Han Crossbow
The Han crossbow was the mass-issue missile weapon of Chinese armies from the Warring States period through the Han dynasty, more than a thousand years before the crossbow became common in Europe. Its heart was a cast-bronze trigger mechanism of interlocking parts, made in standardized sizes in government workshops and often inscribed with the maker's name and date. Rated by the force needed to draw it and spanned by hand or foot, it let ranks of briefly trained soldiers shoot armor-piercing bolts in volleys against the cavalry of the northern steppe.
Also known as Nu, Chinese crossbow, Han dynasty crossbow, bronze trigger crossbow
Origins
The crossbow was in use in China by the fifth or fourth century BC, and by the Warring States period it had become a decisive infantry weapon. The historian Sima Qian records that at the Battle of Maling in 342 BC the strategist Sun Bin laid an ambush of ten thousand crossbowmen who destroyed the army of Wei at a signal. The Qin and then the Han built their armies around it. Han frontier records from the northwestern garrisons, preserved on wooden strips, list crossbows by strength and condition as routine items of issue, and bronze trigger mechanisms survive in their thousands.
Design & Construction
A Han crossbow (nu) had a composite or wooden bow fixed across a wooden stock, but the key was the lock. A cast-bronze box held a hooked catch that retained the string, a trigger lever and a sear, all turning on bronze pins; when the trigger was pulled the catch dropped and released the string. The parts were cast to standard patterns in state workshops so that they could be replaced, and many are inscribed with the workshop, the official responsible and the date. Some locks carry a graduated rear sight for estimating range. Bows were rated in dan (shi), the weight needed to draw them: lighter bows were spanned by the arms, heavier ones by bracing the feet against the bow. Bolts were short, with bronze and later iron heads.
Combat Use
The crossbow suited the Chinese state's way of war. It took far less training to shoot accurately than the composite bow, so conscripted farmers could become effective missile troops quickly, and it could be spanned in advance and held ready. Han armies used massed crossbowmen, shooting in rotating ranks, against the horse archers of the Xiongnu, whose shorter-ranged bows struggled to reply; Chinese writers regarded the crossbow as the weapon that gave the infantry parity with the steppe cavalry. The Han Shu tells how the general Li Ling, surrounded by the Xiongnu in 99 BC with five thousand infantry, fought his way south shooting hundreds of thousands of bolts before his supply ran out. Larger multi-man and mounted crossbows served in fortifications.
Legacy
The crossbow remained a standard Chinese military weapon into the Song dynasty and beyond, long after its heyday under the Han, and its bronze trigger locks are among the most sophisticated mass-produced mechanisms of the ancient world. In Europe the Crossbow became common only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the heavy Arbalest later still. Han locks and bolt heads are well represented in museum collections, and the crossbow's role in Chinese history is a frequent theme in scholarship on the relationship between technology and the early Chinese state.
Sources
Needham, Joseph, and Robin D. S. Yates. Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5 Part 6: Military Technology — Missiles and Sieges. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Selby, Stephen. Chinese Archery. Hong Kong University Press, 2000.
Loewe, Michael. Records of Han Administration. 2 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1967.
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