English warbow report

[david w.]

I am doing a report on english  warbows.  What are some good facts, quotes, sources & such

Thanks

[Yeomanbowman]

Dave,
The best thing for you is to buy or borrow a good book or two.  Try 'Secrets of the English Warbow' by H. Soar or 'The Great Warbow' by Strickland and Hardy and, of course, Toxophilus.
I'm sure you will enjoy it and learn a lot.

[david w.]

heres my report on the english warbow so far. tell me if any info is faulty as I do not know much on this subject but my teacher wouldnt know it.  Its alot of fun to research

Still have alot to cover, its not even half done.  I am aiming for about 5 pages is what our teacher wants.

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[markinengland]

David,
Your report is coming along nicely.
In your first paragraph you use the word farce! I think you may have meant to use the word force. :>) We may be a farce now but we were a force then!
You could mention the most famous battles of the 100 years war between England and France like Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.
You might mention the English tactic often used of fighting a defensive battle from a position that protected the archers in combination with armoured men-at-arms also fighting on foot. The French were then forced to attack a well defended line, and had to get through arrow storms to attack the men-at-arms and commanding officer if they wanted to win the battle. The archers often shot from behind hedges or hammered sharp wooden stakes into the ground in front of them to stop horses charging them down. This worked well against French knights on horses so eventually the French knights gave up their horses and also fought on foot.
You could mention the Mary Rose wreck and the warbows found on it - basically the only actual English Warbows existing.
You could mention that English archers were used in many other wars around this time fighting for other states as mercenaries.
You could mention that an archer may not have been a wealthy man but that they could and often did make their fortunes as archers by capturing a wealthy noble knight and randsoming him.
You might look at the Battle of Shrewsbury and other similar longbow against longbow battles.
An archer could shoot around 12 arrows a minute. 7000 archers could thus shoot 84,000 arrows in one minute.
There are some quite good images on google if you do an image search for longbow and warbow and want to include them in your report.
Hope this helps,
Mark in England

[david w.]

Thanks!!  Thats some good info!

thanks for catching farce

[bow-toxo]

heres my report on the english warbow so far. tell me if any info is faulty as I do not know much on this subject but my teacher wouldnt know it.  Its alot of fun to research

Still have alot to cover, its not even half done.  I am aiming for about 5 pages is what our teacher wants.

     A few corrections.The English did not adopt the longbow from the Welsh. There is NO evidence that the Welsh used longbows before they got them from the English who brought longbows with them when they migrated from northern Europe. D shaped cross sections were used in Victorian England but only on a minority of the bows from the Mary Rose, the Schleswig Viking bows and the Roman period Danish Nydam bows. Oval cross sections were much more usual. Swallow tails were a type of broadhead used in hunting to cause maximum blood loss in animals. They were impractical in war. Narrower broad heads with small barbs would stick in a horse that would become unmanageable from the arrow bouncing around in its flesh. In your short selection of arrow woods you might have mentioned poplar, a soft wood used in most of the MR arrows, and birch , that was used in all cultures. A mediaeval English longbow is not necessarily a warbow. The bows used to teach archery to 12 year old children were not warbows nor were the weaker hunting longbows. The word 'mediaeval' [or medieval]  does not take a capital letter because it is an adjective not derived from a noun, while the adjective 'Renaissance' does.
 Good luck on your paper. It is really great that you are asking for help to get it right. Consider me to be at your service.

                                           Erik

[nickf]

some corrections:
line 4. with 'become' you probably mean 'became'

'The English longbow is also referred to as the English warbow'
the english warbow is an english longbow, but not otherwise. With english longbow you could also point on the victorian bows. Maybe it's an Idea to explain the difference between both? about drawweight, drawlengths, handles, shapes and dimensions?

line 17: with 'knocks' you probably mean 'nocks'. There's a difference between these wrods

strings were mostly made from linen and flax, hemp came later, being import (correct me if I'm wrong?)

for arrows: hornbeam is pretty rare in europe, as far as I know. haven't heard of shafting made from it in the medievals. Birch shafting was very common, just as ash and poplar.

