Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Michal Marcin

The and Its Military Use

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt.

2013 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Michal Marcin Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt. for her valuable advice and guidance. I would also like to thank my family and my friends, particularly Wouter Konijn, for their encouragement. Table of Contents

1 Introduction 5

2 The Longbow and Its General History 7

3 The Longbow in Medieval England 15

3.1 The Beginnings – the Saxons, the or the Welsh? 15

3.2 Edward I and the Birth of the English Military Longbow 18

3.3 The Slumber of the Longbow During the Reign of Edward II 22

3.4 Edward III and the Ripening of the Military Longbow 24

4 The Golden Age of the Longbow 29

4.1 The Battle of Crécy 29

4.2 The Battles of Poitiers and Agincourt 30

5 The Decline of the Military Longbow 33

6 The longbow in fiction 39

6.1 Viking: King's Man by Tim Severin 39

6.2 Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell 43

7 Conclusion 47

Bibliography 50

English Resumé 52

Czech Resumé 53 1 Introduction

The aim of this work is to create a compact guide to people wishing to learn about the longbow and its origins, introduction to the English army, military history and eventual decline, and also to prove that the longbow was in a considerable use for a far wider period of time than merely the commonly supposed Hundred Years' War

(henceforth mostly referred to as the War). There already is a great amount of texts concerning the War or some of the battles in particular, therefore, rather than to summarise these texts, I decided to cover the history of the longbow in a much wider extent.

The longbow is a peculiar item. In some people it evokes a glorious past, to others it is a bitter reminder of a once mightiest kingdom's defeat and suffering and to still others it remains a trusty companion, be it for spare time or as a tool necessary for their lives. To most people these days, however, it is a nearly forgotten relic of the past, although this is not the first time people thought so. The longbow is a very simple weapon. In its typical construction it is, with the exception of the size, no different from other self-bows, i.e. bows made from a single piece of . Therefore, when a more sophisticated ranged weapon became common, the old-fashioned longbow was expected to be abandoned. Far from that, it rose to become a core element of a new type of armies and left most of medieval Europe wide-eyed in astonishment at its deadly effectiveness.

The first chapter of the thesis describes the very beginnings of the bow and its types, the earliest findings of longbow fragments, and discusses some theories about the weapon's reoccurring disappearance throughout the history. It also demonstrates the earliest military usage of the longbow in the world and in Europe, particularly the

Germanic tribes. At the end of the longbow historical background, the use of the longbow outside Europe after the is briefly mentioned.

5 The thesis further discusses possible nations responsible for bringing the bow into England, the introduction of the longbow into the English army and the person most responsible for it, as well as its role in the evolution of the way armies were formed and battles fought.

The Golden Age of the longbow is briefly outlined, along with the three most important battles of the War – Crécy, Poities and Agincourt. However, rather than give lengthy accounts of the battles, some events preceding and following them are written about, along with the effects lasting for longer periods of time.

The decline of the longbow is dealt with next, starting with the late stages of the

Hundred Years' War. The role of the longbow in the is described, as well as the increasingly desperate attempts to keep the weapon a part of the English army, particularly during the reign of Henry VIII. This proved to be the final effort, after which the use of the longbow steadily declined, without any notable achievement. The thesis lists some of the main reasons for the inevitable decline and the eventual abandonment of the longbow in the military.

In the final chapter, two pieces of historical fiction regarding the use of the military in certain battles are analysed. The Battle of Stamford Bridge, which features in Viking: King's Man by T. Severin (first published in 2005), is barely known in this respect. The depiction is examined, along with some theories on the use of the longbow in that period. The portrayal of the by B. Cornwell in his novel Azincourt (2008) is studied next, as well as some aspects of the life of a common longbowman, as represented in the text.

The chief sources are Longbow: A social and military history by R. Hardy, a detailed study of the weapon, and The Hundred Years War by D. Seward, selected for additional information on the longbow in regard to the War.

6 2 The Longbow and Its General History

It is often thought that the main catalyst of the change in the way wars were fought in the late1 Middle Ages and the early modern history was the . This notion, probably based on the belief that changes are always the outcome of new technologies, not merely new ideas for items already commonly in use, is wrong. While some cannons or handguns were in use as early as the middle of the fourteenth century

(Seward 55-7), it still took a few centuries2 rather than decades for them to be commonly used, and still few more centuries to actually surpass the effectiveness of the longbow3. Cornwell mentions two wise men wishing the longbow was still widely used in their time: , who "believed that if the American rebels had been armed with the longbow then the revolution would have been over in a matter of months rather than years" and, a few decades later, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who "wanted to raise a Corps of Longbowmen to fight Napoleon", but failed to do so due to a shortage of trained men (Hardy, foreword). In short, were still the deadliest weapon for a long time after they fell out of military use, and also for a very long time before they came to be massively used in the Hundred Years' War, for the history of the (long)bow is, in great part, the history of humanity itself.

The beginnings of the bow in general are closely tied to the beginnings of mankind. Early on humans figured out it was safer to attack from a distance, and have ever since kept improving upon the idea. Throwing spears with fire hardened points were already in use half a million years ago, having replaced stones and sticks (Hardy

11). It is likely that by observing a tree bending in the wind, and by realizing the force 1 Meaning about the second half of the Middle Ages, from some 1000 CE on. Not to be confused with (from roughly 1300 CE on). 2 While several cannons were used during Henry V's conquest of , it was only for sieges. However, despite being fairly powerful, they were highly erratic and it still took a few weeks to breach the walls. Seward states that "their chief weakness seems to have been unreliable powder" (172). 3 For instance, Hardy believes that where the rate of fire is concerned, the rifle surpassed the longbow only as late as by the time of the World War I (75).

7 with which a sapling would lash out after being bent and released, humans eventually came to the idea of creating a bow (Hardy 11). The oldest preserved , made of stone, flint or obsidian, small enough not to be used for spears (bows were made from organic material and have perished over the time) are estimated to be roughly 50,000 years old (ibid. 12).

There are two types of bows: self-bows, i.e. made from a single piece of wood, and composite. The composite ones are, as the term implies, pieced together from parts.

As humans learnt the properties of various materials other than wood, such as that horn compresses and sinew is elastic, they started using it for their benefit. They would make the centre of the bow from wood, then glue sinew to its back (the outer side, facing the target) and horn on its belly (the inner side, facing the archer) (ibid. 14). Therefore, when the bow was drawn, the horn would compress and the sinew expand, and upon firing the two outer layers would quickly revert to their original state, thus greatly enhancing the capabilities of the bow. Properly executed, this design would outperform even the best of the wooden bows. This is proven by the fact that modern bows are based on this design, the only difference being the use of fabricated and more efficient materials (ibid. 14). The reason why those more sophisticated bows were not used all over the world is simply that they were the outcome of necessity: in many parts of the world there was not enough timber available to create self-bows, unlike the more temperate regions, where wood was plentiful (ibid. 14).

The oldest preserved bows, or parts thereof, were found in Germany and

Switzerland, and they are believed to be from the Late Stone Age (ibid. 17), presumably between 4000 and 3000 BCE. These were made entirely of yew wood, the best timber for bows due to its mechanical properties (Kašpar 12). They were measured, and the longest that can be estimated with certainty is 69 inches long (175 cm), but it is believed

8 that "another of 67 in would probably have been 70 in originally, and another well over

80 in [(203 cm)]" – definitely longbows (Hardy 17). "They are all of a deep section, none is a flat bow," and "any of these weapons," Hardy further claims, would "to an

English bowman of the 15th century [CE], or to a member of the British Long Bow

Society today, be instantly understandable and familiar" (17).

The two oldest bows found in England, in Somerset County, were yew longbows as well. There were only found halves of them, but it was enough to undergo radiocarbon dating, a technique using the decay of carbon to estimate the age of organic items. The remains of the first, a flat longbow dated 2690 BCE, "suggest that it was once over six feet long, or up to 190 cm" (ibid. 18). The other, dated 2665 BCE, is smaller: "about 63 in long, or 160 cm", but is described as "rounded and deeply

'stacked'" and "much more like the medieval weapon than [the other bow]" (ibid. 18).

According to Hardy, from these findings can be deduced that in England in the third millennium BCE "there already existed fine weapons of the two main types, flat longbow and high stacked longbow" and that they coexisted together (18).

The oddity about bows is their reoccurring disappearance and emergence as time passed (ibid. 21), as if mankind grew bored of them and tried other things, only to eventually realize archery was still the safest way. It is estimated, by archaeological traces, that the bow was a predominant weapon in Europe from about 10,000 to 1500

BCE (ibid. 19). This decline in use was probably connected with the rising amount of bronze weapons and the change in the fashion of combat - men preferred to fight hand to hand (ibid. 21). Hardy believes the bow was then probably neglected for a time and only used as a hunting weapon, and he implies it was not improved for wars and therefore, even if used, the were often deflected by the emerging metal , until the piercing arrowheads were introduced around 750 BCE (21). However,

9 this theory of abandonment of the bow for military use does not seem probable, because the arrowheads of the time would have very likely been made from bronze as well, which is an easy alloy to work as it is possible to cast it into a mould, unlike the tedious process of forging steel arrowheads, thus allowing for a mass production of items of the same shape, size and weight (Kašpar 13-14) – a great advancement for the earliest military machinery. Later on, as the protection of soldiers progressed and new armour was gradually put into use, such as the mail armour (at first merely big rings sewn onto leather garments) or the various predecessors of medieval (usually tiny bits of plates held together by leather strings), a new eventually emerged to match them. Unlike the common broadheads, which had blades or "wings" on the side of the point, for massive laceration, the new ones were sturdier and narrower (barely wider than the shaft), in order to focus all the force into a smaller area, therefore giving the arrow higher chance for penetration and even though they caused lesser wounds to an unarmoured target than a broadhead would, it was enough to put a fighter out of combat (ibid. 15). These bodkin arrows were probably what Hardy meant by the

"armour piercing arrow" (21), but this is by no means a confirmation of his theory that bows fell out of use until the invention of the bodkins.

