Crossbows Trivia
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50 free Crossbows trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The crossbow is a bow turned sideways and given a trigger, and that one change reshaped warfare on two continents. This quiz starts with the machine itself: what the prod, tiller, bolt and quarrel are, how a rolling nut differs from a Chinese bronze lock, and why a windlass or cranequin was needed to span an arbalest that could still only loose two bolts a minute. Then it follows the weapon through history: bronze locks from 650 BC and the mass crossbow volleys of the Han armies, the belly-bow of Dionysius of Syracuse, the Pictish hunting stones, the 1139 council that banned crossbows against Christians, the Genoese mercenaries who left their pavises behind at Crécy, the bolt at Châlus that killed Richard the Lionheart, the apple on William Tell's son's head, and the repeating crossbow wrongly credited to Zhuge Liang. It ends with grenade-lobbing crossbows in the First World War, Montagnard crossbowmen alongside the Green Berets, whale-biopsy bolts and Daryl Dixon. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a crossbow in a film; the expert tier is for military historians and re-enactors. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the crossbow, its history and the people and battles involved, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the bow part of a crossbow called?
The prod
It is also called the lath; the word prod apparently comes from a 19th-century mistranslation of rodd in a 16th-century inventory.
Q 02The main frame of a crossbow, held like the stock of a gun, is called what?
The tiller
The bow-like assembly is mounted horizontally across it, which is what puts the cross in crossbow.
Q 03The arrow-like projectiles shot by a crossbow are called bolts or what?
Quarrels
The word comes from Old French for a square thing, after their typically square heads.
Q 04Compared with arrows shot from a traditional hand bow, crossbow bolts are typically what?
Shorter and heavier
A crossbow's short draw length means the bolt has to be stiff and heavy to take the energy from a very high draw weight.
Q 05A crossbow shooter may be called an arbalist, after the arbalest, a European crossbow of which century?
12th
The name descends from the Roman arcuballista, bow plus missile-throwing engine.
Q 06The arbalest, the heavy late-medieval crossbow, had a prod made of what?
Steel
The metal's tensile strength gave huge force, but a skilled arbalestier could still loose only about two bolts a minute.
Q 07About how many bolts per minute could a heavy medieval crossbow shoot?
Two
The slow reload is why crossbowmen often sheltered behind a large shield called a pavise.
Q 08Which of these was a mechanical device used to span, or cock, a heavy European crossbow?
Cranequin
Levers, belt hooks, pulleys and windlasses were the other main options for overcoming very high draw weights.
Q 09European crossbow prods of the 10th to 12th centuries were made of wood, most often ash or what?
Yew
Steel prods took over around the 14th century as the metal became more widely available.
Q 10Medieval European crossbow names mostly derived from the word for which Greek torsion siege engine?
Ballista
The two look alike but work differently: a crossbow bends a prod, while that engine used twisted-rope springs.
Q 11The earliest known crossbows were invented in which civilisation?
Ancient China
They transformed projectile warfare during the Qin unification wars and the Han campaigns against the northern nomads.
Q 12Cast bronze crossbow locks found in China have been dated to around what year?
650 BC
Bronze bolts from the mid-5th century BC have also turned up in a Chu burial in Hubei.
Q 13The Chinese crossbow trigger was typically made from how many cast bronze pieces?
Three
The bearing surfaces between them gave a mechanical advantage, so a light pull could hold a very heavy draw.
Which classic Chinese military text refers to crossbows and compares a drawn crossbow to might?
Q 21According to Marsden, craftsmen of which city's tyrant invented the gastraphetes in 399 BC?
Syracuse
Heron of Alexandria's Belopoeica describes it and calls it the forerunner of the catapult.
Q 22The only pictorial evidence for Roman hand crossbows shows them used for what?
Chasing game
The historian Vegetius mentions manuballistae only in passing, saying they were too well known to need describing.
Q 23Early medieval carved stones showing crossbows used for hunting survive from which people of Scotland?
The Picts
Four such stones date from the 6th to 9th centuries, long before the weapon reappeared in French sieges in 947.
The Art of War
The earliest documents to mention the weapon are texts of the 4th to 3rd centuries BC attributed to the followers of Mozi.
Q 15Crossbowmen of which state ambushed Wei commander Pang Juan at night at the Battle of Maling in 342 BC?
Qi
The strategist Sun Bin drew him in with the tactic of the missing stoves, making his army look as if it were melting away.
Q 16The Terracotta Army guarding the tomb of Qin Shi Huang includes kneeling figures armed with what?
Crossbows
More than 40,000 bronze weapons have been recovered from the pits, among them crossbow triggers with interchangeable parts.
Q 17What draw weight did a Han dynasty soldier have to manage to qualify as an entry-level crossbowman?
About 76 kg
A few elite troops were said to arm bows of more than 340 kg using both hands and feet.
Q 18The Chinese repeating crossbow is popularly named after which Three Kingdoms strategist who did not invent it?
Zhuge Liang
The design dates back to the Warring States period; handheld versions were so weak that bolts were often tipped with poison.
Q 19The Ming dynasty repeating crossbow was armed by doing what?
Pushing a rear lever back and forth
A Ming writer called it a handy little weapon that even a Confucian scholar or palace women could use in self-defence.
Q 20The gastraphetes, the ancient Greek hand-held crossbow, takes its name from which part of the body?
The belly
The shooter pressed a concave rest at the back of the stock against his stomach to push the slider back and cock it.
Q 24The Byzantine princess Anna Komnene described the crossbow as a bow of the barbarians unknown to whom?
The Greeks
She associated it with the Western European crusaders, though some think Byzantium had crossbowmen earlier.
Q 25Crossbows were used at which famous 1066 battle, and were common on battlefields by the 12th century?
Hastings
The oldest surviving European crossbow remains, found at Lake Paladru, date from the same century.
Q 26Canon 29 of the Second Lateran Council of 1139 prohibited the use of crossbows and bows against whom?
Christians
The council was convened by Pope Innocent II and attended by nearly a thousand clerics; the ban did little to stop the weapon's spread.
Q 27Which English king died in 1199 after a crossbow bolt struck his shoulder at the siege of Châlus-Chabrol?
Richard I
The wound turned gangrenous; the crossbowman, named variously as Pierre Basile or Bertrand de Gourdon, may have been a boy.
Q 28At the siege of Acre, the sick king was carried on a stretcher under a silk quilt to do what?
Pick off wall guards with a crossbow
He was suffering from arnaldia, an illness resembling scurvy, at the time.
Q 29The famous mercenary crossbowmen of the Middle Ages came from which Italian republic?
Genoa
A team was usually one shooter and two assistants, one holding the pavise and one spanning a second bow to double the rate of fire.
Q 30At Crécy in 1346, the French crossbowmen were routed partly because wagons carrying what were left behind?
Their pavises and spare bolts
Without the big shields to reload behind, some 5,000 mercenaries were shredded by English longbowmen and their commander Ottone Doria ordered a retreat.