the longbow,sucky,or all powerful?

As the truth nearly always is...somewhere in the middle

Yes, it was powerful and it's rate of fire let it decimate any crossbowman in range. It also had an amazing rate of fire and was relatively easy to manufacture against the ''superior'' composite bow. But to my knowledge, the composites use lighter arrows and rely on the speed, the longbowmen tended to use quite heavy arrrows for killing things.

I have no doubt the mongols would whip the english yeomen, even on foot...due to the fact they were trained from birth even more so than a yeoman.

However, just about any half decent weapon is amazing with the amount practice and massed numbers that were employed by the yeomen.

And yes, a gun is inifinitely superior to a longbow if you don't have literally years to train men to use that weapon

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

You're the first one I hear that he recognizes he's drunk..... ~:cheers:

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Well dude, I have to say that I am rather experienced in recognizing different states of influence ~:cheers:

Was there ever a battle in which the longbow had a significant duel with either the eastern composite bow or the crossbow?

The Mongols used armor-piercing bodkin arrows in addition to a bunch of other specialized arrows. They worked pretty well on the Polish, German, and Hungarian knights in the 1230's. But then again weren't most of the knights at that time only wearing partial plate over chainmail?

There are guys that used 80lb longbows in NFAS shoots and there is no way they could fire any type of arrow through 4 inches of seasoned oak

.....Orda

i dont think that a 150 pound longbow would be too far out of reality. if a modern man can pull a 110pound bow several times,how much could a seasoned veteran,(who i think were stronger than average modern men because of the intense if short lives they lived.)how many times did a bowman pull in a larger battle?i would say quite many.and also werent warbow competittions held in great profusion in england?and if i were a warlord,if my archers couldnt draw their bow at least 50 times with ease their heads would rest on spits.or i would fire them.same thing.
plus i know a redneck who draws a 170 compound bow(some kinda freakin bow,maybe compound.haha)for deer hunting.lets just say the deer doesnt even realize its been hit.it run until all the blood is out,then falls over and doesnt get up.too bad the best bows(i think) are being made now that they are no longer used in mainstream warfare.

A 170 lbs compound?!? Aik.

Training makes all of the difference. Any warrior would tell you that it's not the equipment which wins a battle, it's how the well the equipment is used in the heat of battle. Longbows require years of training to gain the skills necessary to use properly, just as shooting a composite bow from the saddle does. Shooting a crossbow requires less training and less skill, gunpowder weapons even less. In a contest under ideal conditions, the guns are more accurate and easier to use than the crossbows which are likewise easier to use and more accurate than the longbow. But, battle isn't a simple contest and is certainly not under ideal conditions.

Those years of training to acquire the skills needed mean the difference in battle, where it's all chance and confusion and adrenaline surges. So the skill and experience, acquired via intense and long training, to shoot those longbows or fire from horseback creates an army which is better able to win. In both cases, and in other examples I'm sure, it's not the technology which really creates the winning edge, it's the skill and training and experience of the user.

I don't hold the longbow very highly in regard. It was too large, and was inferior to range and power to Eastern composite bows in any case.

Does anyone else wish that they lived back in the timeframe where owning and being able to use a bow was a thing to be proud of?

I mean sure, I'd be proud of having awesome skills with a bow, but it's not going to bring home the bacon unless I live on a pig farm.

oy vey, to live in ages past when such skills were honorable.

By what I've read of it the fact that the composite bow was never much used in Western Europe is actually rather prosaic - no suitably long-horned cattle. Simple as that. Apparently you need horns of certain minimum lenght to get sufficiently large component parts to use in a bow, and suitable bovines simply weren't around in those parts. And no, nobody apparently though of importing suitable stock either. Come on now, those days the average person wouldn't travel fifty miles from his place of birth during his entire life...

Apparently the sort of "jigsaw" construction used in composite-stave crossbows wasn't usable in hand-bows either. If it were it'd naturally have been done - there were after all ways to protect the glues of composite bowstaves from moisture, as the Arabs and Turks and whoever had composite archers in their ships' marine contignents. Incidentally, East Europeans and to some degree the Italians apparently had access to suitable materials to construct composite bows; presumably they either had suitable cattle or could trade for raw materials easily enough.

