European Archers

[Madae]

Hm The Traditional Bowyer's Bible says otherwise. Yew is one of the best bow woods to be sure, but you can make a good selfbow out of many different species of wood. AFAIK Yew bows can take a set as well, and in other wood species set can be mitigated with the right design and if the bow is well-made. Differences in wood performance aside, my original point still stands. Making a man-tall bow is not a novel concept, in fact it's pretty common.

You can, but should you? I'm not going to say other countries didn't use Longbows - I"m sure they did, and the concept is pretty simple to understand - but I'm gonna post this again;

Yew is the only widespread European timber that will make good self longbows, and has been the main wood used in European bows since Neolithic times. More common and cheaper hard woods, including elm, oak, ash, hazel and maple, are good for flatbows. A narrow longbow with high draw-weight can be made from these woods, but it is likely to take a permanent bend (known as "set" or "following the string") and would probably be outshot by an equivalent made of yew.

I think if good Longbows were easy enough to replicate, then the rest of Europe would have been using them too, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that Yew was a northern wood, and almost extinct in their area because of the English "farming them" for bows. If it was so easy to create a good Longbow like the English, I imagine that would have spread rapidly around Europe just like the firearm and cannons did.

But then again, I'm not an archer/bowyer, so I couldn't really say one way or the other. I'm inclined to think it was not as easy as it sounds.

Also, the fact that they didn't spread rapidly around Europe like guns, and mostly stayed in English hands, kind of proves that other countries perceived them as the situational weapon that they were, and not necessarily a game-breaking win whenever they fought in a battle - the few battles having been pointed out where a Longbow contributed heavily notwithstanding.