English longbow


The English longbow was a powerful medieval type of longbow about long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in warfare. English use of longbows was effective against the French during the Hundred Years' War, particularly at the start of the war in the battles of Sluys, Crécy, and Poitiers, and perhaps most famously at the Battle of Agincourt.
However they were less successful after this, with longbowmen having their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil though the English won a decisive victory, and being completely routed at the Battle of Patay when they were charged by the French mounted men-at-arms before they had prepared the terrain and finished defensive arrangements. The Battle of Pontvallain had also previously shown longbowmen were not particularly effective when not given the time to set up defensive positions.
No English longbows survive from the period when the longbow was dominant, probably because bows became weaker, broke, and were replaced rather than being handed down through generations. More than 130 bows survive from the Renaissance period, however. More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's navy that sank at Portsmouth in 1545.

Description

Length

A longbow must be long enough to allow its user to draw the string to a point on the face or body, and the length therefore varies with the user. In continental Europe it was generally seen as any bow longer than. The Society of Antiquaries of London says it is of in length. Richard Bartelot, of the Royal Artillery Institution, said that the bow was of yew, long, with a arrow. Gaston III, Count of Foix, wrote in 1388 that a longbow should be "of yew or boxwood, seventy inches between the points of attachment for the cord". Historian Jim Bradbury said they were an average of about 5 feet and 8 inches. All but the last estimate were made before the excavation of the Mary Rose, where bows were found ranging in length from with an average length of.

Draw weights

Estimates for the draw of these bows varies considerably. Before the recovery of the Mary Rose, Count M. Mildmay Stayner, Recorder of the British Long Bow Society, estimated the bows of the Medieval period drew, maximum, and W. F. Paterson, Chairman of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, believed the weapon had a supreme draw weight of only. Other sources suggest significantly higher draw weights. The original draw forces of examples from the Mary Rose are estimated by Robert Hardy at at a draw length; the full range of draw weights was between. The draw length was used because that is the length allowed by the arrows commonly found on the Mary Rose.
A modern longbow's draw is typically or less, and by modern convention measured at. Historically, hunting bows usually had draw weights of, which is enough for all but the very largest game and which most reasonably fit adults can manage with practice. Today, there are few modern longbowmen capable of using bows accurately.
A record of how boys and men trained to use the bows with high draw weights survives from the reign of Henry VII.
What Latimer meant when he describes laying his body into the bow was described thus:

Construction and materials

Bowstave

The preferred material to make the longbow was yew, although ash, elm and other woods were also used. Gerald of Wales speaking of the bows used by the Welsh men of Gwent, says: "They are made neither of horn, ash nor yew, but of elm; ugly unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large and strong, and equally capable of use for long or short shooting". The traditional construction of a longbow consists of drying the yew wood for 1 to 2 years, then slowly working the wood into shape, with the entire process taking up to four years. The bow stave is shaped into a D-section. The outer "back" of sapwood, approximately flat, follows the natural growth rings; modern bowyers often thin the sapwood, while in the Mary Rose bows the back of the bow was the natural surface of the wood, only the bark is removed. The inner side of the bow stave consists of rounded heartwood. The heartwood resists compression and the outer sapwood performs better in tension. This combination in a single piece of wood forms a natural "laminate", somewhat similar in effect to the construction of a composite bow. Longbows will last a long time if protected with a water-resistant coating, traditionally of "wax, resin and fine tallow".
The trade of yew wood to England for longbows was such that it depleted the stocks of yew over a huge area. The first documented import of yew bowstaves to England was in 1294. In 1350 there was a serious shortage, and Henry IV of England ordered his royal bowyer to enter private land and cut yew and other woods. In 1470 compulsory practice was renewed, and hazel, ash, and laburnum were specifically allowed for practice bows. Supplies still proved insufficient, until by the Statute of Westminster 1472, every ship coming to an English port had to bring four bowstaves for every tun. Richard III of England increased this to ten for every tun. This stimulated a vast network of extraction and supply, which formed part of royal monopolies in southern Germany and Austria. In 1483, the price of bowstaves rose from two to eight pounds per hundred, and in 1510 the Venetians obtained sixteen pounds per hundred.
In 1507 the Holy Roman Emperor asked the Duke of Bavaria to stop cutting yew, but the trade was profitable, and in 1532 the royal monopoly was granted for the usual quantity "if there are that many". In 1562, the Bavarian government sent a long plea to the Holy Roman Emperor asking him to stop the cutting of yew and outlining the damage done to the forests by its selective extraction, which broke the canopy and allowed wind to destroy neighbouring trees. In 1568, despite a request from Saxony, no royal monopoly was granted because there was no yew to cut, and the next year Bavaria and Austria similarly failed to produce enough yew to justify a royal monopoly.
Forestry records in this area in the 17th century do not mention yew, and it seems that no mature trees were to be had. The English tried to obtain supplies from the Baltic, but at this period bows were being replaced by guns in any case.