By what I know of it the composite bow had pretty much reached its ultimate recurved form by the Huns, although Ottoman master artificiers apparently still managed to enact some further improvement. No biggie really - if the American Plains Indians are to be judged by, almost as soon as a people learn the pros of mounted pastoralism (as opposed to the earlier footslogging variety) they start developing composite bows to shoot with from horseback. And horse nomads in Eurasia are a phenomenom some four or five thousand years old...

In any case for most intents and purposes Europeans didn't have composite bows readily available. That actually makes them a bit of an odd man out in continental Eurasia as damn near everyone else who now made military use of archers to any meaningful degree seems to have been in love with the damn things, save for pre-Mughal Indians who likewise used longbows.

However, even the superb recurve composite bow tended to let you down against heavily armoured opponents, save perhaps at uncomfortably short distances. Want proof ? How about the simple fact that the concept of the cataphract, armoured man on armoured horse, originated specifically among the cultures that made wide use of the composite bow ? It is extremely difficult to believe the princes and prosperous warriors would have expended such enormous sums on the defensive gear of themselves and their warriors (incidentally themselves often bow-toting), nevermind horses strong and fit enough to carry these fellows plus their own armour to boot around with any speed and stamina, had it been a simple exercise in target shooting to pluck one of these elite warriors from the saddle.

Then there's the way East and Central European late-medieval armour tends to show an interesting proliferation of defenses specifically for the neck and throat; this is apparently a fairly common trait amongst warrior groups who can virtually count on being exposed to extensive and powerful archery (in this case the Turks', but the proliferation of cross- and longbows had comparative effects on West European and Italian gear). Again, it is dubious if the damn things would've been bothered with, especially for so long and in such a scale, if they didn't work. Crude Darwinism normally works pretty mercilessly as far as combat gear is concerned.

Oh yeah, and mail-clad Crusaders also seem to have singularly failed to drop like flies under Turkish recurve-bow archery...

As for the longbow, if one is to judge by the way armoured French troops seem to have generally been able to engage their English counterparts for effect despite having been subjected to varying degrees of "from Britain with love" arrow-storms, even very early in the HYW when "topnotch armour" meant a mail hauberk plus hardened leather or even (*gasp*) coat-of-plates its effectiveness against decently protected men is vastly overrated in the popular mind.

More of the same is suggested by the fact that the longbow (plus Scottish and Helvetian pikes and/or poleaxes plus Dutch godendags plus evolving crossbows plus sundry) was among the chief motivators in the line of developement that led to the birth of the solid plate armour; and the way said weapon gradually disappeared from use not too long after the aforementioned type of harness was introduced. Crossbows at least, besides being very easy to use in comparision, could cope by replacing the composite stave with a steel one, and once sufficiently refined guns could do all the crossbow did and many things (like making holes in things) even better... but the longbow, that one became obsolete. Increasing its power sufficiently was simply not materially possible, unlike with the composite bow whose draw weight can AFAIK be engineered way beyond what any conceivable human physique can actually use...

Even after plate armour became widespread the longbow could no doubt have made itslef useful in plaguing lighter-armoured troops, which were abundant in any army. The simple breastplates of the rank-and-file troops just plain weren't of the same grade and strenght as those worn by the elite. But that apparently wasn't useful enough, which is as such understandable. Heavy cavalry, the real headache, was better countered with pikemen supported by musketeers and crossbowmen or just plain dismounted men-at-arms with polearms, and for their part crossbowmen and gunners were easy and quick enough to train that they were a cost-efficient, if not quite optimal, way of shooting at the lighter troops too. You could say that the longbow could no longer fill its former tactical niche well enough to justify all the hassle employing it gave the English.

