AHC: Have the crossbow remain a prominent militarily weapon

It's been argued the reason the longbow was replaced in favor of gun powder weapons was due how they required much less skill for the average person to operate. Which may be correct, however the crossbow was arguably as easy or easier to operate than most early gunpowder firearms which were clumsy and unwieldy.

Is there a way the crossbow could have kept widespread usage until at least the 19th century?
 
well right now IOTL, some police forces (Chinese ones, iirc) are starting to use bows with scopes on them as an alternative to firearms in the event of suicide bombers since an arrow won't accidentally detonate a bomb. also, the main advantage that bows have over firearms is that they're completely silent--even a suppressed firearm still makes noise. crossbowmen could emerge as an early, silent version of snipers.
 
Malone said:
Which may be correct, however the crossbow was arguably as easy or easier to operate than most early gunpowder firearms which were clumsy and unwieldy,
In his book History of Warfare John Keegan postulates that the first handgunners were crossbow men and that in usuage there was very little difference between the two weapons. I say little not none because a crossbowman can not blow up his mates.:eek:

One edge of the hand gun is that it requires little physical energy to use because you don't wind it up. Another edge, at least initially is that the bang of it going off will startle knight's horses.

I suspect there was also a macho element for the first users, especially as a few of them would have been maimed by unsuccessful experiments.:eek: Against that longbows were still used by the English into the Tudor period, partly nostalgia and partly "real men don't use guns".

At least in Europe once you get the development of a cheap reliable and effective musket crossbows become obsolete. In addition, it is noticeable that when a Middle Eastern potentate wished to take on established military practice he would bring in musketeers who would proceed to wipe the floor with the old guard.

Emperor Norton I said:
Perhaps early adoption of special forces?
Special forces as we know them today did not exist. The nearest troops in that era were a) light infantry who went for range rather than silence and b) pet bandits such as Cossacks.
 
well right now IOTL, some police forces (Chinese ones, iirc) are starting to use bows with scopes on them as an alternative to firearms in the event of suicide bombers since an arrow won't accidentally detonate a bomb. also, the main advantage that bows have over firearms is that they're completely silent--even a suppressed firearm still makes noise. crossbowmen could emerge as an early, silent version of snipers.

The Chinese have always had an affinity to crossbows. They were using them long after firearms had been developed.

Especially the repeater variety.

I have considered the stealth advantage of crossbows and arrows over even silenced firearms. There are actually some incredibly powerful crossbows being made today for hunting, and would be how I picture crossbows to have developed militarily had they not been so quickly supplanted by guns.
 
Does anyone know how the crossbow and early muskets compare regarding range and accuracy, as well as the number of shots per minute they could manage? Many years ago I read an ATL novel in which the American army during the Revolution adopted crossbows as a desperation measure to combat a shortage of muskets. The premise of the book was that the crossbow performed so well that it was retained even after more firearms became available.

ETA: The Brown Bess musket had an effective range of 50-100 yards and could be fired three to four times a minute, depending on the training and skill of the soldier. Steel crossbows of the 15th Century had a point-blank range of 75 yards and a highest effective range of 150 yards but were still able to kill at 300 yards. Except for the heaviest versions, they also could loose three to four bolts per minute. I haven't found anything yet on relative accuracy.
 
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More complicated to make, more complicated to maintain, can't fit a bayonet.
c2-21-levin-crossbow-pistol-with-blade.jpg

That basic concept seems easy enough to manage.
 
Guilmartin talks about this a bit in Gunpowder and Galley.I don't have the book with m now, but from memory, The Knights of Malta used them during the Ottoman siege. They swapped muskets for crossbows when it rained to deter a Turkish assault. Many ships also carried significant compliments of crossbows for quite some time.
 
It's been argued the reason the longbow was replaced in favor of gun powder weapons was due how they required much less skill for the average person to operate. Which may be correct, however the crossbow was arguably as easy or easier to operate than most early gunpowder firearms which were clumsy and unwieldy.

Is there a way the crossbow could have kept widespread usage until at least the 19th century?

There is an rare photograph of the conquered Chinese Taku fort during the Opium Wars. On top of the palisade there you can see a Cho Ku Nu reapeating crossbow. I once read they were also used on occasion during the first chinese-japanese war and the Boxer war
 
I remember there being a discussion on this when I joined the board (centuries ago). These were points I can remember because I thought arrows had an advantage over early muskets.

-Crossbows are heavy.
-Bolts affected very heavily by wind. Bullets are too but not as much.
-Less stopping power than a musket. Bolts do not have the penetration power of bullets, can be blocked with shields, armour etc.
-Old muskets did more damage when they hit, seriously it's a lead ball fired at high speeds, wrecks face. While bolts are deadly, a musket bullets could take a limb if they hit the right spot and WAY harder to remove than a bolt.
-Crossbows cannot generally be used in the rain.
-Crossbows have a shorter range.
-Crossbows were actually quite difficult to maintain to an early musket, a crossbow was a lot of moving parts and if they fucked up they were harder to un-jam or fix.
-Crossbows are not as accurate as early muskets, as hard as that is to believe. Bolts and arrows fly in a parabolic arc, muskets fly at a flat trajectory and air easier to aim as a result.
-In terms of training Crossbows were easier than bows and muskets were (apparently) even simpler again. Remember its not only teaching someone how to fire and reload, but also maintain and repair.
-Muskets made for somewhat effective melee weapons and could fix bayonets, crossbows by comparison are cumbersome.
-Muskets allow you to carry more munitions.
-Finally, muskets are loud and scary. Can't see the bullets, suddenly you're dead. :cool:
-When it comes down to it, a mass fire of muskets bullets is FAR more devastating than a mass fire of cross-bow bolts and both were deployed in kind.

With these disadvantages in mind, crossbows are probably not going to remain a primary weapon for an army that wants to win. However, they could possible still see deployment in specialist situations. They are still used by special forces quite prominently as they are useful for deploying things like zip-lines but I'm not an expert in this field. That being said any ideas how these disadvantages could be minimized?
 
Well you can always contrive a situation where an Xbow may be useful.

Now try and stand off a charge by 2000 pistol and sword armed cavalry, or charge breach at night.

What's more useful, musket that doubles as a short spear and club or a bow you have to strainto reload.

Incidentally the european experience inIndia was a good bayonet man was better than a good sword and shield man.
 
It's a widely held misconception that crossbows have short range. That's only true of European crossbows with very short length of draw necessitated by their lever trigger design. The Chinese crossbow triggers are more like a modern mechanism which allows light trigger pull and full length draw, giving it similar range to the longbow using arrows like bolts.

However as mentioned in the previous post, the projectiles have a parabolic trajectory making hit probability more difficult the further away the target and the faster that target is moving.

Another factor is manufacture of ammunition. Bolts were produced by skilled fletchers. Producing bolts with consistent weight and shaft stiffness is quite complicated. Those who could mass produce this with high level of quality control had a significant advantage. In China it has been discovered the surviving bolt heads from the Qin dynasty were precision cast with quality control marks.

Compare that to a gun, the high velocity makes ammunition quality less critical. Early guns were loaded with stones or fired multiple pellets like shotguns. Later on they used cast lead, which was made by soldiers in the field over a campfire. This combination of simplicity in logisitcs and high hit probabilty was worth the trade off of the cost of powder and longer range.
 
Special forces as we know them today did not exist. The nearest troops in that era were a) light infantry who went for range rather than silence and b) pet bandits such as Cossacks.

That's what I meant: have Europeans create the concept of special forces earlier, thus allowing the crossbow to continue as a specialized, silent tactics weapon.
 
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