
Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did? - blacksqr
http://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf
======
vkazanov
Interesting. Although this point of view might be a bit simplified, there's
another example of a weapon, which was both relatively cheap to make - and
really hard to use unless the whole society was built around the skills
required to use it.

Mongols! Light cavalry using composite bows was both unbelievably effective
and hard to copy for everybody but steppe nomads. All Mongols were hunters,
they practically lived with their bows on their horses. So the whole
population could do warfare.

While back in the days, in both Eastern and Western Europe, contemporary
warfare was rotating around heavy cavalry, and one can't have too many
knights. Even if somebody managed to gather an army more or less comparable to
Mongol hordes - heavier cavalry would just be meat for lighter riders making
circles around them.

Besides, feudal lands never managed to be centralized enough to counter
mongols. In medieval Rus' the need to centralize led to the rise of Moscow -
and it took quite a while anyway.

~~~
ucaetano
It's hard to compare Mongols to Europeans. The composite bows rely on animal-
based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in
humid and warmer climates.

Also, light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as
the ones found in most of Europe, specially when you don't have huge, flat
battlefields that allow light cavalry to circle any target.

In other words, Mongol warfare was perfect for the environment they were
created for: vast empty dry lands with few geographical features and
settlements which are far from each other.

~~~
wwwong
Re: "light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as
the ones found in most of Europe"

Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than
Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands.

Also, despite Europe's fortifications, a scouting party led by Subutai of
20,000 horse archers, widely wiped out a much more significant force of
Central Europe soldiers, greatly outnumbering the Mongols. Fortified cities
may cause trouble, but by this time, Mongol dominance had incorporated Chinese
siege technology that fortified central european cities had not seen.

~~~
jernfrost
I read a long discussion about this on Quora. What I could gather from that
was there were far more castles in Europe than China. Also Europe has too
little plains to be able to support a mongol army very long. They each had
something like 5 horses. There isn't enough grass for a large mongol army like
that. One the debaters claimed e.g. that European castles were very well
supplied for long sieges and would run out of food much later than an
occupying mongol force which would be vulnerable to counter attacks.

European heavy cavalry was not useless against mongols. It is just that they
were seldom effective when mongols could just run away from the battle field.
Easy to do when they were much lighter armoured. But if Mongols maintained a
siege they had to stay in position which would have made them vulnerable to
European nights which were probably superior to mongol soldiers if they could
not perform hit and run tactics.

Apparently the mongols beat the Hungarians initially but when they came back
and the Hungarians had built lots of castles, they were soundly beaten. The
sieges dragged on and they would get harassed by Hungarian forces which could
always retreat back to castles while mongols starved.

My understanding is that the Mongols managed to conquer the more hilly
southern China by using conscripted Chinese soldiers. So they were not really
using standard Mongolian tactics there. Duplicating this in Europe would have
been difficult because unlike China Europe did not have the same kind of
central government which would have allow the conquest of a few cities to gain
huge tracts of land and extra manpower. They would have had to conquer huge
numbers of castles which would have dragged out in time.

In fact Machiavelli talks about this in the Prince. The Ottomans, Roman
Empire, China etc were far more centrally controlled which made them one
strong unit but once you conquered the central city of government you would
control the whole country. The Feudalistic European countries however might
not as easily marshal huge combined forces but they were extremely difficult
to conquer because you had to conquer every little vassal state one by one.
Considering that every one had a castle this was no easy task.

One should not completely discount the effectiveness of European military.
During the crusades, the muslim forces would usually use Mongol like tactics
to wear them out. But whenever the crusaders managed to corner a muslim army
they crushed it with their heavily armoured knights.

~~~
geggam
5 horses is quite a bit of food to feed the army... the more the army eats the
more grass you have left for the horses... so when the castle is running out
of food you have 1 good well fed horse and 1 good well fed soldier who has to
win or he doesnt have enough horses to go home

i think that wins

~~~
ashark
That's fine for the first siege (assuming an extra couple months was all you
needed), but now you have to supply up with 4x(number of horsemen) for the
next one to be in the same position. Tens of thousands of horses for even a
smallish Mongol army. And at least some of them must be trained for war,
specifically in the Mongol fashion, not just any ol' training. In short, it's
not gonna happen on any reasonable time scale.

Plus you lose whatever advantage the extra horses gave you until you get
more—I mean, I'm sure they didn't keep them around just for fun. Greater
travel speed by resting them off, extra cargo/loot capacity, whatever their
reasons were.

------
zhte415
tl;dr:

The abstract does a wonderful job. It is will worth reading.

Longbow was cheap and technically superior, but required training. Crossbow
more expensive, required less training. Rulers of England less worried about
rebellion, OK to invest in training. Rulers of France/Scotland not so happy
because of fear to give potential of overthrow to the people (Scotland not in
title, but in article along with France).

Perhaps an analogy could be painted with companies today. Those that churn,
and those that nurture skills.

