THE LONGBOW.
The longbow is a weapon of great antiquity; an example may be seen on
a bas-relief in the Louvre, dated about 700 B.C. It was used by the
Egyptians, Chaldæans, and Greeks; and was probably introduced into
Britain by the Romans. The bow of Pandarus is related to have been
made of ibex-horn, and strung with sinews. The following lines from
the _Iliad_ are very graphic, and descriptive of this bow and its
manipulation:--
“Straight he uncased his polished bow, his spoil
Won from a mountain ibex, which himself,
In ambush lurking, through the breast had shot
True to his aim, as from behind a crag
He came in sight, prone on the rock he fell;
With horns of sixteen palms his head was crowned;
These deftly wrought, a skilful workman’s hand
Had polished smooth, and tipped the ends with gold.
He bent, and resting on the ground his bow,
Strung it anew.
His quiver then withdrawing from its case,
With care a shaft he chose ne’er shot before,
Well-feathered messenger of pangs and death.
The stinging arrow fitted to the string,
At once the sinew and the notch he drew:
The sinew to his breast, and to the bow
The iron head: then, when the mighty bow
Was to a circle strained, sharp rang the horn
And loud the sinew twanged, as toward the crowd
With deadly speed the eager arrow sprang.”
--_Iliad_, iv. 119.
An antique Greek drawing of the time of Theseus has been already
referred to, whereon is an Amazon with a drawn bow, the arrow-head
being barbed. Agathias, writing in the seventh century, says that the
Franks did not use this weapon in war, but it is mentioned in the
capitularies of Charlemagne, and there is evidence that it was not
uncommon among both Anglo-Saxons and Danes. It was pre-eminently an
English weapon of war, though used also in the chase in that and other
countries, and was remarkable for range and sureness of aim, as well as
for penetrative force. The Germanic nations applied it mainly in the
chase, the Saxons especially using a short bow. An illustration occurs
in a MS. in the Cotton Library.[41] The English archer became justly
famous under the Norman kings, and it was first under them that the bow
assumed great importance as a weapon of war. Bowmen in England at this
time wore a leathern jacket, which was afterwards adopted by the French
and called a “jacque d’Anglois.” On the Bayeux tapestry only one single
bowman appears among the Saxon array, while there are several shown
among the Norman ranks; these bows are short and thick, and arrows with
barbed tips. Harold’s eye was pierced by an arrow, and but for this the
Normans would hardly have won the battle. Richard I. was himself an
adept in the use of the longbow, and it was the leading weapon of our
armies at Creçy and Agincourt; and indeed continued to be so well into
the “renaissance.” It will be remembered that at Flodden the Scottish
king was killed by an arrow, and this battle may be said to have been
the latest won mainly by the longbow.
The proper length of the English longbow was about the archer’s height,
say between five feet six inches to six feet, with a bend of nine
inches; and those made from the bough of a yew were preferred; but
as yew trees were scarce, bowyers were enjoined by Act of Parliament
to make four bows of “witch-hazel,” ash or elm, to one of yew; and no
persons under seventeen years of age, with certain exceptions, were
permitted to shoot with a yew bow, under a penalty of six shillings and
eightpence. This Act of Parliament was repealed in Elizabeth’s reign.
The string was either of silk or hemp, twisted or plaited, but always
round where the notch of the arrow was placed. The shaft was drawn by
two or sometimes three fingers to the head, and always towards the ear,
when shot at short marks; but towards the breast when used at long
ranges. The archer kept both eyes open, and looked only at the object
aimed at, holding his weapon perpendicularly. Part of the light cavalry
in the thirteenth century consisted of mounted archers. During the
reign of Henry VIII. hand-guns had greatly superseded the use of the
longbow, but the king himself was a skilful archer. The archer carried
his sheaf of arrows, consisting of twenty-four, in his belt; the length
was a clothyard shaft, feathered or plain at the base, and tipped
usually with a sharp, but sometimes barbed head. These heads were of
iron, pointed with steel. The archer wore a leathern wrist-guard,
called a bracer, to avoid hurt by the recoil of the string. The arrow
with feathers from a goose’s wing was the “broad arrow,” first used as
a regal badge by King Richard I. The plain pile, without feathers, was
considered to penetrate better. Henry V. enacted that the Sheriffs of
Counties were to take six wing feathers from every goose for feathering
arrows. Arrows of ash were preferred. They were about thirty-two inches
long, and usually tipped with a sharp unbarbed head.
