Longbow(s)

[jazstl]

Yesterday I read a book aboute longbowmans... It was saying that in england longbows were used also before medieval...:jawdrop: Thae found 2 neolitic longbows somwhere on british islands.
I was tottaly confused... Do any of our historians know anything aboute it?:dizzy2:

Apalogise for my bad english:stupid:

[Owen Glyndwr]

I'm no expert on the matter, but I believe the concept of the longbow had been in use long before it was popularized by the Welsh and later the English.

I remember a few months back there was a discussion about the Indian longbow which was supposedly planted in the ground to provide support.

[Rahwana]

Don't forget Caucasian archers, as they must use some kinda giant bows to launch arrows that the greeks used them after as javelins....

Maybe we could use the longbow engine (ap missile, high accuracy) as the part of some specialized archers, but then, maybe some Casse Longbowmen was good candidate to replace some gilodic units with hammers...

[antisocialmunky]

Indian Longbowman. The English Longbows are just mythologized because they A) Spanked the French on multiple occasions and B) England won the war and C) they were an archetype citizen soldier compozed of the Yeomen farmer class.

[jazstl]

Acctualy England lost the war... But they won many battles with longbowmans...

[Genava]

Yes, the Ashcott's longbow is dated of 3400 BC! It measures 1.95 meters and it is manufactured in yew like many prehistoric bows.
http://www.bourges1ere.fr/images/Archeologie/Ashcott.jpg

Others prehistoric bows:
http://www.bourges1ere.fr/Archeologie.htm

[Ibrahim]

Indian Longbowman. The English Longbows are just mythologized because they A) Spanked the French on multiple occasions and B) England won the war and C) they were an archetype citizen soldier compozed of the Yeomen farmer class.

they lost the war at Castillon in 1453.

and actually, the french won the majority of battles, mostly from the end of the war (1430-1453). they were also winning from 1360-1415.

[ShadesWolf]

they lost the war at Castillon in 1453.

and actually, the french won the majority of battles, mostly from the end of the war (1430-1453). they were also winning from 1360-1415.

Excuse me, Where did you get those facts from?

The 3 main pitched battles England won. It was only really from the fall of Normandy/ Gascony that the tides turned.

Lack of resources (problems with english monarchy) and not adapting to the new French Army setup/ tactics caused the fall. As well as the loss of Burgundian support. The war was not continued later as instability back in England caused major problems and allowed France to strength her holdings.

Taxation and famine in normandy was the result of defeat not glorious victories.

[Ibrahim]

Excuse me, Where did you get those facts from?

The 3 main pitched battles England won. It was only really from the fall of Normandy/ Gascony that the tides turned.

Lack of resources (problems with english monarchy) and not adapting to the new French Army setup/ tactics caused the fall. As well as the loss of Burgundian support. The war was not continued later as instability back in England caused major problems and allowed France to strength her holdings.

Taxation and famine in normandy was the result of defeat not glorious victories.

*looks again*

*bangs his head at slopiness*

my bad, it was actually the english who did. you are correct. I misunderstood the list of battles*. but I must correct there were more than 3 major battles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hundred_Years%27_War_battles

of these england/allies won 24, France 22. most of the french victories were indeed in the periods I mentioned.


*I have a habit of counting battles in a war: what happened here was that the initial count had 22 french wins to 17, but then I realized later (when you posted), that I failed to count a part of the table mentioned above.

[Gustave]

please, don't turn this thread into a French vs English war.:inquisitive:

[Atraphoenix]

BTW but talking about the size like 1.2 or 1.5 m does not make much difference in meaning but the use the technique the capacity of ancient longbow cannot be compared with the English longbow like the composite bows during EB time frame cannot be compared with the composite bows of mongols or sipahis (ottoman composite bows). making a good composite bows takes years nearly 1- 3 years but at the moment we can make a bow in a day and it is much more deadlier than ancient or medieval ones...
names are same but not the products.....

[jazstl]

I was accualy asking if any of the long ones will be in?

[Horatius Flaccus]

I was accualy asking if any of the long ones will be in?

Well, since Indian Longbowmen are already in EBI, I would assume they are also in EBII.




I leave 16th 17th for Spanish and Portuguese domination in the world...


I disagree about the Portugese, I would argue the Dutch were at least as strong, if not stronger.



but (17th?) and 18th 19th centuries in Europe French language & Culture were ruling and french revolution swept the Europe.
until 1900s diplomatic language throughout the world was French and English would not be so much a dominating Language and Culture without US. English Language and Culture started to dominate the world after the defeats of France in Napoleonic Wars and mainly after World wars......

Uh, aren't you forgetting something like the 'Industrial revolution'? And the Age of Enlightment wasn't an exclusive French thing too.


and if Axis had won the world you can be sure that the world should be speaking German now....

Wait, what?

I'm sorry for the offtopic!:oops:

[Ludens]

The discussion on the British Empire has given its own thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=123603).

Back to topic: a more relevant question for EB would be whether they were used in or around EB's time-frame and, if so, how often?

