A weapon that's been mystified to the point that people make ridiculous claims about it. Like saying it only became obsolete in the late 19th century. The military writers of 16th century England actually wrote pretty damning things about the longbow and the sources go against what is pop knowledge on the weapon. Even the supposed supreme range of the longbow is attested to be a lie as military writers of the era write that it wasn't up to par with the latest military hardware such as the firearm on range and accuracy. And it's not only the English but also the French. The consensus on weapons test in the 16th century in accuracy and range in the range between the firearm, crossbow and longbow make it pretty clear that the firearm was just plain superior to the longbow. Of course these men weren't writing out of their ass. They all grew up in a period where the longbow was still in use so they got to experience it's downfall and write about it.
Alexander Garcia
Yes.
Angel Taylor
>The longbow is obsolete Try saying that to Mad jack's face.
Nathaniel Miller
Yes. I've even read fanboys on Veeky Forums claim it could knock an armoured knight from his horse, like what the fuck.
Thomas Stewart
Im pretty sure a warbow could dent low quality steel/iron armour of that age. A significant dent would result in fucked ribs.
Ethan Watson
no. >ridiculous claims Such as? >inb4 second hand information Can you name a few of the writers who didn't like the longbow? It was easy to make, arrows were easy to create, it was an 'honorable' weapon (any peasant can pick up a crossbow), it could penetrate common armor, it was very accurate, it had a long range. >hurr durr guns had longer range They had shit accuracy before rifling and they required machining. Longbows and longbowmen could be fielded from a village. Also high rate of fire would rip apart gunmen.
Mason Harris
The longbow was a great weapon, in its time. The longbow was the decisive weapon of many of England's greatest victories and even non-English writers praised English archers.
The problem was that English archers could only win in one way. They took a defensive position and used their superior range to force the enemy to come to them. Once longer-ranged handguns and artillery came along in the 16th century, the longbow was quickly relegated to a cheap weapon for the untrained militia that rarely saw use outside of peasant rebellions.
Nonetheless, the longbow has mystique as a superman weapon because the skill required to use one is so overexaggerated.
Levi Torres
>>inb4 second hand information >Can you name a few of the writers who didn't like the longbow? OP is probably refering to soldiers like Humphrey Barwick, Barnabe Riche, Robert Barrett, and Sir Roger Williams. You can find their books on EEBO or look on bowvsmusket.com for the relevant passages.
Luke Russell
>Such as? >Like saying it only became obsolete in the late 19th century.
>Can you name a few of the writers who didn't like the longbow? "The commentaries of Messire Blaize de Montluc, mareschal of France" by Blaize de Montluc (1500-1577) "A breefe discourse, concerning the force and effect of all manuall weapons of fire and the disability of the long bowe or archery" by Humfrey Barwick (1592) "A briefe discourse of vvarre" by Sir Roger Williams (1590) "The arte of vvarre Beeing the onely rare booke of myllitarie profession" by William Garrard (1591) "A right exelent and pleasaunt dialogue, betwene Mercury and an English souldier" by Barnabe Rich (1574) "The theorike and practike of moderne vvarres discoursed in dialogue vvise." by Robert Barret (1598)
>They had shit accuracy before rifling and they required machining. Longbows and longbowmen could be fielded from a village. Period sources state the opposite. Example Humfrey Barwick joined the english army in in the mid 16th century back when the longbow was still commonly used and wrote that 2-3 times a week his commander held a trial of arms involving bows, crossbows, and firearms which apparently left little doubt that the latter were more accurate. When it arrived in china, Qi Jiguang wrote that on the practice field the musket regularly hit the target up to five times more often than the bow and arrow did.
>Also high rate of fire would rip apart gunmen. Yet this was not the case when longbowmen met gunmen. Read the accounts on when French handgunners met English longbowmen. They got torn apart.
Colton Turner
It's just the English mythologizing themselves and the hundreds year war (which they lost). America does the same shit with guns, like the colt revolver.
Parker Price
Also to add to the shit accuracy part. The reason the "effective range" of muskets was generally considered so short is firstly in part due to experience in the field. If on the practice field 50% of a volley struck a battallion-sized target at 100 yards, then in actual combat when soldiers are stressed by the noise, shouting, and bullets flying over their heads then the actual accuracy generally dropped to less than 5% at the same distance. We don't have nearly as much information about how the accuracy of arrows is affected in combat, but the idea that a weapon far more complicated to aim would retain its more of it's accuracy in combat than a musket would is pretty far fetched.
Charles Jenkins
Dude finished off nazis with a sword and managed to kill one with a barbed arrow . It's confirmed... It says he also carried and played bagpipes.
Alexander Thompson
Do we even know if the longbow ever existed? I've read historians claim all bows have been longbows in medieval Europe and the English owe their success to changes in tactics and not technology.
