So whilst playing DnD last night we had a situation where somone was leaning over a castle wall to fire straight down at someone below. The question arose, what stops the quarrel from falling free when the crossbow is effectivly pointed straight down. Such situations must have been common in medieval sieges.
I wondered if most crossbow designs include some sort of restraint or other device to keep the quarrel in place till the trigger is pulled. Another suggested that friction and the weight of the quarrel would keep it in place until fired, but none of us actually knew. A
quick google leaves us none the wiser.
So does anyone know how this problem was addressed?
Don’t really know about the crossbow question itself, but people did not lean over the battlements to fire down. That’s what machicolations, murderholes and arrowslits were there for.
At a guess I would think that quarrels, like arrows, were notched and thus “gripped” the string, which would keep them in place even when pointed straight down. But mostly, why would they bother firing crossbows down, when simply dropping nice big rocks presumably did more damage ?
Modern designs have a leaf spring that gently presses the bolt in place. I can’t tell whether there’s anything similar on the woodcuts of older designs I looked at, but it’s such a simple device, I’d be surprised if it’s a novel idea.
for the most part, the arrow rested on a war crossbow by gravity. however, better designs helped keep stability even in difficult angles of shooting. earlier weapons simply had a slot on the top of the stock cutting across the groove where the bolt/arrow rests. the drawn string is fitted to this slot from which the bolt is nocked onto the string. the string can be released by a vertical push rod actuated by the trigger. in this case, the bolt is mainly resting on the groove.
later crossbows had a wheel which is seared with the trigger for release. this wheel has a groove cut along the radius line to hold the string. there is another groove cut along the edge to fit the nock of the bolt snuggly as it is stringed. so the wheel can hold the end of the arrow snuggly yet allows fast release.
there are repeating crossbows that shoot finless bolts from a magazine (top-down like a bren gun.) the bolt comes out of a tube so this might allow vertical shooting.
