"En haste vont les clefs serrant des arbalestes." 2^e. Partie, vers 8,625.
Several further varieties of the Cross-bow are named about this time:--Balistæ corneæ; ad stapham[381]; ad viceas[382]; de torno vel de lena[383]; ad unum pedem; ligneæ ad duos pedes; de cornu ad duos pedes; a pectoribus; a pesarola[384]; and among the rest, a _Double Cross-bow_, discharging two quarrels: "Balista sine nuce, quæ duos projicit quarrellos." See Ducange and Adelung, v. _Balista_.
The Quarrel (_carreau_), as its name indicates, was an arrow with a four-sided or pyramidal head. This distinctive form of the arbalest shaft is carefully kept in view in the illumination from Add. MS. 15,268 (our No. 49); where, while the archer plies his barbed arrow, the cross-bowman discharges his angular quarrel. The feathering of the quarrel is seen very clearly in woodcut, No. 50; where the markings shew that _feathers_ are really intended, and not slices of wood, leather, or metal. These last-named materials being found in later monuments, it seems not unlikely that they may have been used thus early; and we have the distinct evidence of cotemporary writers that the _larger_ quarrels discharged from the engines called espringales were "empennés d'airain[385]."
The Slings of this period have already been noticed (page 204): the cord-sling is figured in our woodcut, No. 50, the staff-sling in No. 51.
The Military Flail appears in the following woodcut from Strutt's _Horda_ vol. i., Plate XXXII. The original miniature is in the MS. of Matthew Paris, at Benet College, Cambridge, which has already furnished us with examples of the Staff-sling and other weapons of this time. The flail-man in our engraving is engaged in the assault of a castle: other assailants in the same vessel are armed with bows and slings. Adelung cites the following passage, in which the flail is mentioned under the name of _flaellum_: "Cum ducentis hominibus in armis, electis et gleatis, et cum flaellis[386]."
The Greek Fire, still rejected among the nations of Western Europe, for the reasons assigned in a former page, was in frequent use among the Saracens. In 1250, the Christians, advancing towards Damietta by water, were intercepted by their enemies. "The Saracens in their vessels met the Christians sailing down the river, where a most fatal naval conflict ensued, the missiles of the combatants flying like hail. At length, after an obstinate battle, rendered more dreadful by the Greek fire hurled on them by the Saracens, the Christians, being worn out by grief and hunger, suffered a defeat[387]." The letter "to his respected lord, Richard, earl of Cornwall," from "John, his Chancellor," gives a similar account of this terrible fight; from which one only of the Christians escaped, "Alexander Giffard, an Englishman of noble blood." "The Saracens, by throwing Greek fire on the Christians, burnt many of their boats and killed the people in them, thus obtaining the victory. The Christians were drowned, slain, and burnt[388]." The authors of the treatise, _Du feu grégeois_, Captain Favé and M. Reinaud, remark that during the fifty-seven years of the reign of French princes at Constantinople (taken in 1204), the secret of the Greek fire could not have remained concealed from men who had made some advances in the science of chymistry. "Mais alors les préjugés de l'ignorance se joignaient aux idées religieuses et aux sentimens chevaleresques, pour repousser l'emploi d'un art qui semblait rendre inutiles la force et le courage individuels[389]."