used the longbow, while the French king had a body of six thousand Genoese crossbowmen in his pay, but these were unavailable by reason of the rain. The English archer could shoot twelve arrows while the crossbowman discharged his three quarrels, for it took so long to wind up the “moulinet”; the crossbow had, however, the advantage of a lower trajectory; moreover, the longbow was much lighter and more portable, besides being more easily preserved from the action of damp, than its crossbow confrère. It does not seem that the extreme range of the crossbow has been accurately determined, but it certainly did not exceed three hundred yards. Part of the light cavalry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries consisted of mounted crossbowmen. The introduction of the pavise, a large shield kept propped up before the archer, was a great protection against missiles; and a miniature from Froissart, in the Bibl. Nat. de Paris, shows crossbowmen shielded in this manner. According to a manuscript in the British Museum, the Genoese crossbowman wore a jacket with long sleeves, an iron helm, brassards, and greaves. The steel used in the construction of crossbows was of the strongest and most elastic kind. An enactment in the reign of Henry VII. forbade the use of the crossbow under severe penalties, and in the sixteenth century crossbows were mostly used for the defence of fortresses, and on warships. The windlass crossbow, called _à tour_ by the French, was largely used at Agincourt, and the form of that time continued practically the same for centuries; indeed, up to early in the seventeenth, bows on this model were made at Malines, in Belgium, by a “confrérie de tir.” The author has one of these bows in his possession, and it is, he believes, the exact counterpart of the Agincourt bow. [Illustration: Fig. 47.--Crossbows and Quarrels.] The projectiles are usually called quarrels, and are in great variety of form, but shorter and thicker than arrows for the longbow; several specimens were found at Tannenberg, dismantled in 1399, and the complement for a crossbowman was fifty. Quarrels for the arbelest were called “muschettæ,” hence the word musket; but there is some doubt whether it was not the missiles of the “scorpion” that were termed thus. A picture in the National Gallery shows how the common stirrup crossbow was bent _ad unum pedem_: the bowman places his foot in the stirrup, a cord is then fixed to the butt of the stock, the other end being attached to the waistbelt; the cord runs on a pulley, and the bow is bent by raising the body. The crossbowman wore a “brigandine” or stuff tunic, lined with strips of steel, besides his “half plates.” Illustrations of most of the varieties of the crossbow are given in Fig. 47. THE GOATSFOOT CROSSBOW. This bow is bent by a lever of two branches, called the goatsfoot, one of which is provided with forks, which grasp the string, while the other pulls it back. It was used by horsemen.