Late Middle Ages

The English longbow in the Hundred Years’ War

The English longbow, a self-bow of yew, ash, or elm, was the weapon of the great English victories of the Hundred Years’ War. At Crécy, in 1346, the longbow cut down the French cavalry in three successive charges; at Poitiers, in 1356, the longbow drove the French to the ground and took the king; at Agincourt, in 1415, the longbow destroyed a French army in the mud of Picardy. The weapon was not new. It was a development of the Welsh bow of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it was the result of a long training, a long law, and a long tradition. The bow was the centre of the English military system in the war, and the system was, in turn, the centre of the English claim to the French throne.

Yew, draw-weight, and the archaeology of the weapon

The longbow was a simple weapon. It was a stave of yew, about 6 feet long, with a D-shaped cross-section and a natural curve, drawn by hand to the ear. The draw-weight of a war-bow, by modern calculation, was 80 to 150 pounds, with a typical figure of 100 to 120 pounds for a well-trained archer. The arrow was a shaft of ash, poplar, or birch, about 3 feet long, with a steel or iron head, and a fletching of goose-feather. The bow was drawn to the ear and the arrow was released with a stroke of the fingers; the rate of fire, in the conditions of the late-medieval battle, was eight to twelve arrows a minute, sustained for several minutes at a time. The range, in skilled hands, was 200 to 300 yards, and a broadhead could penetrate mail at 200 yards and plate at close range.

The archaeological evidence of the longbow is unambiguous. The Mary Rose, the warship of Henry VIII that sank in the Solent in 1545, was raised from the sea in 1982 with a cargo of 137 yew longbows, of which the best preserved have been the subject of detailed study. The bows were of yew, with a heartwood core and a sapwood back, and they were between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet 2 inches long. The draw-weights, calculated from the dimensions and the test-bending, run from 50 to 100 pounds, with a median of 75 pounds. The arrow-heads, of ash and of poplar, were of iron or steel, and the fletching was of goose-feather. The Mary Rose bows are the best-preserved longbows in the world, and they are the basis of the modern calculation of the weapon.

The yew for the longbow was imported from Italy, the Tyrol, and the Baltic. The English kings, from Edward I, had statutes regulating the import of yew staves; the statute of Edward IV, the Yew Bow Act of 1472, made it a felony to cut or destroy yew trees in England. The bows, in short, were a strategic material, and the supply of yew was a matter of state.

The recruit and the law: archery as a national institution

The longbow was, however, not a weapon that one could pick up. The draw-weight of a war-bow was 80 to 150 pounds, and a skilled archer had to train for years to develop the strength and the technique to use it effectively. The English kings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made archery practice a national institution. The statute of 1363, “Quare Wadham,” required every man, on Sundays and on holidays, to use the longbow, and forbade the game of the hand-ball and the football, which were thought to interfere with the practice of the bow. The statute of 1414, the Act of the Merciless Parliament, repeated the regulation and added that the butts should be set up in every village.

The statute of 1363 is the first great Act of the longbow. It was reinforced by the Statute of Labourers of 1349, which required every able-bodied man to maintain a bow and a bolt. The combination of the two acts, the archery statutes of Edward III and Richard II, is the basis of the longbow as a national institution. The archers of the Hundred Years’ War were drawn from the English and Welsh peasantry: the yeoman of the West Country, the husbandman of the Home Counties, the Welsh archer of the March. The yeoman of England, the social type of the late-medieval period, was the man who could draw a longbow.

The training of the longbowman began in childhood. The archery statutes, the accounts of the great retinues, and the wills of the late-medieval period all describe a society in which the longbow was a normal part of growing up. The will of a Hampshire yeoman, of 1447, leaves a longbow and twelve arrows to his eldest son; a similar will of a Wiltshire husbandman, of 1392, leaves a longbow and a quiver of arrows to his daughter. The longbow, in short, was a family object. The yeoman of the late Middle Ages was an archer.

Range, rate, and the contested numbers

The longbow was, in the hands of a trained archer, a formidable weapon. The range, at the upper end, was 280 to 300 yards, with an effective range of perhaps 200 yards. The rate of fire, sustained, was eight to twelve arrows a minute, with a higher rate for the first few volleys. The bow, in the right conditions, was capable of stopping a cavalry charge: the French cavalry at Crécy, charging uphill through the mud, was cut down by the longbow at ranges of 200 to 100 yards.

