The Longbow was a mainstay of English battle tactics for about 200 years and served a role in battle for something over 300 years.
Lately I have seen several programs debunking its ability to pierce armor. This flies in the face of a great deal of contemporary accounts. What is more, is it means that the English spent a lot of time and effort on something that didn't work in the first place.
One early account that sticks in my mind said that a Welch bowman shot a knight in the upper thigh sending the arrow through cuisse, chain, leather, leg, saddle, and into the horse deep enough to kill it.
In any event the Welsh bowmen were dangerous enough to inspire Edward I to bring them into his army, order that yew trees be planted in every churchyard in his kingdom, and outlaw every sport except archery on Sundays. Once it was known that English Yew was not as good for bows as that found on the continent laws were enacted that required each ship docking at an English port to bring 4 bow staves for each tun (a shipping barrel) of other goods. This was later increased to 6.
Seemingly the longbow fell out of use more because of the lack of suitable wood than because of the prominence of firearms. Europe, it would seem, was devoid of usable timber for English bow staves.
That is a tremendous amount of effort over a deficient weapons system. Not to mention all of the various arrow points they developed.
The main point I would like to make is that in both of the programs I watched they were not actually using longbows for the tests. One of them did have what could be, today, termed a longbow, in that it was almost 6 feet long, neither had a draw weight in excess of 70 lbs. The one with the more powerful bow did manage to break several links of chain mail with a broad head arrow at 10 meters but the bodkins failed to penetrate.
I found this a bit odd. As an a side, I once had a project to install top security booths for a government installation. I found that while there was bullet proof glass that could withstand point blank machinegun fire it was not proof against bodkin arrow points.
I believe that I read something of British scientists studying the remains of several archers and they found that they were somewhat deformed in the shoulders. It would seem that the skeletons studied had tremendous muscle mass in those areas which accounted for the deformities. Coupled with that are the bows found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, from the tail end of the period. Those bows had draw weights from 160 to 180 lbs. at a 30 inch draw, with them most being at the higher end of draw weights.
We hear time and again from those writing at the time, that bowmen took years to develop their talent. We also read that they had a range of around 275 yards with their standard arrows.
Their rate of fire is given as only 6 per minute where as someone shooting a 50 lb. bow has no trouble shooting 12 per minute with a bit of practice. Furthermore, the same guy with a 50 lb. bow can be reasonably assured of hitting a 30 yard target within a few weeks and not take years to develop his skills.
So, what do you think? Are we the victims of 700 years of English propaganda or are the debunkers making some sort of errors in their testing?
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