After all, it took a long time to train an archer with sufficient physique to make an effective battlefield longbowman (learning to judge the distance, firing elevation etc. is apparently *way* faster), all the more so as the prospective archer had to work his farm too besides practicing at the butts. The English rulers had to pass some fairly harsh laws to keep most of the understandably somewhat uncooperative peasants practicing even their supposed minimum quota. Lands where many peasants hunted with the bow for a living, such as nigh anything on the continental coniferous belt, at least could sidestep this issue; a hunter recruited into the army already had all the archery training he needed, and just had to be drilled and disciplined and generally turned into a soldier. The steppe nomads had a similar "leg up" with their composite bows, and obviously full-time standing troops like the Egyptian Mameluks, Ottoman Janissaries and the upper strata of Japanese samurai etc. could spare all the time they ever needed for archery practice.

The problem with claiming anything is armor piercing is that the people who make the claims, especially contemporary historians, never say what sort of armor was pierced. It could be hardened leather, or is it scale? Chain or plate?
But yes, most of the heavy horse in the East likely would have survived pretty well against arrows. But they wouldn't do well trying to chase horse archers, as they'd evantauly be shot down, regardless of how long it took to pierce the armor. That was what other horse archers and other light cavalry was for, to prevent the sort of shoot out that you describe.

I think you are right about the armour piercing but i think Cataphrakt style of warfare was developed mainly against other horse archers.They had composite bows too.And themselves were better protected compered to unarmoured horse archer.The combination of armour and composite bow was maybe the best solution against other horse archers. :bow:

Crusader knights proved to be fairly able to ride down horse archers, assuming the latter didn't do the smart thing and disperse. That's actually down to the horses; hit-and-run (or rather, "shoot & scoot") skirmish tactics wear the beast out fairly quickly, and are thus only really possible for troops with lots of remounts to replace tired horses. In practice this means steppe nomads. Now, those shaggy little steppe ponies, besides being actually rather cute, have much to recomment them; they're hardy, tough little beasts that tend to survive the worst Momma Nature throws at them in the high plains with relative ease, and can subsist indefinitely on just grass and enough water. But they're also rather small, and not the fastest or strongest equines around. In a race against a grain-fed, much bigger, stronger and faster warhorse, even one weighed down by armour, they're going to lose out on sheer speed uncomfortably easily.

The steppe nomads were incidentally apparently the first groups to breed real warhorses, just for their elite mounted warriors although this was long before the later cataphracts.

'Course, those warhorses were expensive and logistically problematic; whereas an average nomad warrior would start a campaign with over a dozen ponies (the Mongols considered eighteen to be a good number) - although attrition naturally reduced the numbers rather quickly - your average "civilized" cavalryman could consider himself lucky if he had more than one remount. On the other hand in a cavalry fight the possessor of the superior mount had a definite advantage, and so long as the trooper didn't dash around the field pointlessly his horse could likely be counted on to last through your average set-piece battle.

This difference is well apparent in the wars between the Mamluks and the Ilkhanid Mongols. The Mamluks, despite their Turkish origins, were very much "civilized" horse-archers; they rode trained warhorses and normally fired standing still, which allowed greater range and accuracy although they were also trained in and used more mobile archery tactics when needed. I've read that their archery drill eventually produced such rates of fire that they were at least once able to stop a Crusader cavalry charge on firepower alone, which would make them the first - you'd need to wait until the musket salvo fire of the Thirty Years' War or thereabout for the next occasion on armoured cavalry being checked by just shooting.

The Ilkhanids (who, like the other Mongol hordes, by this point only had actual Mongols in the highest ranks - but then again the other steppe nomads recruited along the way differed little from them, so the point is a little moot) for their part were very much a "classic" steppe army, although the Mongol combat method apparently modified the traditional nomad tactics somewhat. They had all the hallmarks - huge herds of ponies, clouds of loose-order skirmishing horse-archers, the works, plus somewhat refined command structures and so on. But not all that much, mind you; the steppe nomads were always big on battlefield control and coordination.

The Mamluks won, incidentally.

Aside from their slave-soldier background their fighting methods were probably fairly similar to those used by Byzantine, Chinese, Russian and so on "regular" horse-archers, as they faced many of the same considerations (especially regarding horses). Although it was common among "Eastern" heavy cavalry to also carry bows, shock charge actually seems to have been an important counter to lightly armed horse-archers - for example the Byzantines considered "Latin" knights good mercenaries to use against the Turks, and they generally knew what they were doing.