String

s are made of hemp, flax or silk, and attached to the wood via horn "nocks" that fit onto the end of the bow. Modern synthetic materials are now commonly also used for strings.

Arrows

A wide variety of arrows were shot from the English longbow. Variations in length, fletchings and heads are all recorded. Perhaps the greatest diversity lies in hunting arrows, with varieties like broad-arrow, wolf-arrow, dog-arrow, Welsh arrow and Scottish arrow being recorded. War arrows were ordered in the thousands for medieval armies and navies, supplied in sheaves normally of 24 arrows. For example, between 1341 and 1359 the English crown is known to have obtained 51,350 sheaves.
Only one significant group of arrows, found at the wreck of the Mary Rose, has survived. Over 3500 arrows were found, mainly made of poplar but also of ash, beech and hazel. Analysis of the intact specimens shows their length to vary from, with an average length of. Because of the preservation conditions of the Mary Rose, no arrowheads survived. However, many heads have survived in other places, which has allowed typologies of arrowheads to be produced, the most modern being the Jessop typology. The most common arrowheads in military use were the short bodkin point and a small barbed arrow.

Use and performance

Training

Longbows were very difficult to master because the force required to deliver an arrow through the improving armour of medieval Europe was very high by modern standards. Although the draw weight of a typical English longbow is disputed, it was at least and possibly more than. Considerable practice was required to produce the swift and effective combat shooting required. Skeletons of longbow archers are recognisably affected, with enlarged left arms and often osteophytes on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.
It was the difficulty in using the longbow that led various monarchs of England to issue instructions encouraging their ownership and practice, including the Assize of Arms of 1252 and Edward III of England's declaration of 1363:
If the people practised archery, it would be that much easier for the king to recruit the proficient longbowmen he needed for his wars. Along with the improving ability of gunfire to penetrate plate armour, it was the long training needed by longbowmen that eventually led to their being replaced by musketeers.

Range

The range of the medieval weapon is not accurately known, with much depending on both the power of the bow and the type of arrow. It has been suggested that a flight arrow of a professional archer of Edward III's time would reach but the longest mark shot at on the London practice ground of Finsbury Fields in the 16th century was. In 1542, Henry VIII set a minimum practice range for adults using flight arrows of ; ranges below this had to be shot with heavy arrows. Modern experiments broadly concur with these historical ranges. A 667 N Mary Rose replica longbow was able to shoot a arrow and a a distance of. In 2012, Joe Gibbs shot a livery arrow with a 170 lbf yew bow. The effective combat range of longbowmen was generally lower than what could be achieved on the practice range as sustained shooting was tiring and the rigors of campaigning would sap soldiers' strength. Writing 30 years after the Mary Rose sank, Barnabe Rich estimated that if 1,000 English archers were mustered then after one week only 100 of them would be able to shoot farther than 200 paces, while 200 would not be able to shoot farther than 180 paces.

Armour penetration

Modern testing

In an early modern test by Saxton Pope, a direct hit from a steel bodkin point penetrated Damascus mail armour.
A 2006 test was made by Matheus Bane using a draw bow, shooting at 10 yards; according to Bane's calculations, this would be approximately equivalent to a bow at 250 yards. Measured against a replica of the thinnest contemporary gambeson armour, a 905 grain needle bodkin and a 935 grain curved broadhead penetrated over. Against "high quality riveted maille", the needle bodkin and curved broadhead penetrated 2.8". Against a coat of plates, the needle bodkin achieved 0.3" penetration. The curved broadhead did not penetrate but caused 0.3" of deformation of the metal. Results against plate armour of "minimum thickness" were similar to the coat of plates, in that the needle bodkin penetrated to a shallow depth, the other arrows not at all. In Bane's view, the plate armour would have kept out all the arrows if thicker or worn with more padding.
Other modern tests described by Bane include those by Williams, Robert Hardy's tests, and a Primitive Archer test which demonstrated that a longbow could penetrate a plate armour breastplate. However, the Primitive Archer test used a longbow at very short range, generating 160 joules, so probably not representative of battles of the time.
Tests conducted by Mark Stretton examined the effects of heavier war shafts. The quarrel-like 102-gram arrow from a yew 'self bow' while travelling at 47.23 metres per second yielded 113.76 joules, more kinetic energy than the lighter broad-heads while achieving 90% of the range. The short, heavy quarrel-form bodkin could penetrate a replica brigandine at up to 40° from perpendicular.
In 2011, Mike Loades conducted an experiment in which short bodkin arrows were shot at a range of by bows of - powerful bows at less than normal battlefield range. The target was covered in a riveted mail over a fabric armour of deerskin over 24 linen layers. While most arrows went through the mail layer, none fully penetrated the textile armour.
Other research has also concluded that later medieval armour, such as that of the Italian city-state mercenary companies, was effective at stopping contemporary arrows.
Computer analysis by Warsaw University of Technology in 2017 has estimated that heavy bodkin-point arrows could penetrate typical plate armour of the time at up to. However, the depth of penetration would be slight at that range, a mere 14mm on average; penetration increased as the range closed or against armour lesser than the best quality available at the time, but with 24mm being the highest penetration depth estimated at 25 m range, it was unlikely to be deadly.

