Medieval Research: The Classy Crossbow

(This post is related to the one I wrote on bows earlier on. You can find that one here)

In the time of The Black Prince (roughly the 1300s), archers were pretty much respected for the skill they had, especially with the longbow. And it was one heck of an art; archers had to build up arm strength from childhood; practice for years, and at that period, would probably never do anything else in life other than shoot arrows. Live an archer, die an archer, and more often than not, the latter would be on the battlefield with your bow in your hands. Glorious, indeed.

Of skeletons found that date back to medieval times, it is fairly easy to identify the ones that belonged to longbow archers. Apparently, the spines would be all twisted out of shape, and the bones in the right arm near the elbows were reportedly deformed. Kind of morbid, I know, but it goes to show how difficult their training was, and how much a part of their lives it played. If you really want to know more about  this, you can go here. Otherwise, moving on...

  

Of course, it’s pretty cool if you were a king to be able to call on an army of longbow archers whenever you felt like having a tantrum in some other country, or even if you just wanted a change of scenery. On the Crécy campaign, Prince Edward took some 7500 archers with him when he decided to stroll around France and get some looting done. Royalty had itchy feet back in the day.

But it was pretty easy for him; since the 13^th century, it had been stated by law that all men of Britain were to practice archery on Sundays, specifically for the sake of having elite archers lying around when Spain, France or some other troublesome rival country felt restless. Needless to say, it worked, and future Kings and commanders all took advantage of it

But in Continental Europe at the time, there were no such laws. Bows were still regarded as a peasant’s weapon; yet despite that, archers did play a role in their wars. Only, these archers were different from the bowmen who trained all their life; these archers used crossbows.

What made the crossbow so immensely popular? There were many reasons besides the advantages they had in battle. Firstly, though, one didn’t need much training to operate a crossbow. Sure, you would have had to do some pushups to be able to pull that string back, but after the windlass and other methods of reloading were invented, even that wasn’t necessary.

All you needed to do to operate a crossbow was to be able to aim and shoot, and then to hunker behind something while reloading without getting shot back at. This meant almost anyone could use it, and pretty effectively at that after a few weeks of getting used to it. No more lifetime training required; conscripts could be drafted in days, and ready for battle in weeks. As you can imagine, armies were raised much faster.

And for another thing, regular archers with regular bows had to stand to fire; and this made them pretty open targets on a pitched battlefield. Crossbowmen could fire standing, while crouched, while on their stomachs, while having a cup of tea; they were pretty flexible. And in pitched battles, when they needed reloading, crossbowmen also had their own personal shield called the pavise, behind which they could safely span their weapon and reload. See?

Alright, first things first: what is a crossbow?

Basically, it was the first ever hand held mechanical machine that could kill at range. And that was pretty impressive, in its time. The crossbow changed the way battles were fought; in all honesty, it was truly the sniper of the medieval age. As more modern and powerful crossbows were developed, it gradually got harder to draw the string back, and so sharpshooters would wait for a worthy target before they pulled the trigger.

So how do crossbows work?

To paint a mental picture, a crossbow is pretty much an archer standing with the bowstring drawn and the arrow ready to fire. Instead of the archer’s arms, we have the wooden stock of the crossbow, and instead of his fingers, we have a simple mechanism called the nut that holds the string in place. Extending to the back of the bow is a lever that serves as the trigger, and releases that mechanism to let the projectile fly.

Here is what a nut looks like from the top and from the side:

And this is the trigger, the lever that extends to the back:

This diagram shows what could possibly have been a simple way this worked. The nut would be set to rotate freely inside its own little groove. At the top, you could see the ridge where it catches and holds onto the bowstring. Inside, there was a notch where the end of the lever fitted against it and held it in place, without rotating.

Squeeze the lever, and the end would drop out of the groove. Nothing would stop the nut rotating and releasing the string, and then tally ho, quarrel away.

