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Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
- dozzie 11y agoI don't know, maybe because bow is a peasants' weapon, and France had knigts? Western Europe had its share of stupidity, like kings leading charges instead of commanding battles on a tactical level.
- louhike 11y ago"I don't know, maybe because bow is a peasants' weapon, and France had knigts?" If you read the abstract (I'm not saying you didn't), you'll see that this is what they are saying. The TL;DR version is that using longbows meant training peasants, which will pose internal security problems. England was more stable at this time so it was less dangerous for them to train peasants to fight.
- dest 11y agofrom the abstract: Rulers choosing between missile technologies thus confronted a trade-off with respect to internal and external security. England alone in late medieval Europe was sufficiently politically stable to allow its rulers the first-best technology option. In France and Scotland political instability prevailed, constraining rulers in these nations to the crossbow.
- arethuza 11y agoNot sure there was much option at that time - to get to be a King, or keep your position, quite often required being a direct hands-on stupendous badass.
- vacri 11y ago> stupidity, like kings leading charges instead of commanding battles on a tactical level. Why exchange one form of stupidity for another? If you're going to ping medieval Europe for military stupidity, then instead suggest that the people commanding the battles should be trained military specialists, as they are today. There's nothing magical about kings that make them better at battle tactics.
- dozzie 11y agoThe problem with kings leading charges is that there's nobody to command the battlefield, not that they were skilled or not. Eastern Europe had that much better.
- brudgers 11y agoAn apparent preprint: http://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf http://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf
- dang 11y agoOk, we changed the URL to that from http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684231 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684231.
- camperman 11y agoGreat paper. Nice to see the authors include Edward III's compulsory practice longbow after church on Sundays for two hours.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gobbo 11y agoI see a possible problem with this theory: in few words, according to the authors the French and Scots did not adopt the longbow for fear of rebellion. Still the nobles participated to the very battles that saw them being defeated by the English and their longbow. If the longbow was cheap and relatively easy to adopt, a noble aspiring to the crown would have been able to develop the technology independently from the (unstable) central government and have an even easier road to glory against their own technologically inferior king. I admittedly did not read carefully the whole paper, but this possibility does not seem to be addressed.
- educationcto 11y agoThe paper does address exactly that point. The longbow required sustained central support over many years which prevented rebellious nobles from quickly adopting it: "These features of longbow technology had two important implications for those interested in adopting it. First, centralized efforts were necessary to create a culture of archery. As shown above, these efforts in England consisted of laws supporting bow ownership and practice, restrictions on competing leisure activ- ities, subsidies for bows, and festivals and tournaments focused on archery skills. Because of this, the longbow could be adopted only by, or with the permission and support of, a nation’s ruler, who alone wielded the authority and resources required to undertake such e orts. Indeed, given the nature of longbow technology, to have even attempted to adopt the longbow without his ruler’s permission, a noble, for example, would have needed to successfully hide the fact that he was continuously training large numbers of archers for years—a highly improbable proposition. Second, conditional on a nation’s ruler adopting longbow technology, a usurper noble with an eye on the Crown, or a prince interested in independence for his territory, could lead an effective rebellion against his ruler by supplying the inexpensive weapon to large numbers of citizens, whose ruler-sponsored training and practice with the bow had made them proficient archers. Thus, to be willing to develop longbow use in his country, a ruler had to be confident that his efforts would not be turned against him."
- gobbo 11y agoYes, I read that, and of course it is possible. Nevertheless the fact that the centralized government was unstable and news would not travel too fast makes me think that it is a bit strange nobody tried it in 150 years. The maps of France they present also shows that lots of territories would not recognize the French crown for long time. Those could have developed the technology and either take over the throne or give the crown one more reason to develop the technology themselves. Maybe the line is thin, but given the long times it seems strange to me that there has not been at least an attempt to this (at least to my knowledge, but they don't cite any such event).
