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.