Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The English Longbow: The Weapon That Changed Medieval Warfare

Episode Date: August 22, 2020

The longbow was one of the most devastating weapons in medieval Europe. It was a weapon that could launch projectiles hundreds of yards and pierce the heaviest of armor. It was the battlefield trump card to heavy armored cavalry. No country adopted and mastered the longbow quite like the English. One reason why they found the military success they did was due to a complete societal commitment to the longbow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Longbow was one of the most devastating weapons in medieval Europe. It was a weapon that could launch projectiles hundreds of yards and pierced the heaviest of armor. It was the battlefield trump card to heavy armored cavalry. No country adopted and mastered the Longbow quite like the English. One reason they found the military success they did was due to a complete societal commitment to the Longbow. Read more about why the Longbow was so powerful and how an entire country was transformed by it on this episode of Everything Everywhere. daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The great

awakening is coming. What is happening? Every week on Conspirality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation. This episode is brought to you by Audible.com. With more people doing road trips due to air travel restrictions, now is a great time to listen to audiobooks rather than trying to pick up week-am radio stations in the middle of the country. One book I would recommend which deals with today's topic is The Black Prince, England's greatest medieval warrior by Michael Jones.

As a 16-year-old, Prince Edward led forces at the Battle of Creasy, where the English defeated the French due to the power of the Longbow. Get your free one-month trial subscription to Audible and two-few. free audiobooks by going to Audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere or clicking on the link in the show notes. A long bow is, at a fundamental level, just a really long bow.

Most definitions will define a long bow as anything greater than four feet long, but most medieval bows in England were actually five feet eight inches long. Most modern definitions would say a long is any bow over four feet long where the string doesn't touch the limb. Long bows were around

at least as early as the year 3,000. in BC. Otsey, the ice man who was found in a melted glacier in Europe, had a long bow on him. As far as our story is concerned, they appeared as early as the year 1,000 in Wales. Legend has it that after a battle with the Welsh, a king of England noticed that one of his knights was injured. He had been shot with an arrow that went through his chain mail, through his leg, through the other side of the chain mail, through the leather on his saddle, through the wood on the saddle, and then went through the horse and killed it. England had to get them some of those. It's here where I have to explain the difference between a long bow

and the other ranged medieval weapon of the time, a crossbow. Both crossbows and longbows were similar in terms of the power of their projectiles. The difference was in how easy they were to shoot and the rate of fire. A crossbow was very easy to use and shoot. Someone with very little training could learn to fire a crossbow. The energy in a crossbow is stored in its limbs and the string is locked in place just waiting for someone to pull the trigger to release the energy. In fact, the crossbow was feared because it was so easy to use.

The Pope even encouraged banning crossbows because it allowed a peasant to take down a fully armored knight, which would totally destabilize the medieval social order. The problem with a crossbow is that you couldn't fire that fast. Most crossbows required your whole body to cock it, including your feet, or more commonly, a crank that pulled back the string. A trained, experienced crossbowman could fire two or three bolts per minute. The energy in a long bow is all contained by the archer. A long bow required strength and years of practice.

However, if you're a skilled archer, you can fire 10 to 12 arrows per minute with far greater accuracy. That means one long bowman was worth four to six crossbowmen just by the firing rate alone. Most countries in continental Europe put their efforts into the cheaper, less effective crossbows. It was a function of economics and the fact that because borders changed so often, the last thing a king wanted to do was trained skilled archers who might later be used against him. England, however, was on an island. They weren't under threat of having its subjects used against them, so they embarked on a plan of training their populace in archery.

Henry I exempted anyone of murder who killed someone during practicing archery. In the Acese of Arms in 1252, King Henry III ordered all men between the ages of 50 and 60 to keep arms in their house, including a longbow. Edward I was really the one who brought forward the power of the English longbow. At the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, he defeated the Scottish with the help of the Longbow, as was dramatized in the movie Braveheart. He later banned the participation of any sport other than archery on Sundays and holidays. Successive kings of England kept up the Longbow tradition.