In other parts of the world, such as Egypt, the bow was well established by 8000

BCE – they used many different kinds of arrowheads even before the time of the

Pharaohs (Hardy 22). Composite bows were considered a better choice at the time, and were often preferred as the weapon of war and hunt, at least to those who could afford them, as they were mostly imported, while wooden bows were mostly employed by neighbouring regions, such as by the Nubian from the south of Egypt, although the use of these bows likely spread among the Egyptian army too – four

Egyptian longbows were found, dating between 2300 and 1400 BCE (ibid. 22). Those

10 longbows were unusual in their rather low estimated draw weight – only about "50 lb

(23 kg)" (Hardy 23). Hardy explains that the countermeasure for this was the use of extraordinarily light arrows - "They weighed from 0.5 oz (14.5 gm) to 0.4 oz (10 gm) the heaviest being [about] 37 in (94.6 cm) long, the lightest 34 in (86.4 cm)"4, and this more than made up for the seemingly weak bows, for the effectiveness of Egyptian military archery of this era (around 1900 BCE) is well documented (ibid. 23). However, one must bear in mind that this was at a time when there was barely any protection available to the soldiers, and that the light arrows would probably be ineffective against metal armour.

Bows enjoyed widespread use in other parts of the world in the Bronze and Iron

Ages as well, be it settled nations like Ancient Greece or China, where great workshops for bows and arrows have been unearthed, dating back to the second century BCE, or the nomadic nations like the Huns, who, in the fourth century CE, used to bury their dead along with their bows, thus pointing out the high esteem in which these weapons were held (ibid. 15).

The situation in central and northern Europe is not so clear, for there is little evidence of the use of bows in the Bronze Age and they only started to appear again at the beginnings of the "Christian era" (ibid. 21). A sizeable amount of bows excavated in

Denmark date from the late Iron Age, between "100 and 350" CE and "in general they are longer than the height of the men who used them" (ibid. 21), so they can be safely labelled as longbows. Of particular interest is a group of longbows recovered from ship- burials at Nydam5, for these longbows were crafted with very similar ratio of depth to width as the modern ones, but more striking is the fact that the ratio was the same (1 to

4 In the Middle Ages, merely the arrowheads (of the bodkin type) weighted from 14.2 gm to 49.6 gm (Hardy 54). 5 Located on eastern coast of the Jutland peninsula, southern Denmark, close to the border with Germany.

11 1.1) as "the bows recovered from a ship of Henry VIII's navy, wrecked in

1545" (Hardy 21), which were probably the last bows made for significant military use.

Some of the Nydam bows had horn nocks (the slots at the ends of a bow for the string), which are used even today, some had iron ones, possibly to be used as the last resort for close combat, and some kept to the old fashioned self-nocking, i.e. slots cut into the timber itself, and they were thinner than the Mary Rose bows, so they would not last as long (ibid. 21). These are, however, only minor blemishes, if they can even be called that, for they do not worsen the firing capabilities of the bow. The main difference was in the use of heartwood and sapwood. Much like in the creating of a , heartwood, which compresses, is used for the belly, while sapwood (the outer part of a tree, as opposed to heartwood), which is more elastic, is used for the back. The Nydam bows stick to this idea in their centres, but outside of that they "all taper gradually to the ends, in [some cases] leaving almost no heartwood on the outer parts of the limbs. Later bows . . . were made with the proportion between sapwood and heartwood kept more nearly constant from handle to nock" (ibid. 22). This, however, still does not necessarily make the Iron Age bows bad weapons, for the extra heartwood at the limbs merely increases draw weight, not accuracy or any other shooting-related qualities, and the extra draw weight was not needed, since the armour of the time was much worse than in

Henry VIII's time. Therefore, it could be argued, the Nydam bows were even more effective than the Mary Rose war-bows, in their respective time periods.

The immediate question which may come to one's mind is how it was possible for the Romans to conquer so much of Europe, if the Germanic tribes used those powerful bows. The problem is that it is not known what bows the tribes used, but it is very likely that the longbows of their Danish neighbours eventually found their way south, for there are at least two instances of Roman attacks against Germanic territories,

12 which were repelled by the use of archery: in 354 and 388 CE. Of the latter is said that the "Roman attack on Neuss was repulsed by a hail of arrows 'falling as thick as if thrown by arcubalistae6'. Shades of Crécy." (Hardy 21) Bearing in mind the big shields the Roman used, as well as the highly advanced and by centuries of war proven testudo formation (Latin for "tortoise") made for warding off arrows and other lesser projectiles, two theories may not be far from the truth. First, the bows used were indeed longbows, for no lesser bow was likely to penetrate the shields, or at least cause enough of an impact to force a shield aside for another arrow to fly in. Second, the tribal people deployed them in huge enough numbers to cause the entire formation to falter and retreat, for it is unlikely that the Romans would fall back after a few of their numbers fell. A certain answer to the initial question may never be known, but it would probably be one of the following: the tribes simply did not realize the power of the bow, they did not know how to use it on a larger scale, they felt it disgracing to use it or they were compelled by their beliefs to die with a sword (or other close combat weapon) in their hands, lest they should not be allowed to enter Valhalla, although this belief was not quite as widespread as among the Norsemen. A mix of these arguments, except the religious one, was probably the main reason why it took almost another millennium for the longbows to become the weapon of the late , despite the fact that the longbow remained mostly the same.

Longbows kept developing independently in areas outside of the Western world as well, such as in the isolated regions of the native tribes of Brazil in the late twentieth century. Their bows were examined and it was concluded that "almost every known section shape to be found in European bows can be seen in the weapons of the Brazilian

Indians" (Hardy 24). In mid-twentieth-century Kenya, a game warden tried the typical

6 A repeated, and/or possibly multiple-shot, .

13 bows of two native tribes. The first, a "short, simple-segment wooden bow of . . . about

3 ft (91 cm) long, of some 50 lb (23 kg) draw weight" (much like the Egyptian longbows), he drew with ease7 (Hardy 25). "[The warden, who] was a big, powerful man, used to hunting-weapons of all kinds," then checked the second, "but the first 5 ft

10 in (178 cm) . . . bow that he tried defeated him completely" (ibid. 25). This example provides the evidence of the impressive craftsmanship the natives were capable of, for

"the drawing weight [of their bows] was on average over 100 lb (45 kg)", while it is estimated that "[common] medieval war bows weighed from about 80 lb to 120 lb (36 kg to 54 kg)" (ibid. 26) and the Mary Rose longbows about 110 to 180 lb (50 to 80 kg)

(Kašpar 10). To penetrate an armour from the first half of the sixteenth century, it is estimated a draw weight of about 110 to 130 lb (50 to 60 kg) was needed (ibid. 10), so a

Kenyan native would stand a fair chance against a soldier of the era, provided he used a proper arrowhead - which is, however, unlikely, for it is believed the iron the natives used for their arrowheads came only from the European traders (Hardy 26). The techniques the natives used to handle the bow nearly mirrored those of the European medieval archers, including finesses like using three fingers to draw (ibid. 25), as well as individual adjustments such as ensuring the length of "arrows would be suited to the proper drawlength of each archer" (ibid. 27), and therefore it can be fairly safely assumed that these "savages" were as good archers as their counterparts in more developed parts of the world.

7 Nowadays, a person of average physique, new to archery, would be very tired after an hour-long training with a 30 lb bow, and it is very unlikely that the said person would even be able to draw a 40 lb bow to its full effect, let alone fire properly.

14 3 The Longbow in Medieval England

3.1 The Beginnings – the Saxons, the Normans or the Welsh?

As Hardy explains, Roger Ascham, a tutor to Edward VI and to Queen Elizabeth

I and also the author of "the first archer's manual" (Hardy 138), believed the Saxons first brought the longbow to England (Asham, qtd. in ibid. 29). He is partially right, because the Saxons were a grouping of the Germanic tribes, among whom the longbow was common, and it is more than likely that they did bring it with them to England.

However, the weapon then gradually fell out of use, up to a point where it seems it was hardly used at all by the English during the Battle of Hastings1 (ibid. 32), let alone three centuries later. Asham could not have known that the longbow had already existed in

England in the third millennium BCE (ibid. 29), as mentioned in the previous chapter.

What he probably did know, however, is that the descendants of those Stone Age peoples, the Welsh, used it, and that the English adopted it for their own military use.

He may have merely been hesitant to credit such a huge accomplishment to any other nation than the English themselves.

It may never be known whether the Welsh kept using the longbow continuously since the earliest findings, or reinvented it long before they came into contact with either the Saxons or the Danes2, but there are written sources of their use of the longbow during the Early and High Middle Ages. The earliest mention is in 633, when

"Offrid, the son of Edwin king of Northumbria, was killed by an arrow in battle with the

Welsh and the Mercians."3 (ibid. 30) Another example, proving the continuous Welsh use of the longbow in the military, is the English expedition into in 1055. The

1 For some theories on the use of the longbow by the English during the battles in 1066, see section 6.1. 2 There is also the possibility of adopting it from either of the two nations. 3 Hardy clarifies that "we cannot be certain that the arrow flew from a Welsh bow, but . . . the inland races in Britain" did not favour the use of the bow in the military (unlike the Welsh, whom he deems the original users of it in warfare) and he implies that the chances of any of the English using it are very slim (30).

15 horsemen were ambushed by the Welsh longbowmen and the attack was so well organized that the English were routed before they even managed to fight back (Hardy

32). There are also mentions of the penetrating power of the Welsh longbows, such as from the account of a certain Giraldus Cambrensis from the late twelfth century: "'One of [the lord's] men, in a fight against the Welsh, was wounded by an arrow that penetrated his thigh, the casing armour on both sides' - which would have been mail armour - 'the part of the saddle known as the alva, and mortally wounded the horse.'"