Contemporary accounts

commented on the power of the Welsh longbow in the 12th century:
Against massed men in armour, massed longbows were murderously effective on many battlefields.
Strickland and Hardy suggest that "even at a range of 240 yards, heavy war arrows shot from bows of poundages in the mid- to upper range possessed by the Mary Rose bows would have been capable of killing or severely wounding men equipped with armour of wrought iron. Higher-quality armour of steel would have given considerably greater protection, which accords well with the experience of Oxford's men against the elite French vanguard at Poitiers in 1356, and des Ursin's statement that the French knights of the first ranks at Agincourt, which included some of the most important nobles, remained comparatively unhurt by the English arrows".
Archery was described by contemporaries as ineffective against steel plate armour in the Battle of Neville's Cross, the siege of Bergerac, and the Battle of Poitiers ; such armour became available to European knights and men at arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th century, though never to all soldiers in any army. Longbowmen were, however, effective at Poitiers, and this success stimulated changes in armour manufacture partly intended to make armoured men less vulnerable to archery. Nevertheless, at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and for some decades thereafter, English longbowmen continued to be an effective battlefield force.

Shields

Following the Battle of Crécy, the longbow did not always prove as effective. For example, at the Battle of Poitiers, the French men-at-arms formed a shield wall with which Geoffrey le Baker recounts "protecting their bodies with joined shields, turned their faces away from the missiles. So the archers emptied their quivers in vain".

Summary

Modern tests and contemporary accounts agree therefore that well-made plate armour could protect against longbows. However, this did not necessarily make the longbow ineffective; thousands of longbowmen were deployed in the English victory at Agincourt against plate armoured French knights in 1415. Clifford Rogers has argued that while longbows might not have been able to penetrate steel breastplates at Agincourt they could still penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs. Most of the French knights advanced on foot but, exhausted by walking across wet muddy terrain in heavy armour enduring a "terrifying hail of arrow shot", they were overwhelmed in the melee.
Less heavily armoured soldiers were more vulnerable than knights. For example, enemy crossbowmen were forced to retreat at Crécy when deployed without their protecting pavises. Horses were generally less well protected than the knights themselves; shooting the French knights' horses from the side is described by contemporary accounts of the Battle of Poitiers, and at Agincourt John Keegan has argued that the main effect of the longbow would have been in injuring the horses of the mounted French knights.

Shooting rate

A typical military longbow archer would be provided with between 60 and 72 arrows at the time of battle. Most archers would not shoot arrows at the maximum rate, as it would exhaust even the most experienced man. "With the heaviest bows does not like to try for more than six a minute." Not only do the arms and shoulder muscles tire from the exertion, but the fingers holding the bowstring become strained; therefore, actual rates of shooting in combat would vary considerably. Ranged volleys at the beginning of the battle would differ markedly from the closer, aimed shots as the battle progressed and the enemy neared. On the battlefield English archers stored their arrows stabbed upright into the ground at their feet, reducing the time it took to nock, draw and loose.
Arrows were not unlimited, so archers and their commanders took every effort to ration their use to the situation at hand. Nonetheless, resupply during battle was available. Young boys were often employed to run additional arrows to longbow archers while in their positions on the battlefield. "The longbow was the machine gun of the Middle Ages: accurate, deadly, possessed of a long range and rapid rate of fire, the flight of its missiles was likened to a storm".
In tests against a moving target simulating a galloping knight it took some approximately seven seconds to draw, aim and loose an armour-piercing heavy arrow using a replica war bow. It was found that in the seven seconds between the first and second shots the target advanced 70 yards and that the second shot occurred at such close range that, if it was a realistic contest, running away was the only option.
A Tudor English author expects eight shots from a longbow in the same time as five from a musket. He points out that the musket also shoots at a flatter trajectory, so is more likely to hit its target and its shot is likely to be more damaging in the event of a hit. The advantage of early firearms lay in the lower training requirements, the opportunity to take cover while shooting, flatter trajectory, and greater penetration.