Any ordinary English archer would rarely miss an object the size of
a man at 250 yards; and he could discharge his weapon twelve times a
minute. The extreme range of a bow was “from sixteen to twenty score
yards;” in fact, a “bow-shot” seems to have been used to express a
distance of 400 yards, and the minimum range for archery contests was
usually 220 yards.
It was the first duty of the archers in battle to send clouds of arrows
against charges of cavalry, so as to disorganise their formation by
killing or wounding as many of the horses of the opposing host as
possible, thus causing confusion in the enemy’s ranks by rendering
many riders _hors de combat_, and though rarely able to pierce a
harness of proof, the arrows often found an interstice in the armour.
Since the thirteenth century the armies of England maintained large
numbers of mounted archers in their ranks, the complement of bowmen to
a corps of fifteen hundred fully equipped lancers being from three to
five thousand, while each lancer’s equipment was five or six mounted
soldiers, at least two of whom were archers.
German and Italian bows rarely exceeded five feet in length. The
shape of their arrow tips varied exceedingly. An ordinance of Henry
I. provides that when archers were practising and any one had the
misfortune to be killed or wounded by accident, it was merely to be
regarded as a misadventure.
The form of the longbow of the fourteenth century was thick in the
middle, narrowing towards the ends, and it was sometimes coated with
paint.
The price of longbows was fixed by statute in the reign of Edward IV.
at a maximum price of three shillings and fourpence each; and in order
to increase the number available, every merchant vessel carrying goods
to London was compelled to bring a certain number of bows in proportion
to the weight of the cargo. A statute of Philip and Mary ordains that
all temporal persons having estates of a thousand a year and upwards
are required to furnish to the State thirty longbows and thirty sheaves
of arrows.
Archers carried one or two pointed stakes as part of their equipment,
for planting before them in the ground to resist cavalry; also
a lead-headed mallet, to drive them in, which was also used for
despatching the enemy’s wounded.
Specimens of the English longbow are of the greatest rarity. The
unfortunate loss of an English war vessel, the _Mary Rose_, which sank
off Spithead during the reign of Henry VIII., in 1545, furnished us
with some actual specimens of the period. The whereabouts of the wreck
was known, and in 1843 divers recovered several bows, a couple of which
are preserved in the Tower of London; they are six feet four and a half
inches long, and are made of yew.
There was a Northumberland English longbow still to the fore early in
the present century, and the late Mr. Matthew Culley of Akeld, in a
letter to the Newcastle Society, dated Nov. 26, 1814, wrote concerning
it: “This bow had long been used by the hereditary bowmen of Wark
Castle. It is described as having been formed of various coloured wood
inlaid together, and of great length and strength. From the joining of
different sorts of wood very valuable properties are derived, which are
well known to mechanics, and more especially to ship-builders. This
weapon, so dreadful in the hands of its ancient possessors, being no
longer in request, was consigned to the children as a plaything.” There
is an English longbow at Dover Castle.
The longbow continued in use long after the introduction of firearms,
but was practically superseded by the harquebus in the sixteenth
century. Though used at the siege of Rochelle in 1627, its reputation
had sunk so low in the reign of Charles I. that that king granted two
commissions under the great seal for enforcing its use, and another to
prohibit the enclosure of fields near London, which would have had the
effect of interfering with the practice of archery. A curious fact in
connection with the longbow is that Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1776
to equip the colonial forces with the weapon.