Most people with an average medieval knowledge would be aware that crossbows don’t shoot arrows, per se. Rather, crossbow ammo was called bolts, and/or quarrels. They were shorter, thicker, and more deadly at close range. Some quarrels were fletched (i.e. the arrangement of the feathers at the rear) in such a way that the bolt spun while it flew. As you know, this would grant it longer distance and more importantly, greater penetrating power.

Like all weapons, crossbows evolved over time. The first ones were made of pure wood; and as a result, needed to be fairly long so as to not snap when drawn. There’s a lot of tension when the string is pulled back to the trigger; and there had to be something to support that pressure. They probably looked as simple as this:

You could say that early crossbows were pretty cumbersome to their users. But since they weren’t all that powerful, it was fairly simple to draw the string back, or "span" it; the archer would just put one foot on the bow stave and pull back with both hands.

Pretty soon, though, composite technology allowed for smaller and yet more powerful crossbows to be made. Composite is the term used when more than one material is used in making a bow; in this case, it was mostly horn and sinew, that granted more strength and allowed shorter staves.

But the more powerful the crossbow became, the more difficult it got to span, and so more advancements arrived. First came the stirrup at the front, where the archer could put his foot through to hold the bow down while spanning it. Obviously, there would be less damage to the staves if the string was too hard to pull.

Then came the simple mechanism called the spanning belt, aka, the belt and claw. That would be this doohickey on the left, right here. It was pretty straightforward; a hook on a belt. Kneel down, place the hook around the string, and have your foot in the stirrup. Stand, and let your body pull the string for you. Quick, easy, and simple to do with minimal effort

Soon enough, bowmakers found out how to make staves out of steel. Much more power, much more range, and much, much more harder to span that bow. Fortunately, they came up with the solution, too: the windlass, for one.

This was a medieval add-on for a crossbow device that was removed once the string was ready and then fitted on again after the bolt was loosed. Here you can see what it looked like when fitted on. The two hooks grab onto the string, and then the pulley system you can see there made it a simple process for the archer to wind the cranks and pull it backwards. 

         

Once it was past the nut, the windlass was wound backwards to let it settle. Once ready, it was removed, and the bow aimed. As you can imagine, it was probably a cumbersome business, but hey, if the distance was greater and the pierce better, maybe it was worth it.

Unless, of course, you were ridden down on and killed while busy winding away. Then, it would, well, suck.

Then there goat’s foot lever, which probably was a lot faster than the windlass, thought it might have taken a bit more effort if the string had some real pull. This is what a medieval one looks like.

And this is how one was used. Pretty much like a lever. That was… shaped like a goat’s foot. Oh. Apt.

And this here is a Cranequin, a rack and pinion type mechanism. Somewhat similar to the windlass, I’d say, at least in terms of winding it around. But much less cumbersome, without all those ropes and pulleys.

As you can understand when looking at it, there is a toothed wheel inside that canister-like round thing that's hooked onto the toothed bar; and the lever rotates the wheel, which pulls back the bar. The bar has a hook at the end, and three guesses what that hook snags.

Like the rest, this device is detachable to allow unencumbered shooting. The best part about this one is, you don’t have to brace the end of the crossbow against anything to span it; it meant that the cranequin could let you use relatively powerful crossbows on horseback.

And so that was most of them. The spanning belt, the windlass, the goat foot lever, and the cranequin; all mechanical spanning devices that were developed as more and more powerful crossbows came into existence.

Here’s a little game to help you jog your memory; match the name of the device being used to the crossbowman using it:

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That was just a reason for me to use this picture there. Guilty.

Probably the most well-known crossbow users of the good old days are the Genoese crossbowmen, a famous medieval military corps that played a part in the Crusades, as well as in the battle of Crécy. There's an interesting story to them, which I'll probably talk about some other day.

 Now that you've seen all that, chances are you're itching for a crossbow of your own. Modern ones do exist, with a price range from $89.95 to around $500.  If, like me, you find yourself slowly backing away from numbers of that magnitude, there's always something like this out there for the creative minds:

If you’re interested in finding about more about crossbows, you can start with this half hour YouTube video here. It helped a lot with this post, and has much more interesting information you might enjoy