[Tuuvi]

The basic definition of a longbow is a bow that is the same height as the shooter. A bow can be made out of many types of wood and with many different designs but as long as it has the required length it is considered a longbow. According to the Traditional Bowyer's Bible volume 2, the two oldest bows found in Europe, the Stellmoor and Holmegaard bows, were longbows. The Stellmoor bows are around 10,000 years old and the Holmegaard bows are around 8,000 years old. The Traditional Bowyer's Bible also says that several yew bows dating from 100 to 350 A.D. have been found in bogs in Denmark and Northern Germany that are nearly identical to the English longbow.

I don't think there should be a specific longbow unit in EB but I suggest that the archer unit for the Sweboz be given longbows instead of the shorter bows they have now. Short bows are less efficient than longbows if they do not feature a reflex in the limbs or some sort of backing (like composite bows). As I said before there is evidence that European people used longbows before and after EB's time frame, so they were most likely used within EB's time frame as well. Because of their greater power and efficiency it's safe to guess that they would have been used quite often in war.

[Blxz]

They are more powerful and more effective for war time. But they are less effective for general hunting. I thought that the Sweboz archer unit was meant to be essentially hunters that have been gathered into a war unit. Have I misunderstood?

[Ludens]

As I said before there is evidence that European people used longbows before and after EB's time frame, so they were most likely used within EB's time frame as well. Because of their greater power and efficiency it's safe to guess that they would have been used quite often in war.

If longbows were so clearly superior, why had they disappeared in most European countries by the middle ages?

[Foot]

Were longbows used for hunting, or were they specifically warbows. It seems that any attempt to stalk prey with a bow the size of a man is not going to be successful.

Foot

[KARTLOS]

If longbows were so clearly superior, why had they disappeared in most European countries by the middle ages?

maybe poor nutrition! - you have to be very strong to use one.

They did require that the bowman practice a lot, it is much simpler to equip people with crossbows and guns.


Were longbows used for hunting, or were they specifically warbows. It seems that any attempt to stalk prey with a bow the size of a man is not going to be successful.

Foot

you can get different sized longbows! it doesnt have to be full length (size of a man) to be considered a longbow.

[Atraphoenix]

maybe poor nutrition! - you have to be very strong to use one.

They did require that the bowman practice a lot, it is much simpler to equip people with crossbows and guns.



you can get different sized longbows! it doesn't have to be full length (size of a man) to be considered a longbow.

that is right I am not surprised why Football banned in favour of of archery in England.
but the aim was different from the user one may prefer the longer distance one may prefer accuracy..
mongol and their successor nomad bows mostly were made to release the arrow as far away as possible.
but records does support both sides namely accuracy and distance but that is right that to be a good archer one should spend his years for mastery. parthians, mongols and many nomad non nomad factions grew up their sons with this training. to use guns was easy so that is why archers lost their position in the armies after gunners started to be deployed in the armies. in fact early gunners were less deadlier than archers but it was easy to replace gunners but not archers (Ottoman Wars after 1700s and Lepanto were good example of this.)

[ShadesWolf]

If longbows were so clearly superior, why had they disappeared in most European countries by the middle ages?

Two main reasons my friend

1/ euopean countries, France is an excellent example, didnt want to put the power of a unique weapon in the masses hands, as they were nervous of the power it would give them.

2/ the develpment of the fire arms, any basically trained peasant could fire one, needed no years of training or strength.

[Tuuvi]

If longbows were so clearly superior, why had they disappeared in most European countries by the middle ages?

I did not mean that longbows were vastly superior, what I meant is that the longbow design has some advantages over shorter bows. I will have to do some reading in order to remember what exactly they were, however I believe it has something to with the length of the string when drawing the bow. I would also like to point out that shorter bows can be just as powerful as longbows with the right design (Asiatic composite bows being a great example).

You're also forgetting that the English longbowmen have a reputation for having been the best archers in medieval Europe.


Were longbows used for hunting, or were they specifically warbows. It seems that any attempt to stalk prey with a bow the size of a man is not going to be successful.

Foot

Longbows can be used for hunting quite successfully. Today in the U.S. there is a small niche of people who prefer to use real wooden bows for hunting over the modern compound bow; longbows are a pretty popular choice among these people. There are also historical examples of longbows being used for hunting. The Eastern Woodland Indians used longbows for hunting. I believe that the bows I mentioned in my earlier post were used for hunting, but the book does not say what the bows were used for so that is a guess on my part.

[Owen Glyndwr]

If I recall correctly, the longbow wasn't even very popular in the English army until Edward I (of Braveheart fame) encountered their deadly capabilities at the hands of the Welsh during his campaigns. (1276-1277 & 1282-1283)

The longbow was extremely effective in Welsh warfare, which relied a lot more on hit and run tactics, and ambushes compared to the heavy cavalry based combat of the English and French.

Out of lazyness, I have cited wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_longbow#History

[Mediolanicus]

Two main reasons my friend

1/ euopean countries, France is an excellent example, didnt want to put the power of a unique weapon in the masses hands, as they were nervous of the power it would give them.

