English Military Mistake- Longbow

Ozz

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I was reading a history of the English Speaking Peoples.
(Winston Chruchill Vol 1 pg 262)

In it he states:

At 250 yards the arrow hail produced effects never reached
again by infantry missiles at such a range until the American
civil war.

And again: pg 327

Battle of The Herrings:
at ranges greater than the muskets of Marborough,Frederick the
Great, or Napoleon could ever attain broke the whole assualt.

He even states an English general after the Napoleonic Wars
avocated returning to using the long bow due to it's range,
accuracy and rate of fire, And filed an offical report to that
effect with the crown.

i can't understand why any civ abandon such a military advantage? it must be a english military mistake.
 
It was a conspiracy of saltpeter pile owners and metalsmiths. They kept paying off the right MPs, and so, no longbows.
 
I'm not an expert on military history but back then the muskets were not effective at long range, reloading took a long time and lots of accidents happened while shooting. I guess at that time the new technological advance didn't seem very helpfull.;)
 
The answer lies in the fact that metalurgy had improved by Napoleon's time, if an army were equiped only with long bows, opposing armies would simply issue metal shields and breast plates, nulifing that advantage.

No shield or breast plate made could stop a musket ball at 100 paces, thus, no change back to long bows.

Also, it requires skill and pysical abilty to use a long bow properly, wearas a someone could be taught to load and volly fire in one day.
 
On paper the longbow does seem superior to the musket; up to 12 shots a minute compared to the muskets 2 or 3, more accurate, cheaper to construct and maintain, lighter and easier to carry, and so on. However, muskets do have two very important advantages.

First there is firepower. It has been estimated ('Line of Fire', the Longbow, History channel) that a bodkin armour piercing arrow from a longbow delivers about 150 kilojoules of energy on impact, while a musket ball delivers some 4,000! Late Renaissance plate armour could and was made to be impervious to arrow shot, at a cost of being very heavy, and could even protect the wearer against pistol shot (you can sometimes see Renaissance brestplates with a small 'dent' along the brest bone - this was where a pistol was fired into it by the maker to show that it was 'pistol proof'). But to make armour proof against a musket ball would make it so heavy that the wearer wouldn't be able to stand up!
(BTW, musket balls easily outrange longbow arrows. The problem is that you have almost no chance of hitting a target with a musket over 150 yards/meter range).

The second advantage, and the most important, is the fact that to use a longbow effectively requires many, many years of practice. Just to pull the bowstring of a 6 foot/2 meter longbow all the way back to the ear requires a pull of some 150lbs/75kg! So it takes years to develop the muscles to do this, and not everybody has the right physique even after years of training. This is why several English kings outlawed all games except archery on saturdays in an attempt to try and encourage more bow practice.
Muskets on the other hand can be used by anybody, no matter how small and weedy, and anyone could be taught how to use one effectively in just a few weeks. You don't need arms like Arne Schwarzenegger in order to use a musket!

So a small country like England, with a population in the 17th and 18th centuries of about 5 or 10 million, could only find about 10 or 20 thousand men with the right physique able to use longbows, but could field some 100,000 smaller weaker unfit men with muskets (if they had the money to pay them that is. And all the money in the world couldn't add muscles to men who haven't got any! I know....I've tried!).
 
Originally posted by Alcibiaties of Athenae
The answer lies in the fact that metalurgy had improved by Napoleon's time, if an army were equiped only with long bows, opposing armies would simply issue metal shields and breast plates, nulifing that advantage.

No shield or breast plate made could stop a musket ball at 100 paces, thus, no change back to long bows.

Also, it requires skill and pysical abilty to use a long bow properly, wearas a someone could be taught to load and volly fire in one day.


Both examples I quoted were against mail clad or Plate mail
clad French troops. The mail of that time was no protection.
(1360s). If metalurgy improved enough to lower weight and
could deflect a longbow arrow perhaps a breastplate, i think
a shield would really encumber a musketman.

Good point about the training, maybe this is the reason.
but i would think it would be a false economy: ie inferior
troops easily trained with expensive weapons. (Muskets
& Powder) vs Expensive Elite troops with inexpensive
weapons (some arrows will be reuseable, some arrows
repairable, not to mention the cost of muskets & their
maintenance vs longbows)
 
Originally posted by Kryten
The second advantage, and the most important, is the fact that to use a longbow effectively requires many, many years of practice. Just to pull the bowstring of a 6 foot/2 meter longbow all the way back to the ear requires a pull of some 150lbs/75kg! So it takes years to develop the muscles to do this, and not everybody has the right physique even after years of training. This is why several English kings outlawed all games except archery on saturdays in an attempt to try and encourage more bow practice.
.