The actual effectiveness of the longbow, however, has been a matter of controversy. The older view, of Desmond Seward, of Harold LaMonte, and of the popular tradition, was that the longbow was a decisive weapon, capable of stopping a cavalry charge at a distance. The revisionist view, of Clifford Rogers and of the modern military historians, is that the longbow was a supporting weapon, and that the decisive factor at Crécy and at Agincourt was the cohesion of the English army and the failure of the French.

The actual range of the longbow is well-attested. The 1980s experiments at the Royal Armouries at Leeds, in which a modern longbowman, working with replica bows, fired at armoured targets, established that a broadhead could penetrate a 1.5 mm plate at 200 yards, and could kill at the same range. The Mary Rose bows, of a similar design, are consistent with these findings. The range, in short, is not in dispute.

The rate of fire, however, is. The chronicler Jean Froissart, writing in the 1370s and 1380s, said that a good archer could shoot twelve arrows a minute; the chronicler of the Annales Henrici Quinti said the same. The modern test, by the Royal Armouries, established a sustained rate of ten to twelve arrows a minute. The number is consistent with the chronicles.

The longbow against plate: how much could it really do?

The longbow, in the right conditions, was effective against plate armour. The 1980s experiments at Leeds, of which the most famous is the 1995 test at the Royal Armouries, established that a 75-pound yew bow, at 100 to 200 yards, could penetrate a 1.5 mm breastplate of plate armour, and could kill the wearer. The breastplate, however, had to be of a particular thickness: 1.5 mm was the limit of the bow, and 2 mm was enough to stop it. The armour of the early fourteenth century, which was of a single piece of plate, was vulnerable; the armour of the late fifteenth century, which was of plate with a mail lining and a padded gambeson, was more resistant.

The longbow, however, was not used only against breastplates. The arrow, fired at close range, could kill a horse, and the killing of the horse was often more decisive than the killing of the rider. The chronicler of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, the chaplain who recorded the events of Henry V’s reign, wrote that the longbow, at Agincourt, “shot so sharply that the horses fell to the ground, and the riders were overthrown.” The killing of the horse, in the conditions of Agincourt, was the work of the longbow.

The longbow, however, was not used only at Agincourt. The chronicler of the Annales Henrici Quinti, the Brut, and the Royaumont continuation of the Grandes Chroniques all record that the longbow, at the battles of 1346, 1356, and 1415, killed a great number of men and horses. The weapon, in short, was effective.

The withdrawal: longbow, handgun, and the end of an era

The longbow remained an important weapon throughout the Hundred Years’ War, but it was gradually replaced by the new gunpowder weapons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The hand-cannon, which appeared in the 1380s, was a clumsy weapon that was difficult to aim and slow to reload. The hand-gun, of the early fifteenth century, was an improvement: it was portable, it could be aimed, and it could be reloaded in a few seconds. The arquebus, which appeared in the 1470s, was a further improvement, with a matchlock, a stock, and a trigger.

The longbow, in the face of the new weapons, lost its place. The handgun, by the 1480s, was being used in the French army in the Italian Wars, and the longbow, in the English army, was being gradually replaced. The archery statutes, in the 1480s and 1490s, were repealed; the yeoman of the late-medieval period, who had been the archer, was gradually replaced by the musketeer. The change is treated in detail in How gunpowder changed medieval warfare.

The English longbow, in the long view, was the weapon of the Hundred Years’ War. It was the weapon of the great English victories; it was the weapon that made the English claim to the French throne; it was the weapon of the English yeoman. The decline of the longbow, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was the decline of a system. The English monarchy, in 1544, was still using longbows at the siege of Boulogne; by 1590, the longbow was a curiosity. The weapon, in the end, had served its time.

The historiography of the longbow is dominated by the work of David Green, The Longbow: A Social and Military History (2010) and The Battle of Crécy: A Casebook (2013), of Clifford Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp (2000), and of the modern technical literature of the Royal Armouries. The most recent studies are those of Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy, The Great Warbow (2011), which combines the archaeological and the documentary evidence.

References and further reading

  • David Green, The Longbow: A Social and Military History (Stroud: The History Press, 2010).
  • Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy, The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose (Stroud: The History Press, 2011).
  • Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000).
  • Andrew Ayton, Knights and Warhorses: Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward III (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994).
  • Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years’ War, vols. I–V (London: Faber & Faber, 1990–2021).