Over in the civIII forums there are some threads talking about the longbow as a suggested UU for the English civ. A few posters have noted that ONLY the English used the longbow.

However, in 1996 I visited the Royal Armoury in Leeds (England:) ) where I saw a display of Japanese weaponry. One of the items was a Japanese longbow.

So my question is- am I deranged and merely imagine having seen this object, or were the English (along with the welsh) not the only ones to employ longbows?

Depends on the definition of a 'longbow'. As I recall, the Japanese did use fairly large-sized bows for warfare, but not in organized formations.

They still do today, where schoolgirls are taught archery lessons in school, as part of their 'cultural' education. ;)

IIRC (I wouldn`t swear to it) the information on the longbow displayed stated that they were more powerful than the british version.

They were also made of more than one piece of wood (and included bone I think), this was so that the lower arm was shorther than the upper one allowing the bow to be used from horseback or while kneeling. It also said that they were difficult to build- so they proberbly were not used on a mass scale as you suggest- but they were certainly used.

Various cultures had longbows. The Pauravians of India used longbows with effect against Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Hydaspes for example.

In fact the English copied the longbows from the Welsh now that I think about it.

The importance of the longbow in northern Europe was it was the first time that effective bows could be made cheaply, and thus in large quantity. Northern Europe didn't have the materials required to make the kind of bows cheaply available in the middle-east, like the Composite Bow, althought they did develop the Crossbow; but, like I said, these were ruinously expensive.

This is well illustrated by the battle of Crecy. Here, the French had hundreds of expensive Genoese Crossbowmen mercenaries. But they are quickly overwhelmed and routed because of their comparitively low numbers, and it was these Genoese Crossbowmen, expected to be a winning tool, who were made the scapegoats for the defeat! But it wasn't that Crossbows were worse weapons - they had much more power and direction - it was just that they were very expensive; and longbows were cheap, but appoached the crossbow in effectiveness.

Interestingly, the Longbow didn't survive very long as a tool of western warfare, but the Crossbow was used for centuries afterwards, even though it had already been around for centuries before the emergence of the longbow. If someone can explain this, I'd be veryu grateful! :goodjob:

I think you have partially answered your own question calcagus-the crossbows power allowed its bolts to penetrate steel armour. There was actually a documentary on british T.V about this very thing not so long ago- I think it was one of the Battlefield Detective series. They were investigating whether the longbow was actually the decisive weapon it was supposed to have been at Agincourt. They found in lab tests that the standard iron bodkin that was in use by the English/Welsh at Agincourt could not have penetrated the French steel armour of the day- they put forward other theories of why the French forces were routed and why the bowmens contribution was seen as decisive.

Interesting. :hmm:

But how many, I mean what percentage, of the French soldiers at Agincourt could actually afford armor that needed a Crossbow bolt to penetrate it? I mean, when the armour wearing classes of medieval warfare ever actually died on a battlefield, it was usually by having their throats cut or something in the aftermath, rather than actually dying in combat. These guys expected to be ransomed; they probably wouldn't have regarded death as much of a possibilty. ;)

Agincourt is generally regarded as the French toffs Big Day Out which went pear shaped. Whether this is actually the case I dont know- they did find a highly ornate fragment of armour. I don' t know if this was representative of the general quality of the armour being worn by the French - they seemed to think that it was.
They argued that the French men at arms were in fact melled to death by the Henrys bowmen not skewered with arrows. They reasoned after analysing the topography of the battlefield of Agincourt which is a raised plateau funnelling towards where Henry had positioned his troops and also the soil composition- the soil type at Agincourt when wet generates a great deal of suction. That the battle had more in common with a crowd disaster than a battle, amplyified by the knights being knocked over and being unable to extricate themselves from the mud many of them actually suffocating to death before the bowmen could mash them with their mells.
They would have expected to have been ransomed had they lived, those that did Henry had executed which suggests that they weren't the flower of French nobility that is generally believed. The Battle field detectives said that they were indeed French noblemen and the Henry broke the rules of chivalry for expediency-not totally unlike him it has to be said.

it was usually by having their throats cut or something in the aftermath,

:) the or something probably refers to the infamous coffee cup method of offing a knight although you are probably too polite to mention it. However, I'm not !:p The favoured method was to shove a so called bollock dagger into the unarmoured nether regions of the unfortunate knight and giving it a good old twist- in the process severing the femoral artery ( hence the analogy with cutting the bottom off a coffee cup ). This saved you the tediousness of struggling to get the guys helm off and his arms getting in the way. I don't know if the bowmen were eqipped with bollock daggers though- I guess there was a large second hand market for used suits of armour back in England though featuring adverts like " one not so carefull owner requires extensive work on helm and breastplate, would suit first time buyer who wants to get their first foot on armour ladder".