'Lifelong training was necessary to work up to the excessive draw-weight of the warbow'
this has more to do with accuracy, since strenght can be build up pretty quickly. IMO

hope this helps a little

Nick

[triton]

In your short selection of arrow woods you might have mentioned poplar, a soft wood used in most of the MR arrows,

Poplar is a deciduous tree, so is a hardwood.  Evergreens are softwoods.
Cork and Balsa are hardwoods even though they're physically softer than the softwood Yew.  Confused yet?

[bow-toxo]

A few more corrections. your MIDDLE-AGES.ORG site is a good example of my rule that if you know three things about any subject, two of them are wrong. It is really full of errors. Nickf caught a few more that I missed. Here are a few more. The jury is still out on the bodkin points piercing armour. There have been lots of inconclusive tests on that recently. Butts were not flat, except on the target face. The " three feet long arrows" existed but were not the usual longbow arrows.  Not one of the hundreds of Mary Rose arrows was longer than 32 inches and it is true that the 30-32" draw was used with longbows, of course with that length of arrow. The clothyard arrows would also be drawn to the head by archers capable of it. I hope you are not getting discouraged.

                                                    Erik

[Rod]

And in it's heyday it was known as a "bowe" or chauvinistically, as an English bowe.
The term "longbow" is a fairly late term used to distinguish it from a crossbow.

What the Norman kings and their captains learnt from the Welsh campaigns was the efficacy of the Welsh light troops and archery against the Anglo-Norman heavy cavalry in difficult terrain.
Following this and similar experiences against the highly mobile Scottish incursions using light horse, the English captains made significant adjustment to their view of how they might best employ the archers available to them throughout the English counties.

This was the beginning of the end of the dominance of the use of heavy cavalry in Western Europe and marked the beginnings of the English habit of men at arms and mounted archers dismounting to fight set piece battles on foot from a strong defensive position.

The canard about "deriving from" the Welsh bow is in part derived from this experience in the field, and in part from a misreading of Geraldus, who said that the archers of Gwent were the best in Wales, not that they were the superiors or antecedents of strong English archery.

Rather than rely upon puerile websites that trot out the same old nonsense over and again, I would recommend that you go to a more intelligent source for an overview of the facts.

The Yale University Press "English Monarchs" series in paperback, particularly Edward 1 and Henry V (Agincourt) are as good a place as any to start.

The books on the Henrys, I & II are very good on the Angevin building of Anglo -Norman military organisation.

These are also very sound on the social and economic context.

For Edward 111 (Dupplin Muir, Halidon Hill, Sluys, Poitiers and Crecy) Roger Cliffords "War Cruel and Sharp" is very good on making the case for chevauchee as a means of drawing out the French and porovking and attack on a defensive position.

Jonathan Sumption "The Hundred Years War" Vols i & ii are also recommended, though he is stronger on the use of  chevauchee than on longbow specifics.

Also A W  Boardman " The Battle of Towton" and Desmond Seward "The Wars of the Roses" which is an easy and interesting read.

The bibliographies of any of these contain many useful reference sources.

Rod.

[youngbowyer]

The bow was “D” shaped in it’s cross section  this is just a small spelling mistake nothing big but it's supposed to be the bow was "D" shaped in its cross section instead of it's.

Hope it helps.

[bow-toxo]

And in it's heyday it was known as a "bowe" or chauvinistically, as an English bowe.
The term "longbow" is a fairly late term used to distinguish it from a crossbow.

The canard about "deriving from" the Welsh bow is in part derived from this experience in the field, and in part from a misreading of Geraldus, who said that the archers of Gwent were the best in Wales, not that they were the superiors or antecedents of strong English archery.

Rather than rely upon puerile websites that trot out the same old nonsense over and again, I would recommend that you go to a more intelligent source for an overview of the facts.

Rod.

My sentiments exactly. It is really time to forget that glaringl absurdity about Welsh invention of the longbow that had been around in Europe since the Stone Age. The longbow was also called the "English bow" in pre Hundred Years War France in 'The Book of Roi Modus'. We know that a longbow was meant because the length is specified.  The term 'long bow' [two words] was used to distinguish it from a 'small bow'.
The term 'handbow' was used to distinguish them from crossbows.

[nickf]

this thread has become very interesting and informative, thanks for startng it david! good to see some basic things about warbows being discussed.

Nick

[david w.]

Thanks for all the help.  I really don't know much about the warbow and its history as there is alot contoveresy around it.

Thanks for all the help its been really interesting.  Its's a good thing my teacher won't know the difference