A devilish device

Author(s): Kay Smith and Ruth R. Brown

Source: Medieval Warfare , MAY / JUN 2017, Vol. 7, No. 2, IN THIS ISSUE: Sieges and
battles of the First Barons' War, 1215 – 1217 (MAY / JUN 2017), pp. 52-53
Published by: Karwansaray BV

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48578165

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Karwansaray BV is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Medieval
Warfare

This content downloaded from

88.240.181.39 on Sun, 09 Oct 2022 19:53:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE WEAPON

THE CROSSBOW

A devilish device
“...at length, by means of the crossbowmen, by whose skill the
horses of the barons were mown down and killed like pigs, the
party of the barons was greatly weakened, for, when the horses
fell to the earth slain, their riders were taken prisoners, as
there was no one to rescue them.”

We have grisly evi- By Kay Smith and Ruth R. Brown However, long before this the cross-
dence for the effects bow had been singled out as a devilish

T
of crossbow bolts his striking image of the effect device. As early as 1139 the Lateran
from the skeletons of the crossbow was recorded Council had forbidden its use against
from the Battle of by Roger of Wendover, a monk fellow Christians, a law repeated by
Visby on Gotland in at St. Albans Abbey, describing Pope Innocent III. Yet it is clear that this
1361. An examination law was more honoured in the breach.
the Battle of Lincoln in his Flores Histo-
of the 1000+ skeletons Richard the Lionheart, himself a great
riarum. Earlier he noted that there were
from its mass grave promoter of the crossbow – he had him-
nearly two hundred and fifty crossbow-
identified about 125 self carried to the walls of Acre while ill
men in the Royalist army, which also in-
men with wounds so that he could personally shoot the de-
cluded four hundred knights.
made by bolts in their fenders – died from a crossbow bolt shot
The importance of crossbowmen in
skulls. While most at the siege of Châlus in 1199.
the outcome of the battle is reinforced in
were simple square Just when man started to use a bow
an anonymous poem celebrating the life
holes, some 2-10 mm for hunting and for war is unknown, al-
of William the Marshal. It adds the pi-
in size, three were though it was probably between 20,000
quant detail that the man in charge of the
clearly injuries where and 10,000 years ago. Equally, the
royal crossbowmen was “Peter, the wor-
the bolt had gone origins of the crossbow are obscure,
thy bishop of Winchester”, because he
right through the skull though there is evidence of its use in
“had sound knowledge in that sphere”,
and penetrated the China from the sixth century BC. Its use
telling “the bowmen to make sure to
further side – evi- spread west, reaching Europe in classi-
spread themselves out in a long line, so
dence of the power of cal times, though it is not until the tenth
that, when the French arrived, their hors-
the crossbow. century AD that the crossbow emerges
es would be killed under them.” Earlier,
© Wolfgang Sauber / Wiki- as an important weapon there.
media Commons at the siege of Rochester, crossbow bolts
Three types of crossbow were in use
were a deadly threat to both de de-
in Europe in the medieval period. The
fenders and besiegers, and,
first had a simple wooden bow, usually
after the castle was taken,
of yew. In the second, the bow was made
the only man executed in
from a combination of wood, sinew, and
retribution was a cross-
cross
horn, similar to composite long bows.
bowman formerly in
Finally there was a bow made com-
King John’s service. At
pletely of steel. Although the wooden
Dover Castle, Louis
bow could be spanned relatively simply
intended to build
by hand or with a belt hook, the other
a tower to enable types needed some form of mechanism
his crossbowmen to – these ranged from a simple lever to the
shoot over its walls. cranequin, which worked using a rack-

52 Medieval Warfare VII-2

This content downloaded from
88.240.181.39 on Sun, 09 Oct 2022 19:53:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

mw_7-2.indd 52 23/03/2017 16:20

 and-pinion gear system, and finally
the pulley type, which used a complex
series of pulleys worked like a windlass.
The power of the crossbow
The Royal Armouries in Leeds carried
out experiments in 1998 on the veloc-
ity of projectiles in medieval weapons:
sling, crossbow, longbow, and two small
handguns. What is surprising is that all
the weapons powered by hand yielded
velocities of under 50 metres (165 feet)
per second. The two crossbows used
were, firstly, a replica of an early medi-
eval crossbow with a yew bow, and sec-
ondly, a replica of a 15th century cross-
bow with a steel bow. The draw-weights
were 90 lb and 440 lb respectively, but
both gave very similar speeds – from 36
to 44 metres (120-145 feet) per second.
Contrary to what many authors have
stated, the velocities for the crossbow
and the longbow were very similar. By
contrast the two guns gave far greater ve-
locities, ranging between 180 and 520
metres (590-1700 feet) per second. The
difference between the crossbow and
the longbow was the training and skill
needed to shoot the longbow and the
relative ease and limited skill needed for
the crossbow. The crossbow also had an
advantage in that it could be spanned
and held ready for shooting for a period
of time – the longbow had to be drawn
and shot off in one movement, although
its rate of fire was much faster.
While crossbow bolts are frequent
finds, occasionally still embedded in
their victims, medieval crossbows are
88.240.181.39 on Sun, 09 Oct 2022 19:53:57 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
mw_7-2.indd 53
very rare in-
deed. The only
surviving 13th
century crossbow bow to
be identified was found in 1931
in the moat at Berkhamsted Castle.
This former royal castle is only 30 A reconstruction
miles north of London, and in the of a late medieval
summer of 1216 was besieged by Louis crossbow with its cranequin.
for two weeks. Perhaps the crossbow © Rocío Espin
dropped from the hands of a hapless sol-
dier during this time. This massive yew
bow, preserved by the silt of the moat,
measures 49 inches (1245 mm) along the
back and some 2½ inches (65 mm) wide
at its thickest point. A second crossbow,
now in Glasgow Art Gallery and Muse-
um, consists of a bow dating to the 13th
or 14th century fitted to a 15th century
tiller. Like that from Berkhamsted, the
back of the bow is uneven and follows A close-up look at the crossbow
the knots in the wood itself. stave discovered at Berkhamsted
The crossbow remained a vital war castle in 1931.
weapon until the sixteenth century. Even © Trustees of the British Museum
when they were replaced on the battlefield
by the new-fangled firearms, the crossbow
continued in use for hunting as it was both
accurate over short distances and silent. MW
Ruth R Brown, who has degrees in histo-
ry and archaeology and formerly worked
for the Armouries in the Tower of Lon-
don, is currently working on a catalogue
of the collection of artillery in Museum
Bronbeek in the Netherlands.
Kay Smith, formerly Head of Conservation
in the Royal Armouries, specialises in the
study of medieval weapons and has a par-
ticular interest in early guns and gunpowder.
This content downloaded from
Medieval Warfare VII-2 53
23/03/2017 16:20