PART XXII.
THE SLING AND FUSTIBAL.
These rude missile-casting weapons, with the longbow, were greatly used by the peasantry and yeomanry of the early “middle ages.” The first-named is too familiar to need much description, and its very ancient character is universally known. The Spaniards employed it with great effect at the battle of Navarete, where, Froissart says, “they broke many helmets and skullcaps, so that they wounded and unhorsed many of their opponents.” At the Rotunda, Woolwich, are twelve sling stones of two sizes, viz., 2.35 and 1.7 inches in diameter. These stones came from Rhodes—they are pebbles covered with lead. A single slinger appears on the margin of the Bayeux tapestry; the weapon is being used by a peasant aiming at a bird.
The fustibal, or staff-sling, consists of a long pole, four feet in length, with a sling in the middle. An example is recorded in a MS., which is attributed to Matthew Paris, in Benet College Library, Cambridge, C. 5, xvi. It was wielded by both hands to cast large stones against an enemy, and was in use as late as the sixteenth century for hurling grenades. The ordinary sling was still to the fore in the fourteenth century—indeed, it was sometimes used in warfare even in the sixteenth; Grose gives an instance at the siege of Sancerre in 1572. The author saw it in Egypt, used by boys for frightening birds from the bean fields.