We are very happy to present to you the Medieval Crossbowmen and Archers. These will join the mounted knights, foot knight, and foot sergeants in the Western Medieval range.
This is a 30 figure set, giving you 20 Crossbowmen and 10 archers. You get numerous arm and head options as you have come to expect from us! That every figure can be made differently.
These figures can be used in the Crusades and Europe from the late 12th to late 13th centuries. Europe was a hotbed of conflict and you can use them on the fields of France, Spain, Germany and England during the Barons wars and conflicts with the Scots, Welsh and Irish.
For those who are familiar with our Norman Crossbowmen you will see the later development in the crossbow on these figures. A stirrup has been added to the end of the weapon to help in drawing back the string. You would put your foot into the stirrup, attach the draw string to the hook on the belt and straighten your leg and lean upwards pulling the draw string to cock the bow. This made loading a lot quicker and led to the development of a more powerful crossbow.
We have also included some archers in Gambeson. You can mix these with and use alongside a lot of the figures in our Dark Age archers set to give you a fantastic amount of variation in your archer units.
The English infantrymen adopted the bow as their principal weapon from Henry III assize of arms in 1242 and so fielded large forces of archers whereas the Crossbow was more widely adopted by the French. The Italians, Gascons and Catalans were also famed for the expertise with the Crossbow.
General Medieval tactics tended to be the infantry including spearmen, archers and Crossbowmen forming a solid block in the centre. The cavalry would attack and then pullback to reform behind the solid infantry wall before charging out to attack again.
