askchapo

crossbows were more likely to be wholly owned by the local lord/baron and given out during wartime and taken back after, while longbows were relatively commonly available (if not exactly cheap or easy to make) civillian hunting tools as well as weapons of war. crossbows are the rich lord's peasant levy weapon of choice since it leaves the peasants disarmed afterwards as the crossbows are too expensive (difficult to manufacture metal crank parts etc. compared to 'self bows' like the english longbow that can be made entirely out of one piece of wood with a little experience with curing) to not take back after issuing. plus, since crossbows are simpler to use and require less training, the lords would invest less in military training for their civilians/militias, leaving the more vulnerable to military domination when they didn't have their lord's crossbows in hand, whereas many places encouraged longbow practice and military tradition to ensure they had enough bowmen should they need them for war, creating a decentralized military power base and cultural attitude of resilience and self-reliance among the populace. crossbows were a way to centralize military power in the hands of the aristocracy, not some kind of proletarian worker's weapon of choice (which was probably either a staff, a club, a repurposed woodcutting axe, an improvised spear, or a simple hunting bow). there were exceptions to this general trend like the Taborites (who were a peasant indurgency that was famous for using crossbows, murray bookchin claims they were a kind of proto-anarcho-communism), especially in places without bow traditions (mainland europe for example) and as time went on and political power in general became more centralized (in places with longer traditions of centralized power, china for example, the crossbow was more common due to more standardized 'state armies' compared to ad-hoc european feudal militias). its kind of like early factories, sure there might be nothing inherently and essentially wrong with the centralization of production itself, but the way it was used historically was at the behest of and for the benefit of the ruling classes. for example, the prominence of crossbows in continental Europe (they abhorred missile weapons compared to many other cultures, bow training had to be forced by decree after military experience proved this to be disastrous) is almost solely due to Italian city states (such as Genoa) mustering entire platoons of only crossbowmen that they would hire out as mecenaries. Crossbowmen often were paid double that of an archer, even though the bow took more training. think about why that might have been if they are supposedly the 'weapon of the people'