Crossbowmen were held in such high regard in Spain that they were granted status on par with the knightly class. The rank of commanding officer of the crossbowmen corps was one of the highest positions many medieval armies, including those of Spain, France and Italy. Crossbowmen were held in high esteem as professional soldiers, often commanding higher rates of pay than other footsoldiers. Crossbowmen were also valuable in counterattacks to protect their infantry. Usually they engaged the enemy in offensive skirmishes before an assault of mounted knights. In the armies of Europe, mounted and unmounted crossbowmen, often mixed with javeliners and archers, occupied a central position in battle formations. Later crossbows (sometimes referred to as arbalests), utilizing all-steel prods were able to out-range and out-penetrate the longbow, but were more expensive to produce and slower to reload, requiring the aid of mechanical devices such as the cranequin or windlass - often necessitating the use of a pavise to protect the operator from enemy fire. Although a longbow had greater range, and could achieve comparable accuracy and faster shooting rate than wooden or composite crossbow, crossbows could release more kinetic energy and be used effectively after a week of training, while a comparable single-shot skill with a longbow could take years of practice. They almost completely superseded hand bows in many European armies in the twelfth century for a number of reasons. The use of crossbows in Medieval warfare dates back to Roman times and is again evident from the battle of Hastings (1066) until about 1525 AD. Ī Medieval crossbowman drawing his bow behind his pavise This suppressive shooting would allow them to mount the wall with ladders more safely. The large ballistae at the bottom level were designed to destroy the parapet and clear it of any hostile troop concentrations while the small armorbreaking scorpios at the top level sniped at the besieged. At each level of the moveable tower were several ballistae. An example for the importance of ballistae in Hellenistic warfare is the Helepolis, a siege tower employed by Demetrius during the Siege of Rhodes in 305 BC. The smaller sniper version was often called Scorpio. Its application in sieges and against rigid infantry formations featured more and more powerful projectiles, leading to technical improvements and larger ballistae. The efficiency of the gastraphetes was improved by introducing the ballista. Īrsenal of ancient mechanical artillery: Catapults (standing), chain drive of Polybolos (bottom center), Gastraphetes (on wall) Alexander's siege of Tyre in 332 BC provides reliable sources for the use of these weapons by the Greek besiegers. This was a key Carthaginian stronghold in Sicily, as described in the 1st century AD by Heron of Alexandria in his book Belopoeica. It was used in the Siege of Motya in 397 BC. Meaning "belly-bow", it was called as such because the concave withdrawal rest at one end of the stock was placed against the stomach of the operator, which he could press to withdraw the slider before attaching a string to the trigger and loading the bolt this could thus store more energy than regular Greek bows. The gastraphetes was a large artillery crossbow mounted on a heavy stock with a lower and upper section, the lower being the case fixed to the bow and the upper being the slider which had the same dimensions as the case. Heron identifies the gastraphetes as the forerunner of the later catapult, which places its invention some unknown time prior to 420 BC. The device was described by the Greek author Heron of Alexandria in his work Belopoeica ("On Catapult-making"), which draws on an earlier account of his famous compatriot engineer Ctesibius (fl. The earliest evidence for the crossbow in Europe dates back to the 5th century BC when the gastraphetes, an ancient Greek crossbow type, appeared.
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