[quote=@TheSovereignGrave]
Wait a second, elephants wouldn't live that far in the north, do they? I can imagine mammoths, but not elephants.

Also, wouldn't bows be a better weapons for horsemen than crossbows? I'd think stringing a bow from horseback would be much easier than trying to load a crossbow.
[/quote]

First of all, excuse the delay. I am having connection issues, and my internet took a 9mm to the head shorty after I started composing my response.

It is not too far a stretch to have elephants in the northern region. However, I assumed that the region closer to the mountain range was not as chilly (10-20 C). Not sure if this tidbit really applies, but didn't Hannibal bring a bunch of elephants through the Swiss alps or something?

The crossbowmen would be using push lever crossbows, a design that was not uncommon before the medieval period. China used designs like it (Zhuge Liang's Repeating Crossbow) way before the 11th century. Medieval Europe actually made use of the design and even reinvented cavalry tactics based on the use of push lever crossbows.

The image provided in my application is erroneous. I simply googled "Chinese crossbow" without thinking about the mechanics involved and threw the first image that looked relevant in.