8*8. XL MAY 23, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
419
Nominally that subject is the crossbow. Incident-
ally, however, the work deals with bows generally
as implements of war and the chase ; with the long-
bow, to which in^ mediaeval times the incontestable
superiority of English marksmanship, and conse-
quently of English arms generally, was due; the
short bow, the hand-gun, and other missiles. By
extension, too, it is occupied with the balista and
catapult of the ancients, mentioned in Biblical
annals " Et fecit in Jerusalem diversi generis
machinas, quas in turribus collocavit, et in angulis
murorum, ut mitterent sagittas et saxa grandia"
(2 Paralip., xxvi. 15) and with the trebuchet of
mediaeval times. Possessor of a fine we should
suppose unrivalled collection of crossbows, Sir
Ralph is able to supply, in addition to designs of
the bows themselves, illustrations of the method
of workmanship, not a few of them the result
of his own experiments. Besides these sources,
Sir Ralph has had carefully copied designs from
Viollet - le Due, Vegetius, Strutt, the Bayeux
Tapestry, and other authorities, ancient and
modern, printed or MS., while the projectile im-
plements of early warfare he has had reconstructed
by modern workmen. It is a curious fact, which
we accept on the authority of the writer, that
there are but one or two old English longbows in
existence, the bow itself being but " a hewn stick
of foreign yew of no intrinsic value." On the other
hand, numbers of beautifully constructed mediaeval
crossbows are forthcoming, and on some of these
the artist, the engraver, the inlayer, and the
mechanic have exercised their talents. While
books on the longbow, the use of which was prac-
tically confined to the English, are abundant, no
work devoted exclusively to the crossbow is known
in any language, though this arm, as Sir Ralph
says, " was carried by hundreds of thousands of
soldiers in mediaeval warfare, and has ever since
been popular on the Continent for sporting or
target use."
The introduction into England of the crossbow as a military and sporting arm Sir Ralph assigns con- jecturally to the Norman invaders of 1066. But no picture of the crossbow is shown on the Bayeux Tapestry, nor is it until the fourteenth century that illustrations of its use are of pretty frequent occurrence. Long before that time, how- ever, the crossbow, though still primitive in shape, had sprung into popularity in English and conti- nental armies. In the twelfth century its use, on account of the dreadful wounds it inflicted, was forbidden by the more enlightened monarchs ; and its employment, except against infidels, was inter- dicted, as a weapon hateful to God and unfit for Christians, by the second Lateran Council in 1139 under pain of an anathema. Richard Cceur de Lion, an expert with the weapon, was, while pros- trate with fever, carried on a mattress in order to shoot bolts at the paynim defenders of Acre ; and his death at the siege of the castle of Chaluz, near Limoges, in 1199, by a wound inflicted by a crossbow, was regarded as a " visitation " for the employment of these prohibited weapons. These and other statements of the kind we take from Sir Ralph. Under the word ' Crossbow ' the first use traceable in the 'H.E.D.' is by Higden in the fifteenth century ; under ' Arbalest '=arblast, men- tion is made in the ' Old English Chronicle ' under the year 1079. The Genoese were the chief users of the crossbow, and are said to have employed it so early as 1099 at the siege of
Jerusalem. Froissart gives an animated account
of jthe behaviour of the Genoese crossbow men at
the battle of Cre"cy: "When the Genoese had
assembled, and began to advance, they made a
great leap and cry, to affright the English ; but
they [the English] stood firm for all that : then the
Genoese made another leap, and a fierce cry, and
stepped forward a little, and the Englishmen
retreated not a foot: thirdly, again they leaped
and cried, and marched forward till they came
within shot : then they shot fiercely with their
crossbows ; when the English archers stepped for-
ward one pace, and let fly their arrows so regularly,
and so thick, that it appeared like snow. When
the Genoese felt the arrows piercing through their
heads, arms, and breasts, many of them cast down
their crossbows, and cut their strings, and returned
discomfited. When the French King saw them
fly, he said 'Slay these rascals, for they will
hinder and trouble us without reason ' : then the
men of arms rushed among them, and killed a great
number of them ; and the English still shot their
arrows wherever they saw the greatest number "
(Berners's 'Froissart,' vol. i. chap. cxxx.). It was
urged that at Cre"cy the bowstrings of the Genoese
were wet and failed to act. Sir Ralph has, how-
ever, tested the matter by soaking a steel crossbow
in a tank of water without finding any appreciable
alteration in the tightness of the string. The
development of the crossbow as described consists
in the addition of windlasses and other substitutes
for manual labour in tightening the string. Mon-
dragon, in Spain, where, it may be said, a curious
collection of ancient arms is still on view, was as
famous for the manufacture of crossbows as was
Toledo for that of sword-blades. Pyrmont, in
Germany, was another famous source. It was
celebrated by Sir John Harington in his translation
of Ariosto :
But as a strong and justly tempered bow Of Pyrmont steel, the more you do it bend, Upon recoil doth give the bigger blow And doth with greater force the quarrel send.
No less interesting than the designs of crossbows in warfare are those of the same weapon for the chase. Many of these are very striking. The disappear- ance of the English longbow is fixed by Sir Ralph at between 1580 and 1590. At a period even later, we fancy, practice with the longbow was com- pulsory in England, and the practice of other games was punished. The primitive crossbow dis- patched its bolt with considerable force, was, Sir Ralph holds, a more accurate arm than the ordinary bow of its period, and was probably capable of piercing, on emergency, a coat of mail. What is said concerning the warlike weapons of antiquity adds greatly to our knowledge of the subject, and demands an amount of attention which, for reasons of space, we are unable to bestow. The volume is finely illustrated, and is a work of exem- plary labour. Exactly the kind of work is it to gladden the soul of the antiquary and to form a welcome feature in every carefully selected library beside such works as Burton's unfinished ' History of the Sword,' the Duke of Newcastle's work on the art of the manege, books on fencing, and the like, which have a peculiar fascination for a large class of readers. In French may be found one or two descriptions of local collections of cross- bows which Sir Ralph might with advantage consult.
