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Siege Weapon

2020-03-10T00:05:00Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Modern */

Let's say you're a medieval lord with 5,000 knights, men-at-arms and peasant levies you've decided to attack and conquer a lesser lord who has 1,000 fighting men of similar abilities. If you line your guys up and fight out in the open, you'll crush him. But the coward/sensible leader does not do this and instead holds up in his [[castle]], which has high walls and heavy gates to keep people out, a large supply of rocks to drop on the heads of people trying to climb said walls, safe vantage points to shoot at attackers before they get to the walls and graineries, larders, wine cellers an cisterns which can keep his troops fed for months. You have several options available to you. You can try to storm the castle while your guys are shot and get rocks and burning sand dropped on them. You can try to starve them out, which is going to take months, suffer casualty's from raids and camp sickness, lower morale as people are away from the friends and family and incur massive opportunity costs as the peasant levies could be farming, or you could employ '''Siege Weapons'''.

Note that while most siege weapons were used offensively against fortifications, some could be used defensively, whether against infantry formations or to destroy enemy siege weapons.

== Types of Siege Weapons ==
==Historic==
===Battering Ram===
One of the oldest and simplest siege weapons, the Battering Ram is, at its most basic, a log that men use to try and break down a door or section of wall. Over time people got ideas like swinging it from ropes to make it easier to smash into enemy fortifications, an iron cap on the log to help it smash through tougher materials, and strong roofs to keep the men inside from being crushed by falling rocks, scalded with boiling oil or shot by arrows. Notably under Roman law, any defenders who failed to surrender after the first ram touched their wall were basically fair game. You could throw in the towel before then, but afterwards if the Romans won they would kill you, enslave your wife and loot everything you owned.

===Ballista===
One day a Greek man looked down at his [[crossbow]] and thought "what if I made it bigger?". They came with two designs: a ridiculously large''Oxybeles'' (which was essentially a larger version of the gastraphetes crossbow), later known as a ''scorpion'' (which was commonly used as anti-siege-weapon weapon mounted on fortifications) and an "even bigger mounted crossbow" called the ''ballista''. Adding a windlass turned chain and a hopper magazine resulted in the ''Polybolos.'' Contrary to popular belief ballista is not an oversized crossbow - as the tensions, stresses, and material resistances scale differently and cause huge wooden bows to break and huge metal bows to deform from straining under such pressure. Thus Greeks devised a system that uses twisted ropes in which bow arms are fixed to store energy to the point it can hurl spear-sized bolts with enough power to break gates and warship hulls.

* '''Polybolos''': roughly meaning “multi-bolt thrower” in Greek and also known as a "repeating ballista," the Polybolos more often resembles a big crossbow than a ballista since the arms are fixed to the "stock" and don't twist around to fire it; though some versions do use arms wedged into tense bundles of twisted ropes like regular ballista. The repeating ballista was fired by turning a wheel connected to a chain drive forward to cock it, then turning it the other way to load it again from a hopper on top of the stock and fire it. Turning the wheel at the back of the crossbow counterclockwise pushed a sliding plank called the mensa (like that from the Gastrophetes/Oxyboles) forward. Once driven forward sufficiently, the latch claws at the back of the plank are pushed up by a lug under the plank and hold the drawstring in place. Then, turning the wheel clockwise drew the drawstring back as the plank slides backwards. At the same time, the motion of the plank drives a screw threaded pole (in contact with the plank by a block with a sliding nut) to rotate and load a bolt (via a built-in notch on the rod) onto the body of the plank from the hopper on top. Pulling the wheel back to the very end will bump the latch on another lug that triggers the latch into releasing the drawstring and firing the bolt.

Serving as highly accurate artillery (multiple stories exist of single soldiers getting sniped by bolts), Ballista was used by both the Greeks and Romans and later through Medieval times, for a long time coexisting with early gunpowder artillery until development of cannon technology made it obsolete. Not only were cannon barrels relatively simple to cast and maintain, but they were not as finicky or vulnerable to humidity or weather compared to wood and rope.

===Catapult===
Using weights and levers, ancient and medieval people found they could throw rocks, balls of metal or whatever else they had handy into walls to knock them down. If they had dead bodies handy, they could fling them ''over'' the walls of an enemy city and wait for them to get sick and die, as the Mongols did. Alternatively, a pot of incendiary liquid or something soaked in oil being lit on fire and then thrown over the wall to start fires worked nicely, as did explosives.
* '''Mangonel''': One of the more basic types of catapult and probably what you think of when you imagine one. What actually constitutes a 'mangonel' is a little unclear, as there is not set historical definition for the type of weapon the name describes. They had an impressive range, able to hit targets over 1000 feet away.
* '''Onager''': A siege weapon commonly used by the Roman Legions, employing the torsional tension of twisted rope and the whip-lash effect of a sling to hurl very large projectiles. Onagers were mainly designed for attacking fortifications from within the confines of other fortifications (as in Roman-style siegecraft), and thus were quite short-ranged. Confusingly, some onagers are mangonels, but not all mangonels are onagers.
* '''Trebuchet''': The big daddy of catapults, it was the biggest, most destructive and longest ranged catapults in history. This was the go-to weapon for sieges until gunpowder became practical. Unlike most catapults, which used torsion to power their throwing arm, trebuchets instead used a weight and gravity to do the trick.
**'''Floating Arm Trebuchet''': A normal trebuchets when fired has a weight on short end of the throwing arm and a rock attached to a sling on the long arm, both ends swing in Arcs as its fired and the weight and throwing arm both curve. The Floating Arm Trebuchet on the other hand is very different. Unlike a normal trebuchet, the floating arm has the throwing arm attached to wheels that roll freely in a channel. The weight is lifted up, straight up (unlike a traditional trebuchet where the weight is moved along an arc), which pushes the throwing arm back on the channel. When fired the weight drops straight down, the arm rolls forward and the throwing arm is whipped forward as its weight makes it rotate on the axis very quickly. If your thinking "''Gee that sound complicated for medieval engineering''", then you're not wrong. The Floating Arm Trebuchet is a modern design used mostly as an engineering student project. It may not even be that practical a design on its own merits since '''Yankee Siege II''', A traditional Trebuchet design was the record holder in the 2013 "Pumpkin chunking contest" beating out multiple floating arm designs (although that may be because increasing the range requires a greater drop distance, which then risks damaging the track from the impact of the arm).

===Siege Ladder===
Sometimes the best answer to a large wall is to simply go over it. The siege ladder was invented with this in mind, allowing men to climb over the walls.

*'''Sambuca''': Like a siege ladder, only built for D-Day. They let roman soldiers on ships charge up onto the walls of enemy citys.

===Siege Tower===
If a Siege Ladder didn't work, the solution was to make it bigger and with protection. Siege Towers allowed men to climb up without having to worry about anyone attacking them from the sides or simply knocking the ladder over. There were also platforms on top to allow archers to fire at the defenders.

===Sappers===
A good way to weaken enemy walls was to dig under them, weakening the foundation and making them more prone to fracturing and collapsing. What sappers would usually do is once they were certain that they were directly underneath the enemey’s walls, they’d stash a whole lot of flammable materials and douse it with pig’s fat (not live pigs, they’re significantly less flammable and more prone to running away) then set everything on fire to collapse the supports and cause a cave-in. It was a dangerous job, but it was effective, so long as the enemy didn’t catch on and start counter-mining. Would-be attackers would oftentimes be literally smoked-out and suffocate if they were discovered. Cave-ins were also rightly feared.

As modern cities typically have tunnel systems running through them (e.g. for subways, access to water pipes, smuggling), sapping and mining still see some use in urban warfare situations where a heavily fortified building needs to be brought down but anti-aircraft defenses prevent the use of bombers to do so.

===Petards===
Before people worked out how to make [[cannon]]s that were better at killing the enemy than whoever was using them, they would sometimes use Petards. Their job was to run up to enemy walls with barrels of gun powder or other primitive bombs, light the fuse and run like hell, letting the explosion take down the wall. Most of the time this ended up killing the Petard as well, hence the phrase "hoisted by his own petard"

===Hwacha===
A Korean gunpowder weapon used defensively against large armies. Take a bunch of long arrows, attach small rockets to each arrow, and fire all of them at once out of a portable box container on a fixed cart. A single launcher could fire as many as 200 arrows. Such overwhelming firepower made attackers think twice about charging defensive positions. While reloading them was a time consuming nightmare, they served as a good psychological deterrent and volley weapon from defensive positions.

===Named Historic siege engines===

'''Warwolf''': Thought to be the largest Trebuchet ever built, it took 30 wagons to transport it, putting at between 300–400 feet tall and it took over 50 people over three months to build it. Used in the Siege of Stirling castle by king Edward the scotts were so scared of the thing they tried to surrender, but the king was like "nope" and he wanted to see his weapon at work. Records show it threw over 300 pound stone balls and leveled a section of the castle's wall.

'''Helepolis''': not to be confused with "''Heliopolis''", or Suncity, the Helepolis was a greek seige engine who's name means "Taker of Cities". Actually it was a type of siege engine, but it was more then just a siege tower. It was tank! It was built like a siege tower only with multiple catapults at each level of the tower, it could roll up to a castle wall, firing all the while, while solider manning dart throws on top could clear the walls for soldiers in side to jump out of the moveable tower.

==Modern==
Seige Weapons are still useful into modern times. However they are used a bit differently than their middle age counterparts.

===Howitzer===
Originating in the 17th century after descending from early [[Cannon|cannons]]. The Howitzer is still the go to indirect fire weapon for infantry in the 21st. When [[Gauss#Railgun|Railguns]] become smaller and more portable. It will also remain so well into the 22nd and beyond.

===Portable Explosives===
Comes in all shapes and sizes. A few of the more noteworthy types:
*'''TNT''': TriNitroToluene. Also known as dynamite. More powerful than gunpowder, more stable than nitroglycerin. Dynamite comes in sticks and and is ignited using an electrical charge from a plunger device. Just a few well-placed sticks can blast rocks with ease.
*'''Plastic Explosives''': Explosives made from a flexible material, such as C4. Can be molded into any shape and stuck on any surface with a bit of duck tape. Stick the primer in, then remotely detonate when you’re a safe distance away.
*'''Thermite''': this compound produces a jet of molten iron when ignited, rather than exploding outright. Great for cutting through thick surfaces, or destroying gun barrels/sensitive equipment.
*'''Detcord''': A type of plastic explosive that’s optimized for dynamic entry. Comes in a rope shape for easy bundling and placement; stick it on a wall in an outline of the hole you want to make, or sandwich a rolled up bundle between two bags of water to create a powerful door-knocking explosive.
*'''Shape Charge''': explosives placed around an inverted metal cone. When ignited, the cone collapses into a jet of molten metal, concentrating the explosive power into a fine point to punch through armor. Commonly used in anti-tank rounds, though portable versions exist.

===Bangalore torpedo===
These were explosives in a tube used mainly to clear obstacles such as mines, barbed wire, and barricades. They came in handy if you couldn't otherwise dismantle said obstacles properly, such as if you were storming an enemy position under fire and needed to create a clear path very quickly.

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{{Vehicle Warfare}}
[[Category:History]]

Cannon

2020-03-10T00:04:08Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Cannons in Warfare */

After the [[China|Chinese]] worked out the basics of gunpowder, they began to experiment with how to use it on the battlefield. As such, during the Song Dynasty people invented basic bombs, rockets and [[firearm]]s for use in combat. Eventually someone decided that their firelance was a good idea, but it could become an even better idea by making it even ''bigger''. Thus were born the first '''cannons'''. By an odd quirk of fate this design process apparently happened in reverse in Europe when gunpowder got around to them, with cannons being built first which were then scaled down into man portable handgonnes/hand-cannons.

Not to be confused with [[canon]], though they do share the same word root which refers to a tube/pipe.

== Cannons in Warfare ==
[[image:TurkishBombard.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The Great Turkish <s>Penis Compensator</s> Bombard, when you absolutely positively need to conquer Constantinople, accept no substitutes]]
The history of the cannon is written in blood-- in its first chapters often the blood of their users along with their targets. The first generations of cannons were crude affairs made by people with rudimentary metallurgy working things out by trial and error, with error often ending with the poor sods manning the gun getting a face full of iron shards, if not vaporized by the blast outright. This was made all the worse by the crude gunpowder available at the time and mishandling by inexperienced crews. In this initial period history Cannons were used for two purposes: small wall mounted defensive weapons in fortifications and large siege weapons to get through city walls. While they were powerful, cannons were simply too inaccurate in the early times, which was especially true for the heavier offensive guns. The big siege guns would usually be carted into a fixed location and be set there. Even if nothing went wrong they could only get off a couple shots an hour. Early cannons fired a variety of shot from spears to rough rocks, though eventually cast iron balls became the most common as things progressed. While early cannons were dangerous and unreliable in terms of accuracy or lifespan, they were more easy to cast and maintain compared to the wood and rope used to make catapults and ballista; with the latter prone to warping and decay from humidity and weather.

Eventually the art of cannon making improved as time went on and things became more reliable as gunmakers and gun crews got more experienced in handling their weapons (partially as the stupid ones got their jimmies blown off) and tried and true designs were replicated. As this happened, it prompted a change in fortification design. Tall and comparatively thin walls with high towers might be imposing and good at fending off attempts to scale them with ladders and siege towers, but they could not take that many salvos from a besieging enemy. Walls instead became shorter and thicker, reinforced with heavy earth ramparts to absorb the shock of cannonballs, with pointed battlements better suited for mounting defensive cannon and bouncing shells.

An even bigger development was the matter of cannons at sea. Though some people tried using catapults, ballistas, and the occasional flamethrower ([[Standard Template Construct|until the Byzantines forgot how they worked thanks to Emperors keeping the recipe and well...a coup and a couple of dead folks later, no one remembered where they put it.]]) as ship-mounted weapons, naval battles were up until this point settled by ramming or boarding actions. By the late 1400s potential of naval guns soon became obvious, damaging or destroying the wooden enemy ships outright, and navies began adapting their ship designs to carry guns. In 1571 the naval forces of the Holy League faced off against those of the Ottoman Empire off the coast of Greece at Lepanto. Though the Ottomans had a slight numerical advantage in terms of galleys and soldiers, [[Dakka|the Christians had more that twice as many cannons as well as better trained gun crews which could get off two shots for every volley]] the Ottomans could which was a big factor in the crushing defeat that the Ottomans suffered that day. Even so, the days of the galley were done and the age of sail had begun. Purely sail driven warships might not have the short range speed advantage or the shallow water maneuverability of a Galley, but where a galley would have ranks of rowers manning oars and a five or so frontal cannons a sailing ship would have a broadside with dozens of cannon.
[[image:24_pounder_gun.jpg|thumb|300px|left|A 24 pounder Long Gun from the age of Sail]]

From about 1400 to 1800 there were two main materials used to make cannons: Bronze and Iron. Bronze was an easier material to cast guns out of and it had a fair bit of give to it. In Europe the fact that there was a long tradition of making church bells and bronze statues meant that developing a bronze gun industry was fairly easy. Additionally, unlike Iron, Bronze takes much less energy to recast, so it was much easier to smelt down a worn gun (or statues or church bells) into a cannon. (Next time you're in Europe, take a shot every time you find a church-bell older than 200 years. It sucks as a drinking game, since you won't end up drunk at the end.) Bronze guns are also lighter than Iron guns of a similar size, making Bronze more mobile on the battlefield. Furthermore Bronze has some give to it, which means you have some warning if the gun is going to blow up. When an Iron gun is about to blow up, it doesn't give any warning when it's no longer safe, but a Bronze one will bulge first letting you know when you're starting to push your luck.

The problem was that copper and tin were fairly rare and in short supply and the cannon makers were not the only ones who wanted the stuff, so the number of Bronze guns you could make was limited. Iron, by contrast was more common and harder. That said, it took more fuel to smelt, it was much harder to melt and reforge, it took different and less-common craftsmen (since you couldn't just conscript the various bell-makers in your given nation), and if you didn't have a good metallurgist you would end up making a brittle gun that was liable to explode in your face. However an Iron ''IS'' the stronger material thanks to it's hardness, thus an Iron gun will last longer than a Bronze one (which it has to since you can't melt back down as easily). It's just easier to make a big thing like a cannon out of Bronze than Iron. As a general rule, Iron became more and more common as time went on and with it the need for artillery increased and metallurgy improved (in particular the use of coke instead of charcoal and the development of puddling was a big deal in the history of cannon making). It was only around the late 1600s that it became expected that a cannon foundry would produce more working guns than failures that burst in test firings.

When it came to making your cannon your best option was [[Casting]], be it cannons or models of cannons, the process is pretty much the same (and the best).

Of course Iron and Bronze were not the only things we made cannons out of. In a pinch or on the cheap, you could use wood to make a cannon, but wooden guns need much thicker walls than a metal one, limiting the size and weight of your shot and how much powder you can use. Another material experimented with was copper bound with leather, first toyed with by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden against Poland. They were... less than successful, and replaced with 3-pound bronze guns.

You might ask why Gustavus decided to make a cannon out of leather in the first place? The answer is that as time went on and cannons became quicker firing and more accurate, people began wondering about other uses for cannons besides blasting apart castles and ships. Armies back then formed up their infantry into large, blocky formations of arquebusiers (men armed with pre-musket guns), halberdmen, swordsmen and pikemen. Against such foes, the old and massive castle-crackers were overkill. Beyond that they were still slow-firing and a massive pain in the butt to move around. What was needed against those targets were smaller, lighter, (a cannon that can shoot a 3 pound ball is still very heavy, though much lighter than one that shoots a 12 pound ball which is why Gustavus tried leather to make a light gun) guns that could quickly be moved into position, loaded and fired. Thus, bit by bit Gustavus developed the idea of Field Artillery for antipersonnel use and would end up attaching 12 or so field guns to each of his brigades (a military unit he himself invented) to support his infantry. This made Gustavus army devastatingly effective against the Catholic forces in the 30 years war. Just not with the leather cannons.

In any case by 1700 it was made clear that field artillery was a critical part of any army on the march. This development also meant that armies began to shift their tactics away from blockish formations but to long firing lines. You see, you can aim a cannon ball so that when it reaches the ground it bounces off of it in front of the formation so that it would fly though a block formation of thirty or more pikemen and musketeers at hip level, killing and maiming until it went out the other side. This was called the grazeing shot and warhammer fantasy players are likely well aware of how effective this could be on thick blocks of troops. The same would apply to a three man thick line of soldiers, though with only a tenth the casualties.