(ibid. 36)

The Norman rulers seemed to have been more inclined to the use of archery. For example, in 1138, the timely use of archers routed the Scots at the Battle of the Standard near Northallerton, and "during the reign of Henry II was conquered by Anglo-

Norman forces, using many archers, led by Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, the famous 'Strongbow', who was so called because he was reputed to draw the strongest bow in the kingdom" (ibid. 36). While both composite and self-bows were well known to the English by the second half of the twelfth century, as was the fact that the best material for self-bows was yew (ibid. 38), the bows were not yet considered for the lords' armies, but rather remained the weapons of the common people. In fact, the crossbow was becoming more popular than the bow, especially in Richard I's time and during the crusades, since they fared better "in the heat of the Holy Land" (ibid. 35).

Hardy believes one of the main reasons why the crossbow did not completely replace the other bows4 is that the weapon "[was not a] threat to the men who shot against it with the longbow", i.e. the Welsh (35).

By this time, the common way of gathering an army was to call the lords together, who came with their retinues of knights and men-at-arms, then they would

4 Simple and composite ones.

16 move towards the enemy and levy as many common people as possible along the way, to be used as surplus infantry. This form of levies was used up until Edward I's reign, but Hardy believes that these men "would be dismissed almost as soon as collected, because it was plain that such untrained and heterogeneous masses could do nothing but hinder the success of a campaign" (Hardy 43). The first indication of a progress towards the way the English armies were formed during the Hundred Years' War was the extended Assize of Arms of 12525, which appointed constables who were to choose the men to serve in the king's army "for an agreed amount of pay" (ibid. 38). Furthermore, the men were to equip themselves according to their wealth, based on the land they owned: the wealthier with "a steel cap, a buff coat of leather, a lance and a sword", the poorest "must have a bow and arrows" (ibid. 38). This law was the foundation stone in the reorganization of the army, but it still took almost a hundred years for this army evolution to complete: it experienced its birth through the massive effort of Edward I, a stagnation during the kingship of Edward II and its completion in the early stages of

Edward III's reign.

To understand the need for such an evolution, one must first look at the military situation in contemporary Europe. While the military did develop throughout the history in order to be more and more effective, for a considerably long time the approach to it remained much the same within the Western world. For the most of the High and Late

Middle Ages, the heavy formed the core of armies. Not only it showed just where the power and wealth rested, but it also was, especially early on, extremely deadly against any enemy other than another heavy cavalry unit, for it was quite the medieval tank and no infantry could withstand its . Therefore, peasant revolts were regarded as mere nuisances, and wars against kingdoms who could not afford to

5 The original Assize of Arms of 1181 required some classes of commoners to swear allegiance to the king, to have arms and to answer a call to arms, among other irrelevant things.

17 field a force of such soldiers were often not given sufficient regard. However, it was only a matter of time before the infantry learnt to fight against the heavy cavalry.

England, due to its isolation from other major European powers and its focus on conquering the two other kingdoms on the same island (Morgan 167-8), was to be the first nation to learn the folly of underestimating seemingly inferior armies.

Churchill states that it is thanks to the experience gained from the wars with

Scotland and Wales, mainly in the times of Edwards I and II, that the military evolution was hastened in Britain, when compared to the rest of Europe (333), for the Welsh further developed their use of archery, the effectiveness thereof was already mentioned, and the Scots learnt to better organize their pikemen into the formation6 – a unit of soldiers pointing their spears or pikes outwards, usually in two or three lines and to all sides, thus forming a nigh impenetrable barrier for the enemy cavalry. Those lessons were often quite costly, but they proved their worth eventually, particularly during the Hundred Years' War.

3.2 Edward I and the Birth of the English Military Longbow

Edward I, an unusually pragmatic ruler for his day, saw the brutal effectiveness of the longbow and he may have envisioned the possibilities its adaptation for the

English army could create. While he had little success abroad – it were his descendants that were praised for their great military achievements such as at the battles of Crécy,

Poitiers or Agincourt – it must be stressed, however, that without the King's efforts to make the longbowmen a core part of his armies, unlike the supplemental role it played until that point, none of the great archer armies of the Hundred Years' War would have come into existence and, therefore, neither would the War as it is now known.

6 Also known as sheltron or schiltrom, probably based on Old English word for shield-troop, scild- truma (Bosworth and Toller 831). This formation was effectively used even during the Napoleonic wars, to defend against cavalry.

18 During his reign, the English cavalrymen still thought themselves far superior to the infantry and thus were very unruly during battles, much like the French during the

War (Hardy 42). This air of superiority comes as a surprise, since the English lost quite a few battles to the other nations on the same island7, including some major ones, even in Edward's time, such as the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 (ibid. 47). Had Edward not come to personally command the army that marched to fight the Scots the following year, the English would have been likely to lose the Battle of Falkirk too, because even after "working for 20 years at creating an organised army", the impetuousness of the cavalry nearly caused a defeat (ibid. 43). Hardy further explains that the cavalry did rout the tiny force of the Scottish cavalry, as well as their unprotected archers, but they proved useless against the . They would have probably died trying to crush the solid formation, leaving the English archers unprotected, but Edward forced them to stay back and ordered the archers to attack, whose volleys quickly decimated the

Scottish ranks, especially since the soldiers were poorly protected against arrows (ibid.

48-9). The reoccurring experiences of this sort may have gotten him started on the idea of reforming the army, as well as, throughout his reign, kept his resolve strong in this matter.

Edward employed archers from the beginnings of his reign. However, those soldiers were a mix of longbowmen from the friendly parts of Wales (ibid. 44) and crossbowmen from Gascony (ibid. 47). Both were initially counted in hundreds, but during Edward's reign the number of archers amounted to thousands, almost exclusively longbowmen (ibid. 46). There were two arguments in favour of the longbow. The first one was, in a way, also the cause of the eventual decline of the longbow: the price.

Crossbows in the late twelfth century cost from 3s to 7s, depending on the size, whereas

7 They were, after all, trying to conquer Wales and Scotland for quite some time already.

19 longbows "even 50 or 60 years later were only 12d if made from bough-wood and 1s 6d if from the better and stronger timber of the tree bole" (Hardy 44). The training was long and hard, but at a time when a longbowman earned 3d a day (ibid. 42), about as much as, or even more than, an artisan craftsman (ibid. 44), it was well worth it8. The other factor was effectiveness. Hardy claims that around the time of Crécy (1346) the range of was 200 yards (75), while longbows reached some 350 yards (54).

Those crossbows used wooden bows. He further claims that later on, around the time of

Agincourt, there were crossbows with steel bows, reaching about 400 yards (ibid. 75).

However, with increased power also came longer reloading time, thus further increasing the already "hopeless inequality of shooting speed" (ibid. 75).

The King took quite some pains to make his plan a reality. For example, in 1295, he called in 25,000 men to be trained as archers, even though he knew that not many of them would have the necessary aptitude for the weapons, and he also pardoned many poachers and criminals who agreed to serve in the army (ibid. 45-6). Edward's efforts to spread the use of the longbow among the English worked well in the longer term: in

1298 most of the longbowmen were Welsh, while in 1346 the majority were English

(ibid. 46). Taking all this into account, the title "father of the military longbow" bestowed upon Edward by Hardy seems rather fitting (41).

Furthermore, as was already hinted at, the King made a lot of changes to improve the organization of the army, slowly transforming it into something fairly similar to a standing army. The chief change was the wages. Everyone was to be paid, from an earl to a common soldier (ibid. 46). Some of the nobles were reluctant to accept that, mostly out of fear of losing their independence or by feeling degraded to mere mercenaries, but enough of the lords took the King's money to "make the gradual

8 They were also "remarkably well treated" and sometimes received extra wages after battles (Hardy 46).

20 abandonment of the feudal idea inevitable" (Hardy 47). Some sort of military hierarchy started to be introduced: there were units of twenty among whom one was their leader, a vintenar, units of one hundred men were led by a centenar, and some of those units were in turn organized into thousands (ibid. 44). This idea of regular numbers and chain of command was an "enormous advance from the largely disorganised rabble of the feudal levy" (ibid. 44). This advancement in turn contributed a great deal to a better control of the battlefield and thus laid the foundations for the future strategy of a combined force of archers and heavy infantry (ibid. 41). In 1285 the was passed, which helped in keeping track of available forces and also emphasised the duty of an individual "'to have in his house harness for to keep the peace'" (ibid. 47). Oddly enough, the longbow was not stressed – Hardy guesses this to be a part of the idea to keep the use of the weapon among the newly created professional soldiers, rather than the levied troops (47). There is another interesting innovation: Edward was apparently the first to introduce some kind of uniform, in this case a piece of cloth "bearing the cross of St George", to be worn around one's arm9 (ibid. 45).

There were many opportunities to try out the gradually developing army. In 1282 at the Battle of Orewin Bridge, where the Welsh leader, Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, was killed, the "king's army was described as being a mixture of cavalry and archers"

(ibid. 47). The Battle at Conway in 1295 was even more important in the longbow usage development, for not only "it seems there were no Welsh bowmen present on the

English side" but also the English failed in their opening cavalry charge and it was the archers who joined in and "made havoc of the Welshmen's defensive stand", thus helping to turn the tide of the battle (ibid. 47). The following battles with the Scots were already mentioned: the disaster at Stirling and the near-disaster at Falkirk. Both clearly

9 "There is no record of any Welsh reaction to this issue of an alien identification." (Hardy 45)

21 demonstrate two points. First, by this time the seemingly inferior infantry army learnt to handle the heavy cavalry. Second, the proper deployment of archers was crucial. Both of those findings were to prove invaluable to the English during the Hundred Years' War, for at that time the standpoints would reverse and the English would be the ones considered an inferior army. It can also be said that without Edward I, the "sustained and, on the whole, extraordinarily successful - offensive . . . waged for over a century by a poor and scantily populated little country against a richer, more populous and ostensibly far more powerful enemy" (Seward 17) would not have been possible.