In the 100 years war with France in the 14th and 15th century, the Longbow became the weapon that tilted the balance of the longbowlestone. power. In 1346 at the Battle of Crecy, the English, led by the Black Prince, overwhelmingly defeated the French with a smaller force through the use of longbows. The French lost 11 princes, 1,200 knights, and 12,000 soldiers. The English only lost a few hundred men. In 1356 at the Battle of Portier, 10,000 outnumbered English in full retreat, again led by the Black Prince, defeated a force of 20 to 60,000 French, again with the power of the Longbow. In fact, they captured the French king and held him in the Tower of London for a ransom of

three million gold crowns. In 1363, Edward III issued a decree requiring all men to practice archery on Sundays and holidays. The high point of the longbow was in 1415 at the Battle of Adjancourt, made famous by William Shakespeare's Henry V. On the 25th of October, St. Crispin's Day, 6,000 English defeated 25,000 French in crappy weather, pouring rain, and a whole lot of arrows. While many different types of wood can be used to make a long bow, the best wood is from the yew tree. At its peak, England was importing

so much yew wood that much of Europe became deforested of yew trees. The king of Poland had to protect the land so all of their yew wasn't lost. Today, archaeologists can tell if somebody was a bowman because of their skeletal structure. Bowman spent so many years practicing archery and developing their skills that the bones in their right arm are larger to handle the increased muscle mass. You can also notice a slight difference between the height of their left and right shoulders. Skeletal remains of an English bowman can be found at the Richard III Museum, which shows these traits. Because England was the only country that trained long bowmen to this extent, English bowmen were often found as mercenaries in European wars. An experienced bowman was a path

to a solid middle-class existence for many Englishmen. There are some specifics about longbows that have long evaded researchers. While we have 3,000-year-old longbows, there isn't a single longbow from the middle ages which has survived. No one was really sure what the draw weight was of a long bow. The draw weight is the amount of force needed to pull back the string. To put it in perspective, a bow used in the Olympic archery competition is usually about 50 pounds, which is around the weight for most hunting bows. Experts thought that long bows were around 80 to 100 pounds. The Mary Rose, an English ship that sunk in 1545, was raised from the sea in 1982. The ship carried 250 longbows, of which 172 have been recovered along with several thousand arrows. The drawweight of the Mary

Rose's longbows was on average 150 to 160 pounds, which is really high. Most archers today would have a very difficult time pulling such a long bow. This explains why the skeleton of English bowman had modified arm bones. Long bones had their day in the sun, but they were eventually rendered obsolete with gunpowder and firearms. By the end of the Hundred Years' War, which saw the high point of longbow usage,

the weapon had been countered by the French firing field artillery. The weapon which countered heavy armored cavalry was itself countered by cannons. The last major use of longbows was during the English Civil War in 1642 when a local militia managed to fight back a group of unarmored musketeers.

I'll close by noting two third. things. First is that according to some people, the medieval laws requiring archery practice for every male in England were never technically revoked. On June 11, 2010, the Reverend Mary Edwards called all of the members of her parish in Wiltshire England to mandatory archery practice under the terms of the law by King Edward III. People who showed up were treated to a barbecue in a bar. It was debated if the parish vicar had the power to enforce the law, if in fact it is still on the books. The second thing is that the last confirmed use of a longbow in battle occurred in World War II by an English soldier in France of all places. Lieutenant Colonel Mad Jack Churchill

was an eccentric soldier who went into battle with a Claymore, Bagpipes, and a long bow, and actually used his bow to slay a German officer near Calais in 1940. And I can guarantee the German officer did not see that coming. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAlla. Today's podcast reviews come from Apple Podcasts. The first is from Pete DeBack, who says, perfect amount of fun. I love a short show, and this one is a blast, simple, fun topics with a great host. Thank you, Pete. And our next one comes from Brian Pringle, who says, great podcast, has great topics, and a great listen to. Thank you very much. And thanks to all of you who listen to the show, who leave reviews over on Apple Podcast, and who support the show over on Spotify.

Thank you.