As technology got better, shells started to become more common. A cannon ball can only kill people it hits or those nearby (the later due to the fact that [[Khorne|the bones of the people hit spray fragments everywhere]]), but a shell can spray shrapnel and lethal pressure waves over a much wider area. This made direct fire much less effective since a cannon needed to have a high muzzle velocity, meaning the shell had to leave the barrel going very fast. So to make a explosive shell for a cannon the designs had to balance explosive payload with the thickness of the shell walls so it could survive being shot. Additionally because the destructive power of the shell was now disconnected with it's speed, meaning a faster shell did not do more damage, cannons were phased out of use and armies switched to howitzers as the dominant form of artillery. Because Howitzers get their range from the angle of their shot rather than muzzle velocity they can shoot shells with more explosive (or other fragile materials like gas) than a cannon can. Additionally Howitzers don't need direct line of sight to hit a target meaning you can now lob shells behind the lee of hills while your safely entrenched behind the lines, and on top of everything else they have longer ranges due to their higher firing arc. Unlike cannons however, hitting anything was more difficult since you are often firing blind at the target and it is impossible to aim directly. Yes, you can use math to put your shell in an area near the a target, but aiming a shell you've just lobbed almost two miles into the air and three miles forward of you to land directly on anything smaller than a castle is pretty much impossible, but of course if you have a HE shell you're more likely to damage the target even if you're off target a bit. Which is why in world war one they used weeks of saturating bombardments to try and destroy fortifications. Though it often did not work, 1,738,000 shells were fired at the German lines before the battle of the Somme and enough Germans were left alive to kill 26,000 of the attacking British (Empire) and French on the first day. What was needed was a way to get a cannon in place to hit a target directly and allow the accurate destruction of fortifications. . . which lead of course to the invention of the [[tank]] and the modern infantry mortar to allow much closer range accurate fire support.

That pretty much leads us to today: though the propellent for modern artillery changes, tactics for Howitzers still have traces of the first world war in them. More and more however gun Artillery are getting a bit out classed. Not as accurate, hard to deploy, with far less range than a plane with a smart bomb and without the ability to barrage a target as hard as rocket systems. Howitzers however still have a role, in video games terms they are the DPM, they don't hit as hard as other weapons, but they can fire for much, much longer. Additionally howitzer shells and guns tubes are very cheap compared to planes with bombs or Multiple rocket launching systems. Cannons remain common and widely in use, but only for tanks at this point. Modern cannons are built to destroy other tanks and leave anti infantry work to their machine guns, and a select amount of special shells like canister or high explosive, but thanks to the cannons higher muzzle velocity, they tend to have HE shells that are much less effective than howitzer shells. Mortars remain very common and are a effective weapon for supporting infantry at close ranges. Their much smaller shell size means it's safer to use them, thanks to their smaller blast radius and their light weight means that you can carry them to where you need them easier.

Between Cannons and Small arms, cannons are the ones more likely to be replaced with a high tech system like a laser or rail gun. The reason the US navy have done rail gun research is only battleships really have the ability to carry the power generators needed to get them to work. However, much like regular firearms, these projects have yet to provide a system that can compete with the power of a chemical reaction since you don't need to "power" them in the same way you do a laser.

== Cannons in Fantasy ==
[[image:Emp great cannon 1434013374.jpg|thumb|300px|right|One of the [[Empire]]'s cannons, proving that you can mix fantasy with gunpowder weapons]]
Fantasy writers are a bit more accommodating to cannons than firearms: in part because they became more practical earlier on. Also they were crew served devices ill suited to use of a single warrior (unless he/she had fantastic powers to begin with) and cannons are the go to solution when someone says "thrilling non modern naval action". Even so there is some reticence about their use as it implies that sooner or latter someone is going to figure "Hey, why don't we take these things and scale them down?".

Many cannons in fantasy settings have some fancypants adornment with bores made into the mouths of roaring lions, dragons and similar and they are rarely even primitive breech loaders. Fantasy authors also have dislike of making their guns out of Bronze since we like the idea of a big black iron gun. Cannons also tend to exist in isolation, you don't see mortars or howitzers for example . Cannons also tend to be somewhat underpowered (compared to their real life counterparts) in settings where they have to coexist with monsters. To put another way, if a cannon can knock a castle down from 490m away, then I don't care how big your dragon is, one direct hit and it will be down for the count. Mind you, getting that direct hit is going to be a bitch and a half and they are not the easier things to lug around.

== Types of cannons ==
Note: for easy of use only list black powder weapons so we don't talk about every gun that ever existed.
*'''Cannons/Howitzers/Mortars''': The difference between these weapons is in how their projectiles are fired. Cannon projectiles follow fairly flat trajectory, Mortars are fired in high steep arcs that drop the round directly onto the targets head, while Howitzers are between the two firing upward but not as steeply as a mortar. These types of artillery are among the few still in use today, with mortars relegated as a portable infantry support weapon, cannons being mounted primarily on armored vehicles, and only howtizers still being used as static weapons.

*'''Quaker "Gun"''': Named after the Quakers, a group of christian pacifists, and alternatively called "Dummy Guns". A Quaker gun is a gun mock-up (typically made of wood), made to look like real guns from a distance in order to deceive enemies you were more threatening than you actually were. Quaker guns found several instances of success throughout the ages and has negated battles that would have otherwise been an easy victory for the opposing side who didn't realize the guns they were scouting were fakes. These were particularly popular in the US civil war and were reported to have been used until WW2 by both the Allies and Axis powers. Advances in modern reconnaissance technology has largely rendered dummy guns ineffective, except in conflicts where the combatants both have low levels of technology.

*'''Disappearing gun''': Guns have recoil; a Disappearing gun uses the recoil to "blow" itself out of the line of fire after it shoots allowing safer reloading and harder counter battery fire on the now out of view gun. Later versions were mounted on retractable platforms for the same effect.

*'''Bombard''': An early cannon, a Bombard is a big iron wide bore cannon that fired massive stone balls at castle walls in order to break them down. Unlike later cannons bombards don't tend to have carriages and have to be fixed in place wooden frames, though a few bombards did have wheels.

*'''Culverins''': 15th and 16th century cannon that fired a ball weighing between 20 and 14 pounds. Used a slow match fuse.
**'''Hongyipao''': The name literally translates to ""red barbarian cannon" and was introduced to Korea and china by the Portuguese, however in most regards it was pretty much just a Culverin.

*'''Chongtong''': Not "really" cannons but this entry was here before the rocket page existed and these were fired out of a cannon. The Congtong was a Korean cannon, or rather, cannons since there was more than one type. The four types were the "Cheonja", "Jija", "Hyeonja", and "Hwangja", the names being roughly equivalent to Cannons A, B, C, and D. The Cheonja was the largest with a 130mm bore able to fire 30 pound rocket out to just over a kilometer. The other three types were pretty much the same, only shrunk down, the Jija had 100mm bore, the Hyeonja, 80mm while the Hwangja was very similar to a European hand cannon. (Wait a minute, barreled weapons that fire self propelled rockets... [[Bolter|Why does that sounds familiar?]])

*'''Saker''': A smaller version of the Culverin from the 16th century that fired a five pound ball.

*'''Minion ''': Minion is the french word for "cute" and it most certainty was. A 17th century version of the Saker it too fired a five pound ball. Used on ships as a weapon to repel boarding parties.

*'''Demi-cannon''': An 18th century cannon that fired a ball less than 42 pounds, while being bigger than the saker. Replaced full cannons in the British navy due to them being too unwieldy. First rate ships (Google it if you're curious what it is, but all you need to know now is that we're talking a big ass ship), mounted 100 such cannons in 50 gun broadsides.

*'''Falconet''': A light cannon that fired a one pound ball. Though invented for land use, it was common on ships and both the Americans and British used them in the revolutionary war. A breech loading version was invented in the 1620's

*'''Carronade''': The mathematical formula to determine how hard something hits with how much force is mass times acceleration. So to get a cannon ball to hit harder you have two options: shoot it faster, or make it bigger. The carronade takes the second option. The carronade was invented by the British navy and they are short, almost sawed off, cannons that fired reduce powder charges, but with a much bigger ball, while the cannon itself was lighter due to being shorter. They had a much reduced range, but god help you if you got broadsided by a ship with a whole side of these.

*'''Canon obusier de 12/Napoleon''': A French gun that revolutionized gunnery when it was invented in 1853. It was portable, yet able to destroy fortifications almost a mile away. Used by the French and both Americas in their civil war and were the last bronze cannons used in an American army.

*'''Parrott rifle''': A US civil war cannon, the Parrott rifle was, well, rifled. What made the Parrott special was that is used iron, not steel, to forge it but had a additional band of iron applied to the breech of the gun to strengthen it. Nevertheless, they had a distressing tendency to burst.

*'''Hook Gun''': Or Hakenbuechse, an oversized musket, that was always classified as an artillery piece, this weapon was popular in 16-18 century Eastern Europe and was usually used either in sieges or as a proto-sniper rifle.

**'''Abus Gun''': An Ottoman artillery piece, similar to a Hook Gun, the Abus gun was small, but still hard to move about and was fired from a tripod and shot a roughly 5 pound cannon ball.

*'''Basilisk''': A medieval big, big gun, the basilisk was a bronze cannon that was ten feet long, weighted up to 4 thousand pounds, had a five inch or 130mm bore (the [[M1 Abrams]] today is armed with a 120mm cannon) and fired a ball up to 160 pounds in weight. The basilisk was too big however, and it was phased out in favor of lighter more maneuverable guns.

*'''Swivel gun''': Essentially small cannons on stick, swivel guns were mostly used on ships and were mounted on the decks. While ineffective against all but the smallest boats, against boarding parties they could be very effective. Thanks to their small size, swivel guns were the first breech loading weapons, with such versions existing by the 16th century.

**'''Pierrier à boîte''': A french breech loading swivel gun made of Wrought iron. The Pierrier à boîte breech, though allowing it to fire more rapidly than other guns, still had issues and had a tendency to leak leading to a loss of power and additional danger to the gunners.

**'''Lantaka''': A (usually) bronze swivel gun developed by the Philippine Moros, firing a half-pound ball or charge of grapeshot. Mounted on the fronts of boats and on the walls of earthwork forts. Saw much use against the Spanish conquistadors, but was defeated by the howitzers and mortars brought by the American infantry.

*'''Double barreled cannon''': An idea that sounds good on the drawing does not always means good in real life. Case in point, US Confederacy double barreled cannon. The idea was to load the guns with chain shot, two cannonballs connected by a chain, and then fire both barrels at the same time, so that the twin cannon balls would fly in such a way that not only would each ball kill the enemy, the chain between the ball would as well. The problem was in step two of the plan, getting both barrels to fire at the same time. To put it simply, it could not. It was tested three times. The first time the balls flew off target and tore up a corn field before the chain broke. The second time it missed again and tore holes in a nearby pine forest "like mowing machine" a witness said. Third time it was fired, the chain broke apart instantly and one ball flew off hitting a chimney, and the other killed a cow. The over optimistic inventor considered these tests a success. That the gun was lost for over ten years and found under a pile of rock speaks to how much the confederates thought of the thing.

*'''Krupp Gun''': Krupp is an old German company that has been making guns and working iron for centuries, but it really made its name known in the mid 19th century when it worked out a system to load a cannon from the rear. The idea of loading a cannon from the breech rather than cramming everything down the muzzle had been toyed around with before, but there had been problems which prevented it from being fully practical. In 1859, Krupp solved these problems by introducing a sliding block system on an all cast steel cannon able to fire explosive shells. Long story short, there was a block in the back of the cannon which could be fastened into place and unfastened and slid out of the way to load it. These guns let Otto von Bismarck unite Germany under his banner and let him beat the muzzle loader using French in the Franco-Prussian War despite the French having better rifles, airships, and primitive machine guns.

*'''System de Bange''': Yes that's it's real name. No, it doesn't mean 'Bang System', instead 'de Bang' was its inventor, [[Skub|though that arguably makes it funnier.]] Essentially a very efficient breech loading system. After the Germans beat them with Breech Loading Cannons, the French wanted their own such guns if those Germans came back. The solution they settled on was to make a cannon with a steel plug which screwed into the back, but with the screw's thread being removed on two quarters of the length of the plug/bore so it could be secured and opened by rotating it 90 degrees with a washer of asbestos to get a good solid seal. The system worked very well and (with a few tweaks) is still in use today.

*'''Armstrong gun''': The Armstrong gun is, like the Bange and Krupp guns, a breech loader. What makes it special was that it was a "built up gun" which means if you cut a Armstrong gun in half, you see that it was built up in layers, an inner barrel made out of a wrought iron or mild steel, surrounded with more wrought iron coils that were shrunk to keep the tube compressed. Though common use for the big guns of the time period's dreadnoughts, it was not as common for smaller pieces. Armstong used a screw breech, so to load the gun you had to open it like the door on a ship by spinning a wheel to unscrew it. Armstrong guns were made in a wide range of calibers, from 6 pound horse guns to 110 naval artillery. Used widely by the British in their colonial wars and Japan in the Boshin War. The most famous Armstrong guns are the 100-ton guns used to defend Malta, capable of obliterating ships that are barely visible over the horizon.

*'''Autocannon''': Essentially an automatically loading gun that is too small to be considered a field gun (i.e. between 20-40mm). Designed for light weight mobile vehicles such as Aircraft and Armored Vehicles that are expected to take on targets either indirectly or of equal (or less) ability. The Autocannon came into it's heyday during the second World War. They commonly come in two flavors. Revolver and Rotary Cannons. With the former having a slightly lower of rate of fire but are less expensive, takes up less space and have a faster spin up time. Chain cannons and their issues are best left aside. The most common Autocannon is the Bofors 40. Just about every country that was involved in World War 2 and the Cold War had their own version of it. At the 40mm size (the bare minimum for artillery) Sabots, HESH and HEAT rounds can damage the armor of Main Battle Tanks and Warships. With a fire rate of 330 rounds per minute.

*'''Licorne''': Meaning 'Unicorn' in French, the Licorne was the earliest form of gun-howitzer and so named due to the unicorns carved into the original models. It didn't really catch on and thus only the Russians used it extensively.

*'''Secret Howitzer''': The result of pure Russian autism and [[Munchkin|min-maxing]]. This 'weapon' was a howitzer modified to have an oval barrel, [[Wat|in the hope that it would spread grapeshot more effectively.]] The drawback was it was useless for any other purpose and not much better at its intended one. Of course, the Russians being who they were, it was decided that the penalty for talking about these guns was to be death, hence the name. [[Fail|This policy becomes more ironic when you discover that the only response to their enemies, the Prussians, finding out about these weapons was a collective WTF and having the captured units melted down for scrap.]]

=== Noncannon guns worth mentioning ===
There have been numerous inventions in the history of firearms that use a cannon's limbers and caissons to mount a weapon that was not quite cannon, and was often used in a way most cannons were not. What they all had in common was that they were all "artillery" in the sense that they were static, mounted firearms that could fuck up enemies in ways that infantry-portable firearms could not, much like your average cannon.

*'''Da Vinci Cannons''': included in this section because, as far as we know, they were never actually built or used in battle. If they were ever used, we have no record of them, and you’d think it would be a big deal if they were successful. The famous inventor Leonardo understood the emerging importance of cannons, and sought to improve on its design. He had an early version of breech-loaders, but like a true mad scientist, that was just the beginning. Not only did he design a triple-barreled cannon, [[Steampunk|steam-powered]] cannons, and his own version of the Ottoman Bombard, but also a ''33-barreled'' cannon that had three rows of 11 small-caliber barrels set on a rotating axle, and each row would be fired in volley by rotating the row into firing position. [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Certainly reminds you of a certain gun from a certain tabletop game, doesn't it?]]

*'''Ribauldequin''': Don't ask us how to say it (Ri-bow-de-kin, pretty much like it's written. Just ignore the 'l'). A simpler name is “Organ gun,” because the gun barrel arrangement looks like a pipe organ. The Ribauldequin is troubling to list as a "cannon", since it has a number of small barrels rather than one big one. Rather than a cannon, thinking of it as a bunch of guns on a cannon carriage may be more accurate. Of course, the downside to being able to fire a bunch of guns at once is that, in the age of muzzle-loaders, you had to take even longer to reload it. And compared to having a bunch of guys individually aiming an loading a single barrel, you had maybe one or two guys doing all the loading. Still, if you could take the enemy out in a single volley, or at least create an opening for the rest of your guys, it could be an efffective force-multiplier and morale weapon. After all, it wasn’t called the “infernal machine” for nothing.

*'''Mitrailleuse''': French for "grapeshot" (though thanks to this weapon the word now means machine gun in general) was a weapon that looked like a cannon, only instead of one big hole in the muzzle it had 25 13mm barrels. However, like many such rapid fire weapons, despite working fine, the Mitrailleuse was used and treated like a cannon, not a close support machine gun, and as such it's use in the Franco-Prussian War was less than stellar.

*'''Gatling Gun''': More or less a contemporary of the Maxim Machine Gun, seeing deployment two decades earlier. It is named after a guy who created this pretty cool weapon during the American civil war. It is a heavy weapon firing repeating barrage of bullets on the field. It has a multiple barrel which each barrel takes its turn to fire everytime they rotate in a cylinder fashion. This configuration allowed higher rates of fire to be achieved without the barrel overheating and the basic weapon would eventually be coupled with a motor to allow for so high a rate of fire that each of the guns "dakkas" blur into each other to become one long "BZZZZZZZZZZZZ". The earliest gatling gun however required a person to crank it like a pepper grinder, so it's not like it can be fired automatically by some sandwich eating Russian. It was mounted on a cannon's two wheel cart, or Caisson, that generally required horses to move it over long distance. When first invented, the Gatling gun had some teething issues due to the paper cartridges of the day, but once metal ones were invented the Gatling gun quickly hit its stride. Notable for its use in Zulu and the Boshin war, slaughtering those <s>pre-historical savages</s> unlucky per-industrial indigenous like no tomorrow. Electric versions of the gating gun existed before their widespread use in aircraft, but at the time, only naval warships were able to have portable electric generators, limiting their use. While modern machine gun mechanisms have largely replaced the Gatling gun as a main weapon, the Gatling design is still used for weapons that require a very high rate of fire, [[A-10_Warthog|particularly aircraft]].

