Re: [OT] CrossbowRe: [FT] (LONG) The Balance of Power -- Fighters and a Defense

"laserlight@quixnet.net" wrote:
> 
> And the point of *all* crossbows was that an untrained oaf could use
them. 
[snip]
> With a crossbow, any peasant can learn to draw, load, point, shoot. 
You only have to win one battle with them--you can replace your losses
(you always have more peasants than you can mobilize) but if your
opponent has high quality troops, it'll take a generation to replace
them.

Generalising about a few hundred years across a whole continent or
more is always going to open up a can of worms, but...

I honestly can't think of *any* time or place when this holds
true, that it was seen as desirable to recruit and equip a vast
number of untrained oafs as crossbowmen. Indeed I think things
were very much the contrary, that the crossbowmen used in battle
were ideally well-paid and well-equipped mercenaries, or recruited
from among the bourgeois.

One obvious example would the Genoese mercenaries ridden down by
zealous knights at the battle of Crecy.

I recommend Jim Bradbury's "The Medieval Archer" for a treatment
on the Papal prohibition. Working from a fallible memory, what the
Pope banned exactly translates as "archers and crossbowmen" *not*
crossbows, *nor* crossbowmen alone.

-- 
David Brewer

"It is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a stone at every
dog that barks at you." - George Silver, gentleman, c.1600