Grayson Powell
Also missed this part
>It was easy to make I don't know about easy to mak but in Tudor England it was cheaper than switching over to firearms since regulations were in place that ensured longbows stayed cheap. A caliver was twice the price of a good quality bow on average. A musket 3 times the price. Which is also worth brining up that the training aspect wouldn't have been a factor in 16th century England as England still had a pool of archers due to laws set in place.
> it could penetrate common armor, it was very accurate, it had a long range. Accounts from the fighting around Boulogne seem to indicate that the English archers were now being badly "outgunned" by French infantry. According to one Welsh captain, "I never saw Welshmen or Englishmen so bad hearted or so unventuresome as I saw at this time. Not a single one of them would dare to go near where the handguns were shooting at us." Humfrey Barwick, an Englishman who had spent his youth learning archery before being given an arquebus when he joined the army, claimed that "I did never see or hear, of any thing by them don with their long bowes, to any great effect. But many have I seene lye dead in divers skirmishes and incounters [from harquebus and pistol bullets] . . ." From the French side veteran Blaise de Monluc noted that there was a fair amount of respect for the English and their bravery when the conflict began, but after skirmishing with them for a while, he concluded that there was little to fear since the english carried "arms of little reach" compared to the French harquebusiers and they could be made to turn their backs "with as great facility as any Nation that ever I saw". According to another Englishman, Robert Barret, ." . . the wars are much altered since the fierie weapons first came vp: the Cannon, the Musket, the Caliuer and Pistoll. Although some haue attempted stifly to maintaine the sufficiencie of Bowes, yet daily experience doth and will shew vs the contrarie."
Jace Bennett
He was supposedly kinda upset about the surrender: " If it weren't for the damn Yanks we could have kept the war going for another 10 years!" Dudes like the highlander, an crazy warroir born too late in history.
Carson Hill
I've read that the longbow pattern was the most common kind of bow all over northern/western Europe for a long time. There wasn't anything technologically impressive about it. The English "innovation" was having a majority of the army carry them in a time when contact weapons were still generally favored in Europe.
Gabriel Turner
it's not the weapon itself, it's the way the troops used it against the french the longbow in itself is not that strong
John King
...
Matthew Brooks
There has been combat kills done with katana in WW2 as well, doesn't mean it wasn't obsolete.
Ayden Bailey
>it was very accurate, it had a long range
Negative on both accounts. An unsighted bow shooting handmade arrows is about as accurate as a well-patched smoothbore musket, but a musket ball will stay deadly at a longer range than an arrow.
Not to mention that as archers get tired, they not only shoot slower but with less energy. If a harquebusier gets tired, he just reloads slower.
Justin Lopez
It was a really good weapon for defensive positions. See the battle of Aljubarrota, before the portuguese jump in goind mad, the english longbow archers did an excellent job killing wave after wave of castilians knights and men at arms.
Connor Clark
Interestingly enough, it is an Anglo thing, no one in continental Europe gives a shit about longbows, but for millions of merimutts it's like the only history they will ever know.
Nolan Morgan
The western equivalent to a katana would be a falx, obviously.
Right? Same blade, point just faces opposite direction, ya? West is the opposite of Ea...
Hurr hrr, I'll go ahead and kill myself now. Probably with a longbow...
But in all srsness, aside from the "longbow = gud range k", I haven't heard nuttin bout no longbows being fapped to in the manner you describe. I can't recall anywhere anybody going "longbows>firearms".
I can think of one instance off the top of my head however, of katanas appearing in art and defeating firearms (SC2, Mitsurugi slapping minie balls with a katana and cuttin fools).Anecdotal evidence for sure, but am pretty sure longbows aren't getting any sick play like that in any media form.
Katanas are fkn hot. Hot-tanas.
>Of course these men weren't writing out of their ass. They all grew up in a period where the longbow was still in use so they got to experience it's downfall and write about it.
Also, just curious, who are "these men"?
Jack Thomas
>Also, just curious, who are "these men"? Also, who am I?
Jordan Perez
It’s not mythisised it’s just well known that longbow can work wonders with given the right commander and use with dismounted knights and a few spearmen. The English victories come from forcing the enemy to squeeze into a narrow front to avoid archer fire, thus that small amount of dismounted knights is actually very effective The victory against the Scots was effectively because of claustrophobia Also the early musket wasn’t a wonder weapon because of the large supply line it needed, and how it was almost impossible to use in wet weather, whilst longbows had the possibility of snapping in the rain, unlike the recurve short bow which disintegrated because of all the glues involved
Zachary Johnson
>any peasant could pick up a longbow No it required years of training to be reliably shot in battle and twisted the spine of its user because of how much force it used. It was used by lower middle class gentry because it was more affordable than armour, arms and their training
Noah Lopez
you are not from here
Jaxson Hernandez
Well, the arrow could kill the horse.
