Focus on Arms and Armor:  Medieval Military Crossbow Archery

Ranged warfare in Western Civilization was influenced by a form of mechanical archery using crossbows beginning in the classical era and continuing through the medieval period and into the early modern era. First invented in China and dating back to the Zhou Dynasty’s (1046-256 BCE) Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the military crossbow saw wide usage in Chinese armies as a potent infantry and chariot-borne missile weapon. Its popularity in China continued through until the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) when Central Asian steppe cultures took control, and displaced mechanical archery with traditional archery, although it never fully disappeared from Chinese arsenals in the medieval and early modern eras.  On the other side of Eurasia, the Hellenic Greeks invented a crossbow in the late fifth century BCE, describes as a gastraphetes or “belly bow,” so named because of the cocking mechanism made up of a concave wooden rest at the end of the stock which was placed against the stomach as the extended fore-end of the stock in front of the bow was pressed in the ground, making cocking the device easier for the operator. Similar devices were utilized by the Romans, although the primary sources often blur the lines between handheld crossbows (arcuballista) and larger crew served siege engines (manuballista) using similar mechanisms.

RIGHT: Miniatures from Romance of All Chivalry, by Eustace or Thomas of Kent. BNF Français 24364 Roman de toute chevalerie, 1309-1312 CE.  A goldmine of information concerning early fourth century CE English military archery is found in the earliest surviving Alexander romance in England, Thomas de Kent’s Anglo-Norman Romance of All Chivalry (Roman de toute chevalerie). Describing the campaigns of the Macedonian king and conqueror Alexander the Great, this illustrated chivalric romance depicts the events of Alexander’s conquests using the military technologies and tactics of medieval England. In this first miniature a well-armored crossbowman fires his bolt from a ship’s crow’s nest or superstructure, successfully downing a rival knight seen falling. Ship-to-shore missile attacks on the seaward walls of fortifications were tactical specialization of medieval archers and arbalisters, as demonstrated in the successful crusader assaults against Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.

There is less widespread evidence of the use of military crossbows in European history between the fifth and tenth centuries. The French chronicler Richer records the use of crossbow archery at the siege of Senlis in 949 CE and again at the siege of Verdun in 984 CE.  Both the availability and popularity of crossbows increased significantly in the eleventh century in Catholic Europe, with crossbows introduced into England by the Normans. This popularity continued into the late eleventh-early twelfth century when there is evidence of dedicated crossbow companies forming in the powerful Italian thalassocracy of Genoa serving in the first of the Catholic missionary wars to the Levant, the First Crusade (1096-1099). Other specialized crossbow companies would form in Gascony, Portugal, Flanders, and Bohemia during the High (c.1000-c.1300) and Late Middle Ages (c.1300-c.1500), and perhaps more significantly, regular crossbow troops often made up a substantial percentage of light infantry defenders manning European and Near Eastern urban fortifications and castles from the twelfth century until their replacement by small caliber matchlock guns beginning in the late fifteenth century. 

Perhaps the greatest description of the appeal of the medieval military crossbow is also one of the earliest. In her commentary on crusader weapons used by the Latin armies staging in Constantinople during the First Crusade, the bright young Anna Komnena (1083-1153), daughter of Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118), describes the crossbow in great detail in her biography of her father, the Alexiad:

“This crossbow is a bow of the barbarians quite unknown to the Greeks; and it is not stretched by the right hand pulling the string whilst the left pulls the bow in a contrary direction, but he who stretches this warlike and very far-shooting weapon must lie, one might say, almost on his back and apply both feet strongly against the semi-circle of the bow and with his two hands pull the string with all his might in the contrary direction. In the middle of the string is a socket, a cylindrical kind of cup fitted to the string itself, and about as long as an arrow [bolt] of considerable size which reaches from the string to the very middle of the bow; and through this arrows of many sorts are shot out. The arrows used with this bow are very short in length, but very thick, fitted in front with a very heavy iron tip. And in discharging them the string shoots them out with enormous violence and force, and whatever these darts chance to hit, they do not fall back, but they pierce through a shield, then cut through a heavy iron corselet and wing their way through and out at the other side. So violent and ineluctable is the discharge of arrows of this kind. Such an arrow has been known to pierce a bronze statue, and if it hits the wall of a very large town, the point of the arrow either protrudes on the inner side or it buries itself in the middle of the wall and is lost. Such then is this monster of a crossbow, and verily a devilish invention. And the wretched man who is struck by it, dies without feeling anything, not even feeling the blow, however strong it be.”

