"Any low-born peasant with just a bit of training could kill a lord or sovereign with simple squeeze of a trigger ... Not surprisingly, the highest European authority of the day, the Roman Catholic Church, called for an outright ban on the weapon."https://militaryhistorynow.com/2012/05/23/the-crossbow-a-medieval-wmd/ …
and of course the crossbow had been used in China for something like 1500 years before this incident. the Qin Emperor made a point of equipping vast armies of peasants with this weapon that could kill a lord from a distance.