700 Years of Longbows in War
Fors a hundred years after the Battle of Agincourt the Longbow was the king of battle
Bows have been around for thousands of years. These weapons could be very simply made and besides the sling and atlatl, hold the record for the oldest projectile weapons known to man. In what is now Wales in the 12th Century, a revolutionary design was created and gave transformation from the traditional bow to that of the Longbow. The new longbows were much more powerful by design than traditional bows and were much faster to reload than crossbows.
Adopted by Edward I the longbow brought about the end of Medieval combat and helped make England the dominate power in the world in the 14th and 15th Centuries. An experienced archer could fire ten aimed rounds in a one minute period and hit men on the battlefield at a much longer range than any other weapon. Using armor-piercing steel tipped arrows they could defeat light armor at 400 yards and even the strongest hard plate armor at closer ranges out to 100 yards. It was recorded that an arrow fired at the maximum draw by a longbow man could pierce four inches of solid oak. Modern tests using weapons of faithful design have verified that this was indeed possible.
This signaled the end to the heavily armed and armored knights that were the leviathans of the battlefields of the Hundred Years War. At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 Arrows from a thousand bows rained on the French knights killing riders and their mounts by the hundreds at long range. Within half an hour of slaughter the English had lost 500 men; the French 10,000 and heavy armor became decorative
The main ingredient to making a longbow a fierce weapon and the factor that lead to its ultimate demise was the archers themselves. Archers began training at a very early age, typically at around six or seven years old. Training was mandatory and taught by veteran bowmen, often their fathers or grandfathers. It took years to properly train a longbow man, as they had to develop considerable musculature before being able to
Use his weapon to its fullest capacity. It was said that in order to train a good bowman you had to start with his grandfather and wait sixty years. Needless to say this warrior culture produced hand-picked craftsmen who took time to replace if lost in battle.
The end of the longbow came as the musket took the field. For nearly two hundred years the longbow served side by side with the arquebus, a relatively light firearm manageable by one man. This firearm was inferior to the longbow due to the fact that it had a shorter range and its penetration was not as effective. It also had a very slow rate of fire. The advantages of the arquebus was that it could be mass produced in a foundry out of cast metal and given to infantry drafts with very little training. Therefore the larger armies of the Renaissance could be more easily equipped with firearms over longbows.
The Battle of Flodden in 1513 was the last battle to be won by the longbow alone. The weapon was still seen for another hundred years but continued to fall into decline as a combat weapon. Its replacement was the new wheel lock and later flintlock muskets that could be fired at longer range and at a faster rate than the older firearms.
The longbow was nevertheless the principal arm used by the early English colonists in America. In 1622 it was even directed that the weapons be sent to Bermuda and stored there within easy sailing distance of the colony. It was feared that if longbows fell into the hands of the Native Americans they would learn English technological secrets and improve their bows, making them impossible to beat.
The last use of the longbow in modern combat by both sides was the 1644 Battle of Marston Moor during the English Civil War. As time marched on into the 1700's no European army issued the bow to be used in combat and the firearm became the queen of battle. However, During the British retreat to Dunkirk in May of 1940, Capt. John Churchill, an officer with a sense of history and a devout archer had the distinction of doing in a member of a German patrol with a longbow. This was the last recorded incident of a longbow being used in war in its 700 year lifespan. Today many special operations units around the world continue to keep the bow in their inventory as a specialist weapon. The bow also continues to show up in tribal violence today in Africa as the below photographs from Kenya in 2008 with testify.
Not a bad run
 |
 |
 |
