Hmm. I&#x27;d be interested in seeing your source for that. Yes, the power imparted to the arrow is the integral of the poundage supplied by the bow or prod, over the distance that it is propelling the arrow, and that distance is shorter on a crossbow than a longbow. But you can have a much higher poundage and still be usable with a crossbow; you have two arms to draw together, and are supporting none of the draw weight while aiming. I&#x27;ve seen the analysis of draw weights of longbows on the Mary Rose; do you know where there are sources for that of crossbows?<p>And yeah, sorry, I didn&#x27;t mean to make it sound like they were just handing out longbows. Longbows do require significantly more training. In part, the tradeoff for longbows is that you have cheaper weapons but need to put more into training the archers.