~~~
thearn4
If I remember correctly (and I'm still looking for a better source than
this[1]), the Duke Of Wellington had requested a corps of longbowmen be made
ready for use against the French in the Napoleonic wars, but was advised that
no one with the skill needed to train them still existed (the training being
the most difficult part of the technology). The last use of trained english
longbowmen seemed to have been by some of the royalists during the English
Civil War, and after the parliamentary victory practical knowledge of longbow
archery as a military arm had been lost without anyone really noticing.

It's hard for me to imagine a pivotal art or technology being lost like that,
but I'm willing to bet its not at all uncommon if we look across history. For
another military technology example, the art of dogfighting was deemed to have
been lost for a brief period between WWII and the air war over Vietnam, and
had to be re-engineered.

[1]
[http://everything.explained.today/English_longbow/](http://everything.explained.today/English_longbow/)

~~~
jernfrost
Actually one of the points made in the book Guns, Germs and Steel is that
technology and inventions aren't developed because there is a need for them.
Rather inventions pop up and disappear all the time through history in
different cultures. But what makes the technology stay around is that it ends
up getting used.

E.g. South America did invent wheels, but since there was no ox or horse to
pull the invention had not real practical application beyond toys and never
got developed.

So according to this view I guess technology is always in danger of
disappearing if it isn't being used.

E.g. the Apollo moon rocket can't be build anymore because the engineers,
companies and machines needed to build all the parts and assembly it are no
longer around. One would have to recreate a 1960s American industrial base to
do it.

~~~
merpnderp
Surely Llamas could have pulled some cargo. This says that an adult llama can
pull cart loads of up to 200lbs:
[http://workingllamas.com/?id=93](http://workingllamas.com/?id=93)

That's significantly less than a draft horse, but probably roughly the same as
a pony.

~~~
cwp
Actually, the issue there is terrain. Llamas are very agile and can carry
loads to areas that neither horses nor carts can reach. Smaller loads, of
course, but still much more than a person can carry.

Even today, horses aren't really a thing in the Andes, compared to say,
Patagonia.

------
junto
Kevin Hicks is a great resource on the longbow:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvKJcxa8x_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvKJcxa8x_g)

He is also very knowledgeable about all things from this period of history:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUYd6pNy6QU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUYd6pNy6QU)

There is also some more detail regarding the make up of the "English" army
bowmen here:
[http://www.bowyers.com/bowyery_longbowOrigins.php](http://www.bowyers.com/bowyery_longbowOrigins.php)

Sidenote:

\- Bowyer: Makes the bow

\- Fletcher: Makes the arrow

\- Stringfellow: Makes the string

\- Arrowsmith: Makes the arrowhead

~~~
bweitzman
Sounds like somebody figured out the single responsibility principle

~~~
eru
See [http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-
quotes/](http://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-quotes/)

------
wtbob
This seems a good place to post about Mad Jack Churchill, who brought his
longbow to France in 1940 and shot a German with it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill)

~~~
rupellohn
Thanks for posting this!

my favorite bit:

"He startled train conductors and passengers by throwing his briefcase out of
the train window each day on the ride home. He later explained that he was
tossing his case into his own back garden so he would not have to carry it
from the station"

------
gobbo
I see a possible problem with this theory: in few words, according to the
authors the French and Scots did not adopt the longbow for fear of rebellion.
Still the nobles participated to the very battles that saw them being defeated
by the English and their longbow. If the longbow was cheap and relatively easy
to adopt, a noble aspiring to the crown would have been able to develop the
technology independently from the (unstable) central government and have an
even easier road to glory against their own technologically inferior king.

