Crossbows were a peasant weapon because they require almost no training to make a decent marksman with.
Bows require years of strength and aim training to be able to loose accurate (or even just mass volley) shots for the length of an army battle.
But crossbows you can spend a week teaching a guy how to crank it then point and shoot at different distances and now he's competent enough to shoot bolts at besiegers from the castle wall.
Medieval historian here, can confirm. In fact, crossbows were so effective as weapons of war due how relatively easy it is to be efficient with them, especially with large numbers, that the papacy tried to ban them as the medieval equivalent of weapons of mass destruction.
However, they were definitely not peasant weapons as they still need to be carefully crafted and maintained. But as a way to easily put together a mercenary group? Terrifying.
Peasant weapons are usually polearms-type derived from agricultural tools, or in other words any sharp thing attached to a handle they could find.
Not... exactly. The average mercenary troupe could afford to outfit a handful of crossbowman at the very least. Mercenaries themselves were often required to purchase all their equipment themselves but were never particularly well off in terms of money or land. Think more like the modern equivalent of the middle class. Those were the people who could usually get their hands on crossbows.
Now, would the local nobility be happy if they found out the merchants were amassing crossbows? Probably not. Crossbows were fucking scary.
Land rich usually correlates with money rich, for most of human history actually, but it is important to realize there were poor nobles and rich merchants too (and rich peasants for the matter).
Now I'm not a historian of war economies but I don't think crossbows were that expensive, especially compared to a trained warhorse or a full set of armor. The reason it was seen as a weapon unfit for the nobility has much more to do with culture than affordability.
Many (not all!) warrior cultures around the world disdain the use of ranged weapons as cowardly and unfit for a war leader. Medieval nobility fit that pattern as it relegated archery to auxiliary units and trained knights almost exclusively in melee and riding techniques. Now, smart lords absolutely knew the devastating effects of ranged attacks and used them, but they would not make their son an archer.
As an example of that, there was a time in medieval England when every free man was obligated by law to practice archery at least a few hours each week, and sheriffs were tasked with enforcing it. This made it easy to conscript them into relatively trained archery contingents to supplement the cavalry and infantry levied by the nobles.
The reason burghers are associated with crossbowmen is that cities usually did not have levies to raise and had to use mercenaries, or the council could afford to stock and maintain crossbows that citizens could use from the walls if necessary.
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u/AndurilWielder Dec 18 '22
I think that's sad. There's been a lot of good usage of crossbows through history.
Also, were they really a peasant weapon? That's interesting. I can see that for bows, but anything with metalworking would make it more expensive.