which are better and when did europe catch up with chinese crossbows if ever??

The best crossbows ever made is in neither place, but modern day American sports crossbow. Industrialization produced the best crossbows, so thats when the west overtook East Asia. But in term of efficiency used in war when the crossbow was still an instument, they have different uses. European trigger mechanism never reached the East Asian level, but they had steel staves that has a higher punch. But East Asia made up for it with better manufactured materials. Speaking of field military only, the best European crossbow was the Genoese crossbow which has a shorter effective and maximum range than the crossbows of east asia.

why was a triiger system so important how come with many years of cast iron a similiar steel crossbow was made.in another source i heard that mongols used frankish crosssbowmen in there army,i also heard that the steel croosbow of europe had bigger range chinese crossbow but who knows which one they were comparing it to prob a repeating short range one

"why was a triiger system so important how come with many years of cast iron a similiar steel crossbow was made."

???


"in another source i heard that mongols used frankish crosssbowmen in there army,i also heard that the steel croosbow of europe had bigger range chinese crossbow but who knows which one they were comparing it to prob a repeating short range one "

Which source? Frankish crossbows in the 13th century don't even have steel string. It was composite. Unless you are talking about the Golden horde in later time, then obviously the only civilization they are in contact with was europe.

The crossbow was probably introduced into Europe circa 900 CE, and possibly a couple of hundred years earlier. From this time until the 12th. century, the prods of crossbows were self-bows, or made out of one piece of wood. Composite prods, made out of horn and/or sinew(tendon) and/or wood were introduced to Europe in the 12th. century. The composite bow was the technology of the Saracens, and was a marked improvement over the wood bow. Steel prods were made and used after 1350 CE. The tiller of each type crossbow was usually wood, though was sometimes also composite. Self and composite crossbows usually employed a bridle made of rope or sinew to attach the prod to the tiller. With this type of method, the prod is essentially just tied onto the tiller. This method was occasionally used for steel prods, though they were more often held within the tiller itself, rather than lashed to the end of it.


The Chinese were using crossbows 2000 BC. Sun Tzu "those that excel in warfare is sharply focused, their contraints are precise. Their strategic configuration of power (shih) is like a fully drawn crossbow, their contraints like the release of the trigger." I think a few things had changed between almost 3000 years.

I don't think anyone had wire in 2000BC not even Europeans, not that they had a crossbow that needed wire during that era.

so do chinese medieval crossbows outrange or outpower medievel or late medieval europe ones?

It outranges, but not outpowers.

how does it outrange, without out powering the european model?
I've thought "power=range" without really thinking about it.

and what difference do triggers make, between East and west?

By all accounts the crossbow was a new addition to Chinese warfare from around 700BC onwards.
There are no Shang or earlier crossbows.

http://www.atarn.org/chinese/bjng_xbow/bjng_xbow.htm

I have found this Stephen Selby character at the Asian traditional archery research society helpful, and he was reffered to me by Richard Nable.
This article puts the dating at even rather later than I thought...500bc-600bc.
But by most accounts the crossbow is a weapon of the Eastern ZHou period.
He makes comment of the '2,000bc' date in this article here.
Note then that this means the crossbow predates Shang and fits inside the Erlitou bronze culture or earlier. Unlikely to have escaped notice if this were so.
Without a bronze mechanism to support this, or bronze bolt points or something I do not know what evidence there is for this beyond based on interpretation. 2000bc is fantastic and fanciful.

Update on my incomplete post on shang swords.....
IN my research into the earliest dating for Chinese swords I have had mixed results...but one linguistic study suggests there is no character for swortd in Chinese before the commonly held period of its emergnace in SPring & Autumn to warrign states. I have found an image of a knife/sword weapon which is said toi be shang but without info on its excavation i am being cautious as to taking it literally. ALso I had pointed out the distinction between sword and knife is often blurry...so other references to Shang swords I have found may be interpretative (only being 30cm or so).
I have found one hafted slashing weapon from Shang which appears real,but wouldnt be considered a sword....work still in progress on this subject.

Western crossbows were meant to counter the knight. It fired a heavy metal bolt to bust armour. As the years went by crossbows became increasingly sophisticated with winches and so forth to increase armour penetration.

Chinese crossbows were invented to give every layman the ability to shoot arrows. Normal bows took months of training to use, a crossbow can be taught in few days, though it had a slower firing rate. This allowed the ancient armies to leverage numbers and bring a lot more firepower to bear.

but how does the Chinese crossbow fire further, yet have lower striking power? Was it the bolt itself (lighter bolts?)

The trigger is what I'm also curious about, most curious about really

It has to do with the utensil strength of the steel over the composite bows.

It's the throw weight of the bolt as well as the draw weight of the bow. I can throw a tennis ball further than a stronger man can throw a shotput.

Chinese armies had no need for a late Middle Ages type crossbow. They were built for different purposes.

If anything rather reintroduced. The crossbow was already used by Greeks in 3rd century BC as well as by Roman legionnaire.


http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armbrust (German)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow


Only a week ago good preserved parts of a Roman crossbow were found in Xanten, Germany (being only the third ever found, thereby perhaps contributing to the misconception these weapons weren't know in Europe - the other two were found btw in modern-day Iraq and Spain).