I admittedly did not read carefully the whole paper, but this possibility does
not seem to be addressed.

~~~
notahacker
There's another major problem: preventing peasants from being a threat whilst
still yielding some benefit from the longbow could easily have been achieved
by restricting archery training to nobles and selected privileged guards, who
had more time and inclination towards military training than the peasantry
anyway. This would have resulted in less firepower than the English mass
armies, but far more than the crossbows they used instead (indeed, since the
principal advantage of the longbow over the crossbow was rate of fire, it
would have been even more important to take advantage of in an army with a
relative shortage of archers)

Alternate hypothesis: the French lacked the experience of the English/Welsh in
making longbows and training people to use them, so struggled to see any
evidence of superiority when experimenting with longbows over the crossbow
technology they were more familiar with. A local maximum.

And the posited relationship between (in)stability and training regimes for
the wider population looks more plausible flipped on its head: the less stable
English kings paid less attention to the promotion of archery than Edward III
not because they hoped laxity in training would result in any peasant armies
raised against them being worse shots, but simply because they had more
important things to worry about than archers.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
>There's another major problem: preventing peasants from being a threat whilst
still yielding some benefit from the longbow could easily have been achieved
by restricting archery training to nobles and selected privileged guards, who
had more time and inclination towards military training than the peasantry
anyway.

That was pretty small number of people in the middle ages, and they would
already have been trained as mounted knights or men-at-arms so retraining them
as archers would not be a net gain unless one archer was more valuable than
one man-at-arms which I don't think is likely.

The advantage of the longbow is that once trained, you could raise a large
army quite cheaply but that army only worked as part of a combined arms
operation that also had armoured infantry and cavalry. That means that you
don't want to sacrifice the other elements of your army in order to build a
longbow capability.

~~~
cmdkeen
There's also the whole concept of feudalism to throw into the mix. Longbows
were cheap so you could require your peasantry to own and practice them - or
at least for a community to supply X archers per Y population.

Knights are significantly more expensive, and again require years of practice.
The principle of feudalism was landholding being tied to military service -
you hold the land from your feudal lord and in return this supports your
ability to provide military arms.

Take away the requirement for you to provide expensive armour and destriers
(the war horses knights rode) and you remove the need for you to hold land,
which undermines the political settlement of the Kingdom.

------
caoilte
I still remember being blown away when I realised how institutionally
organised longbow practice was as I read this Rosemary Sutcliff as a child

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1195105.The_Armourer_s_H...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1195105.The_Armourer_s_House)

------
mhd
The intro still assumes that the battles won by the English in the Hundred
Years War were due the longbow (alone), which AFAIK is quite debatable (at
least outside of England, where Agincourt is a bit of a national myth, even
more than e.g. the Black Legend).

And never mind instability, the French also weren't as geographically isolated
as the English and thus it was easier to hire mercenaries. Genoese crossbowman
being a particular example.

The penetrative ability of the longbow is also greatly exaggerated, citing a
book that did some pretty shoddy testing (flat sheets of poor quality metal
used as targets, but hardened bodkins as penetrators, 10m distance, no
padding).

~~~
afterburner
France won the Hundred Years War.

~~~
mhd
My bad, of course I meant the famous English victories, changed the post to
reflect that.

------
lambda
I think that the way this paper discusses on the longbow as being the superior
weapon may obscure a key fact here. Man for man, a crossbow is a superior
weapon; requires less skill to operate, has longer range, much easier to aim,
better penetrating power. The main advantage of a longbow is how simple and
cheap it is.

Speed of reloading is another advantage the longbow has, but I think this
article overstates it. While some crossbows do require using a stirrup or
crank to load them, there are others that you can reload against your hips,
and shoot from there, to increase your speed considerably, at some cost to
accuracy. I know people who have managed to get 6 bullseyes at 20 yards on a
crossbow in 30 seconds. Meanwhile, archers would not be firing at the maximum
possible rate in battle; ammunition is a limited resource, and with the draw
weights of warbows fatigue would set in quickly. Overall, with the archers
they had and bows they had at the time, it is likely that the longbows were
able to be a little faster than the crossbows, but it's not a night and day
thing; and the range, accuracy, and penetrating power on the crossbows were
better.