2/ the develpment of the fire arms, any basically trained peasant could fire one, needed no years of training or strength.


Nation states and fire arms weren't around in 600-1000 AD...

BTW, aren't argument 1 and argument 2 a bit contradictory?
We don't want to put the power of a unique weapon in their hands, which they can use highly effectively if they learn to master it by livelong practice. So we gave them fire arms, easy to use; kills everything you aim at, not unique at all.

[Apázlinemjó]

If longbows were so clearly superior, why had they disappeared in most European countries by the middle ages?

I think we can find the answer in the society of those "monarchs" in the "classic" middle ages (before the Hundred Years' War). Who fought the battles? Nobles/knights whose role was the "honourable" heavy cavalry and the peasants who had to arm themselves usually (and citizens mostly in North-Italy). The "mainlander" peasants had to pay taxes, work on the estates and on their own lands I don't think that they had that much time to master archery/hunting. Also with the appearance of the crossbows (around 12-13. century) which required little skill to use, it was evident that it was favoured over the longbows. But these are my thoughts only.

[antisocialmunky]

Depends, both have different limitations and advantages. It probably was a combination of several things that lead certain people to favor certain technologies. It was probably a combination of armor and population pool. England had a decent amount of archers to already draw from. However the pool was shrinking or not large enough to accomodate the need as evidenced by the laws passed to make people practice archery.

Archery was never that popular among commoners on the continent. You only need to look back to EB times to see this. Romans employed Africans and Easterners to serve as archers. So if you're a continental country without a large supply pool of archers, without an large cottage industry capable of supporting the number of archers you need anyways, and you need a ranged unit... What is the best choice for you to make economically speaking? The easier solution of course, you train your peasants to be crossbowmen. You import the technical expertise from Italy so you don't have to develop the base and you get crossbow dominated armies which is a much better opportunity cost than starting from scratch. That or you just hire whatever mercenaries are on the market which would have been pretty light on trained bowmen but have a decent pool of crossbowmen.

Then of course there's the argument that mid-late medieval steel armors forced stronger bows which fewer archers could use that created an upper physical limit on the power of bows while crossbows could be mechanically cranked. And the crossbow more naturally segwayed into firearms.

A concrete timeframe would also help in this discussion...

[jazstl]

Accualy the discusion is aboute antique longbows not the medieval ones.

I would like to know if they were used so comonly, why don t put them in the game... (?)

[seienchin]

A bow might be a deadly weapon in a skilled mans hand, but its not too usefull against heavy infantry with shields. Without the stakes and bad weather the english bowman at agincourt would never have beaten the french knights.

About the firearms discussion,
A weapon beeing able to kill people by penetrating their shields and their armour and inflicting huge wounds (The first firearms used quite big bullets, often made of lead causing deadly poisoning) is much more frightening than arrows which you can absorb which your shields. (Or at least have the illuson about it). Another point is the space bowman need to have. Firearms mad close shooting formations possible.

[-42-]

About the firearms discussion,
A weapon beeing able to kill people by penetrating their shields and their armour and inflicting huge wounds (The first firearms used quite big bullets, often made of lead causing deadly poisoning) is much more frightening than arrows which you can absorb which your shields. (Or at least have the illuson about it). Another point is the space bowman need to have. Firearms mad close shooting formations possible.

Quick note about the lead poisoning, lead isn't some sort of deadly poison, it increases chances of birth defects. The reason lead bullets are so deadly is the combination of the deformation of the projectile, which produces much larger wound channels. Odds are most of the post battle deaths were caused by infection as opposed to "lead poisoning" (look at the massive infection death toll for the US Civil War). And early firearms needed quite a bit of space, being giant chucks of firespitting metal laible to explode if mishandled.

[antisocialmunky]

The thing that causes concern about lead even today is of bullets corroding and the lead finding its way into the ground water. Lead takes a while to kill you but the thing is that heavy metal build up inside of organisms is virtually impossible to get rid of. So a little bit over a long enough period of time will screw you up quite badly.

Yeah... battlefield clean up is very expensive. Now back to the topic!

[-42-]

If there is archeological evidence than I see no reason why not to include it, though I doubt the longbows there would be as effective as heralded.

[Cute Wolf]

So we may get a new unit "Proto-Welsh Longbowmen" whatever, as the local AOR of British Islands :laugh4:

Now seriously, if we gonna include longbowmen mechanic in EB 2, we should give some units "longbowmen" status, such as Hindus Pattiyodha and Kovakasi Netadzik, as they also got huge bow with them. But the question is simple, are that "big-bows" have armour piercing capability or not?

[A Very Super Market]

There is a reason why they were so large. Bamboo isn't very good bow material, but where in India would you find Yew?