- junto 11y agoKevin Hicks is a great resource on the longbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvKJcxa8x_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvKJcxa8x_g He is also very knowledgeable about all things from this period of history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUYd6pNy6QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUYd6pNy6QU There is also some more detail regarding the make up of the "English" army bowmen here: http://www.bowyers.com/bowyery_longbowOrigins.php http://www.bowyers.com/bowyery_longbowOrigins.php Sidenote: - Bowyer: Makes the bow - Fletcher: Makes the arrow - Stringfellow: Makes the string - Arrowsmith: Makes the arrowhead
- bweitzman 11y agoSounds like somebody figured out the single responsibility principle
- eru 11y agoSee http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-quotes/ http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-quotes/
- odabaxok 11y agoThis reminds me of Arrowsmith: I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
- vram22 11y agoAh, that thing of some names being derived from areas of work / professions. Taylor, Fletcher, Smith, Carpenter, ... It's there in other countries than European ones too. Wonder if there is a list of such names anywhere. Would be interesting to read.
- Someone 11y agohttp://surnames.behindthename.com/names/source/occupation http://surnames.behindthename.com/names/source/occupation
- deleted 11y ago
- msh 11y agoI fail to see their references to support the claim that france or scotland was more politically unstable. Also how about the rest of european powers, I am not certain there is support that england was the only politically stable entity is europe during the middle ages.
- arethuza 11y agoWell, England did have the distinct advantage of being the largest power on an island - while they didn't manage to conquer the Scots the Scots weren't really much of a threat to them. So they got a certain amount of stability largely through geography.
- Wildgoose 11y agoNot strictly true - Cromwell conquered Scotland after yet another of the interminable invasions of England by Scotland. It was more a case that after Edward I, England simply wasn't interested in conquering Scotland - there were richer prizes elsewhere.
- vacri 11y agoCromwell comes after the age of longbows, though.
- ezzaf 11y agoPages 699-702 address this in detail: “The land (France) was divided into loose and shifting territories that owed little or no allegiance to any central authority, ruled across large swathes by noblemen who were little more than warlords” and "Flanders, too, had great autonomy from the French monarch and strong ties to Germany and England (Sumption 1990, p. 35). In 1384 Flanders united with Burgundy to create a principality in France that fell in and out of French control for over a century." and "Most critically, (Scotland) was bitterly divided into three warring parts: the English- speaking southeast, the Gaelic-speaking northwest, and the lands that fell between" There's a bunch more detail there along with references to the papers they draw those conclusions from. I'd say they support that part of their argument soundly.
- widdershins 11y agoI've only read the abstract, so I'm not sure if this is covered, but the longbow requires huge amounts of practice from a young age to be effective. You had to be incredibly strong just to draw the string. A crossbow, by contrast, was easier to draw, and men could be trained to use it in a far shorter time. English Kings had constant problems with procuring enough men capable of using a longbow, passing all sorts of laws banning all sports except archery etc. Perhaps the French simply couldn't find enough trained men?
- masklinn 11y ago> I'm not sure if this is covered, but the longbow requires huge amounts of practice from a young age to be effective. It is covered, the paper lists a number of measure the English crown took to force people to train with the longbow in their spare time. > the French simply couldn't find enough trained men? The French could have taken the same measures of mandating longbow ownership and strongly "encouraging" longbow training (by setting up tournaments and forbidding other types of leisure)
- draven 11y agoIt's covered: "The longbow took years of continuous training to master. Not only was there the matter of the physical strength necessary to draw 120-plus pounds with one arm over and over again, but because the longbow arrow was drawn to the ear, aim was largely a matter intuition rather than sight. Thus, if war erupted, it was not possible to recruit a company of men untrained on the longbow and train them to use the weapon quickly. A stock of proficient archers had to already be in place, prepared to serve."
- caoilte 11y agoI still remember being blown away when I realised how institutionally organised longbow practice was as I read this Rosemary Sutcliff as a child https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1195105.The_Armourer_s_House https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1195105.The_Armourer_s_H...
- wuschel 11y agoInteresting read of the introduction - and very good points. Perhaps yew was also way too hard to come by / expensive for the Scottish? Also, it does make sense that training long term military personel was reserved to the ruling feudal class. Still, producing a longbow compatible population (of strong, loyal) men might have had other costs then political ones. Precision wise, a longbow is not a real tournament weapon - and you needed tall, strong men to wield it.
- masklinn 11y ago> Perhaps yew was also way too hard to come by / expensive for the Scottish? One of the first point the paper makes is that the domestic supply of english yew was of poor quality and way outstripped by the demand, and the country imported yew from throughout continental Europe. So while yew availability may have been an explanation for Scottland, it definitely wasn't for France. > Still, producing a longbow compatible population (of strong, loyal) men might have had other costs then political ones. Precision wise, a longbow is not a real tournament weapon The longbow is a tournament weapon if you set up longbow-only tournaments and legally forbid other sport tournaments.
