Actually, some papers written about crossbows seriously doubt that the penetrating power was that much better -- if at all. The poundage certainly was, but it had to be -- crossbow arms are short and the arrow doesn&#x27;t travel as long, thus less time is available to transfer energy.<p>And &quot;large populace&quot; makes it sound like they just handed out crossbows to peasant levies, instead of them being very highly paid mercenaries.
I mean, I can hand a bill or halberd to a peasant, too, but that didn&#x27;t stop the Swiss from getting hired by most of Europe...