No. 49.
The Cross-bowman was an essential component of the host during all this period. He was in the van of battle. "Balistarii semper præibant," says Matthew Paris[273]; and there is scarcely a conflict mentioned by this chronicler in which the arbalester does not play a conspicuous part. In the battle near Damietta, in 1237, "more than a hundred knights of the Temple fell, and three hundred cross-bowmen (arcubalistarii), not including some other seculars, and a large number of foot-soldiers[274]." The Emperor Frederic in 1239, giving an account of his Italian campaign to the king of England, writes: "After we had by our knights and cross-bowmen reduced all the province of Liguria[275]," &c. In 1242 the Count de la Marche, refusing to do homage to Amphulse, the brother of the French king, "swelling with anger and with loud threats, accompanied by his wife Isabella and surrounded by a body of soldiers, broke through the midst of the Poictevin cross-bowmen, and having set fire to the house in which he had dwelt, suddenly mounted a horse and took to flight[276]." St. Louis, marching to meet the English in Poitou, had an army in which there were "about four thousand knights splendidly armed to the teeth, besides numbers of others, who came from all directions, flocking to the army, like rivers flowing into the sea; and the number of retainers and cross-bowmen was said to be about twenty thousand[277]." The opposing forces of the English king consisted of "sixteen hundred knights, twenty thousand foot-soldiers, and seven hundred arbalesters."
The Cross-bowmen were of several kinds, some mounted, some on foot. The mounted balistarii in King John's time were those possessing one horse, those having two horses (ad duos equos[278]), and others having three horses[279]. In 1205 the king sends to the sheriff of Salop, "Peter, a balister of three horses, and nine two-horse balisters," who are to be paid 10s. 4d. per day (the whole ten). The usual pay at this time was: to the cross-bowman with two horses, 15d. per diem; with one horse, 7½d. per day; and to the foot-balister, 3d. per day.
The quarrels for the crossbows were carried after the army in carts. Thus Guillaume Guiart:—
"Arbaletriers vont quarriaux prendre,
A pointes agues et netes,
Qui la furent en trois charrettes
Venues par mesire Oudart."—Année 1303, p. 291.
The bows themselves, with other weapons and defences, were also carted after the host, and termed the "artillery" of the expedition:—
"Artillerie est le charroi
Qui par duc, par comte ou par roi
Ou par aucun seigneur de terre
Est charchié (chargé) de quarriaux en guerre,
D'arbaletes, de dars, de lances,
Et de targes d'une semblance."—Guiart, an. 1304.
Notwithstanding the services rendered in the front of the battle by the cross-bowmen, and the other foot-troops; whose post was the more perilous from their being but slightly provided with defensive equipment; the knightly body of their own party made no scruple to ride them down whenever they stood in the way of the glory or ambition of the equestrian order. At Courtray in 1302, the French foot having gallantly repulsed the Flemings, Messire de Valepayelle cried to the Count of Artois,—