Anna Komnena’s commentary emphasizes the penetrative power of the crossbow, a chief characteristic of the weapon, an attribute which improved as the bow mechanism, also referred to as a lath or prod, changed from wood to composite materials to eventually all metal construction.

Beginning in the eleventh century CE crossbows were popular missile weapons on campaign, for garrison duty, and as weapons of war during sieges by both besiegers and the besieged for numerous reasons. Unlike a traditional self-bow or composite bow which required physical exertion to draw and hold before release (a great deal of energy depending on the bow’s draw weight), a crossbow could be spanned with its string locked into position and bolt inserted in the groove and released at a time of the operator’s choosing. This feature made crossbows ideal for garrison work and siege operations as the weapon was always at the ready. Secondly, operating the crossbow did not require years of training and continuous practice to master, making this point and release weapon ideal for militia. And initially, the cost of simple crossbows made with homogenous wooden bows was not burdensome, however, as bows made of composite materials (layers of wood, horn, and sinew glued together) and later lathed steel, the power, complexity, and cost of the weapon increased dramatically. These more powerful crossbows drastically increased the range and penetrative power of the weapon, while decreasing its rate of fire due to the need of special cocking mechanisms like the windlass and cranequin. Physically, the larger crossbows were much heavier than traditional short or longbows, and due to their horizontal firing position, required a wider frontage to operate on the battlefield, siege lines and battlements.

All of the above characteristics which made it popular as a missile weapon also made it unpopular among Western Europe’s warrior elite. The noble and clergy classes saw the crossbow as an un-chivalrous mode of warfare, leading to papal legislation to control and later ban its use.  As early as Pope Urban II’s (p. 1088-1099) pontificate the Catholic Church was expressing its displeasure with the crossbow. This sentiment was canonized by Pope Innocent II (p. 1130-1143) during the Second Lateran Council (1139), with the weapon declared as  “murderous,” and “hateful to god,” and most importantly officially declaring any Catholic who used a crossbow against another Catholic would be excommunicated. “We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers, which is hateful to God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on.” It is noteworthy that military archery was also included as an anathema offense, reflecting a clear and present fear both the nobility and the clergy had for missile weapons employed by commoners against their social betters. Despite this papal prohibition, the crossbow only increased in popularity throughout the twelfth century, leading to an augmentation of church policy in 1200, with Pope Innocent III (p. 1198-1216) sanctioning their use against infidel Muslims in Iberia and the Holy Land, pagans in the Baltic, and heretical Cathars in southern France. 

LEFT: Miniatures from Romance of All Chivalry, by Eustace or Thomas of Kent. BNF Français 24364 Roman de toute chevalerie, 1309-1312 CE. The second miniature shows a medieval assault ship, complete with a longbowman on the bow, a crossbowmen midship behind a catapult operator, a crowned shield bearer, and a knight or man-at-arms with drawn sword. This illustration depicts the combined arms cooperation required in a successful ship-borne assault, whether it is against another vessels, a shore attack, or an assault on seaward walls.

The crossbow continued as a popular missile weapon in both continental Europe and the Latin East during the Age of Crusades, its benefits in warfare far outweighing the threat it posed to the knightly class. It was also popular in the British Isles but never eclipsed the native Welsh and English longbow as the premier missile weapon in combat. Still, beginning with the reigns of the Angevin kings Richard I (“the Lionhearted” r. 1189-1199 CE) and his brother John (“Lackland” r. 1199-1216), a domestic crossbow industry began on the island, with master weaponsmiths recruited from the continent and perhaps the Near East to build the most modern mechanical bows using composite limbs. Under John’s reign, foreign crossbow makers by the names of Peter the Saracen and Benedict the Moor filled the royal armory with the newest weapons, and leaving modern scholars to speculate on an Islamic origin of the composite-limbed crossbow.

Across Western Europe, crossbowmen were sought after by medieval commanders, receiving a higher status as professional soldiers and often earning higher pay than other foot soldiers, including English longbowmen. This increased pay was also due to the crossbowmen often having to employ his own shield man and purchase and maintain the mechanical bow, a weapon more expensive than traditional self-bows. Moreover, the commanding officer of a crossbowmen company was one of the highest positions in many medieval armies, including those of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. During the Iberian Reconquista, crossbowmen were held in such high regard in Portugal and Spain that they were granted status on par with the knightly class. 

