Incediary arrows in Southern Germany, 1442 and 1485
The watercolors are from the 1485 Landshut/Bavaria armory inventory of which I posted some firearms illustrations in another thread.
Note that the arrows have only one point - as Stekemest wrote, a feature preferably characteristic of South German and Austrian quarrel heads. Thank you again, Peter.
The line drawings were done in the 19th century after the famous South German Hauslab manuscript dated 1442, now preserved in The Royal Armories, Leeds. The watercolors illustrating the making of incendiary arrows posted here earlier are from the same ms. Luckily, those two pages of that book were open on display when I took the photos in the Tower in 1990.
Note that the burning mass on two of the arrows is lit, with smoke curling up. The ankle that both crossbow men and harquebusiers are aiming denotes that the projectiles are planned to cross a town wall and set the wooden tiles of the houses on fire - together with ship sails the main purpose of incendiary projectiles.
Michael
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