- arethuza 11y agoGolf and football were actually forbidden in Scotland for a time in the 15th century to try and encourage archery practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_in_Scotland#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_in_Scotland#Etymology
- GarvielLoken 11y agoI thought this was going to be about the AH-64D Apache Longbow.
- chernevik 11y agoIt's an interesting paper but "politically stable" isn't the right term. A population able to defeat the infantry technology of the time requires a different social and legal position than one that doesn't have that ability. That is, the government needs more cooperation and consent of the governed. That government is stronger than other governments, because it can kill their armies. But it is more dependent on that population and so cannot abuse it in the same manner as those other, "weaker" governments.
- mhd 11y agoThe intro still assumes that the battles won by the English in the Hundred Years War were due the longbow (alone), which AFAIK is quite debatable (at least outside of England, where Agincourt is a bit of a national myth, even more than e.g. the Black Legend). And never mind instability, the French also weren't as geographically isolated as the English and thus it was easier to hire mercenaries. Genoese crossbowman being a particular example. The penetrative ability of the longbow is also greatly exaggerated, citing a book that did some pretty shoddy testing (flat sheets of poor quality metal used as targets, but hardened bodkins as penetrators, 10m distance, no padding).
- afterburner 11y agoFrance won the Hundred Years War.
- mcv 11y agoExactly. The longbow alone doesn't win anything. It has to be used in the right situation, preferably on defensive terrain, on a hill, with dismounted knights protecting the longbowmen. Dismounted knights was a no-go for the French nobility, who loved their glorious cavalry charge. If you're going to charge, the longbow is a lot less useful. And in battles where the French charge succeeded (because the English lacked a good defensive position, for example), the French were a lot more likely to win.
- zhte415 11y agotl;dr: The abstract does a wonderful job. It is will worth reading. Longbow was cheap and technically superior, but required training. Crossbow more expensive, required less training. Rulers of England less worried about rebellion, OK to invest in training. Rulers of France/Scotland not so happy because of fear to give potential of overthrow to the people (Scotland not in title, but in article along with France). Perhaps an analogy could be painted with companies today. Those that churn, and those that nurture skills.
- lifeisstillgood 11y agoThe Sharpe author Bernard Cornwell wrote a couple of novels set in / around Agincourt and from memory there are a few extras to throw in - but I love your last sentence's conclusion 1. The extra training was enormous - thik of an army of a thousand Arnold Schwarzeneggers - these guys cold deliver hundreds of foot pounds from their arms. Robin Hood would have been built like The Rock, not Kevin Costner. 2. The "cheap" idea is misleading - in preparation ofr agincourt a huge amount of the English economny was turned over to making arrows. During Agincourt an estimated 3/4 million arrows were fired. When looking at economics of ranged weapons, don't compare Bows to guns, think RPGs 3. Agincourt changed everything for a generation. Thanks to mud, foolishness, and yes, longbows, France lost an entire generation of aristocracy in one day. The english were being chased out of the country and suddenly ... owned everything. 4. finally, crossbows really are the better weapon - once you start factory-making them, your army can be raised and trained faster, you are not tied down to a specfific class of army recruits and you dont have to feed Arnie.
- noir-york 11y ago> finally, crossbows really are the better weapon - once you start factory-making them, your army can be raised and trained faster But the army you raise is less effective; quantity vs quality. A country which did not want or could not afford to train longbow men may have had a deeper flaw: its model. Perhaps the real reason England could beat France had been a long time in the making: a strong economy, and politically society that afforded it a more equipped better trained army. I wonder if the advantages of a democracy - political stability and a (usually) advanced economy - also translate into the modern battlefield.