Crossbowmen were employed in large numbers by both the English and the French during the many Anglo-French conflicts leading up the pivotal Hundred Years’ War, with both sides employing both native and mercenary arbalisters on campaign. Although Welsh and English longbowmen have long held the position as the premier missile troops in the British Isles, crossbowmen were often employed by English monarchs. The French chronicler William of Poitiers describes their presence at the battle of Hastings in 1066, and the victor at Hastings and first Anglo-Norman king William the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus (r. 1087-1100), was assassinated by a crossbow bolt in 1100. King Richard used them extensively during the Third Crusade. Ironically, Richard would lose his life to a crossbow bolt while sieging a small castle in Limousine, France in 1199. Richard’s brother, competitor, and heir John used them in his expedition to Ireland in 1210 and during the First Baron’s War. His son Henry III recruited crossbow companies from the mountainous regions of Gascon in southwestern France to serve him in his continental campaigns and maintained a personal bodyguard of twenty arbalisters at all times. As noted above, Gascon crossbowmen were part of Edward I’s Welsh and Scottish campaigns, fighting side-by-side with Welsh and English longbowmen recruited for the expeditions. Edward’s grandson, Edward III (r. 1327-1377) had crossbowmen on his payroll during the opening phases of the Hundred Years’ War where they often fought alongside their longbow wielding brothers-in-arms on land and at sea.  

King Philip II Augustus traveled to the Levant with contingents of crossbowmen during the Third Crusade and used them in his wars against the Plantagenet kings when he returned to recover territory in France for the crown. Crossbowmen accompanied French armies in their campaigns against the Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), and the long-reigned “Saint-king” Louis IX (r. 1226-1270) relied heavily on his crossbow troops in both of his missionary wars, the Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) to Egypt and the aborted Eighth Crusade (1270) to Tunisia where he died from illness. The French monarchy famously hired Genoese crossbowmen for numerous campaigns during the Hundred Years’ War, including the large naval battle of Sluys in 1340 where reportedly King Philip VI of France (r. 1328-1350) hired 20,000 Italian crossbowmen to man his bulwarks, leading to an English contemporary of the battle, Geoffrey le Baker of Oxford (d. c. 1360) to write the French attacked the English fleet with “an iron rain of bolts from crossbows.” More famously, Genoese crossbow infantry were present at the ill-fated Crecy campaign of 1346 where supposedly a lack of pavises (still on the wagons at the rear of the French column) and perhaps wet crossbow strings hampered the effectiveness of their mechanical bows when matched against English longbowmen firing downhill from a defensible position.

RIGHT: Heavy crossbow with metal prod, stirrup and windlass, Château de Morges Museum. Morges Castle, Switzerland. Crossbows were a weapon of choice for crusaders in Europe and the Latin East. Early medieval crossbows used wooden limbs, and the string could either be drawn by hand, or with the aid of a simple claw or goat’s foot. But by the thirteenth century, the crossbow had evolved with the addition of a composite limbs made of horn, sinew and glue. The composite crossbow required a stronger cocking mechanism, a problem solved with the invention of the windlass. The windlass used pulleys, attached to the butt end of the stock to a winding mechanism which, when hooked onto the bowstring and wound, would draw the string to the trigger. With a maximum range of almost 500 yards and the ability of piercing the best plate armor, the metal crossbow became the most dangerous non-gunpowder missile weapon in use by medieval light infantry.

Crossbowmen fought for both sides at the other signature English victories during the Hundred Years’ War. At Poitiers in 1356, Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) brought 1,000 Gascon crossbowmen and  2,000 English and Welsh longbowmen as missile troops, facing off against 2,000 Genoese crossbowmen. During the Agincourt campaign in 1415, King Henry V of England (r. 1413-1422) sieged the fortified port of Harfleur with crossbowmen and later fought with an unknown number of crossbowmen and 5,000 archers against a formidable French host supported by crossbowmen and archers, who, incidentally, were not a factor in the French battle plan. By the early fifteenth century, French commanders were relying on crossbowmen recruited from France, Italy and Spain on major campaigns. English crossbow sniping was a factor during the French siege of Orleans in 1429, when Joan of Arc (c. 1412-1431) was wounded by a projectile at the fort of Les Tourelles as she attempted to raise the siege. Here colleague Dunois noted “Joan was wounded by a bolt which penetrated her flesh between her neck and shoulder for a depth of six inches,” a wound very similar to the one which cost Richard the Lionhearted his life in 1199. Despite the injury, the “Maid of Orleans” continue to fight, her wound dressed with a poultice of lard and olive oil which healed the wound within two weeks.

