The bow is an ancient superweapon that has given rise to many myths. When he actually appeared, what was the power and how they could have stopped the knight - in our material.
People have long taken the fashion to kill people. And in this they were helped by a bow and arrow for many centuries. Naturally, myths also appeared about him.
One of the most famous is the myth of the English longbow as a superweapon. True, back in the 19th century, Sir Ralph Payne-Gullway questioned him and showed the serious advantages of a crossbow and a Turkish bow. But he acted carefully. Apparently, he understood that this national myth is one of those whales on which the kingdom stands.
Payne-Gallway's book is a century and a half ago. Since then, nothing clever on this topic has been translated into Russian. Our understanding of bows and crossbows is very outdated.
However, one factor has appeared that strongly influences the views and literally programs us. The most important of the arts, cinema, breathed new life into the myth of the longbow - after all, on the screen, the bow often acts as a wunderwaffe, successfully defeating both infantrymen with shields and armored cavalry.
Let's see what actually happened.
1. Longbows in England were in service in the XII century
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The long bow has been known for a very long time. However, in England in the XII-XIII centuries, arrows used crossbows.
English archers in the movie "Robin Hood" (2010). Here archers - fallout from the future.
The Longbow appeared in the English army only at the end of the 13th century. The English king Edward I met him during the conquest of Wales, appreciated and not just adopted him, but ordered his subjects with a certain level of income to have bows and arrows. At the same time, crossbows did not completely disappear in the army, they were used in the defense of fortresses. And the British even had it in the battle of Agincourt (in 1415).
2. The famous archer Robin Hood lived during the time of Richard the Lionheart
There are three heroes of English history whose adventures are most often filmed. This is King Arthur, Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes. Fictional heroes - there is little that stops filmmakers from fantasizing. Robin Hood in this trio, of course, comes first.
The writer Walter Scott prescribed Robin during the time of Richard the Lionheart, and with his light hand, the robber continues to appear in the same films with this king.
A scene from the 1991 film "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves".
But in England under Richard, the longbow has not yet been adopted!
Bows spread throughout England during the time of Edward I, and shooting competitions were introduced by King Edward III in the middle of the 14th century. That is, Robin Hood could, at best, be his contemporary, not Richard's. And he could rather fight the French at Crecy, and not participate in the Third Crusade.
3. The tensioning power of the longbow was 60-80 kilograms
Most English shooters in battle used yew bows with a tension of 30-40 kilos, under standard arrows (a yard long and with a socketed tip). The task was not to get into the viewing slot of the knight's helmet, but to ensure a high density of "fire" - so that the arrows would fall like rain, inflicting injuries on the soldiers or their horses.
By the way, horse archers cannot create such density.
And from bows with a capacity of 60-80 kilos, individual prominent arrows fired. Then legends were made about them. Here I recall Odysseus, whose bow could not be pulled by numerous rivals who woo Penelope.
If an arrow breaks during a shot, a fragment of it can hit the archer in the left hand.
4. The English Longbow is the most powerful of the combat bows
A compound bow with a reverse bend is able to send an arrow with greater force, that is, further. The speed at which the bow is extended is important here. And it depends on the materials from which it is made. The tree is limiting, which is why simple bows were made so big. The advantage of a longbow is, first of all, in the simplicity and low cost of manufacturing.
In addition, this bow is specifically for the infantry. Composite, small in size, can be used by cavalry. The Japanese for saddle shooting created an asymmetrical yumi long bow with a short lower shoulder. Crossbowmen could shoot from a horse, and English horse archers were a kind of dragoons. They rode on horseback, but they fought on dismounted, and sometimes even taking off their shoes.
5. The firing range of a combat bow was several hundred meters
Indeed, there are recorded results of shooting Turkish bows at a distance of 500-700 meters. But it was shooting at a distance - for the sake of records. And for this, light, non-combat arrows were used.
Sir Ralph Payne-Gullway believed that English archers were unlikely to fire farther than 230-250 yards (just over 200 meters). And here we are talking about mounted shooting, and the range of a direct shot was about 30 meters.
6. An arrow from a bow pierces through the shield
In The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, an arrow of a long English bow pierces the shield right through. The archer, competing in the firing range, managed to send this arrow as much as 630 steps.
It is known that the Parthian horse archers gave the Romans a lot of problems, and their arrows pierced the scutums. But when this happened, the arrows did not pierce the wooden shield right through - they got stuck.
Could the penetration of the shield right through still happen? An oriental military treatise describes a curious case when a Turkmen, dressed in chain mail, removed the garden door and made it a shield. The archer fired an arrow that pierced the door, hit the chest and came out of the back. Seeing such a shot, the soldiers accompanying the Turkmen fled in panic.
