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MOUNTED CROSSBOWMAN, 13th CENTURY
An extract from Armies of Feudal Europe 1066-1300by Ian Heath
34. MOUNTED CROSSBOWMAN, 13th CENTURY
By the late-12th century the crossbow was also in use by horsemen (mercenaries and mounted sergeants, not knights) and mounted crossbowmen thereafter appeared in most Western European armies as well as those of Poland and even Hungary; however, they were to disappear from French armies as early as the 1280s and were never over-numerous in English employ after King John's reign. At a later date they used a cocking mechanism called a crow's-foot lever, but illustrations of mounted crossbowmen belonging to this period invariably show their crossbows with stirrups. However, the cocking of a crossbow by this means while attempting to control a horse cannot have been easy and it seems likely that where possible the butt of the crossbow was secured against waist or saddle and the string pulled back with the hands, a theory indirectly supported by the 13th century 'Speculum Regale', which specifically states that horsemen carried the 'weaker' types of crossbow 'which a man can easily draw even when on horseback'. Mounted crossbowmen would probably have dismounted to fight in most if not all instances anyway, even though they are depicted firing from horseback in a number of contemporary pictures, such as the 'Roman de Girard de Roussillon' from which this figure comes.
Many illustrations show mounted crossbowmen wearing full mail armour and helmets, but - hardly surprisingly - no shield appears to have been carried. Like knights, they generally had 2-4 horses each in the 13th century.