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/...,343291,00.html

TMPikachu;
If you want to know about the real mechanism/trigger and even the development of a safety catch and housing for the mechanism...look at the link I provided just above. Hmm. I wonder how many other links I supply never get looked at.

If you look there you will see several examples, authentic bronze originals (I can tell by the patina of the bronze) and he compares them....and notes the QIn mechanism was not the best!. He has a reconstruction of the crossbow there...plus an example of a fragment of the wooden stock of a real crossbow...and another with traces of wood affixed to the bronze.

If you want to know more you can contact the author, as he most likely can direct you to an article link or some specifics on this.

Thanks Kenneth, I overlooked your link-

I guess the remaining question is "so how was the Chinese bow longer ranged, but the western one more powerful"

I just imagine that if it has the power to hit harder, it would also have the power to fly further. Could there be a difference in bolt design?

I think so as well. Romans had crossbow like siege weapons, I doubt that they don't have crossbow.

I remember hearing something about Roman "belly bows" or something, that was a kind of crossbow, but was unpopular in use (too slow to reload, their trigger mechanism probably wasn't as good)

The siege weapon was called a "scorpion". It was practically a huge version of a crossbow and its use it described in detail by Caesar in his Bellum Gallicum.

The crossbow I was refering to was a weapon used by Roman foot-soldiers (see pic below, hope it works)

what a wierd looking weapon. does it operate like a hand-held scorpion?

Kinda funny, I was designing a fantasy crossbow that looked pretty much just like that

can u show us more info about roman crossbow...
do they replace bows?
thank you....
pics are very appreciated...

The roman crossbow was very little used, and never replaced their bows.
or I'm thinking of the greeks. But as far as I know, Romans were never known for fielding crossbows in large numbers

Hi Kenneth

Check out my Qin Dynasty "ge" polearm and my Han Dynasty crossbow mechanism... I just showed them to Zhaoyun and other forumites last week when we met...

wow, that must be so satisfying to have...

the ge blade is alot smaller than I expected it to be.

The ge is a lot bigger than it looks, bigger than Spring and Autumn and early Warring States ge; it's the camera angle perspective that makes it look small...

I guess, 'cause from that photo it looks like clubbing someone with the crossbow mechanism would hurt more!

on Romans again... I think they just fielded more 'light' ballistas to compensate for not using crossbows in bulk

http://198.144.2.125/Siege/siege.htm

Pretty interesting site about sige engines, although the download is very slow.

Hi Thomas,
for some reason I didnt reply to your pictures earlier, although I believe I saw them. Must have gotten distracted.
That Ge is very good looking example, and certainly looks like a Qin form.
The blade looks to be in good condition, and still have a functional edge.
It is a good size for a ge (as you already explained), and it is perfectly effective. Larger & very slender bladed Ge I have seen from the late warring states period are even reffered to as ceremonial pieces, and the form of your ge looks lethal enough.
TM Pikachu, imagine the blade on the end of a swinging polearm between 6' to 12' long. The blade point can come crashing down like a spike, and the blade along the inside edge could catch in the flesh or snag a limb. A good pull back towards the person holding the weapon will open up a wound like a fish fillet coming away from the bone (well, probably a whole lot more ragged and messy really). Illustrations of billhooks snagging European knights shows the effectiveness of such a weapon in controlling and inflicting injuries on an enemy.

PS; I got this info from Richard Nable if you want to clean up a mechanism and allow free moving parts for a reconstruction.



PPS; there is the possiblity that the heavy green patina on the Ge near that axe-tang could be concealing a repair..as the rest is so free of corrosion that it looks like it might hide a former break there.

PPPS; I attached a smaller Spring & Autumn period Ge to a short pole and it felt fine as a weapon even though it looked even less effective than your ge here when detached. With a good swing as outlined above it reminded me of a 2 handed tomahawk.

The Roman hand-held crossbow, found at Xanten (Germany), I talked about last year has been researched and is now on display in the Romano-Germanic museum at Cologne (Germany).

Fur more details on its construction, consult the fourth pic, a photo from the museum leaflet. Note that it is, unlike normal medieval or Chinese crossbows, a torsion bow. I wonder if the penetrating power of such a device was bigger or smaller than with comparable hand-held tension bows...?


Front


Back and Front


How it was found


Big foto: Replica. Small fotos: Original + use by Romans soldiers


45 degree angle


More pics

Discussion on a Roman Army forum

At that size, it's power would have been fairly weak. Maybe it was a toy made by some senator or general for his son.

It was found at Castra Vetera where at that time 8.000 to 10.000 legionaires permanently were stationed.

High quality replica of the Roman hand-held torsion crossbow:

http://www.simaqianstudio.com/forum/index....397&#entry76397

At that large a size, how heavy was the whole mechanism? Looks like a few kilos.

I was there when he showed it to us. I'd say no more than 200-300grams in weight.

Are you serious? The device is thicker than your arms and as big as your hand. I think a human hand alone weighs 300+, and human tissue has somewhat less density than bronze.

If you know the user, then why not ask him to weigh the whole device? Do it for the sake of science and history!

TL, you do know what it is right? It's a bronze trigger mechanism for a HAND-HELD crossbow. How heavy do you think it would be? Besides, it's mainly empty space inside and not a solid hand-sized chunk of bronze.

Those mecanisms weigh around three pounds in general but that just evens out the weight of the bow at the front.I know from from experience of shooting them it dosn't at all hinder shooting.