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- lambda 11y agoI think that the way this paper discusses on the longbow as being the superior weapon may obscure a key fact here. Man for man, a crossbow is a superior weapon; requires less skill to operate, has longer range, much easier to aim, better penetrating power. The main advantage of a longbow is how simple and cheap it is. Speed of reloading is another advantage the longbow has, but I think this article overstates it. While some crossbows do require using a stirrup or crank to load them, there are others that you can reload against your hips, and shoot from there, to increase your speed considerably, at some cost to accuracy. I know people who have managed to get 6 bullseyes at 20 yards on a crossbow in 30 seconds. Meanwhile, archers would not be firing at the maximum possible rate in battle; ammunition is a limited resource, and with the draw weights of warbows fatigue would set in quickly. Overall, with the archers they had and bows they had at the time, it is likely that the longbows were able to be a little faster than the crossbows, but it's not a night and day thing; and the range, accuracy, and penetrating power on the crossbows were better. The simplicity became an advantage in a few battles, which came after substantial rainstorms that caused problems with crossbows more complicated mechanisms. But the main advantage was how cheap and fast to produce they were; you could easily arm a large populace quite quickly. In order to take advantage of the longbow, you had to do that; you needed a very large number of archers to effectively take advantage of longbows, while you needed fewer archers to be effective with crossbows. But because it was cheap and simple, it was feasible to do that. I think that cost and simplicity of the longbows were their biggest advantage; speed perhaps a secondary factor, but the sheer numbers were likely to be more important. There is, of course, an interesting parallel here with some trends in modern military spending. The Joint Strike Fighter is a technological marvel; one of the most advanced pieces of military equipment ever. However, they are staggeringly expensive, and not actually the best dogfighters in the sky. You wonder how much more effective spending that money on more and simpler weaponry might have been.
- barney54 11y agoIt's my understanding that a longbow has a greater range than a cross, especially one in the 1300s.
- mattmanser 11y agoYou are directly contradicting a researched paper that explicitly contradicts everything you just said. Why do you think you're right? Read page mid-page 691-693. I'm also not sure what the point is of you talking about today's modern crossbows which are unsurprisingly easier to reload.
- ajuc 11y agoIt's funny how the article quietly assumes "Scotland+France+England" = "Europe".
- Kurtz79 11y agoCan you provide a concrete example ? I really can't see this assumption made anywhere in the paper.
- ajuc 11y ago> For over a century the longbow reigned as undisputed king of medieval European missile weapons. Yet only England used the longbow as a mainstay in its military arsenal; France and Scotland clung to the technologically inferior cross- bow. > England alone, for a 150-year window in late medieval Europe, was politically stable enough to render the longbow its rulers’ optimal technology choice. In contrast, in France and Scotland political instability prevailed, rendering the crossbow the optimal technology choice for rulers in these nations.
- Kurtz79 11y agoYes, I read those, but I still don't see the assumption made. The first more general sentence does not imply that the all the countries mentioned in the second make up the entirety of Europe. It makes sense that the author would make a specific comparison with the countries involved in the war, rather than doing so for all the countries in medieval Europe.
- ajuc 11y agoMaybe I'm reading too much into this. It's just that I disagree with both sentences. Mongol composite bows were superior ranged weapons and were used in Europe since 14th century. And there were other politicaly stable countries in that period, including Teutonic Order, Poland, Venetian Republic among others.
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- david-given 11y agoAsimov wrote an essay on this back in 1980, called _The Unsecret Weapon_, in the collection _The Sun Shines Bright_. Same conclusion, IIRC. However I've never found a copy online, which is a shame because I remember it has being one of his best.
- vkazanov 11y agoInteresting. Although this point of view might be a bit simplified, there's another example of a weapon, which was both relatively cheap to make - and really hard to use unless the whole society was built around the skills required to use it. Mongols! Light cavalry using composite bows was both unbelievably effective and hard to copy for everybody but steppe nomads. All Mongols were hunters, they practically lived with their bows on their horses. So the whole population could do warfare. While back in the days, in both Eastern and Western Europe, contemporary warfare was rotating around heavy cavalry, and one can't have too many knights. Even if somebody managed to gather an army more or less comparable to Mongol hordes - heavier cavalry would just be meat for lighter riders making circles around them. Besides, feudal lands never managed to be centralized enough to counter mongols. In medieval Rus' the need to centralize led to the rise of Moscow - and it took quite a while anyway.
- ucaetano 11y agoIt's hard to compare Mongols to Europeans. The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates. Also, light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe, specially when you don't have huge, flat battlefields that allow light cavalry to circle any target. In other words, Mongol warfare was perfect for the environment they were created for: vast empty dry lands with few geographical features and settlements which are far from each other.