[antisocialmunky]

All you would need a yew like wood with the same rigid to soft gradient. In lieu of that similar types of bows were built out of a lamination of of hard wood and bamboo - somewhat a hybrid in the shape of a longbow but with the construction similar to a composite bow. This site sells bows made with the traditional methods and gives a brief description of the construction method:

http://www.krackow.com/asia.html

Now, what's really interesting was when I looked at the Wikipedia article, it mentioned bows made out of Wootz Steel. Now they were starting to make steel at this point but I'm not certain what period those bows are from. I'd be very interested in hearing from an expert on those:

http://www.archeryhistory.com/longbows/longbowspics/drawings1.jpg
Its #4.

[Khorak]

The longbow is an old weapon, but it only became famous because of the way in which England used it. The 'history of the longbow' as people tend to know it is not so much a history of the weapon itself, as a history of how the Hundred Years War started to bring back professional standing armies and the societal evolutions that had been occurring for this to even be possible. England was also blessed with a long period of excellent, sometimes even exceptional battlefield commanders, while the French had been blessed with an unending plethora of colossal idiots who, in the only explanation I can come up with to justify it, resented the dogged bravery of their own troops so much they couldn't bring themselves to do anything but get the poor ******** killed.

Frankly, the longbow is not truly that exceptional when taken entirely on its own, although the myth is not quite so epic as the katana lie. They're certainly no more 'armour piercing' than any other bow with a similar draw weight. No bow should be considered 'armour piercing' above and beyond whatever attack value they have already been assigned in the game. Powerful bows will have a higher attack value than weaker ones, it's that simple; none of them are any more explicitly 'armour piercing' than any other, since the piercing mechanics of how they remain effective against padded armour, maille, and any gaps in rigid armour is endemic to any bow by default with the only difference being, ta daaa, how fast and how big the arrow they're firing is (for the most part).

[-42-]

Here is a nice compormise, as the M2TW engine allows for multiple weapon skins, simply include an occasional longbow in the formation, odds are performance was not that much more exceptional than a standard hunting bow used by drafted hunters.

[Tuuvi]

I agree with what Khorack and -42- have said. The longbow is not necessarily more powerful and it's definitely not any more armor piercing than other bows; it is just a more efficient design. This means that a longer bow pulling 50 lbs. will shoot an arrow faster than a shorter one with an identical draw weight. I would also like to point out again that shorter bows can be made just as efficient with the right design elements, such as recurving the limbs.

If the Sweboz were given longbows like I suggested that wouldn't really mean that there stats would need to be changed, because they used hunting bows which would have had much lower draw weights than war bows. I just feel like that is the kind of bows the ancient Germans would have used based on the evidence I have found. If the EB team doesn't agree with me I completely understand; I'm no historian and I came up with the idea while in the middle of writing my original reply :sweatdrop:

[Chris1959]

I can never resist putting in two penneth when longbows come up.

IIRC weren't the neolithic bows of of a flat D crossection which makes them more powerful than the more standard type but more complex to make and therefore the sort of specialist kit a hunter would use.

I agree with "shadeswolf" in that the French etc were unwilling to arm a large section of the lower orders with a lethal weapon, when it gets to firearms this changes because the weapon and it's ammunition become so much more complex and expensive that only the state can provide and resupply them in significant numbers.

And finally before everything dissolves in to pull weights and penetration I believe the English victories of the 14th 15th century are not due to the longbow as a weapon itself but the whole army being a weapon sytem in itself a fine balance of the logbowmen and men at arms, the real killers being the semi-professional, war hardened dismounted men at arms who for a century had no peers in Europe. It would be quite interesting, if the figures exsisted, to see who inflicted the most fatalities at Crecy, Poitiers etc, my money is on the men at arms.

[antisocialmunky]

You'd probably be able to derive something out of the ransom statistics if oyu can get ahold of them.

[Chris1959]

Regarding ransoms IIRC in an old article in the SPI magazine Edward III actually turned a profit from the Crecy campaign!!!

[Tuuvi]

I can never resist putting in two penneth when longbows come up.

IIRC weren't the neolithic bows of of a flat D crossection which makes them more powerful than the more standard type but more complex to make and therefore the sort of specialist kit a hunter would use.

Many of them were, but flatbows have been found also. I could be wrong but I do not think that bows with a "D" cross section are harder to make than other bows, as a matter of fact D cross sections are and were pretty common. All that is meant by a "D cross section" is that the belly of the bow is round. I think (but I'm not sure) that the main factor determining how the bow is worked is the type of wood used, and if that's not true than I'm sure that wood type does play a large role in it. Yew bows are usually skinny and made with a D cross section; what allows them to be made that way is the high elasticity of the wood. White woods, which are not as elastic however, have to made wider and have flat cross sections. If a bow made out of a white wood such as hickory or ash were made the same way as a yew bow, it would be very prone to breakage and would not be able to achieve the same cast as the yew bow.

Also while I'm at it I would like to add a quote from The Traditional Bowyer's Bible Vol. II that I missed while skimming through it, I feel that if I would have quoted this before it would have helped my previous posts make more sense.


It is also important to note that all evidence says that the oldest bow artifacts (and lots of others since then) were as tall as the men who shot them. This is an important element in keeping string follow to a minimum. Unbacked shorter bows will show more string follow, on average. As string follow increases, cast per pound drops.