Military Crossbow Archery at Sea

Complements of crossbowmen were routinely stationed on war galleys and round ships beginning in the High Medieval era. The leading Italian thalassocracies, Genoa, Pisa and Venice, all placed arbalisters on their sailing vessels. In 1255, a Venetian maritime code required a set number of crossbows per ship to be operated by crewmen. Taller two-decked ships like the two-castled cog (with superstructures both fore and aft) of 100-150 tons were required to have three crossbows, while large round ships of 400 tons were required to have ten mechanical bows, with additional requirements concerning the number of bolts carried depending on type of crossbow (300 bolts each for stirrup spanned bows and 150 bolts for windlass-spanned bows). Some of the larger ships also had crew-served crossbows mounted on their decks for anti-ship and siege operations. The raised castles created firing platforms ideal for crossbow and traditional archery, especially against galleys with lower decks.  In Spain, crew lists from 1258 indicate there were twenty-four arbalisters on the Catalan war galley Bonanova, while in 1323 large Aragonese galleys maintained a compliment of forty on larger galleys and thirty on smaller ones.  In Genoa, crossbowmen played decisive roles in numerous naval battles, including two decisive victories against the Pisans at Meloria in 1284 and Venice at Curzola (modern Korčula, Croatia) in 1298.

LEFT: A Hussite Wagenburg formation, 15th century. From Vienna Picture Archive of the Austrian National Library. Vienna, Austria. Military archery was an important component in Hussite battle tactics, with crossbowmen and archers fighting alongside gunners in armored wagons. Perfected by the Hussite captain-general Jan Žižka, Hussite battlewagons were capable of fighting on the move in carefully coordinated attacks, shifting from positional to maneuver warfare often during a breakout from a besieged position. Wagenburg formations could be oval, square or rectangular and were defended by crossbowmen, gunners, and small-caliber field artillery. This sketch shows the wagons in defensive array with gunners, crossbowmen, horses and infantry inside the formation.

Mastery of maritime mechanical archery was not solely an Italian pursuit. Crossbowmen were instrumental in numerous naval battles in the high and late medieval eras across Catholic Europe as valuable missile troops for both winning and losing sides of battles. Notably, French crossbowmen fought from warships against English longbowmen and crossbowmen at the battle of Sandwich (1217) during the First Barons’ War (1215-1217) and again during the battle of Sluys (1340) during the Hundred Years’ War, with the English archers triumphing. Other regions were also well known for their maritime crossbowmen. In northeastern Spain, Catalan crossbowmen were described as both master craftsmen and excellent soldiers who, according to the Catalan chronicler and soldier of fortune Ramon Muntaner (1265-1336), “did not discharge a shot without killing or disabling the man they attacked.” When the Spanish king Pedro III (r.1276-1285) was building his own fleet to challenge the power of the Italian city-states in western Mediterranean, mandating Roger of Lauria, Admiral of the Crown of Aragon, Catalonia, and Sicily, to:

“Fit out at once twenty-five galleys, and man them so that each has a Catalan boatswain and one Latin, and four Catalan steersmen and four Latin; and the same for the sailors in the fore-part of the ship, and the rowers shall all be Latins, and the crossbowmen all Catalans. And We wish that, henceforth, all fleets you fit out shall be thus ordained and that you, on no account, alter this.”

Pedro emphasized the role of Catalan crossbowmen (balistarii catalani) in his order to the admiral because of the reputation of these Spanish bowmen as bolt casters:

“Catalans do not consider anyone a crossbowman unless he knows how to make everything, from beginning to end, of what pertains to a crossbow. And so he carries all his tools in a box, and it is as if he had a workshop. And no other people do this, but the Catalans learn it at their mothers’ breasts, and the other people of the world do not. Wherefore the Catalans are the most superior crossbowmen of the world.”

Adding their effectiveness as maritime crossbowmen was their panoply consisting of an iron cap and cuirass for armor, and a short sword for defensive action. Their primary arms were two crossbows, one light and the other heavy, with each weapon accompanied by 300 bolts.  Shipborne crossbow military archery continued to a normal feature of medieval naval warfare across Western Civilization, with professional mechanical bowmen station onboard dedicated warships to crossbows themselves part of the civilian sailors’ kit due to the weapon’s ease of use.  