Jason Cruz
Misconceptions about the longbow arise because it was as much about the bowman as the weapon. Few alive today can draw a 200 lb warbow, you would have to be trained from infancy to do so.
Liam Collins
> Also high rate of fire would rip apart gunmen
Then why did the jannisaries, arguably the most elite archers in Europe of the 16th century, abandon their top tier composite bows in favor of Italian style arquebuses?
Henry Edwards
>Not to mention that as archers get tired, they not only shoot slower but with less energy. If a harquebusier gets tired, he just reloads slower.
This was a massive part of why the crossbow and especially arquebuses became the standard for most armies. Campaigning is harsh, dangerous and bad for your health, and soldiers face all kinds of problems that weaken their performance on the battlefield. A good archer doesn't just need to be able to draw a full-sized warbow, but he needs to be able to do so whan he's tired, starving, up to his shins in freezing mud and suffering from dysentery, and easy enough that he can still aim at least vaguely at the enemy. Crossbows and guns are just much easier to use in these conditions.
Joshua Collins
those are almogavars who BFTO everyone they met. See "The catalan company"
Christopher Garcia
Longbows existed for a long time. What made English longbowmen special was their training. The reason English armies had lots of longbowmen was because they were cheaper than proper men at arms.
Also one thing that longbow didn't have compared to the muskets was the noise and the smoke. People forget that most battles in the middle ages had less than 10% casualty rates,and most of those happened while the army was routing. So all you had to do in order to win a battle was to make the other army flee, and few things make people panic like massed musker fire does
Blake Harris
>a 120lb draw weight bow could not possibly knock a man charging at full-gallop towards the arrow off his horse
David Mitchell
are you retarded
Jacob Gray
No, he is just uneducated.
Zachary Jenkins
by the 16th century the longbow had had its day its true, but then by the 15th century everyone including the british were adopting guns in ever increasing numbers.
but during its heyday the longbow in english hands and using the proper tactics played a key role in repeatedly defeating numerically superior french armies, as well as english mercenary archers being fairly sought after in such areas as italy
if you were writing about a SMLE in 1914 you would think it was a great weapon, if you were writing in 1955 you would think it had been a great weapon.
the mythologising of the longbow comes from its heyday and the unfortunate habit of modern times of treating a long period of history that showed significant change and development in military tactics and technology as one homogeneous period, when in reality the longbows period of true success was from the 1200s to about 1450 at most and by the 1500s - arguably not even the medieval period anymore- it was becoming obsolete.
Jose Jackson
What the fuck is this post even saying?
Jason Morgan
REDDIT
SPACING
OUT
Sebastian Peterson
Hahaha yeah alright
Luke Lopez
...
Tyler Price
The padding and hauberkunderneath would easily dissipate the shot. Especially if it was plate armor as well, at the force of the arrow would spread across the entirety of the plate evenly(ish) even if it was low quality.
Cooper Davis
No because it is not fetishized in any country other than the guys jerking off to the fact that they had such amazing sticks with strings
Lincoln Watson
>he lists a bunch of material by authors who can't even spell
Nice sources, retard.
Mason Roberts
Lol
Kevin Miller
Remember, the starving English cannibalized the French prisoners at Agincourt.
Noah Young
Time to read up on the historical method you utter uneducated twat
Wyatt Sanders
Yes they found some in the wreckage of the Mary Rose
Ryder Martinez
is that goatse Satan?
Oliver Moore
Funnily enough, Sir John Smythe claims that longbowmen could stop the charge of heavy infantry unsupported. John Smythe was one of the biggest advocators of the longbow in the 16th century but he didn't have the experience of the other veterans. He fought in Eastern Europe and he was regarded as a bit of a loon.
Not really. A longbow is also unusable in the rain since it will mess up the glue.
Barwick once tried to impress French soldiers with tales of longbowmen, he was in service of France as an English mercenary, but the French weren't having it. They said that the weakest of them was stronger than the strongest of them. Barwick pretty much grew a very low opinion of the longbow through his military career.
Jaxson Garcia
Not heavy infantry. Heavy cavalry.
Carson Allen
the english longbow was made from a solid piece of wood
David Gomez
This extra energy expenditure was what ultimately led to the English army consuming the French prisoners at Agincourt.
Levi Wright
MUH CRECY MUH TWO FINGERS CAN KILL AT A HUNDRED YARDS
William Green
Until it rained, suddenly the bow didn't seem so bad over early firearms
Josiah Bennett
>What is a wet bowstring
Daniel Carter
A wet bowstring with always perform better than wet or even damp powder
Asher Taylor
>what is fat and beeswax
Zachary Watson
Archeryfag here, fucking stub your toe you dim cunt. Worse that happens to new sparks is slapping the forearm and not being able to get full draw.