3.3 The Slumber of the Longbow During the Reign of Edward II

The reign of Edward II is forever marked by the Battle at Bannockburn (Hardy

49), the worst defeat of the English at the hands of the Scots. However, as far as the longbow is concerned, his kingship10 could be considered somewhat positive, for it seems it was his idea to implement the rule that the counties should pay for the archers' armour (ibid. 50). This was quite an improvement, since the archers were peasants, and it was unlikely that they could afford any armour prior to their service in the army.

Moreover, he continued the practice of pardoning criminals in exchange for serving in the army, and the amount of archers requested for military service was proportionally greater than in his father's reign (ibid. 50).

In 1314, Edward II gathered an army for the conquest of the Northern kingdom

(Churchill 313) and met the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn. The English army was unusually large, according to a BBC article on the battle, "by far the largest English army ever to invade Scotland"11. However, the king was not quite the able military

10 Generally speaking, there is very little good to be said about the reign of Edward II. While some of his modern portrayals, such as the very effeminate one in the film Braveheart, are exaggerated, he still was, by most accounts, a weak king who lost much of what his father had achieved. 11 The article states that about 2,000 cavalry and some 12,500 infantry answered the summons, whereas the Scottish army "numbered around 6,000, with a small contingent on horseback". Seward assumes up to 18,000 English (51). Hardy thinks the English were about twice as numerous as the Scots (49). Churchill states 25,000 English against 10,000 Scots (313).

22 leader that was his father, Edward I. On the first day of the battle, whether brought on by the lack of authority of Edward II and poor discipline of his barons, or by his insufficient skills to command a vast force, and despite the failures of this strategy in the past, the main part of the English army, the cavalry, charged the prepared ranks of

Scottish infantry armed with spears and pikes and suffered heavy casualties and retreated (Hardy 50). Hardy further states that the Scots have learnt more from the past mistakes than their enemy and on the second day of the battle their infantry charged the confused lines of the English who were trying to get into position, and caught them unready. The longbowmen moved forward to try and flank the Scots, but Robert Bruce, their leader, was prepared for this and ordered his cavalry to attack them. Without protection, the archers were easily pushed back (ibid. 50). According to Brown's detailed account of the battle, the Scots then pressed the attack and forced the front line of the English into the main body of their army and thus created much disorder, because the English were now crushed together and had hardly enough room to fight properly.

Under this pressure, they began to give ground and flee (Brown 127). It can be argued that, given better leadership, the army would have still won the day, since the English infantry outnumbered the Scots, but "as [the] royal standard departed, panic set in"

(BBC) the rest of the army fled the field.

In this battle the English paid dearly for their stubbornness to learn from the past mistakes, for the errors committed here were nearly the same as those made during the late thirteenth century battles with the Scots. One cannot expect the heavy cavalry to crush a solid line of pikemen without, to paraphrase a modern term, "archery preparation", and neither can one expect a lot of support from archers unless they are well deployed. There was one new lesson, however, one that should have been obvious: unprotected archers stand no chance against the cavalry.

23 3.4 Edward III and The Ripening of the Military Longbow

The following monarch, Edward III, seemed to have inherited more of his grandfather's abilities than his father had, and he learnt from the mistakes made in the times of his predecessors. He also continued with the development of the military archery and the organization of the army right where his grandfather stopped. By the

1340s there was paid service for an agreed period of time12, based on the rank of a soldier, as well as "a form of conscription . . . to raise definite numbers of men for service from particular areas" (Hardy 79). Troops were now also paid prior to their march towards the mustering point, to pay for the trip and to avoid the occasional violence on their part (ibid. 81). The troops were paid even in the case of a delayed transport across the Channel, and this time was often used for drilling not only the archery itself, but also manoeuvres, as well as for getting used to the organization of the army (ibid. 82).

The greatest achievement of the pre-War13 period of the reign of Edward III was, however, the innovation in the way troops were deployed before a battle – both the positioning and the formations. The Battle of Dupplin Muir in 1332 saw the first use of an early version of the tactics used during the War (ibid. 51). Until then, the common way to fight battles was to march within a sight of the enemy, and then send the soldiers forward, either in one great mass or in waves, one following the other14 (ibid. 53).

However, the English found themselves greatly outnumbered, about four to one (ibid.

51), so this kind of battle was out of the question. Hardy describes the battle as follows.

The English took defensive positions: they formed a line of dismounted men-at-arms15 and positioned their archers at the flanks, angled a little forward so as to make it easier

12 At this point, a mounted archer was paid as much as a master craftsman, 6d a day. Foot archers earned 3 or 4d a day. For more info about wages at this period, see Hardy 79. 13 i.e. the Hundred Years' War 14 This is exactly what the French did in the three major battles of the War. 15 Therefore, it was neither Henry V nor Edward III who originally employed this idea.

24 for them to shoot, appearing a bit like horns of the main battle line. The Scots charged the centre of the English line, but as the first volleys started falling into their ranks, the soldiers on the sides tried to move towards the middle of their group in order to avoid the arrows, which quickly turned the army into a disorganised throng. The initial charge did push the English line a little back, but, the defenders being on a higher ground, they eventually halted the attackers' progress. The archers continuously fired at the flanks of the Scots, not only causing massive casualties, but also keeping them in a tight group, therefore making it nearly impossible for the soldiers in front to fight properly, and they thus became easy targets for the English men-at-arms16. The Scots soon turned to run and were massacred by the pursuing English cavalry. The attackers lost 76 knights,

1,200 men-at-arms and "an uncounted mass of infantry. . . . The English lost 33 knights and men-at-arms and not one archer. No Scot had been able to reach them." (Hardy 51)

The Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333 was, in short, the perfection of the previously described tactics. However, there are a few points worth mentioning. The base positioning was just like at Dupplin. However, the effectiveness was almost tripled, as can be seen from Hardy's detailed description of the deployment:

If three such Dupplin formations are put together, side by side, the

forward horns of archers on both flanks of the central, and each inward

flank of the outer divisions, join together and form a sort of triangular

wedge. Thus the whole formation presents the following appearance: left

flank archers inclining forward of the left-hand division, whose right flank

archers form half the triangle with the left flank archers of the central

division. The right flank archers of that same central division form half the

16 This particular depiction of frontal line of attackers made unable to fight properly by the oncoming mass of their fellow soldiers trying to avoid the volleys of arrows was a reoccurring scenario during the battles of the Hundred Years' War.

25 triangle with the left flank archers of the right-hand division. The flank

archers of the right division incline forward, balancing those on the far left.

(Hardy 51-2)

The importance of the resulting increased shooting zone can hardly be stressed enough.

At Dupplin, the archers could release a few volleys at the frontal ranks of the enemy at the beginning of the battle, but after that they had to shoot at the flanks, or else they would risk hitting their own troops. Had the Scots been more coordinated and their morale higher, they might have overpowered the English line of men-at-arms, for there was nothing to hinder the frontal lines during the initial charge. Similarly, if this deployment was used in the Hundred Years' War, the English would have been easily overwhelmed by the far more numerous French, especially since, according to Seward's description of the contemporary protection, they wore the plate armour – a far superior protection when compared to the chiefly mail armour of the English (Seward 51-2).

With the increased shooting zone, the enemy had to march through most of the effective range of the longbow17 under nearly constant volleys of arrows18, while also having to walk over their own dead, for the archers now easily covered the entire enemy line. The archers could also easily switch their firing zone and apply crossfire at a large enemy group, so that if those enemies turned to protect themselves from one side, they would be hit from the other. The massive deployment of archers along the front line also allowed for more of them firing directly, rather than in an arch, which was necessary in order to shoot over their fellow soldiers. This was particularly important against the

17 350 yards (Hardy 54). It ought to be mentioned that, according to Prince Louis Napoleon, "a first rate English archer who, in a single minute, was unable to draw and discharge his bow 12 times with a range of 240 yards and who in these 12 shots once missed his man, was very lightly esteemed" (qtd. in ibid. 68). 18 The amount of arrows fired can be guessed. If we take a unit of some 2,000 archers shooting 10 arrows a minute – probably the lowest estimate (Hardy 68) – at the same time for three minutes, which is a low estimate of the time it would probably take the infantry to get through the worst of the archery fire – Hardy estimates cavalry would take 90 seconds to cross 300 yards (68), we arrive an amount of 60,000 arrows. That is likely at least four times the amount the Scots brought to the field.

26 French, for while it has been proven that longbows can penetrate a plate armour19, it still usually requires a direct hit, as close to the right angle as possible – otherwise there is a very high chance of the arrow sliding off.

Another important point is that young Edward III, aged twenty at the time, was the commander of the English army during the Battle of Halidon Hill. It seems it was the first time he commanded a large army, and he did rather well. He surrounded himself with veterans, such as the commanders of the army at Dupplin20, who devised the defensive tactics used there, and while it may never be known whether it was his or their idea to further develop the Dupplin tactics (Hardy 53), it was essential that Edward witnessed the English army in action and learnt to use it properly for future battles, which in turn provided the necessary knowledge to future generations of commanders, such as his son, the Black Prince, or Henry V.