The simplicity became an advantage in a few battles, which came after
substantial rainstorms that caused problems with crossbows more complicated
mechanisms. But the main advantage was how cheap and fast to produce they
were; you could easily arm a large populace quite quickly. In order to take
advantage of the longbow, you had to do that; you needed a very large number
of archers to effectively take advantage of longbows, while you needed fewer
archers to be effective with crossbows. But because it was cheap and simple,
it was feasible to do that.

I think that cost and simplicity of the longbows were their biggest advantage;
speed perhaps a secondary factor, but the sheer numbers were likely to be more
important.

There is, of course, an interesting parallel here with some trends in modern
military spending. The Joint Strike Fighter is a technological marvel; one of
the most advanced pieces of military equipment ever. However, they are
staggeringly expensive, and not actually the best dogfighters in the sky. You
wonder how much more effective spending that money on more and simpler
weaponry might have been.

~~~
mattmanser
You are directly contradicting a researched paper that explicitly contradicts
everything you just said. Why do you think you're right?

Read page mid-page 691-693.

I'm also not sure what the point is of you talking about today's modern
crossbows which are unsurprisingly easier to reload.

~~~
lambda
First, this research paper is about a game theory analysis about a political
situation that may have made the French and Scots leery of being vulnerable to
usurpation by arming a large population. The material on pages 691-693 is all
background material, not the actual research material of this paper.

I did read 691-693. I am not contradicting any of the information in it;
merely saying that I think they are overstating the direct superiority of the
longbow. Strategically and tactically, it's clear that arming a large number
of archers and using them in the early battle is superior, and the cost and
simplicity of the longbow makes that much easier; but it's not because a
single longbow is better than a single crossbow. I think that the longbow was
a superior weapon, in the sense that the armies that adopted the longbow
strategy clearly beat those that relied on crossbows, but I think that the way
that the paper couches its introduction makes it sound like, side by side, a
longbow was a superior weapon to a crossbow.

I'm not talking about modern crossbows, I'm talking about reproduction
medieval crossbows. I do medieval recreation as a hobby, I shoot longbow, I
know people who shoot crossbow. The longbow is faster, though as I mention, I
know people who can reload and shoot from the hip and get 6 accurate shots off
in 30 seconds. And the crossbow is more accurate, gets better range, delivers
more power, and is easier to shoot.

Now, I don't shoot a 160 pound warbow, I don't have the strength for it. If I
did, I would get some more power and range out of it, at the expense of
accuracy and speed, as I would fatigue much more quickly. With a crossbow, you
can use both arms and brace against your hip to draw, so even without any
stirrup or crank, you can shoot a much heavier crossbow than you could a
longbow. That extra power means more penetrating power and a flatter quicker
flight (or more range if you increase your angle), and the fact that your
muscles are not straining to hold the bow drawn means you can aim more
accurately.

------
4bpp
I wonder if this practice of arming citizens with easily procured long-
distance weaponry that in a less stable country would be feared to become
useful in a rebellion also could be considered one of the memetic ancestors of
modern American firearm culture.

------
dozzie
I don't know, maybe because bow is a peasants' weapon, and France had
_knigts_?

Western Europe had its share of stupidity, like kings leading charges instead
of commanding battles on a tactical level.

~~~
vacri
> _stupidity, like kings leading charges instead of commanding battles on a
> tactical level._

Why exchange one form of stupidity for another? If you're going to ping
medieval Europe for military stupidity, then instead suggest that the people
commanding the battles should be trained military specialists, as they are
today. There's nothing magical about kings that make them better at battle
tactics.

~~~
dozzie
The problem with kings leading charges is that there's nobody to command the
battlefield, not that they were skilled or not. Eastern Europe had that much
better.

------
alricb
Ah, Agincourt-fetish, one of the few fetishes you can display in public
without looking too ridiculous (in the English-speaking world).

Longbows are great in open battle, yes. But the hundred years war was a war of
sieges and raids (by the English and the great companies), and for those the
stonemason is infinitely superior to the longbowman.

For the French, the winning strategy was always to avoid pitched battles and
fortify river crossing points until English armies had run out of supplies,
then patiently retake lost fortified places through siege.