:eek: :goodjob:

Well, Froissart says that the English left this duty to the Cornish and the Welsh. ;) The reason that they did so, was because they were regarded as barbarians outside the framework of traditional chivalric culture. (Compare the French use of the Huron in the Last of the Mohicans!)

So it wasn`t unique to the English/welsh then?

I also understand that it takes far longer for a longbowmen to train and practise to maintain his longbow skills, as compared with a crossbowmen.

BTW, the crossbow had been in use in China since 450 BCE, and was a standard weopan with Imperial Han garrison troops. ;)

Hey, XIII, can you post some information and (if you can) a picture of it? That'd be great :goodjob:

I want to decide whether or not this thing is really a "crossbow", or merely bears some superficial resemblance! ;)

You'll have to look it up yourself - I just happen to 'know'. :p

It really is a crossbow, and the weopan probably travelled to the West, like many other Chinese inventions. The Han had large Imperial-owned factories producing these in mass quantities with milimeter precision (the crossbow bolt and lock or something) for the Han conscript troops.

Originally posted by XIII
You'll have to look it up yourself - I just happen to 'know'. :p

It really is a crossbow, and the weopan probably travelled to the West, like many other Chinese inventions. The Han had large Imperial-owned factories producing these in mass quantities with milimeter precision (the crossbow bolt and lock or something) for the Han conscript troops.

C'mmon, don't be awkward! ;) I wouldn't know where to look :(

I'll check out the origins of the Crossbow though, but I'm always sceptical about attributing western or eastern things to to the other side, unless I'm sure that there was little chance of these things emerging independently!

I too have heard that China used crossbows relatively early, and it's possible the technology could have travelled to the West, but I imagine it probably developed independently. The Greeks used Ballista at that time, and there is evidence that they had a personnel crossbow with some wierd name that escapes me. The Romans had them, but didn't use them to any great extent.

The Ku****es also employed a longbow as early as 100 B.C. (Kushan – Northern India)

Edit: :hmm: The Ku-shi-tes…
Edit again: 100 B.C. not 900 B.C. :eek:

Do you have a source for that?

Originally posted by XIII
I also understand that it takes far longer for a longbowmen to train and practise to maintain his longbow skills, as compared with a crossbowmen. Indeed :)

The longbow was regarded as such an important weapon, that at some battles longbowmen formed as much as 85 percent of the fighting force.

To ensure that there were sufficient archers for the armies, the laws were passed requiring all men from the ages of 12 to 65 to practice weekly. Football (which at the time resembled no-rules rugby with teams of 100 or more) was banned, to prevent people being injured so they could not practice. The practice was so strenuous that the skeletons of archers were slightly deformed.

Originally posted by thestonesfan
Do you have a source for that?
I'll look around :)

Originally posted by Cimbri
The Ku****es also employed a longbow as early as 900 B.C. (Kushan – Northern India)

Edit: :hmm: The Ku-shi-tes… Can't be. :eek: The Kushans at this time were still living on the borders of China (and Mongolia). The Xiong-nu would later drive them westwards, where they eventually seeped into Afghanistan and India.

The Han emperor Wudi sent an envoy to attempt to ally with them (about 50 BCE or so) but was declined as the Yueh-chih (as the Chinese called them) had settled comfortably in Central Asia. Fr whence they would later extend their control over N India...

Originally posted by XIII
Can't be. :eek: The Kushans at this time were still living on the borders of China (and Mongolia). The Xiong-nu would later drive them westwards, where they eventually seeped into Afghanistan and India.

The Han emperor Wudi sent an envoy to attempt to ally with them (about 50 BCE or so) but was declined as the Yueh-chih (as the Chinese called them) had settled comfortably in Central Asia. Fr whence they would later extend their control over N India...
I wrote 10th century B.C. :lol:

The larger ‘longbows’ were introduced around the 2nd century B.C.