To return to the battle of Halidon Hill itself, the defensive positions of the outnumbered English (ibid. 52) were already described in great detail. It is unclear what led the Scots to attempt an attack, since they failed miserably against a similarly deployed army the previous year when they had proportionally far more soldiers, but nevertheless, they did charge the prepared English lines. Thus the Scots had to go through a hail of arrows so strong that they "were so grievously wounded . . . by the

[archers] that they could not help themselves, and quickly began to turn their faces away from the arrow flights and to fall" (Lanercost 279). It seems that so few of them reached the English lines that they were routed soon after and the rest of the Scottish army quickly followed suit (ibid. 280). Hardy claims that the Scots barely even reached the

English lines (52). Only then Edward sent in the cavalry, to finish off remaining pockets

19 Hardy claims the arrowheads kept improving in order to penetrate the gradually improving armour (54). Other sources on the topic, Kašpar (11) and Seward, agree as well, while Seward further clarifies that the approximate effective range is "about sixty yards" (53). This makes sense, since at this range an archer has to start shooting in an arch and the arrow does not hit at the right angle any more. 20 "Edward Baliol, Gilbert Umphraville, Henry de Beaumont and David of Atholl." (Hardy 53)

27 of fighters and capture or kill the rest (Lanercost 280). The victory in the battle of

Halidon Hill helped a great deal in restoring faith and pride of the English in themselves, after the disastrous Battle of Bannockburn.

By this time, the composition of the English army changed a lot since the second half of the thirteenth century, before the time Edward I started to reorganise it. No longer were knights the main force, supplemented by whatever peasants or got levied from the surrounding towns, plus the occasional band of mercenaries, but rather the core of the army was formed by professional soldiers (Morgan 173), both men-at-arms and longbowmen, especially the latter receiving unusually high pay21, allowing them previously unheard-of luxuries such as a palfrey to transport them to battles (Churchill

332), therefore turning a much hated feudal duty into a fairly enviable, albeit dangerous, job.

21 For they were, after all, still peasants, unlike men-at-arms, who were, for the most part, squires to knights or soldiers employed by earls – therefore full-time warriors.

28 4 The Golden Age of the Longbow

4.1 The Battle of Crécy The outcome of the Battle of Crécy (1346) was an incredible shock to medieval

Europe. The English must have seemed to the French much like the Scots did to the

English a few decades ago: a tiny army of knights, even smaller in numbers than the peasants following them. France was considered the greatest of European kingdoms for a reason, for not only did there live five times as many people as in England (Seward

25), but it was also a very rich country and most of all, it had a mighty army: in 1340

Philip VI was able to raise 60,000 heavy cavalry (ibid. 34). However, much like the

Scottish pikemen decimated the English, now the English longbowmen were to decimate the French. The English employed the same proven tactics as in Scotland

(Hardy 66-7), so there is no reason to describe any of the main battles1. Nevertheless, there are quite a few interesting points to make.

Crécy was by no means the first major battle of the War. There were the battles of Cadsand in 1337 (ibid. 57) and of Morlaix in 1342 (ibid. 59), both decisive victories due to the use of the archers. While it seems that no proper account of the battles reached the French commanders, the English, on the other hand, acquired quite a valuable experience from the second battle. Hardy states that the English positioned themselves according to their typical defensive tactics and decimated first two French attacks, both of which were more numerous than the English army. By the time the third attack came, the archers were already low on arrows and the fight was mostly done in close combat. The battle was not decided by dark, and as the French pulled back, the

English, sensing their chance, retreated (ibid. 59). The longbowmen carried only 36 arrows each – if they had more, the third French attack would have likely been

1 Should the reader be interested in detailed accounts of the battles, the author recommends Hardy 65-74 or Seward 60-68 for Crécy, Hardy 91-95 or Seward 86-91 for Poitiers and Hardy 101-104 and 113- 119 or Seward 162-169 for Agincourt.

29 decimated just like the previous two were (Hardy 59). It appears the English learnt their lesson from this, for it seems that during later bigger campaigns each archer had nearly

100 arrows at his disposal (ibid. 85). It was needed – it is suggested that just in the

Battle of Crécy some half a million arrows were fired (ibid. 69), and even then the archers had to enter the battlefield to retrieve some of the arrows to keep shooting (ibid.

73). Hardy also comments on the legend saying that during the brief torrential rain prior to the battle the archers unstrung their bows to keep the strings dry – he claims that the linen strings the archers used at the time would survive days in water without any weakening (70).

The Battle of Crécy was a great turning point in that period. It was not only a great shock to the chivalrous French, who must have found it unbelievable that their mighty army was massacred by a force of peasants. It established the longbow as the ranged weapon for the military. The army experienced remarkable boom in archer recruits – during the siege of Calais in 1346-7 Edward III commanded, by English standards, an impressive army of 32,303 men, 20,076 of them being longbowmen (ibid.

76). The longbowmen themselves rose in prominence too – the Black Prince's elite guard consisted of those soldiers (ibid. 77). On the other hand, the battle completely humiliated the other ranged weapon of the time, the crossbow, which was not used any more at the next major battle at Poitiers in 1356 (ibid. 75). The War and the battle in particular also helped a great deal in giving rise to a "national consciousness in England" and it is also said that the "army [at Crécy] that was part Norman, Saxon, Angevin and

Celtic . . . in some way thought of itself as the army of England" (ibid. 78).

4.2 The Battles of Poitiers and Agincourt

The French were, after the Battle of Crécy, understandably reluctant to face the

English in the field. Nevertheless, face them they did, and the was

30 another disaster, perhaps even greater – king John II and his son were captured, along with heavy casualties in both dead and captured, for it is reported that some English, even the archers, took five or six prisoners (Hardy 95). The English employed the same proven tactics, and the outcome further magnified the fear of the longbowmen. The following king, Charles V, was less chivalrous and more pragmatic. To avoid another

Crécy or Poitiers, he forbid his troops to "engage in [a] full-scale battle with the

English" and to make sure his guerrilla warfare strategy would actually be followed, he made several "obscure men", some even former bandits, his commanders2 (Seward

109). Thus it was that the only other major battle of the fourteenth century where archery played a significant role happened not in France, but in Spain, in 1367, where the English took part in the Battle of Najera3 (Hardy 96).

The English were keen on keeping their one advantage over the French, and to that end, further arrangements were made, such as Edward III's order of 1369 to ban various games4 in favour of archery practice (ibid. 97). Oddly enough, the French did not create an archer army of their own. There were many attempts, but Hardy quotes an account of Jean Juvenal des Ursins5, who believed it was out of fear that should those archers band together, their army would become stronger than that of the nobles (98).

Hardy further claims that "the French king's attitude is easy to understand", for "there was more serious unrest in France than in England"6 (98). Therefore the way the French fought battles remained much the same, while the English retained their longbow

2 Most notable of these was Bertrand du Guesclin, who became Constable of France (Seward 109). 3 Military, the battle was a great achievement, but economically it was a disaster, for king Pedro, whom the English helped gain the throne, was soon overthrown and killed, and thus not only the vision of an ally in Castile was shattered, but also Pedro's debt, which was to pay for the campaign, was never paid (Seward 107). 4 Such as "the throwing of stones, wood, iron, handball, football, bandyball, cambuck, or cock fighting, [or] other such like vain plays, which have no profit in them . . . under pain of imprisonment" (Hardy 97). 5 "writing shortly after Poitiers" (Hardy 98) 6 James I of Scotland tried to introduce the longbow into his armies, too. There were even laws to own a bow and practice archery, but it was too little, too late (Hardy 130).

31 tradition not only to a point where Richard II could maintain a personal guard of some

4,000 longbowmen (Hardy 98), but also to a point where, after gaining the necessary experience to effectively use the longbow in battle in "border warfare as Prince of

Wales" (ibid. 42), the continued tradition allowed Henry V to gather enough archers to reignite the war with France and start a campaign which culminated in the Battle of

Agincourt.

It should be noted that, by this time, the French commanders were of noble birth again and often lacked the necessary skills, unlike the veteran, albeit common, soldiers who led the French armies during Charles V's reign. At Agincourt, there were "12 princes of the blood . . . vying for command" (ibid. 114) and "there was no proper command-structure or leadership of any sort" (Seward 165), which may well explain why nothing decisive was done to counter the deadly longbowmen. Henry V employed the same tactics as Edward III at Halidon Hill or Crécy, and the results were similarly devastating. The King then started a series of successful sieges and by the end of 1419

"the English were undisputed masters of all Normandy" (ibid. 177). The following year the Treaty of Troyes was signed and Henry V "became Haeres et Regens Franciae –

Heir to the French Throne and Regent of France" (ibid. 182). Without the longbow victory at Agincourt, this would not have been possible.

32 5 The Decline of the Military Longbow

The longbow remained a decisive factor throughout the rest of the War. This fact, however, does not mean that the English kept winning. They grew overconfident after

Agincourt and the ultimate result of this folly was the Battle of Baugé of 1421 (Seward

185). Duke of Clarence, the King's brother, charged off with some 1,500 men-at-arms without waiting for the archers, engaged the enemy and got himself killed, along with most of his army, thus proving that "the English still had to rely on their traditional combination of archers and dismounted men-at-arms" (Seward 185-6). Next came probably the last two grand victories of the English longbow, the battles of Cravant in

1423 and Verneuil in 1424 (Hardy 120). However, Seward offers a different account of the latter, implying that the longbow was hardly a decisive factor (198-201). He states that out of 9,000 English there was "a reserve of 2,000 mounted bowmen" (Seward 198) to begin with, and that the archers on the right flank of the English failed to repel a cavalry charge which got through them towards the reserve, and "many English turned and run", presumably the foot archers (ibid. 200). The mounted reserve eventually defeated the cavalry and joined the main battle, but probably without using their bows so as not to risk hitting their own soldiers (ibid. 201). From this account can be assumed that only the archers on the left flank, perhaps some one fourth of all the archers present, got to use their bows to their full effect and therefore the battle cannot be considered a victory of the longbow.

The (1429) is sometimes considered the worst defeat1 of an archer army in the War. Both Hardy and Seward agree that the English were attacked from a different direction than they expected and that the longbowmen unit on that wing, having no flank protection, was quickly overwhelmed, but they also agree about

1 Fastolf, one of two English commanders, who retreated when the battle was nearly lost, was accused of "having lost the war in a single afternoon" (Hardy 124).