*'''Puckle Gun''': Possibly the earliest repeating revolver; invented in 1718, before the gatling gun mentioned above. Just like the Gatling gun, it required a person to crank it like a pepper grinder. It was desired for use by the [[ecclesiarchy|Christians]] to slaughter the [[heresy|false believers]] like the Muslim Turks and it had a choice of round bullets for use against fellow Christians and square bullets that were considered to be more damaging. The Puckle gun however was unpopular because of its some what finicky flint lock and other mechanical issues, since it was revolver made 100 years before colt made his first revolver in a calibre over three times bigger. The technology to allow this sort of weapon was not there yet, which made its feasibility even worse when you allow religious fucktards to overcomplicate military logistics by demanding two different ammunitions which have absolutely no difference, unlike [[Bolter]] shell variations.

*'''Dynamite gun''': In the early days of high explosives, there were no explosives stable enough to be fired from a gun without blowing up, and high explosives were far more powerful than low explosives like gunpowder. Hence, the Dynamite gun, the most steam punk weapon ever deployed. Dynamite guns worked like a big air gun, only instead of a BB they fired a shell full of Dynamite or other high explosives and instead of air they used compressed steam if on a ship, or smokeless powder used to indirectly propel a gas into the barrel to launch the shell.

*''' Maxim gun''' The first successful weapon that can be considered a machine gun and one of the earliest recoil operated weapons. As such the origins of the autocannon can be easily traced back to the Maxim. When it was scaled up for larger calibers. QF 1-pounder pompoms(37mm) and the QF 2-pounders(40mm) were adopted by nations as soon as they were aware of them or had been on the receiving end, essentially converting the machine gun design into auto cannons. The QF 1 started out as a field gun before it was used on warships as an anti aircraft weapon, Just like the Gatling gun years earlier. The Maxim along with it's descendants made field charges and line combat impossible, ushering in the era of trench warfare, with only [[Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20|mall ninjas]] and [[/pol/|other idiots]] lamenting the loss of those tactics.

== Types of cannon ammunition==
*'''Round Shot''': the first type of cannon ammo, Round shot is, as the name suggests, a round ball made of either stone or later iron. Don't knock a Stone Cannon ball because on impact they have a tendency shatter producing shrapnel. Round shot was best used against fortifications and infantry in the open. When firing at infantry the ideal use of round shot was to fire just in front of the infantry and let the ball bounce up and through the formation like a bowling ball from hell. This is replicated in cannon mechanics in Warhammer fantasy. This is also one of the reasons why armies stopped fighting in deep formations and switched to lines.
**'''Hot Shot''': Against wooden ships that were full of black powder and other flammables, often the best solution is to light them on fire. As such an attempt to do this was to take an iron cannon ball, and heat it up so that it glowed red and then fire it. . .carefully. As you can imagine sticking a red hot cannon ball down the barrel of an iron tube full of explosive was careful work in order to pull it off they had to put a plug of wet clay between the ball and the powder. This is word is the modern origin for the term "Hot Shot" as some one who is renowned for their skill and courage- like the people who could load said red hot cannonballs without blowing themselves up in the process.

*'''Chain shot''': used mostly at sea, Chain shot was either two small cannon balls linked with chain, or one single cannon ball that broke into two halves connected by a chain after firing. Chain shot covered a larger area and was used to target the rigging of enemy ships (though as the tv series 'The Borgias' shows, it could also be quite useful in mowing down infantry). As steamships become more common however, chain shot became less and less useful.

*'''Canister shot''': Canisters shot is a collection of small iron musket balls, that was jammed down the barrel in a tin can. Upon firing it turned the cannon into a massive shotgun, spraying the area in front of it with hundreds of musket ball; in a day and age where fighting was done shoulder to shoulder, Canister shot was lethal. '''Grape shot''' was similar but used bigger balls and was loaded in a bag, not a can (supposedly the bulges the balls made in the bag looked like a bunch of grapes, hence the name) and was more common on ships since it could better punch though wooden hulls. A cannon loaded with canister shot could and has stopped an infantry charge dead in its tracks. Canister rounds were made all the way to the modern age, and in many cases are still used for clearing out infantry at close range, but only with special tank cannons. For the same reason shotguns are smoothbore, rifled cannons have problems with canister shot since the grooves impart spin on the balls. However, the use of smoothbore cannons in modern anti-tank guns, canister shot is now a more viable weapon. Artillery-style canister shot, however, fell out of fashion even in the days of smoothbore field artillery in favor of...

*'''Shrapnel rounds''': You know how a person invents a thing and get his name attached to the invention so completely that if you tried to use it today as a name it just sounds strange? Well Henry Shrapnel was so successful with his invention that all types of flying debris now has his name. Shrapnel rounds were invented in 1784, and they're basically canister shot, with a fuse so that the shell explodes in mid air rather then only at the muzzle of the gun almost tripling the range of the anti personal round. Round shot for use against infantry became a thing of the past. Shrapnel rounds were used all the way up to the modern age and some countries still make Shrapnel rounds for their tanks.

*'''Shells''': A bullet that's hollow and has stuff in it. Typically explosives but chemical payloads are also known. While Shells have been known to exist ever since the 14th century, it was not until the modern day when accurate fuses came about that Shells became more common then solid shot. Shells come in a wide variety of munition types, but the most common versions are High Explosive, Armor-Piercing, High-Explosive Anti-Tank (combines HE with a shaped charge), and even guided shells.

*'''Carcass shot''': No, not something a [[Awesome|necromancer with a cannon]] would use. Carcass shot was a high flammable material with an iron shell around it and some vents to spray the chemical after firing. it was called Carcass shot because, supposedly, the shot looked like a human Carcass thanks to the holes. Carcass shot was used mostly out of lower velocity mortars and Howitzers and was one of the first chemical weapons to be used. It was especially useful at night as the glow allowed it to be used to spot for the gun.

*'''Junk''': Obviously if you're out of proper ammunition you could just shove anything you want down the barrel and hope it works. Supposedly a Uruguayan ship fired stale cheese out one of their cannons and shattered the mast of a Brazilian ship. Blunderbusses and similar man-portable weapons could also be loaded with scrap when nothing better was available. Contrarily to the common portrayal, however, the practice was discouraged as it would quickly wear the barrel of the weapon out and render it unusable.

*'''High Velocity Armor Piercing (HVAP)''': Also known as Armor-Piercing Composite Rigid (APCR) if you're a Brit or 'Hartkern' (hard core) if you're German. When World War 2 and its bigger and bigger tanks that could shrug off the fire from small calibre cannons came along, all nations were faced with the same problem of stopping those monsters. Without going into the physics of it, there were three solutions to the problem. First, the time-honored one of bringing a bigger gun, but that was often impossible. Second, lengthen the barrel of the gun so the gases can impart more energy to the projectile, but again this was limited in its execution. Third, make the projectile itself out of heavier, tougher material. That's HVAP/APCR/Hartkern. Same overall shell size, but the weight of the projectile is 'concentrated' in a smaller core made out of tungsten fitted with a lightweight aerodynamic cap that will do more damage than a larger, softer shot.

*'''Sabot (Old)''': Sabots (french for clogshoe and pronounced like "Sah-bo") were used in the 19th century with weapons like the Paixhans gun, one of the first naval guns designed to fire an explosive shell. A sabot is a container made of a light material that fits the barrel and contains the actual munition but falls away after leaving the barrel, leaving just the sub munition to fly toward the target. It was used to center the projectile and trap the gases of the explosion behind it, allowing to fire a shell smaller then the diameter of the gun (shooting a 20mm shell out of a 40mm cannon for example) and also back in the days to prevent a catastrophic explosion of the shell along with the powder. Advances in metallurgy and the invention of the driving band (and the generalized use of copper casings for smaller weapons) have made such sabots obsolete. Buuuuut...

*'''Sabot (Modern)''': Remember the HVAP above, where we said 'core made out of hard material to deal more damage'? Well the modern sabot rounds take this one level further. A small, very heavy projectile is encased in a much bigger shell casing, and the whole casing is discarded the moment it exits the barrel leaving only the core to fly toward the target. This allows the small core to be fired from a substantially large-bore gun, giving it a lot of kinetic energy while avoiding the poor ballistics of such a large shot. This has led to modern main battle tanks being armed with a 120mm cannon while shooting what basically amounts to a ballista bolt made of depleted uranium or Tungsten at one another. Sabots are frequently used for armor-penetrating rounds that would be far too heavy to fire at full-size. When used against soft targets like car bombs, they tend to swiss cheese them.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Siege Weapon

2020-03-10T00:01:43Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Ballista */

Let's say you're a medieval lord with 5,000 knights, men-at-arms and peasant levies you've decided to attack and conquer a lesser lord who has 1,000 fighting men of similar abilities. If you line your guys up and fight out in the open, you'll crush him. But the coward/sensible leader does not do this and instead holds up in his [[castle]], which has high walls and heavy gates to keep people out, a large supply of rocks to drop on the heads of people trying to climb said walls, safe vantage points to shoot at attackers before they get to the walls and graineries, larders, wine cellers an cisterns which can keep his troops fed for months. You have several options available to you. You can try to storm the castle while your guys are shot and get rocks and burning sand dropped on them. You can try to starve them out, which is going to take months, suffer casualty's from raids and camp sickness, lower morale as people are away from the friends and family and incur massive opportunity costs as the peasant levies could be farming, or you could employ '''Siege Weapons'''.

Note that while most siege weapons were used offensively against fortifications, some could be used defensively, whether against infantry formations or to destroy enemy siege weapons.

== Types of Siege Weapons ==
==Historic==
===Battering Ram===
One of the oldest and simplest siege weapons, the Battering Ram is, at its most basic, a log that men use to try and break down a door or section of wall. Over time people got ideas like swinging it from ropes to make it easier to smash into enemy fortifications, an iron cap on the log to help it smash through tougher materials, and strong roofs to keep the men inside from being crushed by falling rocks, scalded with boiling oil or shot by arrows. Notably under Roman law, any defenders who failed to surrender after the first ram touched their wall were basically fair game. You could throw in the towel before then, but afterwards if the Romans won they would kill you, enslave your wife and loot everything you owned.

===Ballista===
One day a Greek man looked down at his [[crossbow]] and thought "what if I made it bigger?". They came with two designs: a ridiculously large''Oxybeles'' (which was essentially a larger version of the gastraphetes crossbow), later known as a ''scorpion'' (which was commonly used as anti-siege-weapon weapon mounted on fortifications) and an "even bigger mounted crossbow" called the ''ballista''. Adding a windlass turned chain and a hopper magazine resulted in the ''Polybolos.'' Contrary to popular belief ballista is not an oversized crossbow - as the tensions, stresses, and material resistances scale differently and cause huge wooden bows to break and huge metal bows to deform from straining under such pressure. Thus Greeks devised a system that uses twisted ropes in which bow arms are fixed to store energy to the point it can hurl spear-sized bolts with enough power to break gates and warship hulls.

* '''Polybolos''': roughly meaning “multi-bolt thrower” in Greek and also known as a "repeating ballista," the Polybolos more often resembles a big crossbow than a ballista since the arms are fixed to the "stock" and don't twist around to fire it; though some versions do use arms wedged into tense bundles of twisted ropes like regular ballista. The repeating ballista was fired by turning a wheel connected to a chain drive forward to cock it, then turning it the other way to load it again from a hopper on top of the stock and fire it. Turning the wheel at the back of the crossbow counterclockwise pushed a sliding plank called the mensa (like that from the Gastrophetes/Oxyboles) forward. Once driven forward sufficiently, the latch claws at the back of the plank are pushed up by a lug under the plank and hold the drawstring in place. Then, turning the wheel clockwise drew the drawstring back as the plank slides backwards. At the same time, the motion of the plank drives a screw threaded pole (in contact with the plank by a block with a sliding nut) to rotate and load a bolt (via a built-in notch on the rod) onto the body of the plank from the hopper on top. Pulling the wheel back to the very end will bump the latch on another lug that triggers the latch into releasing the drawstring and firing the bolt.

Serving as highly accurate artillery (multiple stories exist of single soldiers getting sniped by bolts), Ballista was used by both the Greeks and Romans and later through Medieval times, for a long time coexisting with early gunpowder artillery until development of cannon technology made it obsolete. Not only were cannon barrels relatively simple to cast and maintain, but they were not as finicky or vulnerable to humidity or weather compared to wood and rope.

===Catapult===
Using weights and levers, ancient and medieval people found they could throw rocks, balls of metal or whatever else they had handy into walls to knock them down. If they had dead bodies handy, they could fling them ''over'' the walls of an enemy city and wait for them to get sick and die, as the Mongols did. Alternatively, a pot of incendiary liquid or something soaked in oil being lit on fire and then thrown over the wall to start fires worked nicely, as did explosives.
* '''Mangonel''': One of the more basic types of catapult and probably what you think of when you imagine one. What actually constitutes a 'mangonel' is a little unclear, as there is not set historical definition for the type of weapon the name describes. They had an impressive range, able to hit targets over 1000 feet away.
* '''Onager''': A siege weapon commonly used by the Roman Legions, employing the torsional tension of twisted rope and the whip-lash effect of a sling to hurl very large projectiles. Onagers were mainly designed for attacking fortifications from within the confines of other fortifications (as in Roman-style siegecraft), and thus were quite short-ranged. Confusingly, some onagers are mangonels, but not all mangonels are onagers.
* '''Trebuchet''': The big daddy of catapults, it was the biggest, most destructive and longest ranged catapults in history. This was the go-to weapon for sieges until gunpowder became practical. Unlike most catapults, which used torsion to power their throwing arm, trebuchets instead used a weight and gravity to do the trick.
**'''Floating Arm Trebuchet''': A normal trebuchets when fired has a weight on short end of the throwing arm and a rock attached to a sling on the long arm, both ends swing in Arcs as its fired and the weight and throwing arm both curve. The Floating Arm Trebuchet on the other hand is very different. Unlike a normal trebuchet, the floating arm has the throwing arm attached to wheels that roll freely in a channel. The weight is lifted up, straight up (unlike a traditional trebuchet where the weight is moved along an arc), which pushes the throwing arm back on the channel. When fired the weight drops straight down, the arm rolls forward and the throwing arm is whipped forward as its weight makes it rotate on the axis very quickly. If your thinking "''Gee that sound complicated for medieval engineering''", then you're not wrong. The Floating Arm Trebuchet is a modern design used mostly as an engineering student project. It may not even be that practical a design on its own merits since '''Yankee Siege II''', A traditional Trebuchet design was the record holder in the 2013 "Pumpkin chunking contest" beating out multiple floating arm designs (although that may be because increasing the range requires a greater drop distance, which then risks damaging the track from the impact of the arm).

===Siege Ladder===
Sometimes the best answer to a large wall is to simply go over it. The siege ladder was invented with this in mind, allowing men to climb over the walls.

*'''Sambuca''': Like a siege ladder, only built for D-Day. They let roman soldiers on ships charge up onto the walls of enemy citys.

===Siege Tower===
If a Siege Ladder didn't work, the solution was to make it bigger and with protection. Siege Towers allowed men to climb up without having to worry about anyone attacking them from the sides or simply knocking the ladder over. There were also platforms on top to allow archers to fire at the defenders.

===Sappers===
A good way to weaken enemy walls was to dig under them, weakening the foundation and making them more prone to fracturing and collapsing. What sappers would usually do is once they were certain that they were directly underneath the enemey’s walls, they’d stash a whole lot of flammable materials and douse it with pig’s fat (not live pigs, they’re significantly less flammable and more prone to running away) then set everything on fire to collapse the supports and cause a cave-in. It was a dangerous job, but it was effective, so long as the enemy didn’t catch on and start counter-mining. Would-be attackers would oftentimes be literally smoked-out and suffocate if they were discovered. Cave-ins were also rightly feared.

As modern cities typically have tunnel systems running through them (e.g. for subways, access to water pipes, smuggling), sapping and mining still see some use in urban warfare situations where a heavily fortified building needs to be brought down but anti-aircraft defenses prevent the use of bombers to do so.

===Petards===
Before people worked out how to make [[cannon]]s that were better at killing the enemy than whoever was using them, they would sometimes use Petards. Their job was to run up to enemy walls with barrels of gun powder or other primitive bombs, light the fuse and run like hell, letting the explosion take down the wall. Most of the time this ended up killing the Petard as well, hence the phrase "hoisted by his own petard"

===Hwacha===
A Korean gunpowder weapon used defensively against large armies. Take a bunch of long arrows, attach small rockets to each arrow, and fire all of them at once out of a portable box container on a fixed cart. A single launcher could fire as many as 200 arrows. Such overwhelming firepower made attackers think twice about charging defensive positions. While reloading them was a time consuming nightmare, they served as a good psychological deterrent and volley weapon from defensive positions.

===Named Historic siege engines===

'''Warwolf''': Thought to be the largest Trebuchet ever built, it took 30 wagons to transport it, putting at between 300–400 feet tall and it took over 50 people over three months to build it. Used in the Siege of Stirling castle by king Edward the scotts were so scared of the thing they tried to surrender, but the king was like "nope" and he wanted to see his weapon at work. Records show it threw over 300 pound stone balls and leveled a section of the castle's wall.

'''Helepolis''': not to be confused with "''Heliopolis''", or Suncity, the Helepolis was a greek seige engine who's name means "Taker of Cities". Actually it was a type of siege engine, but it was more then just a siege tower. It was tank! It was built like a siege tower only with multiple catapults at each level of the tower, it could roll up to a castle wall, firing all the while, while solider manning dart throws on top could clear the walls for soldiers in side to jump out of the moveable tower.

==Modern==
Seige Weapons are still useful into modern times. However they are used a bit differently than their middle age counterparts.

===Howitzer===
Originating in the 17th century. The Howitzer is still the go to indirect fire weapon for infantry in the 21st. When [[Gauss#Railgun|Railguns]] become smaller and more portable. It will also remain so well into the 22nd and beyond.