For those of you who don't know, string follow is when the limbs of the bow become permanently bent. All bows will develop some string follow after being shot several times, however the less string follow the better.

[B-Wing]

I don't know nearly enough about archery, modern or historical, to add anything factual on this matter, but I must say that Khorak's response (2nd paragraph) seems most realistic in regards to the martial properties of longbows. To sum it up, if units in the game do equip longbows (of European design), they ought to have relatively high attack ratings without armor piercing. Improved range over shorter bows may also be reasonable.

If it were up to me to implement them however I saw fit, with my extremely limited knowledge and understanding of the time period, I would expect longbowmen to be a medium-level (Tier 3 MIC, perhaps) regional unit available in small geographical pockets. This in contrast to having low-level factional archers armed with longbows as though they were simply the norm for any particular culture.

[Saxby]

Yeh longbows weren't as powerful as people imagine and i bet a lot of people would be supprised at their range (which wasn't as huge as some people seem to think). They were powerful weapons especially as the english were able to mass them (something continental armys coundnt do for some reason (social patterns maybe?).

However as mentioned above it was the generals who kicked the french at these battles not the longbows. If the generals had switched over i doubt you would see the english winning. As luck would have it England was blessed with good generals and more importantly a militarily competant king and royal family. It was the opposite in france at this time and their tactics seem compleltlly insane if you read up on them now.

So yeh popular culture has exagurated the longbow. Even generally competant authors have made it worse such as bernard cornwall whos grail series exagerate the longbowmans power and accuracy hugely. Sorry just realised this is a bit off topic with regards to EBII but i'll post it anyway.

[Macilrille]

A small note on the supposed downpour weakening Italian X-bows more than English longbows.
29th October at a historical congress in Cph on something else I chanced to learn that experiments with submerging X-bow strings in water for 24 hours before using them showed no difference in performance to dry ones. Likely the poor Genoese used that explanation as one of many to explain how the volleys of English arrows mowed them down while they could not reach the longbowmen placed on a hill with their own arrows.

IMO the explanation is more likely:
1. sheer volume of arrows, the longbow has a higher rate of fire by far.
2. better range from the hilltop.
3. The Genoese had not brought their pavises to hide behind.

Anyway, this hints at why the English archers were so effective, they were trained for a lifetime to mass-fire volleys and their sheer volume of fire was incredible. Further, they used the armour-piercing bodkin arrows, which earlier archers did not. Both these developments only happened after the Welsh bloodily demonstrated how scaringly effective longbows were.

Now, the army bog finds from Denmark has yielded longbows, but not many compared to the number of spears and even swords- only in one of them are there lots ow arrowpoints AFAIR, so perhaps massed archery with longbows did not play a large role in Germanic warfare.

Rather we can turn to the situation 1000 years later as decribed in our first medieval sources purpotedly telling of prehistory, Viking Age and their own Early middle age.

Now whether we see them as relating truthfully the stories of the Germanic Iron Age and Viking Age, or (as later artists depicting New Testament events did so with them wearing full plate etc), is not so important here. What the Sagas and Saxo relates is that archery was more comparable to current day snipers than mass weapons.

Let me present a piece of Olav Trygvessons Saga, written by Snorri.
At The Battle of Svold where Sven Tveskæg (Forkbeard), Olaf of Sweden and Erik Haakonsson, Norwegian earl in opposition to Olav Trygvesson confronted him in a battle and clears his warships one by one (clearing a ship in the Viking terminology means boarding and killing everything). No one can board the Royal ship; the famously huge "Ormen hin Lange" (The Long Wyrm/Dragon) as long as Einar Tambarskjelve shoots his huge bow "Tambar". From this high vantage point he can pick off everyone that tries until Erik Haakonsson gets his "Finnish" (Samii) archer to shoot back*.


Einar shot an arrow at Earl Eirik, which hit the tiller end just above the earl's head so hard that it entered the wood up to the arrow-shaft. The earl looked that way, and asked if they knew who had shot; and at the same moment another arrow flew between his hand and his side, and into the stuffing of the chief's stool, so that the barb stood far out on the other side. Then said the earl to a man called Fin, -- but some say he was of Fin (Laplander) race, and was a superior archer, -- "Shoot that tall man by the mast." Fin shot; and the arrow hit the middle of Einar's bow just at the moment that Einar was drawing it, and the bow was split in two parts. "What is that", cried King Olaf, "that broke with such a noise?" "Norway, king, from thy hands," cried Einar. "No! not quite so much as that," says the king; "take my bow, and shoot," flinging the bow to him. Einar took the bow, and drew it over the head of the arrow. "Too weak, too weak," said he, "for the bow of a mighty king!" and, throwing the bow aside, he took sword and shield, and fought valiantly.