What was I thinking? :crazyeye: I'll just edit that, it should have been a 1 not a 9

The remember reading that the Asian longbows were not nearly as well-made as the English ones, and that, coupled with the Samurai ethos, prevented them from really catching on in Japan.

Out of curiosity, did Samurai use longbows?

you see a lot of pictures of samurai with bows but you know they loved those swords:D

Actually, the samurai ethos preventing them from fighting with weapons other than the sword is one big historical myth.

The samurai fought with a variety of weapons. On an average battlefield, they wielded spears (more effective than swords because they can kill one's enemy from further off), and yes, they massively used the bow. Archery - Kyuujutsu - was an art to the same level as swordsmanship. Horseback shooting was part of many samurai's regular activities (which were more often than not a pretext for training).

Looking at japanesse art from the early samurai era, you see (on the "Attack of the Sanjo palace" piece, for example) hordes of Samurai armed with bows and shooting. Many depiction of samurai warriors represent them armed with bows (even including the "Mounted Samurai" unit in the Civ II Samurai scenario, one may note).

Also, let us consider for a moment the name of the founding people of the Japanesse state - the tribe of nomads that migrated through (not from) Korea into Japan, then founded pretty much the japanesse state - history record them as being the "Horse Archers". The name, of course, speaks for itself.

Bottom line is : Samurai did use bow, and it was a key part of their training.

Oda - Is it true that the Samurai were very reluctant to adopt firearms?

To my knowledge, by that time in history, the Samurai largely did not participate in large-scale fighting. But I'm far from an expert.

Originally posted by thestonesfan
Oda - Is it true that the Samurai were very reluctant to adopt firearms?

To my knowledge, by that time in history, the Samurai largely did not participate in large-scale fighting. But I'm far from an expert.

that time was 1500-1600 the sence of huge fighting for the unification of japan.--i think longbows were better than early guns so they did not catch on

They did catch on. And samurai? Not involved in large scale fighting? I seriously do not know where you heard that from. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu made effective use of them against their enemies, and within twenty years of their introduction (or so) Japan was producing superior-quality firearms than those produced in the west.

Japan DID have firearms when Perry dropped by. They were low-technology ones (musket et al). The traditional vision of Perry dropping in a "medieval" japan of bows and arrows is strongly erroneous on more than one topic.

All of East Asia had firearms fr the 15th century onwards.

The Chinese had been using them since the 12th. Later they switched to improved versions introduced by the Jesuits.

Muskets and cannons were a standard weopanry of the late Ming and Qing armies.

Actually that would be 16th for Japan, XIII. At least I think so.

History of Crossbows Website (http://worldcrossbow.com/history.html#HISTORY)
HISTORY:

Literary and physical evidence suggest that the crossbow originated in China during the 4th century BC, though a type of crossbow called the gastraphetes may have been independently invented in Greece at about the same period. It wasn't until the 10th or 11th centuries AD that the crossbow became a significant military weapon in Europe. It passed from general military service in the 16th century, but its use for hunting and target shooting has continued to the present day. The majority of the following chronology is abridged from GUIDE TO THE CROSSBOW by Paterson:

341 BC
Earliest reliable record of crossbow use at battle of Ma-Ling in China.

228 BC
Earliest crossbow artifact, a bronze lock mechanism from the tomb of Yu Wang.

0-100 AD
Heron of Alexandria describes gastraphetes.

300-700
Roman carvings of crossbows.

385
Vegetius mentions crossbows in DE RE MILITARIA.

1066
Crossbows introduced to England by Normans.

1096
Anna Comnena describes Norman crossbows.

1100-1200
Composite crossbow lath appears.

1139
2nd Lateran Council interdict forbids use of crossbow among Christians.

1192
Crusader victory at Jaffa aided by crossbows.

1314
Earliest reliable record of steel lath.

1346
Genoese crossbowmen defeated at Crecy by English longbowmen.

1373
Earliest illustration of cranequin.

1503
First of many English laws restricting possession and use of crossbows.

1550-1600
Firearms replace crossbows in most Western armies.