===Portable Explosives===
Comes in all shapes and sizes. A few of the more noteworthy types:
*'''TNT''': TriNitroToluene. Also known as dynamite. More powerful than gunpowder, more stable than nitroglycerin. Dynamite comes in sticks and and is ignited using an electrical charge from a plunger device. Just a few well-placed sticks can blast rocks with ease.
*'''Plastic Explosives''': Explosives made from a flexible material, such as C4. Can be molded into any shape and stuck on any surface with a bit of duck tape. Stick the primer in, then remotely detonate when you’re a safe distance away.
*'''Thermite''': this compound produces a jet of molten iron when ignited, rather than exploding outright. Great for cutting through thick surfaces, or destroying gun barrels/sensitive equipment.
*'''Detcord''': A type of plastic explosive that’s optimized for dynamic entry. Comes in a rope shape for easy bundling and placement; stick it on a wall in an outline of the hole you want to make, or sandwich a rolled up bundle between two bags of water to create a powerful door-knocking explosive.
*'''Shape Charge''': explosives placed around an inverted metal cone. When ignited, the cone collapses into a jet of molten metal, concentrating the explosive power into a fine point to punch through armor. Commonly used in anti-tank rounds, though portable versions exist.

===Bangalore torpedo===
These were explosives in a tube used mainly to clear obstacles such as mines, barbed wire, and barricades. They came in handy if you couldn't otherwise dismantle said obstacles properly, such as if you were storming an enemy position under fire and needed to create a clear path very quickly.

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[[Category:History]]

Siege Weapon

2020-03-10T00:00:21Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Ballista */

Let's say you're a medieval lord with 5,000 knights, men-at-arms and peasant levies you've decided to attack and conquer a lesser lord who has 1,000 fighting men of similar abilities. If you line your guys up and fight out in the open, you'll crush him. But the coward/sensible leader does not do this and instead holds up in his [[castle]], which has high walls and heavy gates to keep people out, a large supply of rocks to drop on the heads of people trying to climb said walls, safe vantage points to shoot at attackers before they get to the walls and graineries, larders, wine cellers an cisterns which can keep his troops fed for months. You have several options available to you. You can try to storm the castle while your guys are shot and get rocks and burning sand dropped on them. You can try to starve them out, which is going to take months, suffer casualty's from raids and camp sickness, lower morale as people are away from the friends and family and incur massive opportunity costs as the peasant levies could be farming, or you could employ '''Siege Weapons'''.

Note that while most siege weapons were used offensively against fortifications, some could be used defensively, whether against infantry formations or to destroy enemy siege weapons.

== Types of Siege Weapons ==
==Historic==
===Battering Ram===
One of the oldest and simplest siege weapons, the Battering Ram is, at its most basic, a log that men use to try and break down a door or section of wall. Over time people got ideas like swinging it from ropes to make it easier to smash into enemy fortifications, an iron cap on the log to help it smash through tougher materials, and strong roofs to keep the men inside from being crushed by falling rocks, scalded with boiling oil or shot by arrows. Notably under Roman law, any defenders who failed to surrender after the first ram touched their wall were basically fair game. You could throw in the towel before then, but afterwards if the Romans won they would kill you, enslave your wife and loot everything you owned.

===Ballista===
One day a Greek man looked down at his [[crossbow]] and thought "what if I made it bigger?". They came with two designs: a ridiculously large''Oxybeles'' (which was essentially a larger version of the gastraphetes crossbow), later known as a ''scorpion'' (which was commonly used as anti-siege-weapon weapon mounted on fortifications) and an "even bigger mounted crossbow" called the ''ballista''. Adding a windlass turned chain and a hopper magazine resulted in the ''Polybolos.'' Contrary to popular belief ballista is not an oversized crossbow - as the tensions, stresses, and material resistances scale differently and cause huge wooden bows to break and huge metal bows to deform from straining under such pressure. Thus Greeks devised a system that uses twisted ropes in which bow arms are fixed to store energy to the point it can hurl spear-sized bolts with enough power to break gates and warship hulls.

* '''Polybolos''': roughly meaning “multi-bolt thrower” in Greek and also known as a "repeating ballista," the Polybolos more often resembles a big crossbow than a ballista since the arms are fixed to the "stock" and don't twist around to fire it; though some versions do use arms wedged into tense bundles of twisted ropes like regular ballista. The repeating ballista was fired by turning a wheel connected to a chain drive forward to cock it, then turning it the other way to load it again from a hopper on top of the stock and fire it. Turning the wheel at the back of the crossbow counterclockwise pushed a sliding plank called the mensa (like that from the Gastrophetes/Oxyboles) forward. Once driven forward sufficiently, the latch claws at the back of the plank are pushed up by a lug under the plank and hold the drawstring in place. Then, turning the wheel clockwise drew the drawstring back as the plank slides backwards. At the same time, the motion of the plank drives a screw threaded pole (in contact with the plank by a block with a sliding nut) to rotate and load a bolt (via a built-in notch on the rod) onto the body of the plank from the hopper on top. Pulling the wheel back to the very end will bump the latch on another lug that triggers the latch into releasing the drawstring and firing the bolt.

Serving as highly accurate artillery (multiple stories exist of single soldiers getting sniped by bolts), Ballista was used by both the Greeks and Romans and later through Medieval times, for a long time coexisting with early gunpowder artillery until development of cannon technology made it obsolete.

===Catapult===
Using weights and levers, ancient and medieval people found they could throw rocks, balls of metal or whatever else they had handy into walls to knock them down. If they had dead bodies handy, they could fling them ''over'' the walls of an enemy city and wait for them to get sick and die, as the Mongols did. Alternatively, a pot of incendiary liquid or something soaked in oil being lit on fire and then thrown over the wall to start fires worked nicely, as did explosives.
* '''Mangonel''': One of the more basic types of catapult and probably what you think of when you imagine one. What actually constitutes a 'mangonel' is a little unclear, as there is not set historical definition for the type of weapon the name describes. They had an impressive range, able to hit targets over 1000 feet away.
* '''Onager''': A siege weapon commonly used by the Roman Legions, employing the torsional tension of twisted rope and the whip-lash effect of a sling to hurl very large projectiles. Onagers were mainly designed for attacking fortifications from within the confines of other fortifications (as in Roman-style siegecraft), and thus were quite short-ranged. Confusingly, some onagers are mangonels, but not all mangonels are onagers.
* '''Trebuchet''': The big daddy of catapults, it was the biggest, most destructive and longest ranged catapults in history. This was the go-to weapon for sieges until gunpowder became practical. Unlike most catapults, which used torsion to power their throwing arm, trebuchets instead used a weight and gravity to do the trick.
**'''Floating Arm Trebuchet''': A normal trebuchets when fired has a weight on short end of the throwing arm and a rock attached to a sling on the long arm, both ends swing in Arcs as its fired and the weight and throwing arm both curve. The Floating Arm Trebuchet on the other hand is very different. Unlike a normal trebuchet, the floating arm has the throwing arm attached to wheels that roll freely in a channel. The weight is lifted up, straight up (unlike a traditional trebuchet where the weight is moved along an arc), which pushes the throwing arm back on the channel. When fired the weight drops straight down, the arm rolls forward and the throwing arm is whipped forward as its weight makes it rotate on the axis very quickly. If your thinking "''Gee that sound complicated for medieval engineering''", then you're not wrong. The Floating Arm Trebuchet is a modern design used mostly as an engineering student project. It may not even be that practical a design on its own merits since '''Yankee Siege II''', A traditional Trebuchet design was the record holder in the 2013 "Pumpkin chunking contest" beating out multiple floating arm designs (although that may be because increasing the range requires a greater drop distance, which then risks damaging the track from the impact of the arm).

===Siege Ladder===
Sometimes the best answer to a large wall is to simply go over it. The siege ladder was invented with this in mind, allowing men to climb over the walls.

*'''Sambuca''': Like a siege ladder, only built for D-Day. They let roman soldiers on ships charge up onto the walls of enemy citys.

===Siege Tower===
If a Siege Ladder didn't work, the solution was to make it bigger and with protection. Siege Towers allowed men to climb up without having to worry about anyone attacking them from the sides or simply knocking the ladder over. There were also platforms on top to allow archers to fire at the defenders.

===Sappers===
A good way to weaken enemy walls was to dig under them, weakening the foundation and making them more prone to fracturing and collapsing. What sappers would usually do is once they were certain that they were directly underneath the enemey’s walls, they’d stash a whole lot of flammable materials and douse it with pig’s fat (not live pigs, they’re significantly less flammable and more prone to running away) then set everything on fire to collapse the supports and cause a cave-in. It was a dangerous job, but it was effective, so long as the enemy didn’t catch on and start counter-mining. Would-be attackers would oftentimes be literally smoked-out and suffocate if they were discovered. Cave-ins were also rightly feared.

As modern cities typically have tunnel systems running through them (e.g. for subways, access to water pipes, smuggling), sapping and mining still see some use in urban warfare situations where a heavily fortified building needs to be brought down but anti-aircraft defenses prevent the use of bombers to do so.

===Petards===
Before people worked out how to make [[cannon]]s that were better at killing the enemy than whoever was using them, they would sometimes use Petards. Their job was to run up to enemy walls with barrels of gun powder or other primitive bombs, light the fuse and run like hell, letting the explosion take down the wall. Most of the time this ended up killing the Petard as well, hence the phrase "hoisted by his own petard"

===Hwacha===
A Korean gunpowder weapon used defensively against large armies. Take a bunch of long arrows, attach small rockets to each arrow, and fire all of them at once out of a portable box container on a fixed cart. A single launcher could fire as many as 200 arrows. Such overwhelming firepower made attackers think twice about charging defensive positions. While reloading them was a time consuming nightmare, they served as a good psychological deterrent and volley weapon from defensive positions.

===Named Historic siege engines===

'''Warwolf''': Thought to be the largest Trebuchet ever built, it took 30 wagons to transport it, putting at between 300–400 feet tall and it took over 50 people over three months to build it. Used in the Siege of Stirling castle by king Edward the scotts were so scared of the thing they tried to surrender, but the king was like "nope" and he wanted to see his weapon at work. Records show it threw over 300 pound stone balls and leveled a section of the castle's wall.

'''Helepolis''': not to be confused with "''Heliopolis''", or Suncity, the Helepolis was a greek seige engine who's name means "Taker of Cities". Actually it was a type of siege engine, but it was more then just a siege tower. It was tank! It was built like a siege tower only with multiple catapults at each level of the tower, it could roll up to a castle wall, firing all the while, while solider manning dart throws on top could clear the walls for soldiers in side to jump out of the moveable tower.

==Modern==
Seige Weapons are still useful into modern times. However they are used a bit differently than their middle age counterparts.

===Howitzer===
Originating in the 17th century. The Howitzer is still the go to indirect fire weapon for infantry in the 21st. When [[Gauss#Railgun|Railguns]] become smaller and more portable. It will also remain so well into the 22nd and beyond.

===Portable Explosives===
Comes in all shapes and sizes. A few of the more noteworthy types:
*'''TNT''': TriNitroToluene. Also known as dynamite. More powerful than gunpowder, more stable than nitroglycerin. Dynamite comes in sticks and and is ignited using an electrical charge from a plunger device. Just a few well-placed sticks can blast rocks with ease.
*'''Plastic Explosives''': Explosives made from a flexible material, such as C4. Can be molded into any shape and stuck on any surface with a bit of duck tape. Stick the primer in, then remotely detonate when you’re a safe distance away.
*'''Thermite''': this compound produces a jet of molten iron when ignited, rather than exploding outright. Great for cutting through thick surfaces, or destroying gun barrels/sensitive equipment.
*'''Detcord''': A type of plastic explosive that’s optimized for dynamic entry. Comes in a rope shape for easy bundling and placement; stick it on a wall in an outline of the hole you want to make, or sandwich a rolled up bundle between two bags of water to create a powerful door-knocking explosive.
*'''Shape Charge''': explosives placed around an inverted metal cone. When ignited, the cone collapses into a jet of molten metal, concentrating the explosive power into a fine point to punch through armor. Commonly used in anti-tank rounds, though portable versions exist.

===Bangalore torpedo===
These were explosives in a tube used mainly to clear obstacles such as mines, barbed wire, and barricades. They came in handy if you couldn't otherwise dismantle said obstacles properly, such as if you were storming an enemy position under fire and needed to create a clear path very quickly.

{{stub}}
{{Vehicle Warfare}}
[[Category:History]]

Siege Weapon

2020-03-09T23:55:56Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Hwacha */

Let's say you're a medieval lord with 5,000 knights, men-at-arms and peasant levies you've decided to attack and conquer a lesser lord who has 1,000 fighting men of similar abilities. If you line your guys up and fight out in the open, you'll crush him. But the coward/sensible leader does not do this and instead holds up in his [[castle]], which has high walls and heavy gates to keep people out, a large supply of rocks to drop on the heads of people trying to climb said walls, safe vantage points to shoot at attackers before they get to the walls and graineries, larders, wine cellers an cisterns which can keep his troops fed for months. You have several options available to you. You can try to storm the castle while your guys are shot and get rocks and burning sand dropped on them. You can try to starve them out, which is going to take months, suffer casualty's from raids and camp sickness, lower morale as people are away from the friends and family and incur massive opportunity costs as the peasant levies could be farming, or you could employ '''Siege Weapons'''.

Note that while most siege weapons were used offensively against fortifications, some could be used defensively, whether against infantry formations or to destroy enemy siege weapons.

== Types of Siege Weapons ==
==Historic==
===Battering Ram===
One of the oldest and simplest siege weapons, the Battering Ram is, at its most basic, a log that men use to try and break down a door or section of wall. Over time people got ideas like swinging it from ropes to make it easier to smash into enemy fortifications, an iron cap on the log to help it smash through tougher materials, and strong roofs to keep the men inside from being crushed by falling rocks, scalded with boiling oil or shot by arrows. Notably under Roman law, any defenders who failed to surrender after the first ram touched their wall were basically fair game. You could throw in the towel before then, but afterwards if the Romans won they would kill you, enslave your wife and loot everything you owned.

===Ballista===
One day a Greek man looked down at his [[crossbow]] and thought "what if I made it bigger?". They came with two designs: "fuckhuge crossbow" ''oxybeles'', later known as a ''scorpion'' (commonly used as anti-siege-weapon weapon mounted on fortifications) and "even bigger crossbow-looking thing" ''ballista''. Adding a windlass turned chain and a hopper magazine resulted in the ''polybolos.'' Contrary to popular belief ballista is not an oversized crossbow - as powers, energies and material resistances scale differently huge wooden bows would break and huge metal bows would deform under such pressure. Thus Greeks devised a system that uses twisted ropes in which bow arms are fixed to store energy to the point it can hurl spear-sized bolts with enough power to break gates and warship hulls. Serving as highly accurate artillery (multiple stories exist of single soldiers getting sniped by bolts), Ballista was used by both the Greeks and Romans and later through Medieval times, for a long time coexisting with early gunpowder artillery until development of cannon technology made it obsolete.

===Catapult===
Using weights and levers, ancient and medieval people found they could throw rocks, balls of metal or whatever else they had handy into walls to knock them down. If they had dead bodies handy, they could fling them ''over'' the walls of an enemy city and wait for them to get sick and die, as the Mongols did. Alternatively, a pot of incendiary liquid or something soaked in oil being lit on fire and then thrown over the wall to start fires worked nicely, as did explosives.
* '''Mangonel''': One of the more basic types of catapult and probably what you think of when you imagine one. What actually constitutes a 'mangonel' is a little unclear, as there is not set historical definition for the type of weapon the name describes. They had an impressive range, able to hit targets over 1000 feet away.
* '''Onager''': A siege weapon commonly used by the Roman Legions, employing the torsional tension of twisted rope and the whip-lash effect of a sling to hurl very large projectiles. Onagers were mainly designed for attacking fortifications from within the confines of other fortifications (as in Roman-style siegecraft), and thus were quite short-ranged. Confusingly, some onagers are mangonels, but not all mangonels are onagers.
* '''Trebuchet''': The big daddy of catapults, it was the biggest, most destructive and longest ranged catapults in history. This was the go-to weapon for sieges until gunpowder became practical. Unlike most catapults, which used torsion to power their throwing arm, trebuchets instead used a weight and gravity to do the trick.
**'''Floating Arm Trebuchet''': A normal trebuchets when fired has a weight on short end of the throwing arm and a rock attached to a sling on the long arm, both ends swing in Arcs as its fired and the weight and throwing arm both curve. The Floating Arm Trebuchet on the other hand is very different. Unlike a normal trebuchet, the floating arm has the throwing arm attached to wheels that roll freely in a channel. The weight is lifted up, straight up (unlike a traditional trebuchet where the weight is moved along an arc), which pushes the throwing arm back on the channel. When fired the weight drops straight down, the arm rolls forward and the throwing arm is whipped forward as its weight makes it rotate on the axis very quickly. If your thinking "''Gee that sound complicated for medieval engineering''", then you're not wrong. The Floating Arm Trebuchet is a modern design used mostly as an engineering student project. It may not even be that practical a design on its own merits since '''Yankee Siege II''', A traditional Trebuchet design was the record holder in the 2013 "Pumpkin chunking contest" beating out multiple floating arm designs (although that may be because increasing the range requires a greater drop distance, which then risks damaging the track from the impact of the arm).

===Siege Ladder===
Sometimes the best answer to a large wall is to simply go over it. The siege ladder was invented with this in mind, allowing men to climb over the walls.

*'''Sambuca''': Like a siege ladder, only built for D-Day. They let roman soldiers on ships charge up onto the walls of enemy citys.

===Siege Tower===
If a Siege Ladder didn't work, the solution was to make it bigger and with protection. Siege Towers allowed men to climb up without having to worry about anyone attacking them from the sides or simply knocking the ladder over. There were also platforms on top to allow archers to fire at the defenders.

===Sappers===
A good way to weaken enemy walls was to dig under them, weakening the foundation and making them more prone to fracturing and collapsing. What sappers would usually do is once they were certain that they were directly underneath the enemey’s walls, they’d stash a whole lot of flammable materials and douse it with pig’s fat (not live pigs, they’re significantly less flammable and more prone to running away) then set everything on fire to collapse the supports and cause a cave-in. It was a dangerous job, but it was effective, so long as the enemy didn’t catch on and start counter-mining. Would-be attackers would oftentimes be literally smoked-out and suffocate if they were discovered. Cave-ins were also rightly feared.