It is, BTW, interesting to see how the 13th century struggles of Norway vs Denmark and Sweden is reflected in ethnocentric bias, just as the Danish ones against the Holy Roman Empire is in Saxo.
Anyway, there are many stories such at that in various King- and Family Sagas, Saxo, etc., Gunnar of Hlidarendi for example, holds off his attackers by archery and is a famous archer. So we can conclude that in as much as the written sources reflect the real situation and are not just emphasising the prowess of a few great men (which they also do), archery was more of a sniper-ish nature.
However, there is at least one instance where archers in more numerous nature is present, last battle of Harald Hildetand at Bråvalla where amongst other things, archers from Telemarken take down the hero Ubbe of Friesland.

That leaves us little to conclude upon really, and my tentative interpretation would be that massed archers could play a role, but that only specialists such as Finn, Ejnar, Palnatoke, Gunnar and the men of Telemarken (but not Olav Trygvesson) employ the warbow/longbow and has specialised training with it.

*interestingly enough the most famous and highest scoring sniper we know off is a Finn, Simo Häyä 522 kills in 96 days of The Winter War, and Saxo describes the Finns as using basically the same tactics in Viking times as they employed in 1939...

[Ludens]

However as mentioned above it was the generals who kicked the french at these battles not the longbows. If the generals had switched over i doubt you would see the english winning. As luck would have it England was blessed with good generals and more importantly a militarily competant king and royal family. It was the opposite in france at this time and their tactics seem compleltlly insane if you read up on them now.

Not to take anything away from the English generals, but they wouldn't have done well in command of a French army either. The English had something approaching a professional army: the nobility paid scutage tax rather than do feudal duty, and the king used the money to hire mercenaries. The French used the old feudal host. This meant that every unit was loyal to its own commanders rather than the king, which was a problem since the French nobility was very independent-minded. Every count fancied himself a general. Furthermore, because the noblemen only owed 40 days of service to the king, the campaign (and that included assembling and marching to the enemy) had to be done quickly or the crown would have to pay extra. As a result, large armies (more high nobility, more assembly time) were almost unmanageable: the French seem to have done better when their army was smaller.

[Macilrille]

You could also find a worse commander, for example, than Bertrand de Guescelin.

However, we are supposed to discuss antiquity and the possible use of LB there.

[antisocialmunky]

Not to take anything away from the English generals, but they wouldn't have done well in command of a French army either. The English had something approaching a professional army: the nobility paid scutage tax rather than do feudal duty, and the king used the money to hire mercenaries. The French used the old feudal host. This meant that every unit was loyal to its own commanders rather than the king, which was a problem since the French nobility was very independent-minded. Every count fancied himself a general. Furthermore, because the noblemen only owed 40 days of service to the king, the campaign (and that included assembling and marching to the enemy) had to be done quickly or the crown would have to pay extra. As a result, large armies (more high nobility, more assembly time) were almost unmanageable: the French seem to have done better when their army was smaller.

I agree.

In short, the French did most of the kicking of their own butts. Terribly... terribly... kicking their own butts.:dizzy2:

[Watchman]

In short, the French did most of the kicking of their own butts. Terribly... terribly... kicking their own butts.:dizzy2:Err, no. That'd have required something on the order of a civil war (though the definition thereof gets a bit fuzzy in feudal realms), which for a change they *didn't* much engage in during the period.

Amply demonstrated the command-and-control problems of feudal armies (whose relation to force size more or less follows the square-cube law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law)), though, most certainly.

Further, they used the armour-piercing bodkin arrows, which earlier archers did not.No offense, but that's plain poppycock. As if people hadn't been devising specialised arrowheads for specific purposes since the freakin' Stone Age, and archers hadn't had to deal with heavy armour since the Late Bronze Age if not earlier.


Anyways, as to the age of the longbow, meh. It's just a large self-bow; Stone Age tech readily manufacturable by any culture which now was in the habit of making self-bows to begin with (and had ready access to suitable types of wood; in the absence of such somewhat different design approaches, such as the flatbow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbow), were apparently necessary). A rather more relevant question would be if people had a *reason* to carry around bows of such - let's face the facts here - inconvenient size, or found smaller staves sufficient for their needs. Something the size of a longbow is pretty much "dedicated archer" stuff, too large and inconvenient for more multipurpose troops to haul around on the battlefield - for example I'm willing to bet the bows Medieval Swedish militiamen were required to muster with in addition to their close-combat gear weren't of longbow dimensions already due to such practical considerations, although archery itself was a pretty much universal skill in Scandinavia. That the local geography tended to make for comparatively short engagement distances and obstructed battlefields - what with all the forest around - would also presumably have discouraged wielding too many soldiers as dedicated archers in the first place; one gets the impression battlefield archery in the region was primarily the purview of light-infantry skirmishers and a secondary capability of the heavy infantry.

Which is really the important bit here; archers with often quite powerful bows were by no means uncommon in the heavily forested northern Europe, in particular the sparsely inhabited Baltic region where there was copious amounts of essentially empty wilderness for the common folk to hunt in. However, unlike the English started doing (and had been standard in the East for millenia) this archery was not used in massed formations dedicated above all to firepower and -support; this makes a rather considerable difference in the receiving end AFAIK. By what I've read of re-enactor experiments with the topic, even rather small bodies of archers delivering coordinated massed fire are *highly* distruptive to heavy-infantry formations...
The ancient Greeks would probably agree, given the degree to which they modified their infantry doctrine to cope with the positively ghastly weight of fire projected by massed Persian foot. (I've seen it observed in quite a few different sources that for close-order heavy infantry faced with massed archery, the best course of action is to - if tactically viable - open ranks and close in ASAP to minimise damage, distruption and "suppression".)

