 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Arbalest" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
.png)
Thearbalest (alsoarblast), a variation of thecrossbow, came into use in Europe around the 12th century.[1]The arbalest was a large weapon with a steel prod, or bow assembly. Since the arbalest was much larger than earlier crossbows, and because of the greatertensile strength of steel, it had a greater force. The greaterdraw weight was offset by a shorter draw length, which limited the total potential energy that could be transferred into thecrossbow bolt. A skilled arbalestier (arbalester) could loose two bolts per minute.[2]
The term "arbalest" is sometimes used interchangeably with "crossbow".Arbalest is aMedieval French word originating from the Roman namearcuballista (fromarcus 'bow' +ballista 'missile-throwing engine'),[3] which was then used for crossbows, although originally used for types ofartillery.
Modern French uses the wordarbalète, which is linguistically one step further from the stem, due to the disappearance of thesphoneme in the last syllable. This form of the word applies to both crossbows and arbalests (the latter may be referred to as aheavy crossbow, but an actual heavy crossbow may not be the same as an arbalest).
Nicaea 1 to Lateran V.
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)
