Some of the figures repeated on this forum I am certainly are quite wildly inflated and at best irrelevant to the use on a battlefield.
CJ Peers in the Ancient Chinese armies series makes a number of points about crossbows. At his own admission his conclusion are subject to debate, and his text does not reference his sources of information.
East Zhou;
4th-3rd centuries;''...its advantage over the conventional bow lay in its penetrating power at short range, and because of its slow rate of fire it was at first most popular for defending towns. By 340bc however it was used in pitched battles and may have contributed to the decline of the chariot...''
''The horses of the period were still the small Mongolian breed, and partly for this reason early cavalry were mainly light, equipped with the bow and noted for mobility rather than close combat skills.
...It is not certain whether mounted crossbowmen were in use the early. It is usually thought that they had to wait the development of a belt-hook device for cocking the weapon, which otherwise had to be drawn by standing on the bow and pulling up with both hands; but Han armies had them by 170bc, and the use of a light crossbow which could be cocked with the arms alone is not impossible.''
(In the section on Qin I see that although cavalry are called bowmen in some texts or mounted crossbowmen in other he mentions "....{Qin} cavalry, whose armament is unknown."
Given the accounts of the weapons taken from the buried army during the fall of Qin I assume there isn't evidence either way for armament. The idea that the more powerful type crossbows were carried by cavalry seem unlikely. Reconstructions of the QIn crossbows are shown as very large arched devices unlike typical portable cavalry weapons. In the instance of Qin mounted cavalry 'crossbowmen' I remain unconvinced without a specific archaeological evidence or literary record.
With so many weapons removed from the buried army in ancient times further excavation is needed, and the work is still far from finished.
Yang Hong in 1992 says; ''according to incomplete statistics, the weapons unearthed were 14..bronze swords, 5 bronze spear heads, 2 curved bronze swords, 1 bronze battle axe (ge?), 30 bronze shu...1 javelin, over 8,000 bronze arrow heads and some wooden(?) crossbows with bronze trigger mechanism'')
Han
*probably 'Jue Zhang' in Pinyin, i.e foot drawn.Yang Hong uses this term when noting foot drawn weapons were the principal weapons in Han.''There were various grades of crossbow of different draw-weight. The heaviest required a pull of over 350lb..and were suitable only for static positions, where they could be fixed on revolving mounts.
Strong men capable of loading the larger weapons were known as 'chueh chang'*, and were highly valued specialists.
....Lighter crossbows were also used by the Han cavalry, who were prepared to fight dismounted if necessary and one source implies both crossbow and halberds could be carried.
....Some crossbows were very small and probably intended for one handed use.''
The buried army of Qin ShiHuang; Auckland city art gallery
{this is also the figure given in 'Gilded Dragons' published by the British museum, and also in the range of the Qin crossbow as described by Jessica Rawson in 'Art & Archaeology in Ancient China'. 200m seems the consistent range referred to for the Qin devices. This is likely a maximum effective combat range rather than a true maximum range.}''The bronze crossbow mechanism was very much more powerful than any of its contemporary weapons as, reputedly, it could fire a bronze bolt a distance of 200 metres. Its importance in ensuring military supremacy over China's marauding 'barbarians' on her northern and north-western borders was considerable.''
Yang Hong; Weapons in ancient China
East Zhou
**I feel the pace here is likely to be close to a single pace, i.e roughly 75cm in 'modern' times. There is a possibility it is the double pace, i.e 1.5m. Until what the text refers to is identified clearly I would not make a conclusion based on a modern conversion or what is taught in schools today.''Crossbows of the Warring States period among the present archaeological finds are probably all of the 'arm-pulled' type, that is, they are to be pulled by the two arms {I don't see any real reason to assume this by examining mechanisms}. It is written on the bamboo slips of Sun Bin's 'Art of War' that arrows from the crossbow were...'capable of killing the enemy from 100 paces** without the victim's knowing whence they came'...crossbows pulled to the tooth by both arm and foot were already in use at this time. It is written...by Sima Qian that Su Qin, in the course of his tour of the 6 states selling his political ideas, said to the King of Han''..all strong bows and powerful crossbows used throughout the land are produced by Han, and the Xizi and Shaofu type crossbows were manufactured in time to repulse the invading enemy. The range of these powerful weapons is over 600 paces**. The Han soldiers pulled their crossbows with the foot and shot 100 arrows in one volley without let-up.''
At 75cm this puts the 100 paces at close or just over a standard lethal range for bowfire(75m), and the 600 paces at a very impressive effective maximum range (400m).