33 the relatively low numbers of soldiers involved: Seward lists 3,000 English, including

"Parisian militia", against 8,000 French (217), Hardy "about 3,500" (123) and he further states that the said wing unit amounted to some 400 archers (124). If one assumes the traditional positioning of an English army, then there were another 400 archers on the other wing. A loss of 800 longbowmen can hardly be considered fatal for the outcome of the whole war.

Among the various reasons responsible for the eventual defeat of the English in the War, one can be related to the longbow: i.e. the amount of trained archers available.

The changes in the military organization that started occurring around the time of the introduction of the longbow into the army and which contributed to the creation of the great archer armies were now working against it. The organization became stricter. In

France, personal enterprises were discouraged, practices such as a monthly muster were introduced and therefore, in short, "the carefree days of pillage and living off the land were long past" (Hardy 122), thus greatly reducing the desire to serve there. The French, on the other hand, put aside their past reluctance towards the longbow and by the end of the War raised a considerable amount of longbowmen and thus evened out the odds. In

1448, for example, there was an edict to raise 8,000 archers2 (Seward 247). According to

Hardy, in the Battle of Formigny in 1450, a French army included a unit of some 800 longbowmen (124). Seward further states that the English could not afford large overseas armies any more (246) – he estimates the one at Formigny numbered some

4,000 (250). Therefore, the French longbowmen may have played a significant role in the battle. The victory was a truly decisive one, for the "next morning the heralds counted 3,774 English dead" (Seward 251).

2 They could have been, however, either crossbowmen or archers (Seward 247), presumably longbowmen.

34 The last conflict of the War, the Battle at Castillon in 1453, was significant due to the use of gunpowder-based weapons. Hardy states that an English army of 3,000 men went against "more than 150 guns, a large army, and a number of [archers]" and "to the roaring of the guns, in the smoke-filled river valley [the English] were slaughtered"

(125). Seward specifies that the odds were even more in favour of the French: the

English had, at the outbreak of the battle, only "500 men-at-arms and 800 mounted archers", while the French "brought 300 cannon" (260). It is also his belief that those cannons were in fact handguns3 (Seward 260). The weapons were powerful4, but their effectiveness remains a dispute, for "despite impossible odds the [English] assault lasted for nearly an hour" (ibid. 261). At that point a French reinforcement arrived and charged the English flank (ibid. 261) and thus hastened the already inevitable outcome of the battle (ibid. 262). Seward claims it was a "revolution in military technology", for

"French cannon prov[ed] more effective than English bows" (ibid. 253).

It appears that the aforementioned revolution did not reach England. The longbow remained the main ranged weapon of the Wars of the Roses, for "the cannon and the handgun were still principally weapons of siege" (Hardy 125). By now, the protection of soldiers developed even further, "yet still the steel-headed arrows, driven true, could pierce not only mail but the plate armour itself" (ibid. 128). The Wars of the

Roses decimated the numbers of the longbowmen far more than all the battles of the

Hundred Years' War combined. There were two reasons for this. First, the longbow was used on both sides, and while it was not the decisive factor any more, since both sides used it, "it was [still] the main contributor to the masses of dead and wounded" (ibid.

126). Second, the armies were much more numerous than previously, therefore the

3 Seward bases this notion on the explanation that the term culverin was used for both cannon and handgun, and that the handgun's firing mechanism was called a serpentine, which was "also [a term for] a type of small cannon" (258), which led to confusion: "perhaps chronicles were confused by 'culverins with serpentines' and heard 'culverins and serpentines' instead" (ibid. 260). 4 " . . . because of the enfilade one shot killed no less than six men" (ibid. 261)

35 casualties were higher. For example, in the Battle of Towton alone, in 1461, according to

Churchill "some accounts declare that a hundred thousand men were on the field", and while he admits that "later authorities greatly reduce[d] these figures" (449), he states that Edward IV, the leader of the Yorkists, "claim[ed] that twenty-eight thousand

Lancastrian dead had been counted" (ibid. 450). Hardy claims that in total "[about]

25,000 men were killed and wounded" (127). This amount far exceeds the typical battle casualties of the English during the Hundred Years' War and it is not a wild exaggeration to say that total combat casualties of the English during the whole War were not much higher than those at the Battle of Towton.

The result of the Wars of the Roses, as far as the longbow is concerned, is that there were fewer archers and the weapon became much harder to obtain, therefore the raising of new corps was becoming a problem. One of the factors that initially greatly contributed to the spread of the longbow, the price, became a reason for its decline, for by the 1470s the weapon was so scarce and expensive that further laws had to be adopted, such as the fixed low price of the bow and the forced import of bow staves5

(Hardy 129-130). The Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 saw the introduction of another factor in the decline of the longbow - "a corps of 2,000 mercenaries from France armed with handguns" (ibid. 130). While it is improbable that they played a decisive role in the battle6, they were, however, the first instance of "the slow abandonment of the longbow in favour of . . . the musket" (ibid. 130).

Henry VIII, himself an outstanding archer7, was the last King to endeavour to keep the longbowmen a part of the English army. There were two battles early in his reign, in 1513, which were of importance to the longbow. The first one, the Battle of the

5 It seems to have been worth the effort, at least for the time being, since in "1475 Edward IV landed in France with . . . 15,000 archers" (Hardy 130). 6 Hardy claims that "the muskets of Waterloo 330 years later were [still] less efficient than the longbow in speed of shooting and in accuracy" (130). 7 "[Henry VIII] could outshoot his own archers of the guard" (Hardy 130).

36 Spurs, was a symbolic skirmish rather than a proper battle8, "so called because the

French cavalry, routed on their maddened horses by the English archers, used their spurs to ride headlong away" (Hardy 131). The second one, the , was a major conflict and the last one where it "could be said that without the longbow the issue might have been different" (ibid. 131). The battle was, however, an important milestone for the artillery, for not only were the cannons used effectively during a major field battle on both sides, but it also "rained throughout the battle, and the guns still fired with great effect" (ibid. 131), demonstrating significant technological development in the recent years. Henry VIII tried various approaches to ensure the survival of the military longbow, such as the purchase of 40,000 bow staves from Venice, the ban of the crossbow and the handgun (ibid. 133) or the revival of the "old rules of Henry I exempting from arrest or imprisonment any man who shot and killed or wounded a person running between the shooter and the mark" during archery practices (ibid. 135), but he could not stop its gradual decline.

There is no singular reason for the decline of the longbow. While the continual development of the gunpowder-based weapons certainly played a part in it, it was not due to their mechanical properties – in this respect the surpassed the longbow only centuries later9. Rather, the reason was a mix of many lesser changes. One of those was the change in the proportion of workforce – the amount of peasants doing hard physical labour lessened (Hardy 132-3), and therefore the traditional base of recruits with it, for unusual strength was required for the carrier of a longbowman. There was also the inflation and an inadequate raise in the wages of the archers (ibid. 133), therefore the vocation was not nearly as desirable as it had been in the past.

8 The cavalry was probably only a detachment of the French army which unexpectedly encountered the whole English army. 9 It is the author's belief that people were merely drawn to the new because of their curiosity, as is the case with most new items, rather than stick to the somewhat old-fashioned bow.

37 Furthermore, there was a general change of attitude towards the weapon, which is, along with the complicated training of an archer, well portrayed in the sermon of Bishop

Latimer in 1549:

The art of shooting hath been in times past much esteemed in this

realm. . . . But now we have taken up whoring in towns, instead of shooting

in the fields. . . . In my time, my poor father was as diligent to teach me to

shoot as to learn me any other thing, and so I think [did others]. He taught

me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with

strength of arms as other nations do, but with strength of the body. I had my

bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I increased in them, so

my bows were made bigger and bigger, for men never shoot well, except

they be brought up in it. (qtd. in Hardy 135)

The reign of Henry VIII saw the final effort to keep the longbow a part of the English army, and after his death (1547) the use of the weapon in the military quickly declined, for William Harrison wrote in 1577: "In times past the chief force of England consisted in their longbows. But now we have . . . given over that kind of artillery" (qtd. in Hardy

139). Nevertheless, Hardy believes that the last recorded use of the longbow in a war was some one hundred years after Henry VIII's death10 (136).

There is a paradox concerning the legacy of the longbow and medieval archery in general. While no longbow from the medieval period survived to the present day, since the items were very common and "[o]nce a bow was no longer serviceable it would be thrown away or used as firewood" (Hardy 55), a "[p]eculiar [law] allowing the killing of Scotsmen in York (providing they are carrying a ) . . . survived . . . yet again" and by 2007 was still very much in effect (Wainwright).

10 Presumably the skirmish at Bridgnorth in 1642, during the .

38 6 The longbow in fiction

Historical fiction can be divided into two categories. Both take some historical entity and build their story around it, but while the authors of the first kind also take care to portray the surroundings accurately, often after an extensive research of the related era, the others merely follow the well-known key facts and fill in the rest according to their imagination. The following two sub-chapters analyse a book of each of the types, both relevant to the military archery.

6.1 Viking: King's Man by Tim Severin

As the title suggests, the story is told from the point of view of a Norseman. He serves in the Varangian Guard1 of Constantinople, where he meets Harald Sigurdsson2 and, believing him the right man to restore the old ways in Norway, pledges to serve him. He helps him gain fame and wealth in the Byzantine Empire, as well as escape, since the Varyags3 cannot leave the service as they please, and eventually aids him in gaining the Norse throne.

The final part of the book focuses on the invasion of England in 1066. The narrator serves as an envoy to the duke of Normandy, William the Bastard4, to form an alliance, while also observing as much as he can about the army to find some advantage for the possible fight between the two nations, should there be a disagreement about the division of spoils after they defeat Harold Godwinson, the English King. During observing the training of troops, he concludes the archers are merely meant to force the enemy to stay in one place until the main force, the cavalry, is ready to attack (Severin

239). The horsemen training described consists of light cavalry riding towards the targets to throw spears and withdraw, followed by a charge of heavy cavalry (ibid. 240).

