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Bow and Arrow
" In the hands of the English the bow had become, in the form of the longbow, the most deadly and formidable weapon of its time. Every English boy was trained to use it and was taught to bring every muscle of his body to bear upon it ... The result was that arrows were discharged with great rapidity and accuracy and with such strength that they were effective in the matter of penetration at astonishingly long range."
J.W.Fortescue, Military History
The bow is made of a strip of flexible material, such as wood, with a cord linking the two ends of the strip to form a tension from which is propelled the arrow; the arrow is a straight shaft with a sharp point on one end and usually with feathers attached to the other end.
The use of the bow and arrow for hunting and for war dates back to the Paleolithic period in Africa, Asia, and Europe. It was widely used in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Americas, and Europe until the introduction of gunpowder.
Arrowheads were first made of burnt wood, then stone or bone, and then metals. Various woods and bones were used for the bow itself. However, it was not a powerful weapon until the invention of the compound, or composite, bow around 1500 B.C. on the steppes of Central Asia. A composite bow is made of various materials (wood, horn, sinew) glued together so as to increase their natural strength and elasticity. Bows and arrows were among the dominant weapons used by Assyrian chariots, Parthian cavalry, Mongol horsemen, and English longbowmen. At other times they have been used more as auxiliary weapons for massed infantry or cavalry.
The crossbow, although known in Roman times, was not widely used in Europe until the Middle Ages. In China, however, where it developed at the same time, the crossbow revolutionized warfare. A crossbow is a bow set on a stock. It fires missiles propelled by mechanical energy and released by a trigger. It could be more powerful than the ordinary bow and could fire arrows, darts, or stones. It was, however, slower to fire than the longbow and almost as difficult to wield; even the arbalest, a later crossbow, was clumsy and slow. By the end of the 13th cent. use of the crossbow had declined.
In the late 13th century, a new weapon came on the scene, the longbow. Originally from southern Wales, where records of elm bows record its use around 1150. The first battle where it was widely used was the battle of Falkirk in 1298. It was quickly adopted across England as the weapon of choice, and dominated the battlefield until the middle of the sixteenth century. The longbow was regarded as such an important weapon, that at some battles longbowmen formed as much as 85 percent of the fighting force.
The best longbows were made of yew. The staves were cut in winter when no sap was running, from the junction of the inner heartwood and the outer sapwood. The staves were seasoned and worked on gradually over a period of three to four years. Today only six longbows survive, none from the "golden age" and sources do not agree on the dimensions. Most give the length as about 70in. with a drawing pull of 75-100lbs. The arrows were between 27-36in. long. A trained archer could shoot 12 arrows a minute, but some sources say that the most skilled archers could fire twice this number. The arrow could wound at 250 yards, kill at 100 yards and penetrate armor at 60 yards.
At the battle of Crécy (1346) English longbowmen, firing from fixed positions, proved far more efficient than Genoese crossbowmen fighting for the French. The longbow, which was in use in Wales in the 12th cent. became prominent in the Welsh Wars of Edward I in the late 13th cent. For the rest of that century, the English emphasized skill with the longbow; it was inexpensive, mobile, and easily adapted to a peasant army.
At the battle of Agincourt, sources estimate that there were about 5,000 English archers. At a rate of fire of 8 arrows a minute, 40,000 arrows could be loosed each minute! The battle began with dense flights of arrows from the English archers. The heavily armoured French knights replied with a charge, but their horses sank into the muddy ground and their immobility made them an admirable target for their opponents. The battle was decided within about the first half-hour. After the battle, observers wrote that the white feathers from the flights were so thick on the ground, it looked like snow.
Only in England did the longbow survive the introduction of gunpowder; it was superseded gradually by firearms. It was a powerful weapon, but it took great strength to pull and years of practice to master. The training adopted by the English was rigorous. All sports were banned on Sundays and men between 12 and 65 were expected to practice their archery. Every man with an income of over £2 a year was required to own a bow.
The Chinese also developed a longbow, which proved much less effective than the English variety. The Asian bow, designed for use on horseback, was shorter and lighter than the English longbow and could be more rapidly fired. The Chinese later developed the repeating crossbow, an ingenious weapon that proved ineffective against repeating rifles in the First Sino-Japanese War.
Since bows and arrows are relatively easy to make and can produce a rapid rate of fire, they were used in warfare long after gunpowder was introduced, for primitive firearms required much time to load, were hard to manufacture, and often failed. In Japan and North America archery was very important culturally as well as militarily.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS:
Crecy 1346 : Triumph of the Longbow - 96 pages (July 2000)
The Battle of Crecy was the first major land battle of the Hundred Years war. It pitted the French army, then considered the best in Europe, and their miscellaneous allies against the English under King Edward III and the 'Black Prince', who as yet had no great military reputation. The Genoese crossbowmen were outshot by the English longbows and the charges of the French were forced back with appalling losses.
Agincourt - by Christopher Hibbert, 176 pages 1st cooper edition (May 2000)
The Battle of Agincourt, 25 October 1415
fought between an English army, under Henry V, and a much larger French force, resulting in a decisive English victory, which opened the way for an English conquest of virtually all France.
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