high social standing required a response of some kind to a challenge to
personal combat. Xiang Yu’s proposal of a duel was not something which
was obviously ridiculous or beyond the realm of possibility. Having
received the rejection he had probably expected, Xiang Yu then felt justi-
fied in trying to kill Liu Bang at long range with a crossbow. If Liu would
not accept a challenge to close combat, then he became fair game for long-
range crossbow archery. And, of course, Xiang Yu was a skilled crossbow
archer.
At the end of his life, after military fortune had turned against him,
Xiang Yu wanted to prove his personal invincibility before he was com-
pletely defeated. Down to a mere twenty-eight cavalrymen accompanying
him he said:
It has been eight years now since I rose in arms. I have personally fought more than
seventy battles, in which whomever I was matched with, I vanquished, whomever
I set upon, I subdued. Never once defeated, Ifinally became the Hegemon and
illustration 5.Bronze crossbow trigger mechanism, late Warring States to
Han Dynasty, Laufer Collection. Courtesy of the Field Museum and Ernest Caldwell.
Photo by Ernest Caldwell.
64 The Qin and Han Dynasties