Then the gunman said: “There was a hole in that door. The sun was behind the Turkmen and shone through this gap. I, with a good shot, hit the hole [and through it] right into that person. And they thought my arrow had pierced the door, the mail and the man. This plunged everyone into fear."
7. Arrows pierced plate armor
How effective are arrows against armor?
"Bodkin" - an armor-piercing arrowhead of an English bow - confidently pierces chain mail at a short distance. But plate armor was a serious problem for arrows, much more effective was the heavy crossbow bolt.
At the same time, history knows many examples when chain mail with under-armor, leather or quilted cotton armor provided reliable protection from arrows. Indeed, in battle, shooting is conducted not only at close range, and not everyone has arrows with steel armor-piercing tips.
However, it is not always necessary to pierce armor for a serious injury. Thus, the fourth day of the Battle of Yarmouk in August 636 is known in Arab history as "the day of the gouged out eyes." Then the Byzantine archers, firing clouds of arrows, blinded about 700 Muslim soldiers.
In the turbulent year 1066, the Viking chieftain Harald Hardrad was killed by an arrow that pierced his throat at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. And the winner, the English king Harold Godwinson, soon died at Hastings - an arrow struck him in the eye. All of them got arrows into unprotected places. In 1100, while hunting with an arrow, the English king William the Red was killed - he was not wearing armor. And the chain mail did not save Richard the Lionheart from the crossbow bolt.
8. English archers during the Hundred Years War did away with the knightly cavalry
The English bow performed very brightly during the Hundred Years War. But the main victories of the longbow fell on the XIV century (Crécy, Poitiers), when plate armor had not yet become widespread. And in the battle of Agincourt, it became fatal that the French cavalry got stuck in the mud …
Battle of Crecy.
But despite the triumph of the longbow, the heavy armored cavalry did not disappear anywhere, even on the Island. To combat it, all means were good: the forest peak, and firearms, and Wagenburgs. According to the Burgundian military regulations of 1473, the pikemen would kneel so that the archers would shoot from behind them. A volley could be given almost point-blank! In England, they began to use hand firearms already during the War of the Roses - in the second half of the 15th century.
Why did the archers not scatter before the heavy cavalry rushing towards them? Stability was given to them by the ranks of hammered stakes and heavy infantry, which prevented the proud knights from crushing harmful shooters. But in the battle of Pate (1429), the British did not have time to "dig in" and the archers were swept away by the blow of the French cavalry. The rout was complete. Under Formigny (1450), the English army, despite its numerical superiority, was defeated when it left fortified positions during the battle.
I wonder why the textbooks don't tell about these battles of the Centers?
9. The bow was more effective than smooth-bore guns
Sir Ralph Payne-Gullway believed that a hundred skillful Waterloo archers with Brown Bess flintlocks would lose to a hundred archers of the time of Crécy and Agincourt (120 yards away). The archers would respond to each bullet with at least six arrows, and they would shoot much more accurately and effectively.
But this is a "battle of spherical horses in a vacuum."
Why didn't the bow triumphantly return? Each weapon had its own advantages.
A firearm has noticeable advantages in armor penetration, a more stopping effect. And the wounds are more severe: hitting the limbs, the bullets crushed bones and turned people into invalids. The psychological factor also worked.
Archers shot more accurately and faster, but this required a long, many years of training.
Training of English archers.
In this competition, firearms won, but not immediately. And not everywhere at the same time.
The English bow and crossbow in continental Europe gave way to the firearm by the middle of the 16th century. First of all, in the infantry - the accuracy did not matter much when the shooting was "in the squares". In the 17th century in Eastern Europe, the bow was preserved in the cavalry, including the Polish armor.
But the bow lost not only because it pierced the armor worse. In the 18th-19th centuries, armor was practically not used in European armies (the exception was a few cuirassiers and pioneers). "Natural archers", Crimean Tatars or Bashkirs, could no longer defeat the enemy, bombarding him with arrows. The fire of rifles and carbines forced them to stay away, rendering the bows ineffective.
The French, in whom the arrows flew, were disappointed.
10. By the 19th century, guns had supplanted the bow everywhere
There is at least one exception, dictated by the specifics of combat operations.
It's about North America. And if in Woodland the gun quickly supplanted the bow, then the Great Plains created a different military model. There, the Indians, having adopted guns, kept the bow and arrows in the 19th century.
This is due to the specifics of the local theater of operations (theater of operations) - the fighting was conducted by small cavalry detachments. A racing rider is harder to hit, and smooth-bore guns are inconvenient to reload when galloping. In addition, many shooters with rifles are needed to conduct dense continuous fire.
As a result, the bow in the hands of professional shooters turned out to be quite in place.
Directors, writers, and indeed many history lovers should look more often at historical sources and read articles that tell how everything really happened. Otherwise, in the future we will have many more blunders, inconsistencies and the most fantastic, but incorrect legends …
Author: Mikhail Polikarpov