------
brudgers
An apparent preprint:
[http://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf](http://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf)

~~~
dang
Ok, we changed the URL to that from
[http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684231](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684231).

------
david-given
Asimov wrote an essay on this back in 1980, called _The Unsecret Weapon_, in
the collection _The Sun Shines Bright_. Same conclusion, IIRC.

However I've never found a copy online, which is a shame because I remember it
has being one of his best.

------
kiwi93
surprised there's no discussion of the importance of chivalric values in the
French military. French knights were so married to the idea of valor that
employing yeoman infantry was seen as dishonorable. Obviously this is directly
related to the political context of state security but it's worth considering
the cultural factor as well

~~~
mcv
Absolutely. The French nobility loved the heavy cavalry charge. The English
knights had to fight on foot to protect the longbowmen. It's a totally
different culture and attitude. You can't just pick one element out of a
different system and expect to copy the successes of that system.

------
rogeryu
Last summer I did a workshop with the longbow. It's real fun, and has many
links to meditation, finding your center etc. I had seen it before, never
liked it, but it was great.

In the end I shot at a 1.5 meter target about 100 meters away. You could
barely see it, as it was lying flat on a hill. At first I could not believe
that I had the power to get that far, but it worked out. I missed it by about
12 meters, which was not bad looking at the competition that day.

~~~
hussong
You might like the book "Zen in the Art of Archery" by Eugen Herrigel, first
published in 1948 / 1953 (German / English).

------
trengrj
Makes me want to learn how to use the longbow.

It seems a challenge that this skill has been lost, and is interesting in that
how long it took to develop.

~~~
zaphar
I own one and they are very fun to shoot. But it take a lot of practice to be
accurate with one. There is no sight or even an arrow rest on authentic
english longbow so learning to shoot consistently takes a while.

------
alricb
A paper about the hundred years war that doesn't cite a single French-language
source except Froissard? Not very serious.

------
trhway
>Yet the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) lasted longer than a hundred
years—plenty of time for England’s enemies to learn that their defeats were
heavily influenced, if not caused, by the longbow.

Didn't England lose the Hundred Years War? At least looking at the map before
and after - it lost everything on the continent, incl. last remnants of
Angevin and Normandy lost to France, with France rising up significantly
bigger and stronger as a result of the war.

While long bow is a nice nostalgic weapon, the crossbow is technologically
more advanced, and in our civilization technology wins :

"Plate armor that could be penetrated by large crossbows, but was impenetrable
by longbows, was uncommon in Europe until about 1380"

(funny that while a child i was initially making bows, yet soon switched to
making crossbows - and they were interesting until i made my first single shot
handgun at the end of the 1st grade :)

~~~
mcv
Yes, England lost. The thing is, field battles don't really win wars; sieges
do. At least when the war is about territory.

England did a lot of damage to France, but couldn't really hold on to the
territory. And besides, it was really only a handful of field battles they won
so spectacularly (not just due to the longbow, but due to a more comprehensive
strategy involving longbows together with knights on foot and good defensive
terrain).

------
ajuc
It's funny how the article quietly assumes "Scotland+France+England" =
"Europe".

~~~
Kurtz79
Can you provide a concrete example ?

I really can't see this assumption made anywhere in the paper.

~~~
ajuc
> For over a century the longbow reigned as undisputed king of medieval
> European missile weapons. Yet only England used the longbow as a mainstay in
> its military arsenal; France and Scotland clung to the technologically
> inferior cross- bow.

> England alone, for a 150-year window in late medieval Europe, was
> politically stable enough to render the longbow its rulers’ optimal
> technology choice. In contrast, in France and Scotland political instability
> prevailed, rendering the crossbow the optimal technology choice for rulers
> in these nations.

~~~
Kurtz79
Yes, I read those, but I still don't see the assumption made.

The first more general sentence does not imply that the all the countries
mentioned in the second make up the entirety of Europe.

It makes sense that the author would make a specific comparison with the
countries involved in the war, rather than doing so for all the countries in
medieval Europe.

~~~
ajuc
Maybe I'm reading too much into this. It's just that I disagree with both
sentences.

Mongol composite bows were superior ranged weapons and were used in Europe
since 14th century.

And there were other politicaly stable countries in that period, including
Teutonic Order, Poland, Venetian Republic among others.

~~~
lambda
Like the difference between crossbows and longbows, they were superior in some
ways and inferior in others.

Since they were composite, they were dependent on glue and cord holding them
together; they were somewhat more susceptible to weather. They were also more
expensive to produce. However, as recurves they had better power with less
stacking (force required to hold them at a full draw), and they were also
shorter so could be used from horseback, a huge advantage for a nomadic people
on the steppes.