As modern cities typically have tunnel systems running through them (e.g. for subways, access to water pipes, smuggling), sapping and mining still see some use in urban warfare situations where a heavily fortified building needs to be brought down but anti-aircraft defenses prevent the use of bombers to do so.

===Petards===
Before people worked out how to make [[cannon]]s that were better at killing the enemy than whoever was using them, they would sometimes use Petards. Their job was to run up to enemy walls with barrels of gun powder or other primitive bombs, light the fuse and run like hell, letting the explosion take down the wall. Most of the time this ended up killing the Petard as well, hence the phrase "hoisted by his own petard"

===Hwacha===
A Korean gunpowder weapon used defensively against large armies. Take a bunch of long arrows, attach small rockets to each arrow, and fire all of them at once out of a portable box container on a fixed cart. A single launcher could fire as many as 200 arrows. Such overwhelming firepower made attackers think twice about charging defensive positions. While reloading them was a time consuming nightmare, they served as a good psychological deterrent and volley weapon from defensive positions.

===Named Historic siege engines===

'''Warwolf''': Thought to be the largest Trebuchet ever built, it took 30 wagons to transport it, putting at between 300–400 feet tall and it took over 50 people over three months to build it. Used in the Siege of Stirling castle by king Edward the scotts were so scared of the thing they tried to surrender, but the king was like "nope" and he wanted to see his weapon at work. Records show it threw over 300 pound stone balls and leveled a section of the castle's wall.

'''Helepolis''': not to be confused with "''Heliopolis''", or Suncity, the Helepolis was a greek seige engine who's name means "Taker of Cities". Actually it was a type of siege engine, but it was more then just a siege tower. It was tank! It was built like a siege tower only with multiple catapults at each level of the tower, it could roll up to a castle wall, firing all the while, while solider manning dart throws on top could clear the walls for soldiers in side to jump out of the moveable tower.

==Modern==
Seige Weapons are still useful into modern times. However they are used a bit differently than their middle age counterparts.

===Howitzer===
Originating in the 17th century. The Howitzer is still the go to indirect fire weapon for infantry in the 21st. When [[Gauss#Railgun|Railguns]] become smaller and more portable. It will also remain so well into the 22nd and beyond.

===Portable Explosives===
Comes in all shapes and sizes. A few of the more noteworthy types:
*'''TNT''': TriNitroToluene. Also known as dynamite. More powerful than gunpowder, more stable than nitroglycerin. Dynamite comes in sticks and and is ignited using an electrical charge from a plunger device. Just a few well-placed sticks can blast rocks with ease.
*'''Plastic Explosives''': Explosives made from a flexible material, such as C4. Can be molded into any shape and stuck on any surface with a bit of duck tape. Stick the primer in, then remotely detonate when you’re a safe distance away.
*'''Thermite''': this compound produces a jet of molten iron when ignited, rather than exploding outright. Great for cutting through thick surfaces, or destroying gun barrels/sensitive equipment.
*'''Detcord''': A type of plastic explosive that’s optimized for dynamic entry. Comes in a rope shape for easy bundling and placement; stick it on a wall in an outline of the hole you want to make, or sandwich a rolled up bundle between two bags of water to create a powerful door-knocking explosive.
*'''Shape Charge''': explosives placed around an inverted metal cone. When ignited, the cone collapses into a jet of molten metal, concentrating the explosive power into a fine point to punch through armor. Commonly used in anti-tank rounds, though portable versions exist.

===Bangalore torpedo===
These were explosives in a tube used mainly to clear obstacles such as mines, barbed wire, and barricades. They came in handy if you couldn't otherwise dismantle said obstacles properly, such as if you were storming an enemy position under fire and needed to create a clear path very quickly.

{{stub}}
{{Vehicle Warfare}}
[[Category:History]]

Crossbow

2020-03-09T23:53:52Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Types of Crossbows */

[[image:crossbow.jpg|thumb|300px|right|An Arbalast Crossbow with an iron prod. Note the iron stirrup ring on the front; which the user could use in this case to hold down with his foot when pulling back the draw string or mounting a gaffe lever to push the string back]]
{{topquote|'''I waste him with my crossbow!'''|Bob Herzog, ''[[Knights Of The Dinner Table]]''}}

The '''crossbow''' is named for its cross-shaped design, as it is basically a [[Bows and Arrows|bow]] (in technical terms, called a prod) on a stock (alternatively called a tiller) that uses a locking trigger mechanism to hold and fire either an arrow (called a bolt or quarrel) or a small spherical stone or lead bullet (the latter usually being used for hunting). Bolts are arrows with a shorter shaft, and could range from being lighter than an average arrow to several times heavier. It operates on the same principle as the traditional bow in that a tough bowstring is pulled back to store potential energy in the bow, which upon release of the string, transfers it to a projectile.

While historians are unsure who first made the crossbow, the earliest known crossbows were found in [[China]] around 700 to 500 BCE. During the Warring States period, crossbows became a preferred ranged weapon of Chinese armies due to ease of use for conscripts and the use of crossbows certainly aided in the rise of the Qin Dynasty and the beginning of Imperial China. The Greeks and Romans experimented with hand-held crossbows, but they never made extensive use of them, although they did make extensive use of ballista (basically a crossbow scaled up to the size of an artillery piece, and often shot stone instead of scaled up arrows). The [[Asians|Chinese]] of these times, on the other hand, had crossbows of all types and shapes: from one-handed repeater crossbows, capable of launching dozens of (fairly weak, but often poisoned) arrows per minute, to absurdly heavy ones, designed to be pulled by legs, rather than arms, and launch arrows the size of small javelin, later with gunpowder-filled bombs on the heading at range, only rivaled by siege engines, though later they passed out in favor of multiple rocket launchers (yes, you read it right). Crossbows began to see widespread use in Europe around 1000 CE, at this time emerged crossbows with steel bow sections, more commonly called arbalasts.

The difference between a bow and a crossbow is that a bow's string needs to be pulled back and held by the user while aiming, while a crossbow has a mechanism that locks the bowstring in a readied state and only requires the user to operate the trigger to release the bolt upon sighting their target. The trigger mechanism evolved over time, as did aids for drawing the crossbow's string. The weight or size of the crossbow certainly had an effect on the mechanisms involved, as light crossbows could be reset by hand, but heavier version could end up using levers or crank-operated windlasses to pull back and cock the string, and tended to use more robust release mechanisms due to the increased stress involved.

In fantasy settings, technologically advanced races who don't (or in limitation) employ [[firearm]]s as their go-to weapon typically make heavy use of crossbows. It is also the ranged weapon of choice for richer and more experienced mercenaries.

For some reason in a lot of fantasy and medieval fiction it seems to be the preferred ranged weapon of whoever the bad guys are. Examples include A Song Of Ice and Fire (where it seems to be the favorite weapon of [[brundlepenis|King Joffrey]]), The Lord of the Rings ([[Ork|Uruk-Hai]] marksmen use crossbows) and different settings of DnD ([[Drow]] poisoned repeater crossbows). This may have something to do with crossbows being less relying on the wielder's strengths, stamina and personal skill, and thus regarded as "unfair" weapon compared to bow, it was at one point banned by the pope for use on Christians, although due to it's usefulness on the battlefield this was largely ignored.

The crossbow is also the favored ranged weapon of [[dwarves]] in most fantasy fiction, though in this case it may be more than just aesthetics; while it would be fitting for a race known for their technical expertise to use a more complex device, also keep in mind that dwarves would have a harder time using regular bows. A bow's power depends on its draw length, and having shorter arms, dwarves can't get as much power out of a bow. They also need a weapon that can be used more easily in confined spaces, which disqualifies longbows right away. What they do have going for them, though, is great strength, making a crossbow's high draw weight less of an issue for them.

==Use in warfare==
A major advantage of crossbows over regular bows is that because they're fired using a mechanism instead of depending on human strength to hold the bow in a ready-to-fire position, user fatigue is no longer such a huge factor. Additionally, the heavier crossbows could generate more force than most humans thanks to the pulley systems used to cock the string, thus heavier bolts could be thrown, resulting in greater penetration of the target. Possibly its biggest advantage is that it was easier to train the use of a crossbow than bows since the weapon's operation is much less taxing.

Of course, the main drawback with crossbows is that they require a wider range of resources and skills to produce due to the mechanisms involved. Crossbows also generally have a lower rate of fire than bows. At best, a crossbowman can get off about eight shots a minute. More powerful arbalast crossbows that used windlasses could manage about three shots a minute, but could store more energy than a human could physically pull back with bare hands. For these reasons Crossbows excel in a siege situation where the ranges are long and you can duck into cover easily while you're reloading. And since sieges tended to be drawn-out affairs anyway, reload time wasn't as necessary.

That being said, despite crossbows being much more expensive than bows, they were much less demanding on user's skill and physique, meaning you can train as many crossbowmen as you have crossbows and replenish killed ones in just few months of training, while in order to train a bowmen you need to start with kids. So while a single bowman is much more effective than a single crossbowman, you can afford a half-dozen of crossbowmen for the cost of one bowman, and replace lost ones quickly as long as their weapon survives the battle. This is probably why they first took off in Warring States period China, where raising large conscript armies was the name of the game.

It should be noted that despite having much greater draw weights than contemporary bows (above 500 lbs in some cases), crossbows were not proportionally more powerful due to their very short draw length, translating into a much briefer energy transfer. More modern crossbows sometimes address this by using recurve bows, or even by using a bullpup configuration by turning the bow backwards and then pulling the string past the bow. Additionally, the reduced aerodynamic properties of crossbow bolts as compared to arrows mean that they very rapidly lose velocity after a relatively short distance, giving them great punch at short range but reduced effectiveness at longer ranges as compared to bows.

The fact that even relatively poorly trained men armed with crossbows could royally murder fully armored knights, made the crossbow one of the most hated pre-firearm weapons in the Europe, even more than the infamous flamberge. At some point it even came to the pope banning crossbows as unholy weapon not to be used on fellow Christians, but even then they remained popular among mercenaries, rich lords and Protestants. Proud knights could accept deaths from elite long/composite bowmen who like them were training from childhood, but not from some hastily drilled dirty peasant levies whose lord could afford few dozens of crossbows.

Finally, one of the most underrated uses of a crossbow was the psychological element. Those armies that weren't used to fighting against crossbowmen (and many who were) found themselves outranged, outgunned, and/or overpowered by crossbows. Many medieval armours and early modern ones were not capable of withstanding the sheer force that a crossbow shot could inflict, in comparison to many regular bows. This meant that the presence of crossbows on a battlefield could keep certain units away, due to them not being able to withstand that kind of shot. Indeed, we have medieval chronicles talking about the power of the crossbow:

<blockquote> ''This cross-bow is a bow of the barbarians quite unknown to the Greeks; and it is not stretched by the right hand pulling the string whilst the left pulls the bow in a contrary direction, but he who stretches this warlike and very far-shooting weapon must lie, one might say, almost on his back and apply both feet strongly against the semi-circle of the bow and with his two hands pull the string with all his might in the contrary direction. In the middle of the string is a socket, a cylindrical kind of cup fitted to the string itself, and about as long as an arrow of considerable size which reaches from the string to the very middle of the bow; and through this arrows of many sorts are shot out. The arrows used with this bow are very short in length, but very thick, fitted in front with a very heavy iron tip. And in discharging them the string shoots them out with enormous violence and force, and whatever these darts chance to hit, they do not fall back, but they pierce through a shield, then cut through a heavy iron corselet and wing their way through and out at the other side. So violent and ineluctable is the discharge of arrows of this kind. Such an arrow has been known to pierce a bronze statue, and if it hits the wall of a very large town, the point of the arrow either protrudes on the inner side or it buries itself in the middle of the wall and is lost. Such then is this monster of a crossbow, and verily a devilish invention. And the wretched man who is struck by it, dies without feeling anything, not even feeling the blow, however strong it be.''

Anna Commeno, ''The Alexiad'' </blockquote>

Crossbows are still occasionally used for military purposes; while a crossbow's bolts lack the stopping power of modern firearms, the bolts it fires are quieter than any "silenced" firearm and it can also be used for niche purposes such as launching grappling hooks or detonating tripwire-activated mines, and its lower projectile speed means it's much less likely to set off any worn explosives. While its comparatively lower ability to kill outright can be an issue you could use the same solution that the Indian Navy used for this problem and use Cyanide tipped bolts, or take the Rambo route and use bolts with explosive tips.

See Also: [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20#Crossbows are Underpowered in d20|Crossbows are Underpowered in d20]]

===Loading Mechanisms===
Because later crossbows were often too tough to simply pull back unaided, a number of devices were invented to allow the wielder rearm the crossbow via pulling back the string (in a process called spanning). The device used usually depended upon the draw weight of the bow, as heavier bows would require more advanced devices that required more time to pull back.

*'''Gloves and Stirrup''': Generally leather or some other material, good quality gloves (or some tough callouses) can save one some finger or palm bleeding from trying to pull it by the old fashioned way. Talking from experience, if one is to do it this way, put your entire upper back and arms into it, and pull. Either user placed both feet on the bow's span on each side of the stock or in the stirrup ring attached to the crossbow head. Most commonly associated way of reloading in popular culture besides the Cranequin and Windlass. First appearance: 700 to 500's BCE. Mechanical advantage: 1 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 150-300 lbs.
*'''Stirrup and Belt Hook''': Most crossbows you see have a stirrup ring towards the front end for putting your foot through to hold it steady. Combined with a belt worn around the waist with a hook attached to it, the wielder could use their whole body, rather than just their arms, to arm the crossbow. Could also use a belt-attached pulley configuration to lessen the strength to draw. First appearance: 1200's. Mechanical advantage: about 2 or 1 to 1 (depending on whether using pulley configuration). Maximum draw weight: 320-450 lbs.
*'''Goat's Foot Lever''': This was a fairly simple detachable metal lever that gave the user more leverage when pulling back the string. Composed of a rod attached to two curved prongs and two hinged hooks; it's shape had a resemblance to a goat's foot (obvious in the name). Mounts on two metal lugs on the body's sides near the trigger, pull drawstring back in one motion via two hinged hooks, place folded lever back on belt, load the bolt on the crossbow, and then shoot. This could arm the crossbow in a single smooth motion with the lever's curved prongs making the drawing force decrease as the spanning distance increases. Lighter versions can be spanned from horseback or while standing. The heavier ones would require you to put your foot in the stirrup while kneeling and bracing it against your shin as you pull the lever back. Very common for field portable bows and mounted crossbowmen. First appearance: Between 1300's to 1400's. Mechanical Advantage: from 5 up to 30 to 1 (depending on how far the lever is pulled). Maximum draw weight: 500-600 lbs.
*'''Gaffe Lever''': Derived from its older goats foot lever cousin, the gaffe lever consisted of a two piece wooden lever held by a hinge and attached to the stirrup ring via metal hook. User pushed down on the lever to push the drawstring into the trigger before removing. More associated with nobles hunting or shooting clubs than with military arsenals after the gunpowder weapons appeared in the 1500's during the Renaissance. First appearance: 1500's. Mechanical advantage: up to 30 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 400 lbs.
*'''Lever-Action''': Alternatively called "Self-Cocking" or "Self-Spanning" crossbows. These generally use hinged or sliding levers embedded into the crossbow body. The user unlocks catch holding the hinge firm before folding open the half of the crossbow body to catch the drawstring on a latch before pulling back to the trigger to arm the crossbow. Unlike the Asian equivalent in the Chu-Ko-Nu, these did not have a top magazine. This enabled users to aim after loading and pulling a trigger to shoot at the cost of having to load the bolt by hand. Besides the Scottish Border Reivers' latchet crossbow in the 1600's, two noted examples are Martin Löffelholz's armbrust in the Codex Löffelholz and Da Vinci's Balestra Veloce in the Codex Atlanticus (the balestra veloce). While [[Awesome|impressive]], lever-action crossbows were never mainstream or famous due to the transition to gunpowder weapons in the 1500's during the Renaissance. First appearance: 1500's. Mechanical advantage: up to 25 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 220 - 300 lbs.
*'''Windlass''': Alternatively called the "Winch." Like the Cranequin, this was a winding device, but it also came with a bulky pulley system that was mounted to the back of the crossbow. As a result, this was a tremendously powerful pulling system at the expense of needing a lot of time to arm. Along with the Cranequin, this was one of the strongest crossbow loading methods. Contrary to popular culture, it was more often used on large, heavy crossbows for stationary battles like trench warfare or sieges like modern anti-tank guns. On the other hand, usage on open battlefields (behind pavise shields) for support artillery wasn't unheard of. First appearance: 1400’s. Mechanical advantage: ~160 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 1500 lbs+ (limited by time and bow strength).
*'''Cranequin''': Also called the "Rack and Pinion," this device used gears and a crank to wind up the bowstring, requiring multiple turns to pull it all the way back. Device slid onto lugs mounted on the stock and was removed before firing. Along with the Windlass, this was one of the strongest crossbow loading methods. Contrary to popular culture, it was more often used on large, heavy crossbows for stationary battles like trench warfare or sieges like modern anti-tank guns. On the other hand, usage on mounted crossbowmen with lighter crossbows and by footmen on open battlefields (behind pavise shields) for artillery support wasn't unheard of. First appearance: 1500's. Mechanical advantage: ~600 or 840 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 2000 lbs+.

==Types of Crossbows==
As a general note, crossbows are not ballistas, despite their visual similarity. Unlike Crossbows which store energy in a set of arms which are bent back, Ballistas instead store energy in twisted rope that has a wooden beam pushed into it which is then twisted back farther before firing to store energy. That said, some ballistas are discussed here until a proper "[[Siege Weapon|siege]]" article is consolidated.

*'''Gastraphetes''': an early Greek crossbow, the Gastraphetes, or "belly bow", was cocked by resting the stomach on the bolt rest of the stock (which contained a sliding plank attached to the drawstring) and pushing down so that more energy can be stored then an archer could provide. The Gastraphetes worked slightly different from the classic crossbow, in that its arrow slot was two-piece, with the sliding inner plank attached to the drawstring. Thus, rather than drawing back the crossbow, you readied it by slamming it into the ground until the trigger catches onto a latch. While impressive, it was restricted to hip fire, was fired with a button-like trigger, and was more of a man portable siege weapon. A larger winch-spanned, tripod-mounted version, the Oxybeles, was in use as a stationary artillery weapon before being replaced by the ballista.