Don't confuse the Turks that the Crusaders fought with true steppe warriors (though I wasn't clear on what I was talking about). They were pretty settled and stactic, and while their armies where mobile, a knight would never have caught a truly nomadic horse archer, much less even have seen the nomad's army. Take for example Darius' invasion of Scythia. It wasn't like the Persians were nearly as infantry bound as say the Greeks, but he couldn't really engage them in a full battle, until the Scythians were ready to.

I wouldn't consider the Il Khans true nomads either, since they were tied down a certaint part of land that they had to defend. It could be argued that a nomadic army wouldn't have been so quick to engage the Mamluks as the Il Khans were.

But I think many Mamluks were Qipchaqs, who I would have thought would still carry their normal nomadic way of warfare. I'm probably wrong, however.

About the breeding, I think that many times steppe ponies were crossed with heavier breeds, to make tough and strong horses. This way, they could carry heavier armored warriors as well as not having to rely on stall feeds, being more agile, etc.

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I think you are right about the armour piercing but i think Cataphrakt style of warfare was developed mainly against other horse archers.They had composite bows too.And themselves were better protected compered to unarmoured horse archer.The combination of armour and composite bow was maybe the best solution against other horse archers. :bow:

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Well, I agree with you mostly. Except for the fact that even though many had bows, a fully armoured cataphract probably wouldn't be able to catch a horse archer on a fresh mount. But once the horse is tired out, and the cataphract has a fresh mount, then the odds would be evened.

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Well, I agree with you mostly. Except for the fact that even though many had bows, a fully armoured cataphract probably wouldn't be able to catch a horse archer on a fresh mount. But once the horse is tired out, and the cataphract has a fresh mount, then the odds would be evened.

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Sorry Steppe,but i dont understand your logig here.Why would have a cataphract armed with bow would have chased a horse archer in the first place?If it would have been a lancer,i understand he would have had to catch the horse archer in order to kill him with his lance.If these two would have had composite bows both of them.The cataphract would have the advance over the lightly armoured steppe horse archer because of the armour of himself and on his horse.Because of his armor he would have had a better chance to deflect the steppewarriors arrows while the steppewarriors lack of armor would put him and his horse in danger beeing hit by cataphracts arrows. :bow:

They would still have to get in range in order to shoot them, and they could always run out of arrows (though they would have multiple quivers).Also, a horse archer probably wouldn't have stayed still during the whole thing.
In addition, there would rarely be an equal amount of horse archers and enemy cataphracts. So even though a cataphract would be able to sit and take more arrow volleys, there would be more horse archers zipping around, not allowing an easy shot.
Also, they would have tired more easily than the horse archer, and making it harder to chase them (in order to shoot them), or to charge other soldiers.
But thats what other horse archers and other cataphracts were for. Horse archers to chase off the enemy horse archers, and cataphracts to charge the enemy cataphracts.

Lastly, not all cataphracts had bows. Many, if not most did, but there were some, in particular the more settled peoples whose every last cataphract didn't always have bows. They also had varying degrees of protection on them and their horses, so against the poorer cataphracts, a horse archer might have more luck getting in a deadly shot.

Does anyone have actual numbers of the difference in power between a recurve and a selfbow(longbow)?


CBR

Another issue to consider, when looking at the effectiveness of longbows:

The oft-quoted figure of 12 or so arrows a minute is of course very impressive indeed... but how long would a trained longbowman be able to keep it up? A few minutes? Surely, not for the hours a battle could last. And that's before one considers the possibility of running out of arrows. Is it not probable the archers would fire at a more leisurely pace most of the time, except at certain decisive moments? (The very first opening volleys, for example, to demoralise the enemy. Or when some blokes on horseback with pointy bits are running directly at you.)

A crossbow is slower to fire, but would also be much less tiring. (depending on the loading mechanism used, I suppose. Never fired either longbow or crossbow myself, so this is pure speculation.) I imagine a crossbowman would be able to keep firing for far longer periods of time than a longbowman.

This probably helps explain why longbows didn't exceed draw-weights of 110 pounds at the utmost, according to the articles linked to here. Sure, people now can build and shoot bows with much greater draw-weight. But how long can they keep that up?