Re: [tied] Bow and arrow

Exu Yangi wrote:

>
> >From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> > Discovery the other day had an interesting feature on the battle of
> >Azincourt (sic) which was won mainly by the English longbowmen. Interesting
> >fact: one man-at-arms had the price of two longbowmen. More
> >intersting fact: The French were interested in taking hostages for
> >later extorting a ransom. In that quest they completly ignored the
> >English longbowman: they were nobodies.
>
> Actually, to make matters worse, they were peon nobodies.
>
> >Who were these longbowmen, historically? The English and French noblity
> >should have the samestructure, having sprung from a common Germanic
> >source. But I haven't heard of Celtic Britons being especially
> >connected with bows and arrows.
>
> First, the Welsh archer is almost a legend. That aside, the English of the
> time were REQUIRED BY LAW to spend a certain amount of time practicing with
> the longbow. Any man (women were exempt, but that didn't stop some of them)
> was required to practice with the longbow. The better ones were ... errr ...
> requested to stop by their local castle for a bit of long range service.

I've hear it can take about ten years to make a good longbowman.

>
> Since most of the longbow archers were serfs, the French didn't bother
> trying to ransom them. There was no money to pay any ransom anyway.
>
> The other problem of course, was the bow itself. It was generally 5-6 foot
> high and made of English Yew. You had to be pretty hefty just to fire it. It
> was a very effective weapon. According to contemporary accounts, the French
> lost 20,000 of their best knights. The English lost a couple of hundred
> peasants.

The official figures were about 6,000 French dead, mostly knights
(indeed it was almost an entire generation of French nobility) against
less than 400 English casualties (which did include the Duke of York and
Earl of Suffolk.) Not bad when you consider the French started out with
a 3 to 1 advantage.

> But, and here's the rub, contemporary sources cited the REAL reason for the
> huge French loss. You see, there used to be a garment called a cotehardie.
> The English preffered theirs quite long, and said the French version (which
> was shorter) was an offence against God. Sheesh, no wonder they lost.

That and the fact the French tried to charge the longbow units on such a
narrow front the English hardly needed to take aim to hit somebody.

It's interesting to note that when gunpowder came into vogue the English
took that up with equal enthusiasm, especially at sea, and quickly
became famous for firing 3 shots for every 1 their opponents managed.

> >Which is enough for me to suspect they these archers were descended
> >from Nordwestblock peoples arriving in England with the Saxon
> >invasion.
>
> Nope, just English peasants.

Well I'm sure that most of them were Anglo-Saxons:)

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