses (1590)

Someone named Iagoba Ferreira joined the forum discussion at this point and provided this tidbit:

“At least for hunting, Spanish texts explain Heleborus Niger, Aconitus or Luparia (Those are the same! You didn’t hear Snape? ) but those were probably used too by Muslim Spanish during the Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568–1571). Mr Ferreira also mentioned that the recipe described in the English book mentioned above is the same as in the Spanish hunting book.

So it looks… increasingly likely. Arrow lethal, fast-acting poisons were known in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. And they were actively used, at least for hunting.

Hellebore seems to be showing up a lot.

And this term “Crossbowman’s Herb” is our next big clue.

Medieval Sources: Portugal

We seem to have a lot of etymological links – “Toxon” for bow, arrow or poison in Greek. A Latin term for deadly nightshade dorycnion allegedly meaning “spear drug”, and now this “crossbowman’s herb”.

A quick search yielded references to “Armbrustschützenkraut” in this 1912 book on Schuss und Waffe / “shooting and weapons”. The author says that “Erva do besteiro” is a common term for Hellebore in Portugal. There is a reference to “herbe d’arbalétrier” in an 18th Century French book, which seems to be a reference to its use in Spain and Portugal.

The actual terms of art for these concoctions were probably different though, especially in previous eras when the dialects were different in many regions, and soldiers and militia used a lot of military slang.

The Portuguese language Wiki on Hellebore mentions that this erva-dos-besteiros “crossbowman’s herb” was being used by Portuguese crossbowmen back to the reign of King João I, (1385-1433).

Their source is a 19th Century book, Viterbo, Joaquim de Santa Rosa de (1856). Elucidário das palavras, termos e frases que em Portugal antigamente se usaram e que hoje regularmente se ignoram vol. 1. Lisboa: A. J. Fernandes Lopes.

Finally, jackpot.

This article I found on Academia.edu mentions crossbow-militia in 14th-15th Century Portugal (besteiros do conto) being expected to practice putting poison (specifically hellebore) on their bolt-heads or quarrel heads as part of weekly militia training.

“In Portugal, as stated above, the «besteiros do conto» should perform weekly military trainings on Sundays (not to interfere with their professional activities), in a large public space located in each recruitment area. Led by their «anadel», the militiamen performed crossbow shooting on a static target, referred to in the sources as a «tiro à barreira» (barrier shooting) (MONTEIRO, 1998, pp. 439). There, they perfected their aim and the technique to rapidly substitute the crossbow strings (FERREIRA, 1988, p. 206). They should also learn how to prepare the tips of the arrows («virotões») with a poison deriving from several different plants 21”

Footnote 21 reads: “The poison was most commonly derived from the hellebore (or helleborus flower), which current name reveals its medieval purpose: «erva-besteira»(crossbow-plant) (BARROCA, 2000, p. 54)”

The authors source appears to be:

BARROCA, Mário Jorge, 2003 – Da Reconquista a D. Dinis, in Manuel Themudo Barata & Nuno Severiano
Teixeira (Dir.). Nova História Militar de Portugal. Rio de Mouro: Círculo de Leitores, vol. I, p. 21-161.

Conclusions (what we now know)

We have a data point here. It isn’t arrived at with precision or sufficient caution for real research, I’ll be the first to admit. But it’s damn sure interesting to me. I admit it’s possible that due to my oblivious nature, perhaps it’s the case that arrow poisons use in warfare in medieval and Early Modern Europe are widely known, and I just missed it. I am holding the door open for that possibility.

But this may be one of those things, like European martial arts itself, which was there all along, but somehow got missed. I can find it in some primary sources, like Pliny and the Alchemist Brunwchig, and I can find it in toxicology and medical textbooks. But it seems to be left out of most military histories. This poses a lot of new questions. Was it not that significant to the outcome of battles? Did they constrain it from general use? Was it limited to hunting and maybe war in the Iberian peninsula (perhaps due to the Reconquista) or was it more widespread? I have not found any references in Delbrück[i] or Verbruggen, and I checked the indexes of about two dozen modern books on medieval warfare and found no reference to poison. Poison is also curiously lacking in some primary sources as well. For example I found no reference in the History of the Wars by Procopius[ii]. Nor could I find any mention in Caesar’s Gallic Wars or Xenophon’s Anabasis. Maybe this is due to the level of detail in these sources, which tend toward a “bigger picture”. But the overall sense I get is that from the beginning, poisoned weapons were discussed by authors interested in medicine but not so much by those who wrote about war. If this was widespread in antiquity or the medieval period, what the hell else did we miss?

Cultural Constraints on warfare

In considering the possibility that arrow poisons may have been curtailed due to written or unwritten rules or laws. In WWI, poison gas weapons were used, often in a very hazardous manner with slipshod safety gear, repeatedly for the better part of three years, causing an estimated 1.3 million casualties and 100,000 deaths. Chemical weapons as we call them now did turn out to be effective, in spite all the hazards. Even today we can’t say that they are completely gone from the battlefield as they seem to return from time to time.

