Infantry in the Middle Ages heavy toll on the English invaders of their lands. Adapted by the English, the longbow was nevertheless a difficult weapon to master, requiring long years of use and practice. Even bow construction was extended, sometimes taking as much as four years for seasoned staves to be prepared and shaped for final deployment. A skilled longbowman could shoot 12 arrows a minute, a rate of fire superior to competing weapons like the crossbow or early gunpowder weapons. The nearest competitor to the longbow was the much more expensive crossbow or Arbalest, used often by urban militias and mercenary forces. It required
Medieval Latin and was instead a scholarly language of the minority of educated men in medieval Europe used in official documents more than for everyday communication. This resulted in two major features of Medieval Latin compared with Classical Latin, though when it is compared to the other vernacular languages, Medieval Latin developed very few changes. First, many authors attempted to "show off" their knowledge of Classical Latin by using rare or archaic constructions, sometimes anachronistically (haphazardly mixing constructions from Republican and Imperial Latin, which in reality existed centuries apart). Second, many lesser scholars had a limited grasp of "proper" Latin or were