[athanaric]

Further, they used the armour-piercing bodkin arrows, which earlier archers did not. Both these developments only happened after the Welsh bloodily demonstrated how scaringly effective longbows were.

Maybe in the West. Finds indicate that the Kidarites/early Turks etc. used different kinds of arrows in different regions, depending on their enemies' preferred amount of armour. Western Turks used many bodkin type arrows, because they were up against the Persians, who placed emphasis on heavily armoured contingents.

[Watchman]

Again, hardly. Bow-toting Europeans were no fools, and understood perfectly well that you wanted different arrowheads for different purposes. This is as true for the designs used for hunting as for war. Case in point, the Viking arrowheads found around Dublin (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/pdfs/halpin.pdf) include several types very clearly designed primarily for armour penetration - indeed the spike-like "bodkin" types form a clear majority of the finds. Not dissimilarly many of the (few) Carolingian arrowheads (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/coupland.htm) discovered on the Continent are of a rhomboid shape - which isn't quite as dedicated "anti-armour" design as the "bodkin" types, but certainly far more so than the broadheads used for hunting (and sometimes, in war, against horses and unarmoured soldiers).

[athanaric]

Yeah, it seems that in most societies, your average bowmen would usually carry several types of arrows around. This feature is most distinctive in Nomad societies though.

[Watchman]

Make that "best known". I've seen the selections Viking Age Finnish hunters hauled around; there's everything there from the usual varieties of broadheads to chisel-like transverse-edged "cutters" to those weirdo Y-shaped "frog-crotch" sorts... and then a few whose function I could never quite figure out.

By the by, the cutting types with a transverse or somewhat angled edge go back to Stone Age...

[oudysseos]

A point that has seem to be missed is that the La Tene cultures of NW Europe, usually referred to as Celtic, did not seem to use bows much at all (in EBs time frame), and especially not for war. Slings and throwing spears were their missile weapons of choice. So proto-Welsh longbowmen ain't on the list, guys.

Another point that everyone always seems to overlook is that people don't choose technology solely (or even primarily) for materialistic or mechanistic reasons. What I mean is that all this hoo-hah about long bows being better than short bows blah blah blah is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.

There is not an ultimate "best bow" that everyone in the world would have used if only they had the chance (and the same goes for swords, spears, armour and everything else). Weapons, like pottery and all other aspects of material culture, are deeply tied to the cultural identities of the peoples producing them, and are not always the most efficient or advanced technology available. The Japanese didn't use katanas because they are the best possible swords of all time, they used them because to do so was part of being Japanese. Sure, material considerations play a part- a culture poor in metal will not develop metal body armour, as in South America before Columbus, but in many cases a culture with adequate metal supplies will also not use body armour, for non-statistical reasons. Try and keep in mind that the Total War world is a very incomplete model, and the conclusions that you draw about war from playing the game might not be applicable to reality.

[Watchman]

...is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.Hey! Statistics-minded video-gamers are real people too, with real problems! :angry: (Wait...)

[antisocialmunky]

Amply demonstrated the command-and-control problems of feudal armies (whose relation to force size more or less follows the square-cube law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law)), though, most certainly.

Still, it was more the French forces losing rather than the English forces winning that won those engagements.

[Watchman]

More like the French armies stumbling over themselves on account of being quite literally too large for their own good, but basically, yeah.

[satalexton]

I'm under the impression that the french won the 100 years war by zerging. Blighty Yeomen are not easy to replace when they're dead.

[Watchman]

No, not really. Blighty yeomen being way easier and cheaper to replace than fully armed and trained men-at-arms and similar quality close-combat troops, which was kind of a central reason in why there were so many of them in the English armies.

Thing is, Medieval warfare wasn't really about those big dramatic set-piece battles. The important thing was the control of the assorted fortified positions (which Europe had been very thoroughly filled with since the beginning of the Middle Ages), and winning major field battles only really assisted in that in A) letting you lay siege to them in the first place B) if you were lucky, the garrison had marched out to take part in that battle and been decimated. But for the most part the English had to deal with them the old-fashioned way, which is incidentally *the* major reason why territorial borders on the whole changed relatively little during the Middle Ages despite so much trying - those fortress networks were good at frustrating efforts at territorial conquest. (People wouldn't have spent so much money and effort bulding and maintaining the costly things if they weren't.)
Having to then also garrison what fortresses had been captured also obviously somewhat stretched the English manpower reserves...

Another thing that had a fairly important part in Medieval warfare was raiding and skirmishing by relatively small forces, and as already oft mentioned the French tended to do lot better there - much less C-and-C problems.

