English Longbow ⚜️
Overall, each archer in an English army during the 15th century was issued with a bow, between two and five bowstrings and two sheaves of arrows for each campaign. Each bundle contained twenty-four indicators tied up with hemp cord, which archers used to tie their hands around their waists for battle.⚜️⚜️
Distinctive arrows were of poplar, fletched with goose feathers and fitted with a single type of low-barbed head. The best bows were painted and supplied with ash arrows with steel heads, fletched with peacock feathers.⚜️
Though scarcely any medieval longbows survive, we now have a fantastic group from the Mary Rose, which has revolutionised our understanding of the weapon in the last twenty years. We now think they ranged in draw weight between 65–160 lb, with an average of about 110 lb, double what we thought a generation ago.⚜️⚜️
Each archer had two sheaves of arrows to last a campaign and would probably go into battle with just one of them. So all the statistics of how many indicators an archer can shoot in a minute are put into perspective by realising that such an arrow storm could last just three minutes, and then the hands were gone. Once we know that, we can see it happening in the sources: at Poitiers in 1356, the English archers ran out and tried to recover spent arrows. At Towton in 1461, the Lancastrian archers ran out of indicators and suffered the indignity of having the Yorkists shoot their arrows back at them. So the vision moves away from darkening the sky with hands like the Persians’ at Thermopylae towards a smaller number of accurately aimed arrows shot from mighty bows by highly skilled and practised professional archers.⚜️⚜️
You must be logged in to post a comment.