I think another major stumbling block is that people look at one region and extrapolate to another. Many things in terms of military organization seemed to be different between say, Western and Central, Southern or Northern Europe.

My focus is mainly on Central Europe and in that context, in the late medieval artwork especially in German, West Slavic (manly Czech or Polish) or Flemish artwork what you see depicted for battle are primarily the relatively small weapons spanned by the rack and pinion cranequin type spanners, and to a lesser extent, the somewhat larger weapons spanned by the windlass. Some depictions of the goats foot or wippe, and some of spanning with belt hook or the like, but not as much.

Examples would include images from the Swiss chronicles, Polish and Czech manuscripts, (Balthasar Behem Codex from Krakow is a good example) German manuscripts (like the Von Wolfegg housebook), and religious art such as various depictions of St. Sebastian. The prestigious weapon is usually the cranequin weapon.

By comparison if you look at some of the illuminated versions of Froissart from France and Flanders (for a French audience), they often depict the windlass or pully type or belt hooks.

In her War Book, Christine de Pisan clearly describes several distinct types of crossbows and spanners, unfortunately the translation just says "other crossbow" and "another crossbow" since the translator didn't know the period terms, and I've been unable to find a transcription of the original text.

This corresponds with the Teutonic Knights records, urban militia ordinances and records related to the Hungarian Black Army, which all point to an emphasis on the cranequin type weapons as the most preferred, with the stirrup crossbows coming second. I don't think the solid wood ones were used in a military context except in defense of fortifications or towns. They would be fine for hunting though probably.

Note in this detail pic from the Bern Chronik (attached / bottom) and one of the two St. Sebastian images where you can see it, he has a crossbow with a foot stirrup but he's spanning with the cranequin and not using the stirrup. However Bern Chronik also includes some images of belt-hooks.

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Here one guy has a cranequin (on the ground next to his foot), and the other, with seemingly a larger weapon, is using the foot stirrup and (I think?) a belt hook

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While we are discussing all this - do you happen to know the reason why all the crossbow quivers are always wood, have that flaring shape and are covered in fur?

One more with the cranequin. Some times the foot loop looks very small, as it does here. Note his foot doesn't seem to be in it. Maybe that is just a means to protect the prods, especially composite prods, when placing the crossbow nose down for spanning?

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I think I have seen some crossbows hanging from their stirrups. That would be a way to protect the horn or wooden bow in storage. The very small stirrups could be for that.

I heard that badger skin has good water resistance. If you choose to use quivers on the hunt or in the field, keeping water and debris out are important. The badger skin also communicates that you are the kind of person who takes pests.

I translate some primary sources on crossbows from the 13th and 14th century in another thread.

Aren't crossbow quarrels loaded tip up in a case or quiver instead of tip down like arrows with the 'fletching' on crossbow quarrels being made of harder wood or parchment?

It makes sense to have a broader base if that's where the additional bulk of those hard fletching is positionened.

I think that's correct - I always assumed that was specific to wooden-fletched bolts, to protect the thin brittle flights. I can't think of another reason.

Also, regarding the "very small stirrup", it is indeed simply a suspension ring. As far as I know, cranequins were used just holding the crossbow in your left hand while cranking away on the handle, which is why the rustung type didn't need a stirrup. Schnepper types typically had a large staple fastened to the front which doubled as an anchor point for the wippe (cocking lever) and as a suspension ring.

Makes sense to me, I wasn't aware crossbow bolts were stored point up, that's interesting.

You definitely see all kinds of different hunting bolt-heads in the art and in collections of actual bolts.

I think there might be a few more reasons to argue for a flaring shape on the quiver, though I don't have any answers - just a few questions worth contemplation:

1. Retention. Bolts are short and do not have the long length of arrows to help keep them grounded in their container. So, by tapering the mouth of the quiver and flaring the base, you can conceivably help to keep your missiles where you want them. The only thing a bit unusual is that the CG of a bolt should be nearer the tip than the fletchings, so you become dependent on the quiver's geometry more so for retention than the forces of nature, if you will.

2. Protection of the Fletchings. Well, maybe. I am not sure of how tough or not the fletchings on a bolt could be. But, perhaps if they tended to be made from wood, having them stick out of the quiver might result in breaking or cracking if you happen to bump into something, while if they are buried in a sturdy quiver this will be less of a problem?

3. Here is a legitimate question: how many bolts does a typical quiver hold?

Seeing as it's routine for archeologists to track medieval battles by finding the iron bolt heads with metal detectors I would assume a fairly high number of the bolts are lost after being shot. Even my modern 175 lb draw hunting crossbow tends to mangle the 'arrows' when you shoot them.

My original sources for that data were secondary - the relatively recent monograph by professor Ann Tlusty "The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany" has a lot of data on these, (derived from the surviving records) with a pretty good bibliography, and a much older (19th Century) but also pretty good source is Johannes Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters which has a bit more detail. You can find that online if you look around a little.

There are a few books also published in the 19th Century which have the transcription of the special songs which were composed by the organizer of these events, someone called a pritschmeister. They include everything that happened at the event, names of all the winners etc., as well the rules. There is also separately an account of a specific one from Zwickau mentioned in the memoirs of From Hans Ulrich Krafft "Reisen und Gefangenschaft" published 1583.

I had a PDF of a book of five of the schutzenfest songs but I've lost track of them. I will try to track those down, I've asked some HEMA friends for help.

Another source you can look for are the actual invitations they sent out, several of which survived. They put on the invitation all the basic rules, as well as the main prizes, and the size of what they consider a foot or an ell or whatever, since each town had a slightly different measure, and the size and distance of the target. I found a scan of one of them (attached) but unfortunately it's too low res to read the script. You can make out the circle and the length of the unit of measure on the bottom. Also the prize of a silver cup and two oxen. I can't quite make out the date but I think it was 16th Century.

I know there are more of those out there and of course, better image but that's all I have at the moment. If I can find some more for you I'll post it here.

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I should add that, in the rules (including on the invitation) they apparently include

* The size of one unit of measure, physically indicated on the invitation
* The size of the target, also physically indicated on the invitation
* The distance in (units of measure) to the target for the different grades of crossbow or firearm shooting
* The time allowed between shots
* The rules for qualifying as in how close to the hits need to be to the center of the target etc.

So this gives us a lot of ideas as to a baseline of expected accuracy and performance.

Ok so I did some digging, I believe Hans Sachs wrote a few of these, I haven't found the specific 19th Century collection I used to have but i did find this, which includes a description of a Fechtschule in Würtemburg in 1575, with a partial description of a Schützenfest. (It’s about 20 pages long covering fights, dussack, long sword, dagger, staff, halberd, the Federfechter, the Marxbrüder and delineates the Meisterstuck as per Hans Sachs though I'm not sure if this is him).

https://books.google.com/books?id=o3pUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA414&dq=%22hett+zu+ro%C3%9F%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wBCMVcfPG8uXNqfuuxA&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22hett%20zu%20ro%C3%9F%22&f=false