Finally, the French finally got their act together and reformed their military to a more reliably performing and manageable shape - the result being sometimes referred to as "Ordonnance French armies", after the royal ordinances involved in the reforms - and proceeded to evict the English from the Continent in a matter of decades. Getting serious about artillery on the side didn't hurt, either.

[Chris1959]

Plus the French got effective leaders just as the English lost theirs and plunged into political chaos themselves.

[Tuuvi]

Anyways, as to the age of the longbow, meh. It's just a large self-bow; Stone Age tech readily manufacturable by any culture which now was in the habit of making self-bows to begin with (and had ready access to suitable types of wood; in the absence of such somewhat different design approaches, such as the flatbow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbow), were apparently necessary).
:yes:


A rather more relevant question would be if people had a *reason* to carry around bows of such - let's face the facts here - inconvenient size, or found smaller staves sufficient for their needs.

I own a longbow and I haven't found the size to be too inconvenient. While they are taller than other bows, all wooden bows are skinny, thin and lightweight. Carrying around a longbow is pretty much like carrying around a walking stick.


A point that has seem to be missed is that the La Tene cultures of NW Europe, usually referred to as Celtic, did not seem to use bows much at all (in EBs time frame), and especially not for war. Slings and throwing spears were their missile weapons of choice. So proto-Welsh longbowmen ain't on the list, guys.

Another point that everyone always seems to overlook is that people don't choose technology solely (or even primarily) for materialistic or mechanistic reasons. What I mean is that all this hoo-hah about long bows being better than short bows blah blah blah is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.

There is not an ultimate "best bow" that everyone in the world would have used if only they had the chance (and the same goes for swords, spears, armour and everything else). Weapons, like pottery and all other aspects of material culture, are deeply tied to the cultural identities of the peoples producing them, and are not always the most efficient or advanced technology available. The Japanese didn't use katanas because they are the best possible swords of all time, they used them because to do so was part of being Japanese. Sure, material considerations play a part- a culture poor in metal will not develop metal body armour, as in South America before Columbus, but in many cases a culture with adequate metal supplies will also not use body armour, for non-statistical reasons. Try and keep in mind that the Total War world is a very incomplete model, and the conclusions that you draw about war from playing the game might not be applicable to reality.

A lot of people seem to have misunderstood me, I apologize for that :oops: I agree that there is no such thing as the "best bow". The reason I stated that longbows are more efficient than short bows is because I felt that the proto-germans would not have gone to using shorter bows when they already had a good design. I did not take culture into consideration there so you may have a point. The bow artifacts I cited were thousands of years before EB's time frame. Also I have been into archery for about 7 years so I have some real-life experience. Please don't dismiss me as a "statistics minded video gamer".

[Watchman]

I own a longbow and I haven't found the size to be too inconvenient. While they are taller than other bows, all wooden bows are skinny, thin and lightweight. Carrying around a longbow is pretty much like carrying around a walking stick.The point being more if it's worth the annoyance to drag one around the bushes when hunting, or the battlefield when you may need to carry quite a bit of other war gear as well depending on the specific context. We're talking about something with the dimensions of a decent-sized spear after all, no ?

[Tuuvi]

Well as far as hunting goes longbows were and are used pretty commonly, in certain parts of the world. I have been looking at pictures of Amazonian and Papau New Guinean archers and both appear to be using longbows. I don't think the size of longbows really presents a problem when hunting. When it comes to battle and having to carry around a spear or other weapon as well as a longbow the size could present a problem so you may have a point there. I don't really know anything about ancient warfare apart from what I've learned from EB though so I can't be sure.

Now the longbow design does have some advantages over short straight limbed bows which would make it worth lugging one around if it's as cumbersome as you suggest. They are more efficient (meaning they will shoot arrows at faster speeds per each pound of draw weight), have less handshock, and are more pleasant to draw. This is because longbows have a lower string angle when drawn (I was partly wrong when I said it was due to sting length). So basically the problem with short bows is that there is less wood available to do the same amount of work as a longbow with identical draw weight, which results in the limbs of the shorter bow being pulled further and put under more strain. The limbs of the longbow don't have to bend as far when it is being shot. However I am not saying that the longbow is the superior bow design. Short bows can be recurved or reflexed, which decreases string angle. Also bowmaking and archery are complex subjects and there are many more factors to consider when designing a bow. There simply cannot be a "best bow".

[Macilrille]

Last weekend forest training saw two guys with longbows, one on each side, sniping at the rest of us. They had no trouble moving through the woods. In fact they were more mobile than those of us lugging around armourd, big shields, etc. Personally I had only two-handed spear (3m) and sword + buckler for backup, and am outdoorsman, fit and old carpenter used to running in woods, so I had no trouble either. However, the snipers were more mobile than half or so of us, and from behind the line they did a fine job of taking out 1- 5 guys (mainly the two-handed weapons with no shield to hide behind or their counterpart on the opposite side), and with 20-ish on either side that could be decisive.

However that is Viking re-enactment and style, massed units... dunno whether they would loose their cohesion and thus ability to volley fire.