Islamic and Byzantine Crossbows

Military crossbow archery was also a feature of Muslim and Byzantine warfare in the High and Late medieval eras. However, as early as the late ninth century CE Islamic sources mention a qaws al-rijl, a primitive hand crossbow modified later to launch eggs filled with an incendiary mixture for siege warfare. We know Muslim defenders were utilizing crossbow archery at the siege of Acre during the Third Crusade, and garrisons armed with crossbows were a regular feature of Islamic urban and castle fortifications in the Near East from the thirteenth century onward. These were a more powerful stirrup-spanned crossbow or qaws al-rikab, one probably with a composite bow. Moreover, expertise with this mechanical bow was an important skill in Egypt, with Ayyubids and Bahri Mamluks incorporating it into their art of war, although crossbows never reached the popularity seen in Catholic Europe. Later in the medieval era, the windlass-spanned aqqar was utilized by Mamluk forces in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. In Iberia, European style crossbows were used by Moorish defenders in al-Andalus beginning in the High Middle Ages, and the Nasrid Emirate of Granada in their defense of their fortresses during the final stages of the Reconquista, with the technological trends of the mechanical bow keeping up with new European designs. In fact, crossbows were a regular feature in Islamic warfare in urbanized areas of the Dar al-Islam by the end of the medieval era, although traditional archery was still favored by Islamized steppe peoples, especially in mounted combat. 

RIGHT: Battle of Domažlice, Jena Codex, fol. 56a. 15th century. Library of the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic. Depicting the 1431 CE battle of Domažlice between Hussite and German cavalry and supporting men-at-arms, this illustration shows the Hussite chalice standard indicating the Bohemian faithful, and the red cross on white background of the crusaders. Knights wear full plate armor on both sides, while the brutality of missionary war is portrayed by the impaling of children on crusader lances. No quarter in battle was often the rule of the day, and civilian populations were targeted by both sides. Notice the Hussite crossbowmen firing in support of heavy cavalry lancers and swordsmen.  His elevated position may indicate his role as light cavalry firing from horseback.

In Byzantium, large mechanical crossbows (tzagra) were utilized in siege warfare before the eleventh century, however, there is less of a convincing case for infantry crossbows (toxoballistra) before their introduction by the Latin crusaders. There is evidence of hand-held mechanical bows with composite bows employed in Byzantine Trebizond by the thirteenth century, a type of bow utilized in the Islamic world where composite bow construction was commonplace. Both indigenous Greek and hired crossbowmen became a regular feature of Byzantine urban defenses from the Fourth Crusade in the early thirteenth century until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, with the Byzantines preferring Italian mercenaries on their payroll and Genoese crossbowmen playing an integral part in the city’s failed defense against an Ottoman army that also incorporated crossbowmen in its ranks, especially among the Christian vassal states in southeastern Europe.

Military crossbow archery evolved throughout the second half of the medieval era to become a dominant form of missile combat across continental Christian Europe and the Islamic Near East, especially in garrison work and siege operation due to its ease of use, combat readiness, and exceptional penetrative power. In fact, the penetrative power of the crossbow initiated an arms and armor cycle during the high and late medieval eras, as armorers and weapon smiths competed with one another to create ever more powerful mechanical bows (evolving from wooden, to composite, to metal bows) and more protective armor (evolving from chainmail to plate-or brigandine reinforced mail, to full-plate). Much has been made of the English longbow’s role in this offensive-defensive cycle, but in truth the evolution of the infantry crossbow was more of a driving factor across continental Europe. Crossbows were used in every theater of operation during the high and late medieval eras, making their mark during the Age of Crusades in Iberia, the Levant, the Baltic, and against heretics in southern France and Bohemia, and during the Hundred Years’ War and rise of the Ottoman Sultanate.  However, like the longbow and the composite bow, the mechanical bow lost favor with the rise of gunpowder technologies, specifically the matchlock arquebus and musket during the sixteenth century, and by the seventeenth century had all but disappeared from European battlefields. Their popularity continued well into the Age of Gunpowder with dedicated civilian crossbow clubs across Western Europe lasting to the modern era.

Suggested Readings:

Carey, Brian Todd, Joshua B. Allfree, and John Cairns. Warfare in the Age of Crusades: The Latin East. Pen and Sword, 2022.

Carey, Brian Todd et al  Warfare in the Age of Crusades: Europe. Pen and Sword, 2023.

Ellis-Gorman, Stuart. The Medieval Crossbow: A Weapon Fit to Kill a King. Pen and Sword Books, 2022.

Loades, Mike. The Crossbow. Osprey, 2018.

Stanton, Charles D. Medieval Maritime Warfare. Pen and Sword Maritime, 2015.