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Full Version: Mix of bows and crossbows - Warring States / Qin?
China History Forum, Chinese History Forum > Chinese History Topics > Chinese Art of War
WuZhuiQiu
What might have been the typical mix of bow and crossbow units for Warring States or Qin forces?

Might bows and crossbows have been combined in the same units, much as the Japanese combined bows and arquebuses almost two millenia later, where the faster-shooting bow could cover the slower, yet more damaging weapon while it was being reloaded?

To the extent that there can have been some bias, owing to recent or historical looting, what does archaeology tell us about the mix of arrow and bolt heads, if not about the mix of bows and crossbows themselves? For example, what mix was found at the Terracotta Army site?

Xiexie!


WuZhuiQiu
WuZhuiQiu
Why was this moved? I was not asking about the weapons themselves, but about their usage and employment, within and among entire units, as in battle formations and the Chinese Art of War, rather than about the details of ranges and design ...

Anyway, in the hope that this thread might be returned to where it belongs, and in reference to the following discussion, were the archers and crossbowmen in Phalanx 1 of Vault 2 of the Terracotta Army in separate squads, or were they in mixed squads?:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=234
intem
I was planning to make up another thread about chinese archery, but, thank goodness to WuZhuiQiu who kindly set up this thread that i would like to make a relevant post about. My query is, does anyone have any authentic pictures of chinese bows which dates back from qin to song and on to ming dynasty. Because it seems that our traditional han-chinese archery seems to either influenced by mongol or lost through those time periods like in qing dynasty. Most of the sites i've seen, are manchu bow exponents or people who dedicated in manchu bow, and sometimes i feel a bit absurd about how some people tends to see chinese bows which refers to the manchu bows. So it would be very appreciated if someone whos dedicated in han-chinese bows could make a little bit of contribution to this thread. Thanks in advance.

Intem.
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