* '''Polybolos''': roughly meaning “multi-bolt thrower” in Greek and also known as a "repeating ballista," the Polybolos more often resembles a big crossbow than a ballista since the arms are fixed to the "stock" and don't twist around to fire it; though some versions do use arms wedged into tense bundles of twisted ropes like regular ballista. The repeating ballista was fired by turning a wheel connected to a chain drive forward to cock it, then turning it the other way to load it again from a hopper on top of the stock and fire it. Turning the wheel at the back of the crossbow counterclockwise pushed a sliding plank called the mensa (like that from the Gastrophetes/Oxyboles) forward. Once driven forward sufficiently, the latch claws at the back of the plank are pushed up by a lug under the plank and hold the drawstring in place. Then, turning the wheel clockwise drew the drawstring back as the plank slides backwards. At the same time, the motion of the plank drives a screw threaded pole (in contact with the plank by a block with a sliding nut) to rotate and load a bolt (via a built-in notch on the rod) onto the body of the plank from the hopper on top. Pulling the wheel back to the very end will bump the latch on another lug that triggers the latch into releasing the drawstring and firing the bolt.

* '''Chinese "Nu" crossbow''': the Chinese version of the crossbow is noticeably different from the European crossbow: which had a power stroke (drawing span) of about 7 inches, used a rolling nut latch held in place by a sear pushed by a long horizontal lever-like trigger mounted in the middle of the stock, and used prods (bow pieces) made from simple wood, composite, and later with metal. In contrast, the Chinese crossbow had a power stroke of about 21 inches, used a complicated two-piece vertical trigger at the very back of the stock (held together by tension and two pins at the very end of the stock) inside a pistol grip mount, and used wood or composite prods (often salvaged from recurve bows and constructed for conscripts to use en mass instead of drilling archery skills into them). Thus, due to the longer power stroke via the trigger being placed further back and assuming that all other factors are equal, the bolts fired by the Chinese bows (usually with draw weights of 380 lbs) were launched with comparable performance to an average European windlass crossbow (with a draw weight of 1,500 lbs). However, the Chinese crossbows themselves were rather large, cumbersome, and had to be reloaded with just stirrup rings, belt hooks, and/or gloves.

* '''Chu-Ko-Nu''': literally meaning “Zhuge’s Crossbow," classical legend associated it a Chinese noble named Zhuge Liang (2nd Century AD). Alternatively known as the "Lian Nu" (repeating crossbow), it's also known as the "Chinese repeating crossbow" and is one of the more common types of specialty crossbows seen in fiction. In reality, it was invented during the Warring States Period (4th Century BC) in the State of Chu. The term "repeating crossbow" brings to mind some bastard combination of Assault rifle and crossbow, which it kinda is and is not. Without doubt, this thing could fire quickly; trained soldiers could loose ten bolts in fifteen seconds before having to reload. Mechanically, it consisted of a stock that the user secured on their hip with the bowstring sliding through a slit on each side of the sliding magazine/bolt rest. By pushing and then pulling the lever that secures the magazine to the stock, the user catches bowstring on a notch at the back end of the slits while loading the bolt by gravity onto the bolt rest. Once the lever is fully compressed down, a sliding lug nut at the base of the magazine pushes the string up off the notches and propels the bolt out. However, because of the mechanism's design, the pumping action that pulled the string back also fired the bolt at the same time while the magazine is built on top of the bow. Due to that, you could not pull the string back and then aim. Chu-ko-nu's were limited to hip fire; giving you almost ork levels of accuracy in exchange for an appreciable volume of fire. In layman's terms, it's the same as being restricted to hip-firing a pump action shotgun with the trigger permanently welded in the fire position. Additionally because you were pulling the string back one handed, the bolts had a lot less penetration power than those of a regular crossbow. However, the bolts (which fell down onto the stock from a hopper mounted on top) were often poisoned to make up for that (as seen with the [[Drow]], who make use of the weapon extensively). While no matter how strong the poison on your bolt is, you're not gonna kill a man instantly with a scratch. However, on the battlefield causing enough pain to make a person go into shock is as good as killing them outright, and poison delivers the last one in spades. The downside was you had next to no luck piercing good quality armor or thick leather that an enemy is wearing while you're using it.

* '''Balestra Veloce/Löffelholz Armbrust crossbows''': First mentioned in Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus (1478 to 1519) and Martin Löffelholz's Codex Löffelholz (1505), both versions of the said lever-action design (which differ mainly by the arrangement of the trigger, latch, and sear mechanism) used a stock consisting of two wood and metal pieces on top of each other and hinged at the head of the crossbow. By unlocking a catch on the stock, the user can then swing forward the bottom half of the stock to extend a a latch housed in a sliding plank (like that on the gastraphetes) to catch the drawstring. Once the drawstring is caught, the stock is then closed; locking the stock back together and bringing the latch (which is held firm by a spring-loaded sear) back into contact with the trigger on the lower half of the stock. User then loaded the bolt and pulled the trigger to compress the sear; letting the rolling nut release the crossbow string. Whether the German or Italian version came first is unclear; though the rapid fire crossbow pages in the Codex Atlanticus are dated back to 1485. Either codex's blueprints can be found online via an online archive created by "The Visual Agency" media company or a pdf scan hosted by Krakow's Jagiellonian Library respectively. While firing and reloading more rapidly than the mainstream "goats foot lever" crossbows, it was not widely used due to possibly three reasons.
** First, the amount of expert craftsmanship to make it and the extensive training to use it was cost prohibitive for a relatively complicated and delicately structured weapon. This meant that it was likely more of a special luxury weapon that only wealthy people could afford rather than a mass produced weapon for conscripts (the same reason why breech loading rifles existed since the 16th Century for noble hunters but didn't replace muzzle-loading smoothbore muskets in mass use for militaries until the 1840's).
** Second, while quicker than spanning a crossbow with a goat's foot or gaffe lever, the draw weight is reduced to a mere average of 220 lbs. Being half of the maximum draw weight of gaffe and goat's foot lever crossbows, this meant weaker penetration and shorter ranges. This was likely to make the lever-action crossbow more easily rearmed without being too strong to either break the trigger lock or cock with your hands.
** Third, the introduction of gunpowder weapons alongside the volley fire from massed Pike and Shot square formations occurred during the Renaissance. Since these crossbows were developed right when gunpowder took over, this meant these lever-action crossbows already went obsolete the same way that heavy plate-armored cavalry and longbow archers did. Hence, this is why these crossbow types (as well as other related [[Combi-weapon|combination]] specimens preserved at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches and New York City’s Metropolitan museums) were usually hunting or city militia pieces rather than military arsenal pieces.

* '''Latch/Latchet Crossbow''': A light lever-action crossbow popular with Scottish border raiders called Reivers in the 1600's to 1700's, it worked via swinging an internal metal lever forward from the top to push a sliding latch forward to secure the drawstring after unlocking the catch. The user then pushed the lever back into the body to arm the bow before loading and shooting. Popular to the Scottish in the region for home defense and raiding as they were small, easy to use, easy to make, very quiet compared to the more finicky wheel-lock pistol, had a decent draw weight of about 250 lbs, and took only 10 seconds to reload. Their downside was their short range and being restricted to hip firing due to the trigger being a button on the top (a trade off to enable horsemen to fire one-handed from the saddle though you could tuck it into your armpit and adjust to aiming over your thumb).

* '''Bed Crossbow''': A Chinese peculiarity, where multiple crossbows mounted on a static frame were combined to create an increased draw strength. A precursor to the compound crossbow.

*'''Bullet Crossbows''': Also referred to as pelletbows, stonebows, and ballesters, these were essentially the same as regular crossbows or similar to a slingshot in crossbow form, except they fired stone or lead shot instead of bolts. Usually used for recreational shooting and small game hunting.

*'''Crossbow pistol''': Small crossbows designed to be fired from one hand, with modernized versions commonly featuring a more modern pistol grip and trigger. While these did exist in the past, they were nowhere near as lethal as battlefield crossbows as the draw weights were far smaller.

*'''Arbalast''': As European armor improved with the development of steel plate crossbows with wooden bow sections were just not cutting the mustard anymore, as such they began making that part out of steel. This meant that the bow could store more energy and launch a projectile farther and faster, significantly improving armor penetration but it also increased the amount of energy required to draw it, often requiring various leavers and cranking mechanisms to reset it.

*'''Slurbow:''' A crossbow with a cover over its barrel and a small gap used to draw its string back. Arguably influenced by the pistol, the slurbow was mostly used for firing unfeathered quarrels or darts.

*'''Sauterelle''': The last apparition of a crossbow-like weapon in a modern battlefield for frontline work. In WWI, soldiers had a problem: all the artillery that existed was big and unable to drop explosives accurately into a trench, especially at close range. And on the other hand, thrown hand grenades had the precision but too limited range. As an interim solution the French invented the ''Sauterelle'' (grasshopper in French): basically a big crossbow built to lob grenades at around 150 yards distance. Worked decently enough but later in the war they were replaced by small, two-man team infantry mortars that were just as easy to move around and use but had three or four time the range and a better rate of fire.

*'''Compound Crossbow''': the modern version of the crossbow, which is basically a modern compound bow on a rifle stock. Many of these also come equipped with telescopic sights modified with cross-hairs that compensate for the effects of gravity, wind, elevation, and other factors that might affect a bolt's accuracy. They are primarily used for hunting, sport and (unusually) home defense in Britain since everything else has been banned. Also finds military (specifically special forces, not frontline grunts), espionage and law enforcement utility by being used to fire ziplines or grappling hooks, explosive, incendiary, poisoned or gas releasing projectiles, or simply well made darts for a silent kill. Most use conventional spanning mechanisms but some more recent exotic ones combine various technological concepts from past and present (such as the ones build by hobbyists like Lacas Crossbows or cottage industries like GoGun's Cobra Adder; with those being a bizarre chimera between the Chu-Ko-Nu's hopper magazine (the latter's being detachable), the Balestra Veloce's lever action system, along with modern optics, grips, and compound, composite bow-pieces).

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Combi-weapon

2020-03-09T23:53:22Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Real Life */

Combi-weapons are specialized weapons in [[Warhammer 40,000]], mainly used by the [[Imperium of Man]], [[Chaos Space Marines]], and the [[Ork]]s. A combi-weapon is essentially a [[bolter]] with another weapon integrated into it. Among the [[Space Marines]] they're commonly used by [[Terminator]]s and most famously by the [[Deathwatch]]. Since 8th Edition came and turned combi-weapons into a flat-out upgrade, individuals armed with them can either shoot any of the two, or, and that's something new compared to previous editions, shoot both at the same time at the cost of a shooting penalty. They come in several varieties.

==Space Marines/Imperials==

Generally speaking, Combi-weapons were first developed during the [[Great Crusade]] in an effort to improve the firepower of Astartes wearing [[Terminator]] armour; because a single [[Bolter]] was just not enough. So the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] started by simply slapping two Bolters together, creating the Combi-Bolter and it snowballed from there. Those weapons were just [[awesome]] enough that their use spread from Terminator units to the entirety of the Space Marine Legions and beyond. The Combi-Bolter was later upgraded further to the purpose built Storm Bolter (while the traitors got stuck with the older variant), but the other Combi-weapons remain much the same as they were back then, combining the 'take-all-comers' flexibility of a good Bolter with the extra punch of a secondary weapon.

===Combi-Flamer===
[[File:Combi-Flamer.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Flamer]]

A boltgun with a [[flamer]] attached to its underside. When you want both the firepower and armor-cracking effects of the Bolter but also want to have the horde cleansing affects of the trusted Flamer, accept no substitutes. Especially useful for close combat situations. Combi-flamers are one of the most common and most well liked type of combi-weapon (The other being the Combi-Plasma) due to its versatility.

Like all Combi-Weapons in 8th edition, you can fire either/or as per normal, or shoot both at a -1 penalty. Because of its Flamer attachment, you can now autohit all enemies and defend [[Your Dudes|your dudes]] when they are being charged.
<gallery>
image:SternguardCombiFlamer.jpg|<center>Sternguard Issue</center>
image:BloodAngelsCombiFlamer.jpg|<center>Blood Angels Sternguard</center>
</gallery>

===Combi-Melta===
[[File:HHCombiMelta.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Melta]]

A bolter with a [[melta|meltagun]] attached to its underside. As you can imagine, these are used when there is a large presence of enemy armor. Combi-meltas are favored by tank-hunter specialists who like the vaporizing affects of the Meltagun but is also quite inclined to attach a more longer-ranged weapon to compensate for the relatively short range of the Meltagun. As you already know, it is very useful when hunting tanks.

Like all Combi-Weapons in 8th edition, you can fire either/or as per normal, or shoot both at a -1 penalty. Because of its Melta attachment, you now have immense flexibility in the tankbusting and troopbusting compartment. Tanks and Terminators would stay the fuck out of your effective range and would make a good deterrent against charging TEQs.
<gallery>
image:SternguardCombiMelta.jpg|<center>Sternguard Issue</center>
SternguardCombiMeltaModel.jpg|<center>Ultramarines Sternguard</center>
</gallery>

===Combi-Grenade Launcher===
[[File:BoltRifleGrenade.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Grenade Launcher.]]

A Bolter with a Grenade launcher strapped to the side, think of this as that particular Noobtube attachment you see on Call of Duty or Battlefield. Sometimes confusingly called the Auxiliary grenade launcher. As you can imagine, some has taken calling this weapon a Noobtube as well despite the fact that on tabletop it is not as overpowered as the ones you see in other video games.

Due to its nature, it is useful for fighting large hordes of enemies or lobbing grenades over well entrenched positions, though why the Imperium thought it would be useful to attach a single-shot grenade launcher to an automatic rocket-propelled grenade launcher is anyone's guess (one might point out that this particular query has already been answered by the above reference to indirect/parabolic fire but, we all have off days). Better question is why it isn't a belt-fed automatic grenade launcher with a box magazine. There is clearly room for it in the picture and a Space Marine can easily handle that. Fill the grenades with little melta-bombs for extra efficiency-effectiveness. (<span style='color:green;font-size:100%'>'''Bigga is betta, zoggin' 'umie!</span style='color:green;font-size:100%'>) Actually, since bolter shells explode after penetration, while good against armor, that effect is shit for clearing hordes. It's a bomb vs an RPG. The grenade part is to fuck up groups while the bolter cuts through lines of men and puts holes in armor.

===Combi-Plasma===
[[File:Rb6-54-combi-plasma.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Plasma]]

The most prevalent type of combi-weapon among loyalists, combi-plasma guns are extremely useful. A popular tactic is to fire a [[plasma]] blast first, allowing the plasma to burn through whatever armor is present, then fire a bolt, which will be able to pierce the exposed flesh and explode inside the target. It is best used against MEQs, which in a Space Marine's combat tour, is a relatively common enemy to face.

Like all Combi-Weapons in 8th edition, you can fire either/or as per normal, or shoot both at a -1 penalty. Because of its Plasma attachment, you have an extremely versatile weapon that can deal with a wide range of infantry scaling from GEQs to TEQs. However like all plasma weapons, you can overcharge to boost its AP with the added risk of it blowing up.
<gallery>
image:SternguardCombiPlasma.jpg|<center>Sternguard Issue</center>
DevastatorCombiPlasma.jpg|<center>Devastator Sergeant</center>
</gallery>

===Combi-Grav===
[[File:Combi-Grav.PNG|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Grav]]

A bolter with a [[Grav-Weaponry|gravgun]] attached to its underside. It serves the same purpose as a Combi-plasma except it fires more shots and has an equal chance of hurting any vehicle while plasma ranges from ouch against light vehicles to all but useless against the heaviest ones. However due to the rarity of Gravguns, let alone a Combi-grav, these weapons are seldom used unless it is of the most dire situations.

Like all Combi-Weapons in 8th edition, you can fire either/or as per normal, or shoot both at a -1 penalty. Because of its Grav attatchment, it is excellent against vehicles and other 'heavy' units. Although it is relatively poor against hordes of cheap infantry. Its status as a Grav weapon means that it is relatively rare in the 41st millennium.
<gallery>
DevastatorCombiGrav.jpg|<center>Devastator Sergeant</center>
CaptainCombiGrav.jpg|<center>Astartes Captain</center>
</gallery>

===Infernus Heavy Bolter===
[[File:InfernusHeavyBolterPict.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Infernus Heavy Bolter]]

Added in with the Deathwatch army, it's just as it sounds, a heavy bolter with an under-slung heavy flamer, whoever made this must have been high off their tits because that shit is ridiculous. Maybe they've been hanging around orks too long because this sounds like a serious case of wanting more [[Dakka]]. You know, I think you're probably right on that one, it sort of makes sense that the guys dealing with [[Xenos]] filth all the time would take the most inspiration from them.

Besides, when you only have a squad and are supposed to fight things an entire company of Astartes would normally face, you need as much dakka as possible. In any case, combining a heavy bolter with the ability to wipe out anyone who manages to get through the hail of fire without stopping the bolt-throwing is pretty dang good.
<gallery>
Infernus_Heavy_Bolter.PNG|<center>Side View</center>
InfernusHeavyBolter.jpg|<center>Front View</center>
</gallery>

===Adrastus Bolt Caliver===
[[File:SagittarumBoltCaliver2.png|150px|right|thumb|Adrastus Bolt Caliver]]

Adrastus Bolt Calivers AKA <u>'''The Golden Gun'''</u> is a type of Combi-Bolt Weapon used by the [[Adeptus Custodes]].

As you can imagine, these guns are one of the best anti-infantry weapons of the Imperium. Due to the size of the Golden Bananas, these hybrid guns are used as heavy weapons by the Custodes and utilize [[Adrathic Weapons|'Adrasite']] disintegration beam technology banned from the wider Imperium. This essentially makes them as Imperial [[Gauss|Gauss Blasters]] but fluff-wise better and quicker to work but shorter ranged. This combination weapon is able to unleash a fusillade of explosive rounds at long range with the potency of a Heavy Bolter or fire a short range disintegration beam able to rip a target apart at the molecular level. Their golden color and its properties makes them officially [[Awesome]].