Your point is well taken, however, that the paper is really only comparing a
very limited portion of Europe over a fairly limited amount of time. It's an
interesting analysis, but I don't think it has enough data or broad enough
application to make it definitive.

------
ggillas
Explains the large number of hackathons we have these days: "...a ruler who
wanted to adopt the longbow had to create and enforce a culture of archery
through tournaments, financial incentives, and laws supporting longbow use to
ensure sufficient numbers of archers."

------
widdershins
I've only read the abstract, so I'm not sure if this is covered, but the
longbow requires huge amounts of practice from a young age to be effective.
You had to be incredibly strong just to draw the string. A crossbow, by
contrast, was easier to draw, and men could be trained to use it in a far
shorter time. English Kings had constant problems with procuring enough men
capable of using a longbow, passing all sorts of laws banning all sports
except archery etc. Perhaps the French simply couldn't find enough trained
men?

~~~
masklinn
> I'm not sure if this is covered, but the longbow requires huge amounts of
> practice from a young age to be effective.

It is covered, the paper lists a number of measure the English crown took to
force people to train with the longbow in their spare time.

> the French simply couldn't find enough trained men?

The French could have taken the same measures of mandating longbow ownership
and strongly "encouraging" longbow training (by setting up tournaments and
forbidding other types of leisure)

------
chernevik
It's an interesting paper but "politically stable" isn't the right term.

A population able to defeat the infantry technology of the time requires a
different social and legal position than one that doesn't have that ability.
That is, the government needs more cooperation and consent of the governed.
That government is stronger than other governments, because it can kill their
armies. But it is more dependent on that population and so cannot abuse it in
the same manner as those other, "weaker" governments.

------
mcv
A historian friend claims this is bollocks. England was not significantly more
stable, and the longbow was not a superweapon on its own. It was part of a
system of combat, of combined arms, involving knights fighting on foot and
choosing the right terrain.

And when they didn't have the right terrain, those English longbowmen also
lost plenty of battles. They had some spectacular victories at Crecy and
Agincourt, but they also had their fair share of losses.

Excellent weapon, but no silver bullet.

------
DougN7
Interesting discussion, including the comments below respecting how Barons
didn't necessarily want an armed populice because it made it harder for them
to stay in power. Does any of this sound familiar or applicable to today (gun
control debate)??

------
msh
I fail to see their references to support the claim that france or scotland
was more politically unstable.

Also how about the rest of european powers, I am not certain there is support
that england was the only politically stable entity is europe during the
middle ages.

~~~
ezzaf
Pages 699-702 address this in detail:

“The land (France) was divided into loose and shifting territories that owed
little or no allegiance to any central authority, ruled across large swathes
by noblemen who were little more than warlords”

and

"Flanders, too, had great autonomy from the French monarch and strong ties to
Germany and England (Sumption 1990, p. 35). In 1384 Flanders united with
Burgundy to create a principality in France that fell in and out of French
control for over a century."

and

"Most critically, (Scotland) was bitterly divided into three warring parts:
the English- speaking southeast, the Gaelic-speaking northwest, and the lands
that fell between"

There's a bunch more detail there along with references to the papers they
draw those conclusions from. I'd say they support that part of their argument
soundly.

~~~
arethuza
I think Scotland was split into a lot more than just three warring parts -
there were battles between clans up to the 17th century!

[NB This probably explains why we have such an incredible number of castles
here in Scotland.]

------
thesz
"We determined the true solution of medieval war puzzle. The medievals truly
had to reason just like we do. We cite no such reason in medieval literature
sources, just use indirect proofs that we are right."

A good reason to laugh, I guess.

------
hyperion2010
The Brits have had the advantage of a technologically superior political
system for a very long time. I usually make an argument that is quite similar
to this to explain their rapid and unprecedented rise to imperial splendor.

