content_output-035_7 (Q5995): Difference between revisions

Neither the long-bow nor the cross-bow constituted the complete armament of the soldier. The long-bowman carried a mace or mallet with which to kill those whom he had disabled with his arrows; sometimes he was furnished with a pike, which, stuck into the earth in a slanting direction, afforded some slight protection from a cavalry charge. He, like the cross-bowman, was sometimes attended by a paviser—that is, a page or varlet—who bore a huge shield, behind which he and his master could shelter from the arrows of the enemy. In the illustration the cross-bowman is taken from the “Chronique d’Engleterre,” and the paviser from a copy of the “Romaun de la Rose.” The cross-bowmen usually carried a sword, and it is not to be supposed that they and other archers were the only warriors who sought the shelter and aid of the paviser: even the knights not infrequently put that bulwark as one more thickness of iron between themselves and the missiles they so much dreaded.