I dont get to talk about medieval archery and military finance with someone who knows, very often. Thank you Thanas.
A few notes from looking through a few notes:
- Like the longbow, training with the crossbow was mandatory in most Italian cities for youth and males.
- Genoese crossbowmen were paid in Gold, not in silver.
- A galley crewed by 400 men, of which 200 were crossbowmen, cost 900 florins per month.
While not exactly the same, we know the florin was valued at six shillings. This gives us 4500 shillings per month. Given that a pence is a fraction of a shilling, I can only conclude that Genoese crossbowmen were billed much higher than the longbows. (However, this includes a warship. But even if three quarters of this money was due to the ship, that still means that 200 crossbowmen were paid quite handsomely).
For the sake of math (because I am curious)
6 pence per day=15 shillings a month per archer for unmounted yeomen longbowmen recruited from the yeoman class.
If we assume that ALL 4500 shillings go to the crossbowmen, that comes to 22.5 shillings per month, per crossbowmen.
If we assume half (The ship would take a chunk, and the rowers would be paid less etc) goes to the crossbowmen, that comes to just over 11 shillings a month per crossbowmen. Either way, we get a nice range of pay for top-tier professional crossbowmen that is roughly comparable to yeoman longbowmen.
No, here is the problem - a crossbow needs regular maintenance with special tools. If you do not have the tools, you cannot field crossbowmen in the field over a campaign. Also, the training of the longbowmen varied wildly. For example, the crossbowmen of the french fleet (mostly contracted italian mercenaries) outshot the longbowmen left at home to defend against raiding.
Reference for that? I know of the raids, but the definition of "outshot" can be somewhat fungible. A longbow is well suited for massed archery on an open field. Less so for hitting single targets or fighting inside a port town.
What 'proportion' of ranged and melee combat would a professional combatant expect to see during the age where crossbows were widespread and being replaced by muskets? I read mention of melee charges to finish off an enemy, but how much of an occurance were they? Did the pike-wielding formations exist during this time?
That... depends. Close-in fighting was absolutely exhausting and no one really likes charging into a wall of spears and other pointy objects, so for example the massive full-speed infantry shock charges you see in movies are probably pure fiction outside of a few particular exceptions (be they events, or cultures with some strange customs). Especially because most of the infantry carried polearms (outside for example, dismounted knights).
My impression is that while spear and shield walls never went away, things that, say, Alexander of Macedon would recognize as a pike formation did go out of style in Europe during the early Middle Ages, at least in Western Europe. I take it I am mistaken?
Its popularity was somewhat reduced, but it never went away. As Thanas said, the Scotts and Welsh made heavy use of the Pike, though the formations were IIRC immobile and they had not figured out how to use a Schiltron to attack until the early 14th century (Falkirk, the Scottish schiltrons were immobile and got pincushioned by welsh bowmen... Bannockburn, and Robert Bruce figured out how to drill men to move in formation). There was a lot of wheel-reinvention going on, but the pike never really went away.
The English did something a bit different, and there is some debate as to the exact nature of the formation. In modern english it was called a Hedgehog. It was composed of mutually supporting infantry armed with various polearms, and longbows. Basically you have three lines of infantry, two in front, one held in reserve or to react to flanking attacks. Archers on the flanks, and between the forward infantry lines. Works best when you have a natural obstacle to protect the archer line from flanking attacks by cavalry.
An alternative is that archers and infantry were interspersed on the unit level. Each bowmen came inside SOME noble's retinue, along with that guy and his infantry men at arms (hired or feudal) and stayed with them such that each of two lines of infantry had its archers embedded within it to one degree or another. Thanas might know better than me which of these two alternatives is more widely accepted.