~~~
VeejayRampay
As far as Europe is concerned: Roman Empire? Charlemagne? Otto? How is the
British Empire "unprecedented" exactly? Is it a matter of scale?

~~~
hyperion2010
Tiny little island that lost most (all really) of its continental holdings by
1700. Compare with other continental empires.

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Justsignedup
tl;dr -- The longbow is worthless in most applications except military. The
monarchy made it compulsory to train in bow use, so anyone recruited for the
militia was ready in some shape or form to use the bow, so in a relatively
short amount of time anyone can be trained to use a longbow for battle. They
forced bow imports and kept prices very low throughout England.

The rest of the world couldn't enact such rules and thus could not make the
Longbow a successful military weapon. It required years of training, not
something you can do to a soldier who just got conscripted.

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jdlyga
Because France was playing Orc and researched lighter throwing axes instead.

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JoeAltmaier
Anybody going to draw a parallel between this, and modern gun-control efforts?
Or is that too contentious to be helpful in illuminating this centuries-old
issue.

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dmckeon
Here is a contemporaneous control effort:

 _We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers,
which is hateful to God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from
now on._

Canon 29, 2nd Lateran Council, held 1139, under Pope Innocent II

The council also forbade "jousts and tournaments". Apparently the original
text has not survived, so only secondary sources and translations are
available, some of which vary.

In any case, the prohibition appears to have been ineffective.

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wuschel
Interesting read of the introduction - and very good points. Perhaps yew was
also way too hard to come by / expensive for the Scottish?

Also, it does make sense that training long term military personel was
reserved to the ruling feudal class. Still, producing a longbow compatible
population (of strong, loyal) men might have had other costs then political
ones. Precision wise, a longbow is not a real tournament weapon - and you
needed tall, strong men to wield it.

~~~
masklinn
> Perhaps yew was also way too hard to come by / expensive for the Scottish?

One of the first point the paper makes is that the domestic supply of english
yew was of poor quality and way outstripped by the demand, and the country
imported yew from throughout continental Europe. So while yew availability may
have been an explanation for Scottland, it definitely wasn't for France.

> Still, producing a longbow compatible population (of strong, loyal) men
> might have had other costs then political ones. Precision wise, a longbow is
> not a real tournament weapon

The longbow is a tournament weapon if you set up longbow-only tournaments and
legally forbid other sport tournaments.

~~~
arethuza
Golf and football were actually forbidden in Scotland for a time in the 15th
century to try and encourage archery practice:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_in_Scotland#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_in_Scotland#Etymology)

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Agathos
It's nice to see the conventional wisdom confirmed for once, but... isn't this
the conventional wisdom?

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TeMPOraL
Is it? I always thought crossbows were _way_ more effective than longbows at
range and accuracy.

~~~
Agathos
I'm mostly thinking of the battle of Agincourt, which has long been celebrated
in the English-speaking world as the victory of the common man over the elite,
heavily armored knight, all thanks to the longbow.

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encoderer
If anybody wants to go more in depth on this I suggest A Distant Mirror.
Brilliant work.

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GarvielLoken
I thought this was going to be about the AH-64D Apache Longbow.

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camperman
Great paper. Nice to see the authors include Edward III's compulsory practice
longbow after church on Sundays for two hours.

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SFjulie1
Plain BS.

I learnt "canne d'arme and baton d'arme" the "fencing of the i-gnobles".

From feudality to absolute monarchy the raise of monarchy has been made at the
costs of "Jaqueries". Peasant revolts of the "non nobles" "ignobles" in latin
derived french.

The central control brought by the carolingien and then the bourbon as
resulted in strong traditions: knights and nobility are also a force to
squalsh revolts.

This and the dissolution of Lances towards "regular armies" after azincourt
defeat (longbow involved) has been used to cut the fraternity at arms between
feuds members. (Lances were like organic units of versatile men at arms doing
their best to bring everyone alive the local feud included).

The strength of the knight were enforced like in feodal japan, by preventing
the crowd to gain power.

For this, metal was considered the weapons of only knights.

Which means that when using the old franc laws for something as rude as
sullying a women in a church out of the accepted "traditions", the divine
judgement could be called ... a duel.

Needless to say peasants were not authorized to have metal ... officially.

So with all the jaqueries going on, you don't really want the peasants to have
weired ideas about efficient wooden weapons.

And still monarchy was a vast joke at this time and era, cousins of the royal
families were lending each others money, and were often tight by blood.

England had no interest to destroy the french society.

French kings had no real interest in defeating england. They were mainly
aiming for weakening the local suzerain. The feuds.

Of course it backfired. Louis XIV almost get killed during the "fronde".