1 The elite infantry of the Byzantine Empire, bodyguards of the emperor 2 Also known, especially after his reign, as Harald Hardrada ("the cruel", trans. from Czech) 3 Members of the Varangian Guard 4 As he was, according to Severin, then known. Later called William the Conqueror.

39 Next, a feigned retreat followed by a sudden counter-attack is practised (Severin 240).

All of these Norman tactics are remarkably, or perhaps conveniently, similar to those

Severin attributes to the Anglo-Saxons during their battle with the as well.

In Severin's depiction of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the Vikings, caught unaware with about half of their forces present and waiting for almost all the horsemen and most of the archers to arrive, are forced to form a shield wall to protect themselves from the enemy cavalry. However, instead of the expected charge, the Vikings experience a continuous harassment: the cavalrymen ride in near the shield wall, throw a spear and ride away, and only rarely attack in close combat, thus slowly bleeding the

Vikings out (ibid. 270). The Norsemen grow restless, and when they see the enemy cavalry pull back they understand it as them fleeing the field, break the shield wall and charge the seemingly abandoned infantry. The Anglo-Saxon foot soldiers are fresh, but despite that the battle seems balanced, until the point when Harald dies and the cavalry, having only feigned the retreat, attacks, and the battle quickly turns into a rout (ibid.

272-3).

While it is probable that the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans shared some parts of their strategy, it is very unlikely that it was as identical as Severin describes, especially since they were on the brink of war at the time. The Vikings had, by the time of the battle, been raiding the English coast for some two and half centuries, so it can be assumed they knew what to expect and how to fight the English. So they did, Severin actually agrees to that: shortly after the landing the Vikings fought a battle with the local

English lords, and won without much trouble (253). Severin describes this battle as the classic clash of two armies, where one runs into the other, and whoever has more man standing at the end wins. Therefore, the use of such sophisticated tactics as ascribed to the Normans preparing for the invasion or to the Anglo-Saxons during the Battle of

40 Stamford Bridge, for example the hit and run tactics of the cavalry and the feigned retreat, seems rather out of place. There still remains the possibility of Harold being an extraordinary military leader and, upon hearing of the disaster which befell the northern lords, quickly devising a new strategy and putting it in practice, despite the long and hurried march north and the inherent impetuousness of the nobles and knights forming the core of his army. However, the faithfulness of Severin's portrayal of the battle is undermined even further by the misinterpretation of one crucial thing – archery.

There are few clear leads to the use of archery in either of the two major battles in 1066, but a lot can be deduced from these sources. The only thing in the book regarding archery that can with a reasonable certainty be considered correct is the death of Harald by an arrow (Severin 272), for Hardy states that "according to the

Heimskringla (the Lives of the Norse Kings) . . . the Norse King fell, with an arrow through his throat" (32). Little is said about the use of archery during the main part of the Battle of Stamford Bridge in King's Man. Both sides had some archers, but the decisive factors in the weakening of the Vikings' shield wall were the spear-throwing light cavalry and the hit-and-run tactics of the heavy one (Severin 270). During the chase of the surviving Norsemen the pursuers encountered one of the Norse reinforcements, a large group of archers, and, according to Severin, the pursuing cavalry suffered so much damage so as to start to falter until the archers ran out of arrows (278).

To hold off the cavalry without any prepared obstacles would be quite a feat, and one would expect the use of the longbow, for no other bow could have so devastating an effect. While there were laws ordering Norse warriors to include bows as a part of their equipment, it was a secondary weapon mostly meant for naval battles, when close combat was not possible (Hardy 28), and there is no evidence of levies similar to those used by the Anglo-Saxons. Based on that, it can be safely assumed that those bows were

41 not longbows5, for an archer untrained in their use would not be able to draw them.

Therefore, while the late Norse reinforcement group of archers would cause some casualties among the pursuing Anglo-Saxons, the almost-heroic last stand Severin created for them would be very improbable to happen, at best.

It was a different Viking nation, the Danes, who used the longbow more extensively. The numerous findings of the weapons in Denmark, particularly of the bows of advanced design found at Nydam ship-burials (ibid. 21), were already mentioned. It is likely that their use spread south to the Germanic tribes, where it probably played a crucial role in the repelling of at least two Roman invasions (ibid.

28), as well as during the Saxon king Vortigern's invasion of England in 449 CE (ibid.

29). Furthermore, the Danes brought it with them during their own invasion of England in the ninth century, and it is very likely that the use of the longbow became much more common among the local population during the Danelaw, an almost century-long period in which northern England was ruled by the Danes (ibid. 29). Therefore, by the time of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, King Harold Godwinson would have been able to levy a large amount of archers6 to fight the Norwegians (Hardy 32), who were likely the decisive factor of the battle7. This being said, it is hard to consider Severin's portrayal of the Battle of Stamford Bridge anything else than romantic.

As for archery in the , which in King's Man is mentioned only very briefly, it is believed it played only a minor role (Hardy 32). The Bayeux Tapestry8 shows some archers using bows of varying sizes, but it is unclear whether it is to be

5 While this weapon was unusual among the Norsemen, they too had their longbow-archer heroes, such as Einar Tambarskjelve (or Thambarskelfir), mentioned in "King Olaf Tryggvesson's Saga" part of the Heimskringla (Hardy 29) 6 Most of them probably longbowmen. 7 Hardy argues that while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does claim archery "was not much used in battle", it merely implies that the professional soldiers, such as knights and men-at-arms, did indeed not use bows. On the other hand, the local levies were common people, who could hardly afford better equipment than a (long)bow (Hardy 32). 8 A 70 meters long piece of cloth depicting the events surrounding the Norman conquest of England.

42 taken as facts or not (ibid. 33). It is hard to explain why the archers were seemingly so ineffective during this battle so as to leave such a little record, especially with the

English army deployed in defensive positions on a ridge (ibid. 32), since the archers might have played a significant role in the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Hardy makes two points. First, he argues that the reason for this is the fact that the archery had a stronger tradition in the former Danelaw region (ibid. 32). Second, most of the available levies were already in the army on its march north, and were not able to march south again since they lacked horses, and therefore there were few archers in the army when they met the invaders (ibid. 32-33).

6.2 Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell

The story focuses on an English longbowman and his military service in France, first as a to the allies of England and later as a soldier in the army of Henry V during the Agincourt campaign.

Cornwell states that he drew historical information from a few texts discussing the battle, chiefly Agincourt by Juliet Barker (377). However, his depiction of the whole campaign is very similar to the accounts written by the two chief historical sources of this thesis as well, Hardy and Seward. There is no need to analyse all the details, but some of the important parts should be mentioned.

The deployment of troops at Agincourt (Cornwell 298) mirrors the one devised at Halidon Hill and corresponds with both Hardy (113) and Seward (165), as well the crucial decisions such as the one by the French to leave their archers behind (Cornwell

312; 320; 322), with which Hardy agrees (114), while Seward implies they were merely too hindered by the other French troops to be of use (165), or the order for the English to move forward so that the longbowmen would be able to hit the French (Cornwell

305), which matches the accounts of both sources (Hardy 115; Seward 166). Cornwell

43 then describes the march of the English and the absence of a decisive commander9 on the French side (311-2). Had the French attacked during the English repositioning, they would have probably won the battle, for unprepared longbowmen, without a ditch, spikes or some other means to slow the advance of the enemy, are an easy target. One of the French veterans, in disbelief of what is happening, remarks bitterly upon the indecisiveness of the nobles in charge: "Dear God! She came voluntarily, willingly lay down on the bed, spread her legs, and we did nothing." (my transl., Cornwell 312) The

French attacked only after the first volley fell into their ranks (ibid. 313), which coincides with the accounts of Hardy (115) and Seward (166). The rest of the battle progression is in an agreement with one or both of the sources as well.

Cornwell follows the traditional portrayal of Henry V, such the as the fanatical belief in God resulting in the burning of a Lollard (Cornwell 34), the hanging of a man accused of stealing a church's property without a trial (ibid. 260-2) or the command to execute prisoners, rather than risk their joining the battle again and thus losing it (ibid.

358-9), which are well documented10, or the legend of his night stroll among his soldiers, to find out what they thought about him and the oncoming battle (ibid. 286-9), based on a Shakespeare's play.

Cornwell's depiction of the common longbowman is a faithful reproduction of both the historical background and the actual longbow archery, as practised in the present time. The protagonist wonders why the French have no archers of their own, and realizes that men like him are the answer, for it took him ten years to become a longbowman (Cornwell 121). He trained daily since he was seven to achieve two things.

First, to grow strong enough to use bigger bows, eventually mastering, presumably, the military longbow of his father. Second, to learn to shoot well, for an archer, in order to

9 See section 4.2. 10 Lollard (Seward 154), hanging (Hardy 103), the execution of prisoners (Seward 168-9; Hardy 118).

44 get the most power out of his bow, has to draw the string all the way to his ear, therefore not aim by his eye but simply by the knowledge of the way the bow and arrow work

(ibid. 121-2). This technique called the instinctive archery is not much used nowadays, since it is too difficult to learn, unlike aiming by the eye11. Cornwell is correct where physical strength is concerned, for archery primarily requires a particular set of back muscles that are not usually developed, because they are not needed, and therefore a normal person does not stand a chance of drawing a typical longbow.

The portrayal of the longbow itself is very accurate, with regard to the historical sources explored. It is said in the text that the best yew for the bows comes from

"southern, sunnier countries"12 (my transl., ibid. 86) and the unique properties of the yew wood, equalling those of a composite bow, are also explained13 (ibid. 87). The composition of arrows is explained: shafts are commonly made from ash (ibid. 40), flights from goose feathers (ibid. 40) and it is best, after glueing them to the shaft, to also tie them to the shaft using , to make sure they do not fall off14 (ibid. 40-1).

