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 CHAPTER XXI

THE CROSSBOW

It would certainly be outside the pale of this work to deal at any length with the intricate history of the crossbow, but so closely allied to our subject are the bow and crossbow, actual armaments of our ancestors, that we are forced to add to that brief mention of them which we made on pages 4, 5, 65, 124, 125, in noting the form they assumed in the XIIIth century. The crossbow at the period at which we left it was a cumbrous affair, and, as far as is known, was bent by the simple process of the bowman lying on his back, pressing both feet against the bow, and so drawing the cord with both hands up to the notch, or what was known as the "barrel." Early, however, in the XIVth century mechanical appliances for bending the bow began to make their appearance.

We have previously stated that at the second Lateran Council of 1139, presided over by Gregorio Paparesci dei Guidoni (Pope Innocent II, 1130-1143), the use of the crossbow was prohibited amongst Christians as a weapon only fit for employment by or against infidels (vol. i, page 125). This decree was confirmed by Lotario de' Conti di Segni (Pope Innocent III, 1198-1216); but despite these prohibitions we find that in 1181 the Genoese were arming troops with the crossbow—the actual forefathers of the luckless Genoese crossbow men of Creçy fame.

Independently of the mercenary crossbow men—those of Genoa, Gascony, and Brabant—who were employed in the armies of France from the XIIIth century onwards, a great number of towns of the northern provinces of France had companies of crossbow men of their own. In 1230 a French parliamentary decree bestowed the title of Grand Master of the crossbow men on Thibaut de Montléard. The crossbow men were taken from the citizens of towns and formed into corporations. In 1351 King John II ("the good") issued an order in which he said: "The crossbow man possessing a good crossbow, strong in proportion to his strength, and a good baldrick,