At 1.5m this puts the 100 paces at an general effective bowfire maximum of 150m, again adequate, and the 600 paces at a confusing 900m.
900m could only be by pointing the crossbow into the sky for a long range maximum flight. It could be possible as an absolute maximum, and beyond an effective range, but doesn't have relevance to the crossbows penetrating power and probable flat trajectory fire on a battlefield. This longest arc would be irrelevant to warfare.
For those interested I really recommend measuring out 50, 100, 200etc. metres and such ranges to get an idea of what they look like and if possible fire a normal bow to long ranges. It shows the Han era weapons at 260m to be remarkable for being able to engage with effectiveness when individual targeting wouldn't be possible.
My final comment about any confusion over the 'pace' is that modern populations are larger in stature than ancient ones. A single or double pace is unlikely to be either of the two modern 'paces' listed above...evidence for smaller stature is both implied by the increase in average heights since industrialization with increased nutrition in modern times and the artefacts I have handled such as swords and bangles from Zhou to Han suggesting a smaller sized adult population.
The only certainty to be taken from the Sima Qian account is the use of leg-drawn crossbows at that time and the greatly increased range and lethality over arm-drawn examples.
Han
{Yang Hong notes the increased strength of Han era crossbows(Qiang Nu/strong crossbow) & the addition of the scaled sight for increased accuracy.} &
''Records mentioning 8 dan crossbows were also discovered in the Han tomb at Juyan. In addition, it is recorded in Han bamboo that there were crossbows of 8 different tensile strengths, namely of 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 dan. The most widely used is a crossbow of 6 dan which has a shooting range of about 260m, about a quarter of a kilometre.''
He also has a reference to records found on Han era slips at Pochenji recording repairs to weapons at a watch/beacon station. They include a crossbow of 5-pical (250kg) and 6-pical (300kg). Both of these in excess of infantry crossbows listed so without any other explanation I can only assume these are static crossbows at the watchtowers and perhaps one reference to the elusive Han-era arcuballistas.
Yang Hong in referring to the Wei & Jin and a specific mechanism says 'They are similar to those of the Han dynasty in both form and in structure. The strength of the crossbow is given as 10 dan...(268.3 kilos).
The figures seem to become a bit wild beyond here with reference to General Ma Ling recruiting new soldiers and only admitting those that 'could bend a crossbow of 36-jun with his waist...One jun is 15 kilograms and the figure above leads to the conclusion that the crossbow was bent using both arms and the waist, having a strength of 500kgs''. (?!)
He mentions winch loaded crossbows specifically such as Shen Nu/magic crossbow and it is said to be 10,000 jun. He acknowledges this must be an exaggeration....or else perhaps something is wrong with both these accounts. Precisely how a crossbow is 'waist bent' (with a belt hook?) and how many people are humanly capable to work with such weights (500kg) leads me to conclude that despite the reasonable figures up until this point, and the clear referencing of all of his sources, that both figures can be discounted in this case. This is the only part of Yang Hongs book which didn't sit right with me, and the rest of it is quite excellent.
He does however have information on very large crossbow mechanisms which are certainly proof of very heavy ballista-like devices at this time (between Han & Tang). Again the Han must have been capable of producing such devices....
{edit; if the soldiers could lift wieghts like Olympic athletes such 500kg figures might just be in the realm of international lifters...the heavier devices are certainly winch loaded when getting into fantastic realms. Song era crossbows for siege were true war machine crewed by a team of operators for example.}
This is 3 times the size of a typical mechanism and obviously from a war machine.''Five bronze crossbows of the Southern dynasties were discovered in the Qinhuaihe river at Nanjing, and all of them are unusually large in size, 30cm high, 39cm long...and over 10 kilograms in weight.''
The mechanism are pictured in his book, and Jieming e-mailed me a picture of one of these a fortnight ago. In time devices like this should be found in a Han or East Zhou context...assuming they haven't already.
Tang;
''There are seven types of crossbow listed in the Tang Liu Dian...The first two... were ordinary weapons...infantry...cavalry..they had a shooting range of 230 & 200 bu (an ancient length measure, equaling 5 chi) respectively...the long range ambush crossbow being the strongest with a shooting range of 300 bu.
In addition there were giant crossbows for use in storming cities. They were bent with windlasses and could send an iron winged arrow a distance of 700 bu. They were very powerful weapons.''
Edited by Kenneth, 04 April 2007 - 04:12 AM.