During the Battle of Agincourt, the protagonist explains the use of different arrowheads (ibid. 314-5). Against the cavalry he uses broadheads, and even though they are ineffective against the armoured riders, they are devastating against the horses.

Against the riders, and later against other armoured soldiers, he uses bodkin arrows, the type made to penetrate plate armour15. When they ran out of arrows, the longbowmen fought in close combat, and their lack of armour in combination with the extremely difficult muddy terrain worked to their advantage against the heavily armoured French 11 In modern competitions, such as the Olympic Games, all the archers aim by the eye. It should be noted that it is far less time demanding technique and it does not require training since childhood. It is possible for a person training several times a week for a year to become good on a national level, and to aspire to compete in the Olympic Games after another year. 12 Such as Guyenne (Seward 53), a duchy in southern France belonging to the English at the time. 13 See page 8 of the thesis. 14 Ascham, in his treatise, says that the best shaft wood is ash (Ascham qtd. in Hardy 53). Hardy states that using silk in this manner was a "common medieval practice" (56) and that flights were made of goose feathers (83). 15 See pages 9-10 of the thesis.

45 men-at-arms16 (ibid. 337-340). There is a scene where a longbowman uses a hand gesture to mock a Frenchman, to show that he still has the fingers needed to shoot that the French promised to cut off (ibid. 340-1). Cornwell states17 that this may have been the origin of, as he puts it, "the typical British salute using two fingers" 18 (my transl., ibid. 380).

16 This corresponds with Hardy, who in part cited the account of Thomas Elmham, chaplain to Henry V (Elmham qtd. in Hardy 116-7), as well as with Seward (167-8). 17 In a Historical note at the end of the text. 18 Cornwell adds that he could not find a historical source backing the origin of the salute, and neither did the author of the thesis.

46 7 Conclusion

One of the main points the thesis makes is that the longbow had been widely used in a far broader period of time than the one with which is it usually connected, the

Hundred Years' War. The oldest preserved fragments of longbows are dated to the Late

Stone Age, and the two oldest ones in England to 2690 and 2665 BCE. They were first used in the military in Ancient Egypt and, around the twentieth century BCE, they were very effective in this respect. The first longbows similar in construction to those of the peak time in their history, found at the Nydam ship-burials in Denmark, are as old as the second century CE. The longbow was effectively used against the Romans in the fourth century CE.

Another point is that Edward I was the one responsible for the introduction of the longbow into the English armies and for creating the longbow tradition in England.

Prior to his reign, the longbow was continuously used by the Welsh and their ancestors, and it was also repeatedly brought into England by the invading nations: the Saxons, the

Danes and the Normans. Except for Wales, however, its use was in decline, and if not for Edward I, it would have disappeared from the military use altogether and the great archer armies of the fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries would never have come into existence. The outcome of his efforts was the increase in the amount of the longbowmen. In the 1270s, only small units of several hundred longbowmen in total were employed, chiefly Welsh, and even though by the end of Edward I's reign the army archers amounted to thousands, they were still mostly Welsh. The lasting effect of the established tradition was, however, that by 1346 not only were the archers more numerous than any other troop in the English army, but most of them were Englishmen.

Moreover, as many as 20,076 longbowmen took part in the siege of Calais (1346-7).

None of that nor the other great achievements of the English during the Hundred Years'

47 War would have happened if not for the endeavour of Edward I.

The thesis indicates that the extremely successful tactics the English employed in the War were first used in the Battle of Dupplin Muir in 1332 and further developed in the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. The elaborate positioning of the longbowmen along the whole battle line enabled them to fire at the front line of enemy during a significantly larger part of their effective range, unlike the few volleys as at Dupplin

Muir, as well as made possible far more accurate shooting, due to a greater number of archers shooting directly ahead, instead of in an arc over their own men, and also enabled more coordinated attacks, such as crossfire, thus greatly hindering the advance of the enemy. The devastating results of those two battles foreshadowed the outcomes of the battles of the War.

Furthermore, the thesis points out that the longbow had been widely used in the military for a hundred years after the War and that it took another hundred years for it to disappear from the military use. It also notes that it was not the technological progress that caused its decline, for even by the early nineteenth century a unit of longbowmen would have been preferred to a unit of musketmen, but rather the social changes, such as the reduction in the proportion of hard physical labour, a much needed prerequisite for the career of a longbowman, decrease in the economic value of the archers' wages or the general negative change in the attitude towards the weapon.

Moreover, the two analyses of the novels selected prove that Azincourt is by far more accurate, particularly in manifesting a striking detail and informed observations.

While one should not confuse a historical fiction with a history text – for a fiction is, after all, merely the product of an author's imagination – yet, there is a lot an author can tell his readers about the era in question. In regard to the longbow and military archery in general, the only scene in Severin's book that can be safely claimed to be based on a

48 historical fact is the death of Harald Hardrada, the Norse King, by an arrow piercing his throat. Cornwell, on the other hand, has not only done an extraordinary job in tracking down just about all the available information about the Agincourt campaign to portray it as faithfully as he did, concerning the historical sources explored, but he also must have put considerable effort into learning about the technique of instinctive archery to describe the peculiarities of the vocation of a longbowman in so great a detail, such as the need to start training early in one's childhood and to keep practising, for archery uses certain back muscles which are normally not developed, or the arduous process of learning to shoot without aiming, because an archer has to draw the string all the way to his ear in order to get the most power from the bow.

To conclude the thesis, it proves that the longbow was effectively used in the military some three millennia before its most famous period, the Hundred Years' War, and that the person who contributed the most to make the longbowmen a core part of the English army and has thus deserved the title father of the military longbow was

Edward I. It further proves that the longbow was employed in the military for some two hundred years after the War, and that it was not the technological progress that put it out of use.

49 Bibliography

Barker, Juliet. Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle. London: Little, Brown

Book Group, 2010. Print.

"Battle of Bannockburn, 1314, The". Scotland's History. 2013. BBC. 22 Feb. 2013.

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Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 1898. 831.

Germanic Lexicon Project. 15 April 2013.

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Brown, Michael. Bannockburn : The Scottish Wars and the British Isles, 1307-1323.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. 22 Feb. 2013.

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Churchill, Winston. History of the English Speaking People Volume 1. US: McClelland

& Stewart, 1988. Print.

Cornwell, Bernard. Azincourt. Trans. Jiří Beneš. Brno: BB/art, 2012. Print.

Gibson, Mel, dir. Braveheart. Writ. Randall Wallace. Prod. Mel Gibson. 1995. DVD.

Hardy, Robert. Longbow: A social and military history. US: Patrick Stevens Ltd, 2010.

Print.

Kašpar, J. Technologie výroby a zpracování středověkých hrotů střel [Technology of

manufacture and treatment of medieval arrowhead]. Brno: Vysoké učení

technické v Brně, Fakulta strojního inženýrství, 2010.

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Lanercost, The Chronicle of, ed. and trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell. Glasgow: James

Maclehose and Sons, 1913. 20 Feb. 2013.

10/items/chronicleoflaner02maxw/chronicleoflaner02maxw.pdf>.

Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford

50 University Press, 1991. Print.

Severin, Tim. Vikingové: Králův muž [Viking: King's Man]. Trans. Věra Šťovíčková-

Heroldová. Praha [Prague]: BB/art, 2013. Print.

Seward, Desmond. The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1453. New

York: Atheneum, 1982. Print.

Wainwright, Martin. "You can still kill a Scotsman in York, but don't eat a mince pie at

Christmas." The Guardian. 7 Nov 2007. 25 April 2013.

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51 English Resumé

The bachelor's diploma thesis deals with the longbow and its origins, military history and eventual decline. It explains its very beginnings, the first military use, the development of the weapon in Europe and, particularly, its introduction to England and the English army and the gradual evolution in the military tactics in order to employ the longbowmen to the best of their capabilities. The greatest military achievements of the longbow are mentioned, but rather than give lengthy accounts of the battles, some important aspects are pointed out, as well as the most significant consequences. It describes the eventual decline of the longbow and the various factors that took part in it during the late stages of the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of the Roses and the reign of

Henry VIII, which proved to be the final notable effort to keep the longbowmen a part of the English armies. The thesis also analyses two historical novels in regard to the use of military archery, Viking: King's Man by T. Severin and Azincourt by B. Cornwell.

The aim of the thesis is to point out the fact that the history of the longbow encompasses a much wider period of time than the commonly thought Hundred Years'

War and to explain the lengthy and arduous process of the integration of the longbowmen into the English armies, as well as indicate the person most responsible for it.

52 Czech Resumé

Bakalářská diplomová práce se zabývá dlouhým lukem a jeho počátky, vojenskou historií a konečným úpadkem. Vysvětluje jeho úplné začátky, první vojenské užití, rozvoj v Evropě a zvláště pak jeho uvedení do Anglie, zavedení do anglické armády a postupný vývoj vojenské taktiky za účelem co nejefektivnějšího využití střelců z dlouhého luku. Jsou zde zmíněny největší vojenské úspěchy dlouhého luku, ale spíše než obsáhlé rozebírání jednotlivých bitev, několik jejich důležitých aspektů a významných důsledků je popsáno. Postupný úpadek dlouhého luku je znázorněn, spolu s hlavními faktory, které se na něm podílely, od pozdních fází Stoleté války, přes Válku růží, až po vládu Jindřicha VIII., jež značí poslední výrazný pokus o udržení lučištníků jakožto součásti anglické armády. Práce také analyzuje dva historické romány vzhledem k zobrazení vojenské lukostřelby, a to Vikingové: Králův muž od T. Severina a Azincourt od B. Cornwella.

Cílem práce je upozornit na fakt, že historie dlouhého luku je daleko obsáhlejší než obecně předpokládané období Stoleté války, a také na náročný a zdlouhavý průběh začleňování střelců z dlouhého luku do anglické armády. Stejně tak chce poukázat na osobu, která se na onom procesu nejvíce podílela.

53