- wwwong 11y agoRe: "light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe" Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands. Also, despite Europe's fortifications, a scouting party led by Subutai of 20,000 horse archers, widely wiped out a much more significant force of Central Europe soldiers, greatly outnumbering the Mongols. Fortified cities may cause trouble, but by this time, Mongol dominance had incorporated Chinese siege technology that fortified central european cities had not seen.
- wtbob 11y agoThis seems a good place to post about Mad Jack Churchill, who brought his longbow to France in 1940 and shot a German with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
- rupellohn 11y agoThanks for posting this! my favorite bit: "He startled train conductors and passengers by throwing his briefcase out of the train window each day on the ride home. He later explained that he was tossing his case into his own back garden so he would not have to carry it from the station"
- trengrj 11y agoMakes me want to learn how to use the longbow. It seems a challenge that this skill has been lost, and is interesting in that how long it took to develop.
- zaphar 11y agoI own one and they are very fun to shoot. But it take a lot of practice to be accurate with one. There is no sight or even an arrow rest on authentic english longbow so learning to shoot consistently takes a while.
- Agathos 11y agoIt's nice to see the conventional wisdom confirmed for once, but... isn't this the conventional wisdom?
- vacri 11y agoI thought so as well - the abstract doesn't seem like new information.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoIs it? I always thought crossbows were way more effective than longbows at range and accuracy.
- Agathos 11y agoI'm mostly thinking of the battle of Agincourt, which has long been celebrated in the English-speaking world as the victory of the common man over the elite, heavily armored knight, all thanks to the longbow.
- hyperion2010 11y agoThe Brits have had the advantage of a technologically superior political system for a very long time. I usually make an argument that is quite similar to this to explain their rapid and unprecedented rise to imperial splendor.
- VeejayRampay 11y agoAs far as Europe is concerned: Roman Empire? Charlemagne? Otto? How is the British Empire "unprecedented" exactly? Is it a matter of scale?
- hyperion2010 11y agoTiny little island that lost most (all really) of its continental holdings by 1700. Compare with other continental empires.
- 4bpp 11y agoI wonder if this practice of arming citizens with easily procured long-distance weaponry that in a less stable country would be feared to become useful in a rebellion also could be considered one of the memetic ancestors of modern American firearm culture.
- thesz 11y ago"We determined the true solution of medieval war puzzle. The medievals truly had to reason just like we do. We cite no such reason in medieval literature sources, just use indirect proofs that we are right." A good reason to laugh, I guess.
- rogeryu 11y agoLast summer I did a workshop with the longbow. It's real fun, and has many links to meditation, finding your center etc. I had seen it before, never liked it, but it was great. In the end I shot at a 1.5 meter target about 100 meters away. You could barely see it, as it was lying flat on a hill. At first I could not believe that I had the power to get that far, but it worked out. I missed it by about 12 meters, which was not bad looking at the competition that day.
- hussong 11y agoYou might like the book "Zen in the Art of Archery" by Eugen Herrigel, first published in 1948 / 1953 (German / English).
- kiwi93 11y agosurprised there's no discussion of the importance of chivalric values in the French military. French knights were so married to the idea of valor that employing yeoman infantry was seen as dishonorable. Obviously this is directly related to the political context of state security but it's worth considering the cultural factor as well
- mcv 11y agoAbsolutely. The French nobility loved the heavy cavalry charge. The English knights had to fight on foot to protect the longbowmen. It's a totally different culture and attitude. You can't just pick one element out of a different system and expect to copy the successes of that system.
- encoderer 11y agoIf anybody wants to go more in depth on this I suggest A Distant Mirror. Brilliant work.
- Justsignedup 11y agotl;dr -- The longbow is worthless in most applications except military. The monarchy made it compulsory to train in bow use, so anyone recruited for the militia was ready in some shape or form to use the bow, so in a relatively short amount of time anyone can be trained to use a longbow for battle. They forced bow imports and kept prices very low throughout England. The rest of the world couldn't enact such rules and thus could not make the Longbow a successful military weapon. It required years of training, not something you can do to a soldier who just got conscripted.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoAnybody going to draw a parallel between this, and modern gun-control efforts? Or is that too contentious to be helpful in illuminating this centuries-old issue.
- dmckeon 11y agoHere is a contemporaneous control effort: We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers, which is hateful to God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on. Canon 29, 2nd Lateran Council, held 1139, under Pope Innocent II The council also forbade "jousts and tournaments". Apparently the original text has not survived, so only secondary sources and translations are available, some of which vary. In any case, the prohibition appears to have been ineffective.