Treating arrow wounds

The only way to remove an arrow cleanly was to tie a piece of cloth soaked in water to the end of it and push it through the victim's wound and out the other side this was extremely painful. Specialised tools have existed since ancient times: Diocles devised the graphiscos, a form of cannula with hooks, and the duck-billed forceps was employed during the medieval period to extract arrows from places where bone prevented the arrow being pushed through.
Henry, Prince of Wales, later Henry V, was wounded in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury. The royal physician John Bradmore had a tool made that consisted of a pair of smooth tongs. Once carefully inserted into the socket of the arrowhead, the tongs screwed apart until they gripped its walls and allowed the head to be extracted from the wound. Prior to the extraction, the hole made by the arrow shaft was widened by inserting larger and larger dowels of elder pith wrapped in linen down into the entry wound. The dowels were soaked in honey, now known to have antiseptic properties. The wound was then dressed with a poultice of barley and honey mixed in turpentine. After 20 days, the wound was free of infection.

History

Etymology

The word may have been coined to distinguish the longbow from the crossbow. The first recorded use of the term longbow, as distinct from simply 'bow', is possibly in a 1386 administrative document which refers in Latin to arcus vocati longbowes, "bows called 'longbows'", though unfortunately the reading of the last word in the original document is not certain. A 1444 will proved in York bequeaths "a sadil, alle my longe bowis, a bedde".

Origins

The origins of the English longbow are disputed. While it is hard to assess the significance of military archery in pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon warfare, it is clear that archery played a prominent role under the Normans, as the story of the Battle of Hastings shows. Their Anglo-Norman descendants also made use of military archery, as exemplified by their victory at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. During the Anglo-Norman invasions of Wales, Welsh bowmen took a heavy toll of the invaders and Welsh archers would feature in English armies from this point on. However, historians dispute whether this archery used a different kind of bow to the later English Longbow. Traditionally it has been argued that prior to the beginning of the 14th century, the weapon was a self bow between four and five feet in length, known since the 19th century as the shortbow. This weapon, drawn to the chest rather than the ear, was much weaker. However, in 1985, Jim Bradbury reclassified this weapon as the ordinary wooden bow, reserving the term shortbow for short composite bows and arguing that longbows were a developed form of this ordinary bow. Strickland and Hardy in 2005 took this argument further, suggesting that the shortbow was a myth and all early English bows were a form of longbow. In 2011, Clifford Rogers forcefully restated the traditional case based upon a variety of evidence, including a large scale iconographic survey. In 2012, Richard Wadge added to the debate with an extensive survey of record, iconographic and archaeological evidence, concluding that longbows co-existed with shorter self-wood bows in England in the period between the Norman conquest and the reign of Edward III, but that powerful longbows shooting heavy arrows were a rarity until the later 13th century. Whether or not there was a technological revolution at the end of the 13th century therefore remains in dispute. What is agreed, however, is that the English longbow as an effective weapon system evolved in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Fourteenth and fifteenth century

The longbow decided many medieval battles fought by the English and Welsh, the most significant of which were the Battle of Crécy and the Battle of Agincourt, during the Hundred Years' War and followed earlier successes, notably at the Battle of Falkirk and the Battle of Halidon Hill during the Wars of Scottish Independence. They were less successful after this, with longbowmen having their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil, and being routed at the Battle of Patay when they were charged before they had set up their defences, and with the war-ending Battle of Castillon being decided by the French artillery.
The longbow was also used against the English by their Welsh neighbours. The Welsh used the longbow mostly in a different manner than the English. In many early period English campaigns, the Welsh used the longbow in ambushes, often at point blank range that allowed their missiles to penetrate armour and generally do a lot of damage.
Although longbows were much faster and more accurate than the black-powder weapons which replaced them, longbowmen always took a long time to train because of the years of practice necessary before a war longbow could be used effectively. In an era in which warfare was usually seasonal, and non-noble soldiers spent part of the year working at farms, the year-round training required for the effective use of the longbow was a challenge. A standing army was an expensive proposition to a medieval ruler. Mainland European armies seldom trained a significant longbow corps. Due to their specialized training, English longbowmen were sought as mercenaries in other European countries, most notably in the Italian city-states and in Spain.
The White Company, comprising men-at-arms and longbowmen and commanded by Sir John Hawkwood, is the best known English Free Company of the 14th century. The powerful Hungarian king, Louis the Great, is an example of someone who used longbowmen in his Italian campaigns.