Only the [[Sagittarum Guard]] are given the privilege to be issued and trained with these golden weapons of war.
<gallery>
SagittarumBoltCaliver.png|<center>First Side View</center>
Bolt_Caliver.PNG|<center>Second Side View</center>
AdrastusBolterFront.jpg|<center>Front View</center>
AdrastusBolterCabling.jpg|<center>Left View</center>
</gallery>

===Disintegration Combi-Gun===
[[File:Disintegration_Combi-Gun.PNG|150px|right|thumb|Disintegration Combi-Gun]]

A rare weapon from the Dark Age of Technology, the Disintegration Gun is actually only available in the forms of a pistol or combi-weapon. It does exactly as the name suggests, disintegrate things. In 7E, the Disintegration Gun itself has a very similar statline and effects to the Adrathic weaponry of the Custodes (also described as being disintegration weapons), so one can assume the Adrathus Bolt Caliver (An Adrathic Destructor mounted on a Heavy Bolter) is pretty much a beefed-up version of it. With weapons like this, one must wonder how fucked up the Age of Strife was that shit like this wasn't enough to save humanity from being mulched.

Despite being powerful and looking pretty damn sweet, this weapon is only available on the limited edition "Imperial Space Marine" model, so you're gonna have to deal with eBay scalpers or learn how to convert one of your own if you want one.

===Gallery===
====Combi-Flamer====
<gallery>
DeathwatchCombiFlamer.jpg|<center>Deathwatch</center>
CassiusCombiFlamer.jpg|<center>''[[Ortan Cassius|Cassius]]'s''</center>
HeresyCombiFlamer.jpg|<center>Legion</center>
</gallery>

====Combi-Melta====
<gallery>
BASternguardCombiMelta.jpg|<center>Blood Angels Sternguard</center>
DeathwatchCombiMelta.jpg|<center>Deathwatch</center>
LibrarianTerminatorCombiMelta.jpg|<center>Storm Bolter Design</center>
HelbrechtCombiMelta.jpg|<center>''[[Helbrecht]]'s''</center>
TychoCombiMelta.jpg|<center>''[[Erasmus Tycho|Tycho]]'s''</center>
HeroCombiMelta.jpg|<center>Heresy Era</center>
HeresyCombiMelta.jpg|<center>Legion</center>
</gallery>

====Combi-Plasma====
<gallery>
DeathwatchCombiPlasma.jpg|<center>Deathwatch</center>
AzraelCombiPlasma.jpg|<center>''[[Azrael]]'s''</center>
HeresyCombiPlasma.jpg|<center>Legion</center>
</gallery>

==Inquisition / Assassinorum==

===Combi-Needler===
[[File:CombiNeedlerPict.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Needler]]

A weapon used by the [[Daemonhunters|Ordo Malleus]]. A Bolter with a Needler integrated within it, intended to be used against creatures like [[Daemons|daemons]] that are extremely difficult to injure. This Combi-weapon is used only by the [[Inquisitors]] and [[Acolyte|Acolytes]] of the [[Ordo Malleus]] as the materials and expertise needed to craft these weapons is difficult and hard to acquire. A variant of this Combi-weapon also serves as the primary weapon of [[Eversor Assassin|Eversor Assassins]].

The Combi-Needler is used by non-assassins and it is a relatively easy to manufacture weapon in contrast to the Executioner Pistol. Of course as a Needler, it is a pain in the ass to shoot the damn thing.
<gallery>
Combi-Needler.jpg|<center>Pistol Variant</center>
EscherCombiNeedler.jpg|<center>House Escher</center>
</gallery>

===Condemner Boltgun===
[[File:Condemner_Boltgun.PNG|150px|right|thumb|Condemner Boltgun]]

Also called the Combi-Stake Crossbow. Used by Ordo Hereticus and Sisters of Battle, this is a bolter combined with one-use crossbow. Yeah, it sounds pretty pathetic. The cool point is that the crossbow bolt is filled with a mix of holy promethium and some anti-psychic shit produced by the Golden Throne.

So a direct hit from the crossbow component of the Condemnor Bolter will therefore not only deal a severe physical wound to an enemy psyker, it will also send his or her power spiraling out of control, consuming the user in a storm of untrammeled psychic energy. So it's not only going to burn the witch's body, but also burn down his very soul (which is crunch wise auto-peril to any psyker target).

<gallery>
CondemnorBoltgunPict.jpg|<center>Front View</center>
CondemnorBoltgunTop.jpg|<center>Top View</center>
</gallery>

===Executioner Pistol===
[[File:Executioner_Pistol.png|150px|right|thumb|Executioner Pistol]]

Used by [[Eversor]] assassins, this is (in DH) a combi-needle pistol, or (in [[WH40k]]) a pistol that fires [[What|poisonous needle shaped bolt rounds.]] As a result, the Assassin can fire both explosive Bolts or needles composed of a crystallised neurotoxin, sedative or interrogation narcotic into his victim, as the situation demands. The weapon's Needle Pistol toxins are so potent that whenever a target is hit by a shot it kills the victim almost outright.

It is this versatility, combined with the exquisite craftsmanship of every Executor Pistol, that makes it such a popular choice for one of the Imperium’s sanctioned assassins. The weapon incorporates the heights of arcane tech-lore in its construction. It possesses a bi-stabilized targeting sight, and its polymorphic grip is genetically coded to the individual Assassin. Thus, even if an opponent were somehow to gain control of an Executor Pistol, he would be unable to fire it. Changing the weapon’s programming to recognize a different user requires access to secret Officio Assassinorum facilities, something that is almost impossible even for most members of the Inquisition.
<gallery>
ExecutionerPistolLeftView.jpg|<center>Left View</center>
ExecutionerPistolRightView.jpg|<center>Right View</center>
</gallery>

==Chaos Space Marines==

[[File:TigrusBolter53.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Combi-Bolter]]

===Combi-Bolter===

Also known as a Twin-linked Bolter, the combi-bolter was basically a pair of boltguns welded together to create a more dangerous weapon. It was used by the Space Marine Legions during the [[Great Crusade]]. However, it has been replaced by the Storm Bolter among the Imperium, but is still used by Chaos Space Marines, more specifically on the Chaos Space Marine Bike Squadrons where they can perform dakka in a quick and easy fashion. In 8th Edition, it is functionally identical to a Storm Bolter.

==Orks==
===Kombi-Rokkit Launcha===
[[File:ORK_SpareKeys_Rokkit-Kombi.png|150px|right|thumb|Kombi-Rokkit Launcha]]

The Shoota/Rokkit Launcha gives the user a single side-mounted Rokkit Launcha with a single Rokkit to use against enemy tanks and armored vehicles. Great for when your Shoota Boyz needs a little bit more anti-vehicular punch and weight or if you need more Tankbustas but don't want to waste anymore points. Considering orkish ballistic skill it's probably going to miss when you fire it or explode in your face if the wiring is all wrong.

Because of its Rokkit attachment, it would give the Orks some needed anti-armor in an army that is vulnerable from mass artillery and machine gun fire. A Kombi-Rokkit allows your Orks to have a chance (albeit a low one given Ork accuracy) to pop some armor before it gets too hot.
<gallery>
KombiRokkit.jpg|<center>Meganob</center>
KombiRokkitBoss.jpg|<center>Common Variant</center>
</gallery>

===Kombi-Skorcha===
[[File:Kombi-Skorcher.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Kombi-Skorcha]]

An orkish version of the Combi-flamer with the more powerful skorcha (heavy flamer) attached to it instead of a flamer. The ork version of a combi-weapon is a shoota with something attached to it instead of a boltgun with something attached to it. Great for crowd clearing as well as boosting the CQC killyness of your Orky Boyz, and unlike the Kombi-Rokkit Launcha, you don't really need to worry about accuracy.

The Kombi-Skorcha in 8th edition became ridiculous especially when you have all your Nobs or a Big Mek equipped with one. This thing is capable of unleashing 2D6 heavy flamer shots with 6 str5 and 4 str4 shots. Have a bunch of Nobs equipped with one and have them ride on any troop carrying vehicle and let it rip.
<gallery>
KombiSkorcha.jpg|<center>Meganob</center>
KombiSkorchaNob.jpg|<center>Common Variant</center>
</gallery>

===Twin-Linked Shoota===
[[File:Twin-Linked_Shoota.PNG|150px|right|thumb|Twin-Linked Shoota]]

Think of this as the Ork's equivalent to the [[Chaos Space Marines]] Combi-Bolter. The Twin-Linked Shoota is basically two large Shootas duct-taped together from side to side. The Twin-Linked Shoota is often used commonly by Ork Warbosses as it gives them sufficient dakka before closing in for the kill and krumpin' his enemies. It provides greater accuracy than your standard everyday Shoota.

The Twin-Linked Shoota is essentially like the Combi-Bolter, but with more [[Dakka]] and even less accuracy and range. Seriously, it is a pretty impressive feat even by Ork standards to create a weapon that out-storm the Stormbolter and Combi-Bolter respectively.

<gallery>
TwinShootaFront.jpg|<center>Front View</center>
TwinShootaBack.jpg|<center>Back View</center>
</gallery>

===Gallery===
====Twin-Linked Shoota====
<gallery>
TwinShootaNob.jpg|<center>Common Variant</center>
TwinShootaTrakk.jpg|<center>Wartrakk Mount</center>
KombiSlugga.jpg|<center>Slugga Variant</center>
</gallery>

==Real Life==
Yes, these actually exist. Yes, it is [[Awesome]].

The earliest combination weapons sought to combine the ranged firepower of pistols with the close combat of a melee weapon, usually pistol-swords or pistol-axes. Because the components on a pistol didn’t hold up well to physical abuse and the added weight made the melee weapon part awkward to wield, these were not widespread. The only version that became successful was the bayonet mounted on a rifle. Others combined the mechanical reliability of a crossbow with an undermount wheel-lock pistol.

Compared to twin-linked weapons in 40k, in real life this was never done with military small arms. The vast majority of twin-linked weapons are gun turrets specifically intended to destroy aircraft. Against a ground target, a single barrel weapon is sufficient. But against a fast-moving aircraft, the best way to increase your hit probability is to spam as many bullets as possible. We do have one example of a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P57iXMmlUZo|twin-linked M1911 pistol] that was made for the lolz, and an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villar_Perosa_aircraft_submachine_gun Italian SMG from WWI] that started as turret gun for biplanes before being handed to ground troops out of sheer desperation, but users quickly realized that any potential benefit to doubling firepower is lost on the added weight, awkward handling, and the fact that neither bullet will hit exactly where you aim.

But, we added the qualifier up there of 'military' small arms for a reason, and double barreled weapons are fairly common as hunting weapons such as the double barreled shot gun. In these cases the ability to take a second shot quickly on game that might be running away, or running toward you if your going after big game like bear, elephant or even boar, is more important then weight, and if you do have a bear running down on you the ability to take a second shot before you get torn apart is of the upmost importance.

Below are some specific examples of combinations weapons.

===[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeMat_Revolver LeMat Revolver]===
Are you depressed about your [[Dakka|nine-shot revolver]] not having more firepower? Well worry not, as the axle used by this gun's cylinder also doubles as a smoothbore barrel, allowing you to fire a shotgun blast with just a flick of the small lever atop the hammer! Amazing!
{{clear}}

===Grenade Launcher===
The only major combi-weapon the military uses. Examples include the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M203_grenade_launcher M203], which clips under the barrel like a bayonet. It can also be reloaded, unlike pre-8th Edition 40k variants, and has basically replaced the non-automatic Grenade Launcher.
{{clear}}

===Shotgun===
Not as common as an underbarrel grenade launcher, the military also has a few different shotgun attachements, such as the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_Armament_Company_Masterkey KAC Masterkey] or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M26_Modular_Accessory_Shotgun_System M26 MASS]. Used for door breaching more than anything else, troops can also load up specialized rounds for everything from bean-bags to taser shells to even [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRAG-12 small grenades].

{{40k-Imperial-Weapons}}
{{40k-Chaos-Weapons}}
{{40k-Ork-Weapons}}

Crossbow

2020-03-09T23:51:31Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:99AB:B4C1:E2E5:4A7B: /* Use in warfare */

[[image:crossbow.jpg|thumb|300px|right|An Arbalast Crossbow with an iron prod. Note the iron stirrup ring on the front; which the user could use in this case to hold down with his foot when pulling back the draw string or mounting a gaffe lever to push the string back]]
{{topquote|'''I waste him with my crossbow!'''|Bob Herzog, ''[[Knights Of The Dinner Table]]''}}

The '''crossbow''' is named for its cross-shaped design, as it is basically a [[Bows and Arrows|bow]] (in technical terms, called a prod) on a stock (alternatively called a tiller) that uses a locking trigger mechanism to hold and fire either an arrow (called a bolt or quarrel) or a small spherical stone or lead bullet (the latter usually being used for hunting). Bolts are arrows with a shorter shaft, and could range from being lighter than an average arrow to several times heavier. It operates on the same principle as the traditional bow in that a tough bowstring is pulled back to store potential energy in the bow, which upon release of the string, transfers it to a projectile.

While historians are unsure who first made the crossbow, the earliest known crossbows were found in [[China]] around 700 to 500 BCE. During the Warring States period, crossbows became a preferred ranged weapon of Chinese armies due to ease of use for conscripts and the use of crossbows certainly aided in the rise of the Qin Dynasty and the beginning of Imperial China. The Greeks and Romans experimented with hand-held crossbows, but they never made extensive use of them, although they did make extensive use of ballista (basically a crossbow scaled up to the size of an artillery piece, and often shot stone instead of scaled up arrows). The [[Asians|Chinese]] of these times, on the other hand, had crossbows of all types and shapes: from one-handed repeater crossbows, capable of launching dozens of (fairly weak, but often poisoned) arrows per minute, to absurdly heavy ones, designed to be pulled by legs, rather than arms, and launch arrows the size of small javelin, later with gunpowder-filled bombs on the heading at range, only rivaled by siege engines, though later they passed out in favor of multiple rocket launchers (yes, you read it right). Crossbows began to see widespread use in Europe around 1000 CE, at this time emerged crossbows with steel bow sections, more commonly called arbalasts.

The difference between a bow and a crossbow is that a bow's string needs to be pulled back and held by the user while aiming, while a crossbow has a mechanism that locks the bowstring in a readied state and only requires the user to operate the trigger to release the bolt upon sighting their target. The trigger mechanism evolved over time, as did aids for drawing the crossbow's string. The weight or size of the crossbow certainly had an effect on the mechanisms involved, as light crossbows could be reset by hand, but heavier version could end up using levers or crank-operated windlasses to pull back and cock the string, and tended to use more robust release mechanisms due to the increased stress involved.

In fantasy settings, technologically advanced races who don't (or in limitation) employ [[firearm]]s as their go-to weapon typically make heavy use of crossbows. It is also the ranged weapon of choice for richer and more experienced mercenaries.

For some reason in a lot of fantasy and medieval fiction it seems to be the preferred ranged weapon of whoever the bad guys are. Examples include A Song Of Ice and Fire (where it seems to be the favorite weapon of [[brundlepenis|King Joffrey]]), The Lord of the Rings ([[Ork|Uruk-Hai]] marksmen use crossbows) and different settings of DnD ([[Drow]] poisoned repeater crossbows). This may have something to do with crossbows being less relying on the wielder's strengths, stamina and personal skill, and thus regarded as "unfair" weapon compared to bow, it was at one point banned by the pope for use on Christians, although due to it's usefulness on the battlefield this was largely ignored.

The crossbow is also the favored ranged weapon of [[dwarves]] in most fantasy fiction, though in this case it may be more than just aesthetics; while it would be fitting for a race known for their technical expertise to use a more complex device, also keep in mind that dwarves would have a harder time using regular bows. A bow's power depends on its draw length, and having shorter arms, dwarves can't get as much power out of a bow. They also need a weapon that can be used more easily in confined spaces, which disqualifies longbows right away. What they do have going for them, though, is great strength, making a crossbow's high draw weight less of an issue for them.

==Use in warfare==
A major advantage of crossbows over regular bows is that because they're fired using a mechanism instead of depending on human strength to hold the bow in a ready-to-fire position, user fatigue is no longer such a huge factor. Additionally, the heavier crossbows could generate more force than most humans thanks to the pulley systems used to cock the string, thus heavier bolts could be thrown, resulting in greater penetration of the target. Possibly its biggest advantage is that it was easier to train the use of a crossbow than bows since the weapon's operation is much less taxing.

Of course, the main drawback with crossbows is that they require a wider range of resources and skills to produce due to the mechanisms involved. Crossbows also generally have a lower rate of fire than bows. At best, a crossbowman can get off about eight shots a minute. More powerful arbalast crossbows that used windlasses could manage about three shots a minute, but could store more energy than a human could physically pull back with bare hands. For these reasons Crossbows excel in a siege situation where the ranges are long and you can duck into cover easily while you're reloading. And since sieges tended to be drawn-out affairs anyway, reload time wasn't as necessary.

That being said, despite crossbows being much more expensive than bows, they were much less demanding on user's skill and physique, meaning you can train as many crossbowmen as you have crossbows and replenish killed ones in just few months of training, while in order to train a bowmen you need to start with kids. So while a single bowman is much more effective than a single crossbowman, you can afford a half-dozen of crossbowmen for the cost of one bowman, and replace lost ones quickly as long as their weapon survives the battle. This is probably why they first took off in Warring States period China, where raising large conscript armies was the name of the game.

It should be noted that despite having much greater draw weights than contemporary bows (above 500 lbs in some cases), crossbows were not proportionally more powerful due to their very short draw length, translating into a much briefer energy transfer. More modern crossbows sometimes address this by using recurve bows, or even by using a bullpup configuration by turning the bow backwards and then pulling the string past the bow. Additionally, the reduced aerodynamic properties of crossbow bolts as compared to arrows mean that they very rapidly lose velocity after a relatively short distance, giving them great punch at short range but reduced effectiveness at longer ranges as compared to bows.

The fact that even relatively poorly trained men armed with crossbows could royally murder fully armored knights, made the crossbow one of the most hated pre-firearm weapons in the Europe, even more than the infamous flamberge. At some point it even came to the pope banning crossbows as unholy weapon not to be used on fellow Christians, but even then they remained popular among mercenaries, rich lords and Protestants. Proud knights could accept deaths from elite long/composite bowmen who like them were training from childhood, but not from some hastily drilled dirty peasant levies whose lord could afford few dozens of crossbows.

