Who Invented The Crossbow Research Paper

Throughout the Middle Ages armour evolved greatly and so the need to be able to kill the people wearing it also greatly increased, this was further fuelled by people wanting to secure their own piece of land. The fruit of all these conflicts was the crossbow an extremely powerful weapon that could kill a heavily armoured knight.

Major – What was the effect of the crossbow on the way medieval battles were fought? Small – Who invented the Crossbow and what was its original purpose?

There are numerous conflicting historical texts as to who invented the crossbow, the ancient Greeks used a much larger crossbow called a ballista (onager later replaced this) as a siege engine. Leonardo da Vinci (an Italian inventor) had also drawn up sketches for

They had a range of up to 650 feet and so could be used extremely effectively to deter or kill people attacking a hill fort or castle (3). One of the biggest assets to having crossbows readily available is that any untrained peasant can pick one up and be confident in using it in a matter of weeks or sometimes days. Some of the cons to using crossbows instead of longbows or bows is that taking a crossbows string of is extremely hard and so fighting in wet weather with them isn’t and option whereas longbows and bows strings can easily be slipped over the notches which have been made into their bow arms.

Small - Was the crossbow a crucial part to fighting in the Middle Ages?

While yes a huge benefit to whoever used it/had it on their side the crossbow was not a crucial part of medieval fighting as most battles were fought with hammer and anvil tactics, these being the infantry would tie up the opposition’s forces while cavalry snuck around the back for a charge that would inevitably crush the enemy’s morale and cause them to scatter and then the crossbows would come into play picking off retreating enemy’s or lending fire support to entangled allies that where facing heavily armoured