1860
Photographic evidence from Chinese shows repeating crossbows still used there as military weapons.

1939-45
"Arrowspeed" crossbow used by Australian commandos in Pacific Theatre.

1945-1975
Crossbows employed by Montagnard peoples and US special forces during Vietnam conflict.

1960?-present
Crossbows used to shoot anesthetic darts for capturing and treating wildlife; also used to obtain tissue samples from marine animals for obtaining genetic information.




SO, aparently both the Greeks and Chinese used an early form of Crossbow. From what I've been reading (no pictures yet though :( ) the medieval European Crossbow is considerably superior in power to the anceint one from China. Chinese Crossbows were easier to load, apparently, but not very powerful; the bolts, were, however, often smeared with poison! :eek:

Still can't get anything on the actual invention/ import of the Crossbow into Europe, but, it seems to have been used in the Graeco-Roman world, so there is no reason to take it for granted that it was imported from the East. If this were the case, it would be strange that neither the Byzantines nor the Arabs nor the early Turks, who all enjoyed decent links with China, used the Crossbow, but the backward areas of NW Europe did. It seems unlikely then, that it was imported. But I'll have to read further! ;)

I think it's a safe bet the Greeks developed crossbows. It's not much of a stretch from a ballista, which they definately used.

Oda - I thought that the Japanese hierarchy was strongly opposed to gunpowder weapons precisely because it threatened the samurai status as the "ultimate warrior", just like the europeans looked down at crossbows because it went against their code of chivalry. A common man being able to easily kill a well-trained knight or samurai wasn't a hot idea.

It was the Tokugawa Shogunate (who finally won the power struggle) that decided to do away with firearms; not just to preserve samurai class distinction, but also to impose its peace and order on Japan. ;)

The samurai, as a group, didn't get much of a say...

Not sure which of the Tokugawa shogun, and I'm relatively certain that the ban was not a full ban (anymore than the ban on foreign contact was full).

And cannons and their ilk were certainly quite present in Japan pre-Meiji.

Oh, the Tokugawa kept the firearms production going for themselves, and just banned them fr everybody else's use... ;) Was what I meant.

Though of course one must note than the "rebellious" clans (Satsuma et al) weren't exactly charging at Tokugawa musketeers with their swords ;-)

I have just read

The Bowmen of England

by Donald Featherstone.

The important features of the english long bow men were:

(a) Rapid fire (reputably up to 12 arrows a minute)
(b) Killing range of 250 yards
(c) Accuracy (consistently hit man at 250 yards; and
. .. .. .. .. . or joint between armour plates at close range)
(d) No armour and therefore highly mobile infantry
(e) Five foot maule or pike.
(f) Could operate in formation

The English arrows could not penetrate full plate armour.

However this did NOT matter.

If a French Knight attacked on horse, the archer could shoot the horse instead. It was not possible to fully protect both the horse and rider 100% in plate armour as that would weigh too much. An injured horse would go mad and either throw or roll its rider off, who would likely be crushed under his horse and could not get up let alone remount his horse.

If the French Knight attacked on foot, his plate armour would make him very slow. The archer could easily out manoeuve him on foot and unbalance the knght with his 5 foot pike. Once a knight fell over, his armour was too heavy for him to rise so he might be suffocated by other knights falling on top or, if on top, would have a dagger thrust through the vision slits in his helmet.

The only tactics that worked against longbowmen
prior to muskets were to:

(a) attack in very heavy rain (the rain effected the bow string)
(b) by surprise before the archers were lined up
(c) use artillery varying from ballista, catapults and early cannon

as a side note, not sure on the dates exactley, but its a VERY safe bet to assume that the greeks had crossbows around the time of alexander, as ballista type artillery is recorded in the greeks "holy war" when, a mob of celts attempted to pillage delphi- the northern greeks, not usually renowend for great militaries (I'm talking about the Epyrus area, not Macedon) stopped them in there dirty,smelly barbarian tracks :D

[QUOTE]Originally posted by EdwardTking
I have just read




The only tactics that worked against longbowmen
prior to muskets were to:
(c) use artillery varying from ballista, catapults and early cannon [/QUOTE

and this is the very one the french use to drive the english out, in their last few victories they used artillery to bomb the english, out of range of the longbows forcing the longbow men to drop their bows and draw swords and charge--the total opposite of the earlier english victories at crecy and agincourt

Good post Edward

Heres a link to study carried out by guy on the penetrating power of the various warheads used around the time of Agincourt.