Finally, one of the most underrated uses of a crossbow was the psychological element. Those armies that weren't used to fighting against crossbowmen (and many who were) found themselves outranged, outgunned, and/or overpowered by crossbows. Many medieval armours and early modern ones were not capable of withstanding the sheer force that a crossbow shot could inflict, in comparison to many regular bows. This meant that the presence of crossbows on a battlefield could keep certain units away, due to them not being able to withstand that kind of shot. Indeed, we have medieval chronicles talking about the power of the crossbow:

<blockquote> ''This cross-bow is a bow of the barbarians quite unknown to the Greeks; and it is not stretched by the right hand pulling the string whilst the left pulls the bow in a contrary direction, but he who stretches this warlike and very far-shooting weapon must lie, one might say, almost on his back and apply both feet strongly against the semi-circle of the bow and with his two hands pull the string with all his might in the contrary direction. In the middle of the string is a socket, a cylindrical kind of cup fitted to the string itself, and about as long as an arrow of considerable size which reaches from the string to the very middle of the bow; and through this arrows of many sorts are shot out. The arrows used with this bow are very short in length, but very thick, fitted in front with a very heavy iron tip. And in discharging them the string shoots them out with enormous violence and force, and whatever these darts chance to hit, they do not fall back, but they pierce through a shield, then cut through a heavy iron corselet and wing their way through and out at the other side. So violent and ineluctable is the discharge of arrows of this kind. Such an arrow has been known to pierce a bronze statue, and if it hits the wall of a very large town, the point of the arrow either protrudes on the inner side or it buries itself in the middle of the wall and is lost. Such then is this monster of a crossbow, and verily a devilish invention. And the wretched man who is struck by it, dies without feeling anything, not even feeling the blow, however strong it be.''

Anna Commeno, ''The Alexiad'' </blockquote>

Crossbows are still occasionally used for military purposes; while a crossbow's bolts lack the stopping power of modern firearms, the bolts it fires are quieter than any "silenced" firearm and it can also be used for niche purposes such as launching grappling hooks or detonating tripwire-activated mines, and its lower projectile speed means it's much less likely to set off any worn explosives. While its comparatively lower ability to kill outright can be an issue you could use the same solution that the Indian Navy used for this problem and use Cyanide tipped bolts, or take the Rambo route and use bolts with explosive tips.

See Also: [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20#Crossbows are Underpowered in d20|Crossbows are Underpowered in d20]]

===Loading Mechanisms===
Because later crossbows were often too tough to simply pull back unaided, a number of devices were invented to allow the wielder rearm the crossbow via pulling back the string (in a process called spanning). The device used usually depended upon the draw weight of the bow, as heavier bows would require more advanced devices that required more time to pull back.

*'''Gloves and Stirrup''': Generally leather or some other material, good quality gloves (or some tough callouses) can save one some finger or palm bleeding from trying to pull it by the old fashioned way. Talking from experience, if one is to do it this way, put your entire upper back and arms into it, and pull. Either user placed both feet on the bow's span on each side of the stock or in the stirrup ring attached to the crossbow head. Most commonly associated way of reloading in popular culture besides the Cranequin and Windlass. First appearance: 700 to 500's BCE. Mechanical advantage: 1 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 150-300 lbs.
*'''Stirrup and Belt Hook''': Most crossbows you see have a stirrup ring towards the front end for putting your foot through to hold it steady. Combined with a belt worn around the waist with a hook attached to it, the wielder could use their whole body, rather than just their arms, to arm the crossbow. Could also use a belt-attached pulley configuration to lessen the strength to draw. First appearance: 1200's. Mechanical advantage: about 2 or 1 to 1 (depending on whether using pulley configuration). Maximum draw weight: 320-450 lbs.
*'''Goat's Foot Lever''': This was a fairly simple detachable metal lever that gave the user more leverage when pulling back the string. Composed of a rod attached to two curved prongs and two hinged hooks; it's shape had a resemblance to a goat's foot (obvious in the name). Mounts on two metal lugs on the body's sides near the trigger, pull drawstring back in one motion via two hinged hooks, place folded lever back on belt, load the bolt on the crossbow, and then shoot. This could arm the crossbow in a single smooth motion with the lever's curved prongs making the drawing force decrease as the spanning distance increases. Lighter versions can be spanned from horseback or while standing. The heavier ones would require you to put your foot in the stirrup while kneeling and bracing it against your shin as you pull the lever back. Very common for field portable bows and mounted crossbowmen. First appearance: Between 1300's to 1400's. Mechanical Advantage: from 5 up to 30 to 1 (depending on how far the lever is pulled). Maximum draw weight: 500-600 lbs.
*'''Gaffe Lever''': Derived from its older goats foot lever cousin, the gaffe lever consisted of a two piece wooden lever held by a hinge and attached to the stirrup ring via metal hook. User pushed down on the lever to push the drawstring into the trigger before removing. More associated with nobles hunting or shooting clubs than with military arsenals after the gunpowder weapons appeared in the 1500's during the Renaissance. First appearance: 1500's. Mechanical advantage: up to 30 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 400 lbs.
*'''Lever-Action''': Alternatively called "Self-Cocking" or "Self-Spanning" crossbows. These generally use hinged or sliding levers embedded into the crossbow body. The user unlocks catch holding the hinge firm before folding open the half of the crossbow body to catch the drawstring on a latch before pulling back to the trigger to arm the crossbow. Unlike the Asian equivalent in the Chu-Ko-Nu, these did not have a top magazine. This enabled users to aim after loading and pulling a trigger to shoot at the cost of having to load the bolt by hand. Besides the Scottish Border Reivers' latchet crossbow in the 1600's, two noted examples are Martin Löffelholz's armbrust in the Codex Löffelholz and Da Vinci's Balestra Veloce in the Codex Atlanticus (the balestra veloce). While [[Awesome|impressive]], lever-action crossbows were never mainstream or famous due to the transition to gunpowder weapons in the 1500's during the Renaissance. First appearance: 1500's. Mechanical advantage: up to 25 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 220 - 300 lbs.
*'''Windlass''': Alternatively called the "Winch." Like the Cranequin, this was a winding device, but it also came with a bulky pulley system that was mounted to the back of the crossbow. As a result, this was a tremendously powerful pulling system at the expense of needing a lot of time to arm. Along with the Cranequin, this was one of the strongest crossbow loading methods. Contrary to popular culture, it was more often used on large, heavy crossbows for stationary battles like trench warfare or sieges like modern anti-tank guns. On the other hand, usage on open battlefields (behind pavise shields) for support artillery wasn't unheard of. First appearance: 1400’s. Mechanical advantage: ~160 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 1500 lbs+ (limited by time and bow strength).
*'''Cranequin''': Also called the "Rack and Pinion," this device used gears and a crank to wind up the bowstring, requiring multiple turns to pull it all the way back. Device slid onto lugs mounted on the stock and was removed before firing. Along with the Windlass, this was one of the strongest crossbow loading methods. Contrary to popular culture, it was more often used on large, heavy crossbows for stationary battles like trench warfare or sieges like modern anti-tank guns. On the other hand, usage on mounted crossbowmen with lighter crossbows and by footmen on open battlefields (behind pavise shields) for artillery support wasn't unheard of. First appearance: 1500's. Mechanical advantage: ~600 or 840 to 1. Maximum draw weight: 2000 lbs+.

==Types of Crossbows==
As a general note, crossbows are not ballistas, despite their visual similarity. Unlike Crossbows which store energy in a set of arms which are bent back, Ballistas instead store energy in twisted rope that has a wooden beam pushed into it which is then twisted back farther before firing to store energy. That said, some ballistas are discussed here until a proper "[[Siege Weapon|siege]]" article is consolidated.

*'''Gastraphetes''': an early Greek crossbow, the Gastraphetes, or "belly bow", was cocked by resting the stomach on the bolt rest of the stock (which contained a sliding plank attached to the drawstring) and pushing down so that more energy can be stored then an archer could provide. The Gastraphetes worked slightly different from the classic crossbow, in that its arrow slot was two-piece, with the sliding inner plank attached to the drawstring. Thus, rather than drawing back the crossbow, you readied it by slamming it into the ground until the trigger catches onto a latch. While impressive, it was restricted to hip fire, was fired with a button-like trigger, and was more of a man portable siege weapon. A larger winch-spanned, tripod-mounted version, the Oxybeles, was in use as a stationary artillery weapon before being replaced by the ballista.

* '''Polybolos''': roughly meaning “multi-bolt thrower” in Greek and also known as a "repeating ballista," the Polybolos more often resembles a big crossbow than a ballista since the arms are fixed to the "stock" and don't twist around to fire it; though some versions do use arms wedged into tense bundles of twisted ropes like regular ballista. The repeating ballista was fired by turning a wheel connected to a chain drive forward to cock it, then turning it the other way to load it again from a hopper on top of the stock and fire it. Turning the wheel at the back of the crossbow counterclockwise pushed a sliding plank called the mensa (like that from the Gastrophetes/Oxyboles) forward. Once driven forward sufficiently, the latch claws at the back of the plank are pushed up by a lug under the plank and hold the drawstring in place. Then, turning the wheel clockwise drew the drawstring back as the plank slides backwards. At the same time, the motion of the plank drives a screw threaded pole (in contact with the plank by a block with a sliding nut) to rotate and load a bolt (via a built-in notch on the rod) onto the body of the plank from the hopper on top. Pulling the wheel back to the very end will bump the latch on another lug that triggers the latch into releasing the drawstring and firing the bolt.

* '''Chinese "Nu" crossbow''': the Chinese version of the crossbow is noticeably different from the European crossbow: which had a power stroke (drawing span) of about 7 inches, used a rolling nut latch held in place by a sear pushed by a long horizontal lever-like trigger mounted in the middle of the stock, and used prods (bow pieces) made from simple wood, composite, and later with metal. In contrast, the Chinese crossbow had a power stroke of about 21 inches, used a complicated two-piece vertical trigger at the very back of the stock (held together by tension and two pins at the very end of the stock) inside a pistol grip mount, and used wood or composite prods (often salvaged from recurve bows and constructed for conscripts to use en mass instead of drilling archery skills into them). Thus, due to the longer power stroke via the trigger being placed further back and assuming that all other factors are equal, the bolts fired by the Chinese bows (usually with draw weights of 380 lbs) were launched with comparable performance to an average European windlass crossbow (with a draw weight of 1,500 lbs). However, the Chinese crossbows themselves were rather large, cumbersome, and had to be reloaded with just stirrup rings, belt hooks, and/or gloves.

* '''Chu-Ko-Nu''': literally meaning “Zhuge’s Crossbow," classical legend associated it a Chinese noble named Zhuge Liang (2nd Century AD). Alternatively known as the "Lian Nu" (repeating crossbow), it's also known as the "Chinese repeating crossbow" and is one of the more common types of specialty crossbows seen in fiction. In reality, it was invented during the Warring States Period (4th Century BC) in the State of Chu. The term "repeating crossbow" brings to mind some bastard combination of Assault rifle and crossbow, which it kinda is and is not. Without doubt, this thing could fire quickly; trained soldiers could loose ten bolts in fifteen seconds before having to reload. Mechanically, it consisted of a stock that the user secured on their hip with the bowstring sliding through a slit on each side of the sliding magazine/bolt rest. By pushing and then pulling the lever that secures the magazine to the stock, the user catches bowstring on a notch at the back end of the slits while loading the bolt by gravity onto the bolt rest. Once the lever is fully compressed down, a sliding lug nut at the base of the magazine pushes the string up off the notches and propels the bolt out. However, because of the mechanism's design, the pumping action that pulled the string back also fired the bolt at the same time while the magazine is built on top of the bow. Due to that, you could not pull the string back and then aim. Chu-ko-nu's were limited to hip fire; giving you almost ork levels of accuracy in exchange for an appreciable volume of fire. In layman's terms, it's the same as being restricted to hip-firing a pump action shotgun with the trigger permanently welded in the fire position. Additionally because you were pulling the string back one handed, the bolts had a lot less penetration power than those of a regular crossbow. However, the bolts (which fell down onto the stock from a hopper mounted on top) were often poisoned to make up for that (as seen with the [[Drow]], who make use of the weapon extensively). While no matter how strong the poison on your bolt is, you're not gonna kill a man instantly with a scratch. However, on the battlefield causing enough pain to make a person go into shock is as good as killing them outright, and poison delivers the last one in spades. The downside was you had next to no luck piercing good quality armor or thick leather that an enemy is wearing while you're using it.

* '''Balestra Veloce/Löffelholz Armbrust crossbows''': First mentioned in Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus (1478 to 1519) and Martin Löffelholz's Codex Löffelholz (1505), both versions of the said lever-action design (which differ mainly by the arrangement of the trigger, latch, and sear mechanism) used a stock consisting of two wood and metal pieces on top of each other and hinged at the head of the crossbow. By unlocking a catch on the stock, the user can then swing forward the bottom half of the stock to extend a a latch housed in a sliding plank (like that on the gastraphetes) to catch the drawstring. Once the drawstring is caught, the stock is then closed; locking the stock back together and bringing the latch (which is held firm by a spring-loaded sear) back into contact with the trigger on the lower half of the stock. User then loaded the bolt and pulled the trigger to compress the sear; letting the rolling nut release the crossbow string. Whether the German or Italian version came first is unclear; though the rapid fire crossbow pages in the Codex Atlanticus are dated back to 1485. Either codex's blueprints can be found online via an online archive created by "The Visual Agency" media company or a pdf scan hosted by Krakow's Jagiellonian Library respectively. While firing and reloading more rapidly than the mainstream "goats foot lever" crossbows, it was not widely used due to possibly three reasons.
** First, the amount of expert craftsmanship to make it and the extensive training to use it was cost prohibitive for a relatively complicated and delicately structured weapon. This meant that it was likely more of a special luxury weapon that only wealthy people could afford rather than a mass produced weapon for conscripts (the same reason why breech loading rifles existed since the 16th Century for noble hunters but didn't replace muzzle-loading smoothbore muskets in mass use for militaries until the 1840's).
** Second, while quicker than spanning a crossbow with a goat's foot or gaffe lever, the draw weight is reduced to a mere average of 220 lbs. Being half of the maximum draw weight of gaffe and goat's foot lever crossbows, this meant weaker penetration and shorter ranges. This was likely to make the lever-action crossbow more easily rearmed without being too strong to either break the trigger lock or cock with your hands.
** Third, the introduction of gunpowder weapons alongside the volley fire from massed Pike and Shot square formations occurred during the Renaissance. Since these crossbows were developed right when gunpowder took over, this meant these lever-action crossbows already went obsolete the same way that heavy plate-armored cavalry and longbow archers did. Hence, this is why these crossbow types (as well as other related specimens preserved at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches and New York City’s Metropolitan museums) were usually hunting or city militia pieces rather than military arsenal pieces.

* '''Latch/Latchet Crossbow''': A light lever-action crossbow popular with Scottish border raiders called Reivers in the 1600's to 1700's, it worked via swinging an internal metal lever forward from the top to push a sliding latch forward to secure the drawstring after unlocking the catch. The user then pushed the lever back into the body to arm the bow before loading and shooting. Popular to the Scottish in the region for home defense and raiding as they were small, easy to use, easy to make, very quiet compared to the more finicky wheel-lock pistol, had a decent draw weight of about 250 lbs, and took only 10 seconds to reload. Their downside was their short range and being restricted to hip firing due to the trigger being a button on the top (a trade off to enable horsemen to fire one-handed from the saddle though you could tuck it into your armpit and adjust to aiming over your thumb).

* '''Bed Crossbow''': A Chinese peculiarity, where multiple crossbows mounted on a static frame were combined to create an increased draw strength. A precursor to the compound crossbow.

*'''Bullet Crossbows''': Also referred to as pelletbows, stonebows, and ballesters, these were essentially the same as regular crossbows or similar to a slingshot in crossbow form, except they fired stone or lead shot instead of bolts. Usually used for recreational shooting and small game hunting.

*'''Crossbow pistol''': Small crossbows designed to be fired from one hand, with modernized versions commonly featuring a more modern pistol grip and trigger. While these did exist in the past, they were nowhere near as lethal as battlefield crossbows as the draw weights were far smaller.

*'''Arbalast''': As European armor improved with the development of steel plate crossbows with wooden bow sections were just not cutting the mustard anymore, as such they began making that part out of steel. This meant that the bow could store more energy and launch a projectile farther and faster, significantly improving armor penetration but it also increased the amount of energy required to draw it, often requiring various leavers and cranking mechanisms to reset it.

*'''Slurbow:''' A crossbow with a cover over its barrel and a small gap used to draw its string back. Arguably influenced by the pistol, the slurbow was mostly used for firing unfeathered quarrels or darts.

*'''Sauterelle''': The last apparition of a crossbow-like weapon in a modern battlefield for frontline work. In WWI, soldiers had a problem: all the artillery that existed was big and unable to drop explosives accurately into a trench, especially at close range. And on the other hand, thrown hand grenades had the precision but too limited range. As an interim solution the French invented the ''Sauterelle'' (grasshopper in French): basically a big crossbow built to lob grenades at around 150 yards distance. Worked decently enough but later in the war they were replaced by small, two-man team infantry mortars that were just as easy to move around and use but had three or four time the range and a better rate of fire.

*'''Compound Crossbow''': the modern version of the crossbow, which is basically a modern compound bow on a rifle stock. Many of these also come equipped with telescopic sights modified with cross-hairs that compensate for the effects of gravity, wind, elevation, and other factors that might affect a bolt's accuracy. They are primarily used for hunting, sport and (unusually) home defense in Britain since everything else has been banned. Also finds military (specifically special forces, not frontline grunts), espionage and law enforcement utility by being used to fire ziplines or grappling hooks, explosive, incendiary, poisoned or gas releasing projectiles, or simply well made darts for a silent kill. Most use conventional spanning mechanisms but some more recent exotic ones combine various technological concepts from past and present (such as the ones build by hobbyists like Lacas Crossbows or cottage industries like GoGun's Cobra Adder; with those being a bizarre chimera between the Chu-Ko-Nu's hopper magazine (the latter's being detachable), the Balestra Veloce's lever action system, along with modern optics, grips, and compound, composite bow-pieces).

{{MedievalWeaponry}}