Thanks for the post!

I never thought of the physicial limits of using a longbow.
I think this must be the reason for it's abandonment. Too
bad the english didn't keep a force of longbows though, mixed with a force of musketmen their enemies would have been forced
to eithier produce & wear heavy breastplates (and this is not total protection) or face the longbow at it's most effective.
 
I figure there are three reasons, first of all, if anyone out there has fired a bow, they know that it takes a while to hit the target, even one as large as a round bale, from 50 feet away, let alone 150 yards arcing the arrow. Also, the string bites into the fingers and hurts like a #$*%@ if you hit your arm. Secondly, it takes a only a few minutes to learn to use a gun, it is pretty damn sad if you can't hit a round bale from 400 feet away with a rifle. Although, back then it was muskets. Last reason is a musket is scarier with its big bang, its a phycological thing, as it lets the enemy know whats gonna happen :die!:
 
The reason England and Wales gave up the longbow was due to the sheer lengths of time it took to train a good longbowman - in fact, i believe King Henry II (probably not though) made it law that every peasant in his kingdom would have to train as a longbowmen.

I do accept until breach loading rifles i would have preferred a longbow or a crossbow to defend myself but it was a lot easier to train a musketman than a longbowman.
 
Another reason for the decline of the longbow in war was social conflict. The aristocracy was the only group that could afford to wear armor, and this protected them most of the time. But once the longbow came into use, a well-skilled commoner could kill a nobleman from 100 yards away! After the Hundred Years War, civillians were discouraged from owning weapons, and I think that the Pope even issed a ban on the use of longbows in war.
 
The Pope's ban was on crossbows, not longbows. He did, however, specify that crossbows - "a barbaric weapon" - could be used against the heathen Turk.
 
Another reason for the decline of the longbow in war was social conflict. The aristocracy was the only group that could afford to wear armor, and this protected them most of the time. But once the longbow came into use, a well-skilled commoner could kill a nobleman from 100 yards away! After the Hundred Years War, civillians were discouraged from owning weapons, and I think that the Pope even issed a ban on the use of longbows in war.

Erm...as good our good hunched over chum, the third King Richard hath pointed out, the Pope put a ban on the barbaric (yet bloody effective) crossbow. The chap who went nuts where it can to longbows was old William the Bastard of Normandy, a.k.a. William the Conqueror. After he conquered England in 1066, he had the first finger of every longbowman in Harold's army removed. Chop. :eek:

Despite the nutty little Norman, most English nobles used the longbow to great effect in battle. The greatest examples, I think, were those of the Hundred Years War, where the battles of Crecy and Agincourt (We few, we happy few...we band of brothers) were largely won by the bow. :king: :goodjob:

The French weren't too crazy about it. :cry:

The Pope's ban was on crossbows, not longbows. He did, however, specify that crossbows - "a barbaric weapon" - could be used against the heathen Turk.

Good on him, I say! :cool:
 
My good lord the History Guy doth speaketh untrue. "William the Conqueror cut off the first finger of English longbowmen...". Nay Sire, 'twas the Celtic Welsh who used the longbow, not the Saxons of Harold's army. Only after Edward the First had conquered south Wales in 1284 AD did the English adopt the longbow.

And the only cutting of fingers my scribes can find the the old chronicles is the threat by the French at Agincourt to remove the first TWO fingers of every English yeoman captured, which has led through the centries to the famous British 'two fingered salute' (as used by every London taxi driver to this very day!).

Interestingly, it was Richard Coeur de Lion who first introduced the crossbow into England in the late 12th century. Ironic really, because it was a crossbow wound at the siege of Chaluz in 1199 AD that caused Richard's death several days later by gangrene. Before he died he had the crossbowman brought before him and gave him money and a pardon.
But once Richard I was dead, his knights had the man flayed alive!

From your most humble liege servant, Kryten of Nottingham.
 
