d the most fearsome weapon known before the discovery of gunpowder: the crossbow. A man with a sword had great status. "The Saxons considered a sword to have equal value of one hundred-twenty oxen or fifteen male slaves." (Barber 63) They remained popular in many different forms throughout the Middle Ages. The battle-axe was a product of the Scandinavian Vikings of the nineth century. The axe was large and formidable and had no specific types of strikes as the sword did. One simply swung the axe in the general vicinity of a rival. The sling was a thin piece of leather with a thick pocket near the middle. A small stone was placed in this pocket, and the sling was set into spinning motion. Once the sling was released, the stone would flit through the air at an enemy. The short bow was used in the early Middle Ages until the thirteenth century, when the Welsh's longbow appeared on the battleground. The Welsh had been using the longbow since the twelfth century, but in the Welsh Wars of Edward I, it was introduced to the English. With the introduction of gunpowder, only in England did the long bow survive? However, neither of these bows could ever compare to the brutality of the crossbow. This tool of death was smaller than a longbow, but more cumbersome. "The purpose of this short, powerful bow was to give the missile greater initial speed and thus to increase the range of the shot and its power of penetration. It was not possible, however, to obtain increased tension when drawing the bow merely by hand. In order to set the arbalest ready for soothing, it was necessary to use various devices." (Drobn 53). The simplest tightening method was treading. When tightening the crossbow by treading, an archer placed his foot in a stirrup at the front, held the bowstring with clips of his archer's belt and applied tension until the cord was caught in the notch of the arrow. Although this method was the most expeditious, the most frequently used meth...
