Repeating Crossbow
Specifications
- Type
- Mechanical Ranged Weapon
- Origin
- China
- Era
- 4th century BCE – 19th century
- Notable Users
- Chinese defenders, Zhuge Liang (attributed)
- Epoch
- Middle Ages
History
The Zhuge Nu, or repeating crossbow, is a remarkable feat of ancient mechanical engineering. Using a lever-operated mechanism, it can span the bow, place a bolt, and fire in a single motion, achieving a rate of fire of roughly 10 bolts in 15 seconds. Attributed (apocryphally) to the Three Kingdoms strategist Zhuge Liang, the weapon traded individual bolt power for volume of fire. The bolts were often poisoned to compensate for their lower penetration. Repeating crossbows remained in active Chinese military service into the late 19th century — an astonishing span of over two millennia.
Significance
The repeating crossbow is history’s first rapid-fire weapon. Its magazine-fed, lever-operated mechanism anticipated the principles behind 19th-century repeating firearms by over two thousand years. It prioritized rate of fire over individual lethality — a trade-off that defines modern automatic weapons.
More from the Middle Ages
18 weapons
54 Weapons. Five Epochs. One Poster.
The Repeating Crossbow is one of 19 weapons from the Middle Ages featured on the poster.
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