Many valid reasons have been listed here, and I'll ad one more:

The longbow (as AofA mentioned) took a long time to master. The English encouraged village tournaments to get locals to practice so when called up for military service they merely needed to be formed up in units. However, mercantilism in England began to draw young men away from their villages into the major population centers centuries before the rest of Europe. This drain on the villages meant fewer and fewer men learned how to use the longbow well enough for battle. As mentioned here already, longbows required constant practice while musketry required a couple hours' practice in volley drill, and you were set.
 
There are a number of very good reasons posted here
for the demise of the use of the long bow. However
was it a mistake to allow it to lapse?

I think it was, The english could have kept a smaller
elite force of longbowmen if they would have given
some rights to go with the position (ie land) similiar
to knights.

Having such a force along with musketmen, pikemen
and knights would have forced their enemies to eithier
wear very heavy breastplates causing lost of mobility
and causing fatigue (and this would not be total protection)
or to go unarmoured and allow the speed and accuracy
of the longbow to have full play.

Civmonger

"Last reason is a musket is scarier with its big bang, its a phycological thing, as it lets the enemy know whats gonna happen"

I disagree with this point, The enemy would see the arrows
coming. The enemy would know whats gonna happen. With
musket fire there is not much lag between Bang and damage.
I think arrows would more likely break/panic a formation than
musketfire.
 
I thikn we are forgetting about cavalry and how a thick and heavy armour plate can stop an arrow while as it was mentioned earlier, it would take an unbelievably heavy coat of armour ti stop a musket ball.

Even if an elite squad of Longbowmen had been made, they would have been cut to bits by the cavalry forces, who would not have been stopped by a arrows:p
 
Originally posted by allhailIndia
I thikn we are forgetting about cavalry and how a thick and heavy armour plate can stop an arrow while as it was mentioned earlier, it would take an unbelievably heavy coat of armour ti stop a musket ball.

Even if an elite squad of Longbowmen had been made, they would have been cut to bits by the cavalry forces, who would not have been stopped by a arrows:p

I don't agree. Both man & Horse would have to be
totally armoured. Compare the armour coverage to
the rate of fire. And unlike musketmen, Longbowmen
carried and planted pikes in the ground before them.
Muskets wouldn't stop a cavalry charge eithier. Pikes
/Pikemen stop cavalry.

I wasn't avocating the abandonment of muskets eithier.

"Having such a force along with musketmen, pikemen
and knights would have forced their enemies to eithier
wear very heavy breastplates causing lost of mobility
and causing fatigue (and this would not be total protection)
or to go unarmoured and allow the speed and accuracy
of the longbow to have full play."
 
Originally posted by allhailIndia
Even if an elite squad of Longbowmen had been made, they would have been cut to bits by the cavalry forces, who would not have been stopped by a arrows:p

I think that Ozz's answer to this would be a formation of two ranks of musketmen backed up by two ranks of longbows, thus getting the best of both worlds (which is another advantage the longbow has....it can shoot overhead as well as direct).

But there is one thing in this discussion that we are all missing:-
medieval Englishmen were no different from the rest of the human race, so why didn't the other nations adopt the longbow?
I think that the answer to this question is because of the Black Death of 1350's.

Edward I was a very strong king, and the feudal system was at it's height, so if your local Baron said "you're gonna learn to use the longbow", there wasn't much you could do about it. But the plague broke the back of the feudal system, as there wasn't enough skilled people such as farriers/fletchers/blacksmiths/yeomen to go around, so wages soared and people had a little bit more freedom about who they worked for (if the local Baron only paid two groats a day but his mortal enemy next door paid three, people went where the money was!). So to force a society to adopt all the years of hard work longbow training was only possible in a strong feudal system with a strong king, and once the law had been enforced by years of custom, it was possible to maintain it even in the more free society following the Black Death. France, Germany, Scotland and Ireland missed their chance, as after the plague their society no longer had the power that England had pre-plague.

If all this is a true assessment of the situation, then the English were lucky to have conquered south Wales and adopted the longbow when they did. After 1350 it would not have been possible to enforce the archery laws. And if they had conquered Wales a century earlier, then the other nations of the period would have had time to copy the English system (of course, you could say that the 50 years between the battle of Crecy and the battle of Agincourt was enough time for the French to have adopted the longbow.....but hindsight is a wonderful thing....).

EDIT: Oops! Ozz has answered before I could send this post ("that will teach you to be so long-winded Kryten!").
BTW Ozz, musketmen CAN stop a cavalry charge if they are in a square formation (but they need bayonets).
 
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