But we did eventually develop enough of a cultural prohibition against their use that it has certainly diminished. Maybe something like that happened with poison weapons by the medieval period. But maybe it’s use did continue here and there in some fashion, much as we see Chlorine and Sarin and so on showing up on modern battlefields. That’s what I’m interested in finding out at this point.

One obvious parallel when trying to think of how poison weapons may have fallen out of use is the equivalent use of ‘scorched earth’ tactics. There were treaties even between fairly entrenched enemies, such as Poland vs. the Teutonic Knights, which resulted in the at least temporary agreements to curtail certain ‘scorched earth tactics’. The Hunger War of 1414 saw crops burned, mills wrecked, farmers slain, wells poisoned and all manner of scorched earth tactics devastated the land. What followed was a serious and prolonged famine lasting eight years and then an outbreak of plague which killed thousands of people including close to a third of the Brother Knights in the Teutonic Order.

After this the Poles and Teutonic Knights signed the Treaty of Melno in 1422 which they agreed to certain limitations to the destruction of infrastructure during their subsequent wars, which they more or less adhered to during the 13 Years War and other conflicts later in the 15th Century.

Similar rules were enforced by regional treaties called Landfrieden by the Germans, worked out by various powers in a given region, which enforced rules on warfare during feuds, on pain of death (to be enforced by all signatories). Perhaps surprisingly, this actually seems to have worked in many areas.

It may be that something like this occurred which could have led to a diminution in the widespread use of poison in certain regions, if it was perceived as a general problem. If attrition sharply increased during the more or less routine conflicts taking place, it could mean that aggressive neighboring powers, such as say, the Golden Horde or the Ottomans, might take advantage of the resulting general weaknesses.

More Questions

Many things which actually were quite common in the medieval and Classical worlds did not make it into our historiography of these periods. We thought Greek statues were monochromatic white until pretty recently. Most people, including academics, were surprised to learn about the existence of indigenous European martial arts even as late as the early 2000s. Until fairly recently almost all experts on Viking history and archeology thought the “Birka Warrior” was a man, but now we know better. (Even though the literary sources told us about female warriors for ages, we ignored them due to our own prejudices).

And I myself had no idea that there was a frequently used, apparently highly effective arrow poison used not just by Scythians, by hunters in the Iberian Peninsula and even, by Gauls and Slavs, apparently, a practice so widespread as to be known in Early Modern England. So ubiquitous in fact that the common name of one of the plants used is still “crossbowman’s herb” in at least two countries. I have a half dozen books on warfare and hunting in the medieval world on my bookshelf and I’ve read them all, and I’d never heard of this until I started this thread.

I believe strongly that there is a lot more to learn here and we have only scratched the surface. It’s important to remember, only a very small percentage of the surviving literature / documents from the medieval period have survived at all, and only a small fraction of those which do still exist have even been transcribed or scanned, let alone read and analyzed. We also have to keep in mind that previous generations put a filter on medieval history and many things were hidden or ignored. In the last 20 years I’ve been researching the context of HEMA / WMA I’ve learned many quite surprising things which were basically ‘hiding in plain sight” and had largely been ignored by Academia for various reasons, or were known to academic specialists but never reached the wider public.

One point another HEMA friend made recently is that putting poison on a weapon would imply pre-meditation and intent to murder someone. The laws around things like fighting with swords, certainly in Central Europe, typically hinged on a kind of ‘plausible deniability’, in the sense of, “I felt threatened so I drew my sword and defended myself.” Applying hellebore to a crossbow bolt or cobra venom to a spear prior to use makes that notion far less plausible. Were any laws enacted against the use of poisoned weapons? Treaties? I wish I knew.

As noted already, most of the data on poisoned weapons (at least that I have found so far) are in the realm of medicine, while most of the military and legal sources I checked seem oddly silent on the issue. The fact that one group of contemporary researchers tends to look at things like accounts of battles and another looks more at things like medical treatises may possibly be an issue. Some kind of pre-industrial moral opprobium may be a factor (though it is odd to think that this would be universal across such a wide area and such a length of time). It may just be that relatively few military histories from the pre-industrial world get deeply into small technical details, and manuals which perhaps do get into small details such as the German kriegsbücher and treatises of Italian military engineers (other than Da Vinci) have perhaps not had the close scrutiny they deserve. I know that I plan to look a lot harder at both of these types of sources for a variety of reasons.

Ultimately, at the moment, though I have now come to believe they existed and were known in Latin Europe in the late medieval period, I at least have no idea how ubiquitous poisoned weapons were on the battlefield or in civil (or uncivil) life.

 

But it sure makes a weapon like the Ballestrino a bit more interesting, doesn’t it?

Postscript

Of course, there are other ways to interpret the data that emerged in these discussions. Dr. Sean Manning, who participated in this discussion online, has his own take on the whole thing which you can read here.

[i] I have volume 3, which I checked, but lack the earlier volumes at the moment.

[ii] (available in digital format here books I and II, books III and IV, books V and VI)