Quote Originally Posted by fusilier View Post
In Italy this is somewhat debated. Clearly the intent in mounting crossbowmen on horse back was originally to give them mobility, but some claim that they could use from horseback in battle. Given the Italian preference for belt-hooks for spanning crossbows, it sounds like it would be difficult to reload.
Goats feet and cranequin had become pretty widespread by the 15th Century but I'll defer to your familiarity with Italy on this one. I think generally though when people talk about crossbows, they tend to conflate or confuse different types, since they all look quite similar. In Central Europe there were several distinct types or grades of crossbows in use side by side, including the stirrup crossbow, all the way to the phasing out of all crossbows as military weapons by around the mid 16th Century.

I think this is the source of a lot of the confusion in the endless debates about English longbows vs. crossbows (and everything else). They tend to compare longbows to light crossbows when talking about range and penetration and then to windlass crossbows when talking about reloading.

It's kind of like with guns, a lot of people couldn't tell the difference between a carbine, an arquebus, a late or early musket, or a blunderbuss, but as we know they were very different weapons with different levels of performance.

Actually a pavisieri didn't necessarily carry a pavise, and was usually a spearman with a shield of some sort. By the middle of the 15th century such shields were usually oval or round shaped. Still big but not a pavise (in the sense that it could not be planted on the ground).
Yes this is what I alluded to upthread ;) 'Pavisieri' didn't necessarily refer to men carrying pavises, and vise versa.

Pavises may have continued in use Central Europe for a bit longer. Here you can find the Bohemian's boasting about their pavises as late as 1519.
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=2711
That is the same discussion thread I linked to upthread...

But I get the feeling that they were rather behind the times tactically speaking (not technologically speaking, however).
Who, the Czechs? I don't think so.... The Czechs were one of the very few who could defeat the Ottomans in open field battles, which is why the Venetians and the Hungarians hired so many of them to fight in the Balkans.

But where are the Spanish and French pavises from that time period?
The Spanish did also still use pavises both for gunners and crossbowmen, but they moved fairly quickly to the steel rotella for the same role. The French concentrated their military development on heavy cavalry (anachronistically), and relied principally on the Swiss for infantry. The Swiss put most of their emphasis on pikemen but did also use pavises with their crossbowmen, as well as mounted crossbowmen.


By the early 1500s the Spanish were starting to show themselves to be a leading military power, and while an early adopter of arquebuses, they still employed crossbowmen.
Indeed, Cortez had as many crossbowmen as arquebusiers when he first arrived in Mexico.

Pavises limited the infantry's mobility, and as tactics evolved they were increasingly discarded. It's not like there's a switch thrown, and suddenly everybody threw their pavises into furnaces -- but over time their use diminished. That diminishment may have occurred at different times in different places. But it's pretty clear it began in the 15th century and was complete, at least by 1550.
I'm sorry my friend, but I don't think it was that simple. Pavises probably did largely disappear by the mid 16th Century, but I think it's quite inaccurate to suggest that they were on a steady decline through the 15th, to the contrary, their use obviously increased through the 15th Century and peaked near the dawn of the 16th.

I suspect their decline was due to muskets, and cannon.

G