- alricb 11y agoA paper about the hundred years war that doesn't cite a single French-language source except Froissard? Not very serious.
- alricb 11y agoAh, Agincourt-fetish, one of the few fetishes you can display in public without looking too ridiculous (in the English-speaking world). Longbows are great in open battle, yes. But the hundred years war was a war of sieges and raids (by the English and the great companies), and for those the stonemason is infinitely superior to the longbowman. For the French, the winning strategy was always to avoid pitched battles and fortify river crossing points until English armies had run out of supplies, then patiently retake lost fortified places through siege.
- ggillas 11y agoExplains the large number of hackathons we have these days: "...a ruler who wanted to adopt the longbow had to create and enforce a culture of archery through tournaments, financial incentives, and laws supporting longbow use to ensure sufficient numbers of archers."
- SFjulie1 11y agoPlain BS. I learnt "canne d'arme and baton d'arme" the "fencing of the i-gnobles". From feudality to absolute monarchy the raise of monarchy has been made at the costs of "Jaqueries". Peasant revolts of the "non nobles" "ignobles" in latin derived french. The central control brought by the carolingien and then the bourbon as resulted in strong traditions: knights and nobility are also a force to squalsh revolts. This and the dissolution of Lances towards "regular armies" after azincourt defeat (longbow involved) has been used to cut the fraternity at arms between feuds members. (Lances were like organic units of versatile men at arms doing their best to bring everyone alive the local feud included). The strength of the knight were enforced like in feodal japan, by preventing the crowd to gain power. For this, metal was considered the weapons of only knights. Which means that when using the old franc laws for something as rude as sullying a women in a church out of the accepted "traditions", the divine judgement could be called ... a duel. Needless to say peasants were not authorized to have metal ... officially. So with all the jaqueries going on, you don't really want the peasants to have weired ideas about efficient wooden weapons. And still monarchy was a vast joke at this time and era, cousins of the royal families were lending each others money, and were often tight by blood. England had no interest to destroy the french society. French kings had no real interest in defeating england. They were mainly aiming for weakening the local suzerain. The feuds. Of course it backfired. Louis XIV almost get killed during the "fronde".
- DougN7 11y agoInteresting discussion, including the comments below respecting how Barons didn't necessarily want an armed populice because it made it harder for them to stay in power. Does any of this sound familiar or applicable to today (gun control debate)??
- DougN7 11y agoInteresting discussion, including the comments below respecting how Barons didn't necessarily want an armed populice because it made it harder for them to stay in power. Does any of this sound familiar or applicable to today (gun control debate)??
- jdlyga 11y agoBecause France was playing Orc and researched lighter throwing axes instead.
- trhway 11y ago>Yet the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) lasted longer than a hundred years—plenty of time for England’s enemies to learn that their defeats were heavily influenced, if not caused, by the longbow. Didn't England lose the Hundred Years War? At least looking at the map before and after - it lost everything on the continent, incl. last remnants of Angevin and Normandy lost to France, with France rising up significantly bigger and stronger as a result of the war. While long bow is a nice nostalgic weapon, the crossbow is technologically more advanced, and in our civilization technology wins : "Plate armor that could be penetrated by large crossbows, but was impenetrable by longbows, was uncommon in Europe until about 1380" (funny that while a child i was initially making bows, yet soon switched to making crossbows - and they were interesting until i made my first single shot handgun at the end of the 1st grade :)
- mcv 11y agoYes, England lost. The thing is, field battles don't really win wars; sieges do. At least when the war is about territory. England did a lot of damage to France, but couldn't really hold on to the territory. And besides, it was really only a handful of field battles they won so spectacularly (not just due to the longbow, but due to a more comprehensive strategy involving longbows together with knights on foot and good defensive terrain).
- mcv 11y agoA historian friend claims this is bollocks. England was not significantly more stable, and the longbow was not a superweapon on its own. It was part of a system of combat, of combined arms, involving knights fighting on foot and choosing the right terrain. And when they didn't have the right terrain, those English longbowmen also lost plenty of battles. They had some spectacular victories at Crecy and Agincourt, but they also had their fair share of losses. Excellent weapon, but no silver bullet.