Sixteenth century and later

Longbows remained in use until around the 16th century, when advances in firearms made gunpowder weapons a significant factor in warfare and such units as arquebusiers and grenadiers began appearing. Despite this, the English Crown made numerous efforts to continue to promote archery practice by banning other sports and fining people for not possessing bows. Indeed, just before the English Civil War, a pamphlet by William Neade entitled The Double-Armed Man advocated that soldiers be trained in both the longbow and pike; although this advice was followed only by a few town militias.
The Battle of Flodden was "a landmark in the history of archery, as the last battle on English soil to be fought with the longbow as the principal weapon..." The last recorded use of bows in an English battle may have been a skirmish at Bridgnorth, in October 1642, during the Civil War, when an impromptu town militia, armed with bows, proved effective against un-armoured musketeers. Longbowmen remained a feature of the Royalist Army, but were not used by the Roundheads.
Longbows have been in continuous production and use for sport and for hunting to the present day, but since 1642 they have been a minority interest, and very few have had the high draw weights of the medieval weapons. Other differences include the use of a stiffened non-bending centre section, rather than a continuous bend.
Serious military interest in the longbow faded after the seventeenth century but occasionally schemes to resurrect its military use were proposed. Benjamin Franklin was a proponent in the 1770s; the Honourable Artillery Company had an archer company between 1784 and 1794, and a man named Richard Mason wrote a book proposing the arming of militia with pike and longbow in 1798. Donald Featherstone also records a Lt. Col. Richard Lee of 44th Foot advocated the military use of the longbow in 1792. There is a record of the use of the longbow in action as late as WWII, when Jack Churchill is credited with a longbow kill in France in 1940. The weapon was certainly considered for use by Commandos during the war but it is not known whether it was used in action.

Tactics

Battle formations

The idea that there was a standard formation for English longbow armies was argued by Alfred Byrne in his influential work on the battles of the Hundred Years' War, The Crecy War. This view was challenged by Jim Bradbury in his book The Medieval Archer and more modern works are more ready to accept a variety of formations.
In summary, however, the usual English deployment in the 14th and 15th centuries was as follows:
In the 16th century, these formations evolved in line with new technologies and techniques from the continent. Formations with a central core of pikes and bills were flanked by companies of "shot" made up of a mixture of archers and arquebusiers, sometimes with a skirmish screen of archers and arquebusiers in front.

Surviving bows and arrows

More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's navy that capsized and sank at Portsmouth in 1545. It is an important source for the history of the longbow, as the bows, archery implements and the skeletons of archers have been preserved. The bows range in length from with an average length of. The majority of the arrows were made of poplar, others were made of beech, ash and hazel. Draw lengths of the arrows varied between with the majority having a draw length of. The head would add 5–15 cm depending on type, though some 2–4.5 cm must be allowed for the insertion of the shaft into the socket.
The longbows on the Mary Rose were in excellent finished condition. There were enough bows to test some to destruction which resulted in draw forces of 450 N on average. However, analysis of the wood indicated that they had degraded significantly in the seawater and mud, which had weakened their draw forces. Replicas were made and when tested had draw forces of from 445 N to 823 N.
In 1980, before the finds from the Mary Rose, Robert E. Kaiser published a paper stating that there were five known surviving longbows:
The importance of the longbow in English culture can be seen in the legends of Robin Hood, which increasingly depicted him as a master archer, and also in the "Song of the Bow", a poem from The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
During the reign of Henry III the Assize of Arms of 1252 required that all "citizens, burgesses, free tenants, villeins and others from 15 to 60 years of age" should be armed. The poorest of them were expected to have a halberd and a knife, and a bow if they owned land worth more than £2. This made it easier for the King to raise an army, but also meant that the bow was a weapon commonly used by rebels during the Peasants' Revolt. From the time that the yeoman class of England became proficient with the longbow, the nobility in England had to be careful not to push them into open rebellion.
It has been conjectured that yew trees were commonly planted in English churchyards to have readily available longbow wood.