An alternative or archaic spelling of arbalester, a soldier armed with a crossbow.
A variant spelling of arbalester with the French suffix -tre instead of English -er. This reflects historical variation in spelling before standardization, mixing French and English conventions.
Old spellings like 'arbalestre' show how language was in flux during the Middle Ages—people spelled the same word different ways even in the same document because there were no dictionaries or spelling rules yet!
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