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/qq53/page6.htm


He pretty much states what you have although he contradicts what I said in my earlier post about the French having steel plate armour he says it was closer to wrought iron plate at this time as certain mettallurgical problems had yet to be resolved. He also quotes from a probably more significant study by Peter N Jones "The Metallography and Relative Effectiveness of Arrowheads and Armour During the Middle Ages" (which I apologise for not being able to find) which used warheads of similar hardness to those used during the MA.
In his study he found that while using inferior warheads ,lighter arrows and of course a lighter bow ( he probably wouldn't be capable of drawing a heavy MA war bow-I doubt if I could) he was able to penetrate 1mm steel plate in a fashion that would utterly "transfix the wearer". He does state that it was important to grease the arrow head well to get the desired penetrative effect-something that I don't recall the Battle field detectives doing in their test but something Henrys bowmen would have almost certainly done.
The Peter N jones study also demonstrated the ability of certain types of warheads to penetrate plate armour ( in this case 2mm wrought iron plate which would likely have been in use at Agincourt ) although he doesnt state whether jones greased his war heads.

Originally posted by EdwardTking
I have just read

The Bowmen of England

by Donald Featherstone.

The important features of the english long bow men were:

(a) Rapid fire (reputably up to 12 arrows a minute)
(b) Killing range of 250 yards
(c) Accuracy (consistently hit man at 250 yards; and
. .. .. .. .. . or joint between armour plates at close range)
(d) No armour and therefore highly mobile infantry
(e) Five foot maule or pike.
(f) Could operate in formation



Great- but- is there anything to say that any or all of these properties were unique to the Welsh / English longbow?

It sounds like you (thread starter) are thinking that the English are the only people to ever use the longbow. That is not true many societies used the longbow in Europe. However it was only the English that really toke full advantage of them. Training someone to be profiecient with a long bow was very hard and time consuming. England had it's youth spend many hours in training to fire Long Bows. Other countries simply used cross-bows because anyone could use a crossbow with very little training.

Originally posted by samildanach
Good post Edward

Heres a link to study carried out by guy on the penetrating power of the various warheads used around the time of Agincourt.

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/qq53/page6.htm


He pretty much states what you have although he contradicts what I said in my earlier post about the French having steel plate armour he says it was closer to wrought iron plate at this time as certain mettallurgical problems had yet to be resolved. He also quotes from a probably more significant study by Peter N Jones "The Metallography and Relative Effectiveness of Arrowheads and Armour During the Middle Ages" (which I apologise for not being able to find) which used warheads of similar hardness to those used during the MA.
In his study he found that while using inferior warheads ,lighter arrows and of course a lighter bow ( he probably wouldn't be capable of drawing a heavy MA war bow-I doubt if I could) he was able to penetrate 1mm steel plate in a fashion that would utterly "transfix the wearer". He does state that it was important to grease the arrow head well to get the desired penetrative effect-something that I don't recall the Battle field detectives doing in their test but something Henrys bowmen would have almost certainly done.
The Peter N jones study also demonstrated the ability of certain types of warheads to penetrate plate armour ( in this case 2mm wrought iron plate which would likely have been in use at Agincourt ) although he doesnt state whether jones greased his war heads.

Against plate armour angle of incidence was very important (very similar issues to solid shot anti-tank ammunition against tanks).

At 90 degrees long bow arrows could penetrate; but that was very difficult to achieve aginst a moving target and later plate armour was convex curved to reduce the area for which a 90
degrees hit could be obtained; if knight moving directly towards an archer.

I understand that later on the longbowmen took to adding a lump of very thick candle wax to the tip of the arrowhead.

This had two benefits. Firstly if the arrow was not at 90 degrees; the wax would help swing the arrow slightly more to 90 degrees. This is because on the leading side of the arrow (less than 90 degrees to plate armour) that one side of the wax would compact and then slow that side of the arrow earlier and more than the wax on the trailing side (more than 90 degrees to plate armour) of the arrow. Secondly, the wax would spread around the arrow head and shaft as they penetrated reducing friction.