The Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward Read Free Book Online Page B

as they could not shoot from the saddle. It cannot be too much emphasized that all long-bowmen were essentially defensive troops who could only play a decisive part in a battle if they were attacked by an enemy advancing towards them over the right terrain.
    The long-bow and its murderous potential were so far unknown outside the British Isles. The favourite missile weapon of the French was the crossbow, a complicated instrument with a bow reinforced by horn and sinew; to draw it the crossbowman had to place his foot in the stirrup at the front end of the bow, fasten the string on to a hook on his belt, which meant crouching down by bending his knees and back, and then stand up, pulling the string until it could be engaged in the trigger mechanism. The crossbow had sights and fired small, heavy arrows known as quarrels. Its advantages were its longer range and greater accuracy and velocity, its disadvantages being its weight (up to 20 lbs) and slow rate of fire—only four quarrels a minute, at best.

    Long-bow
    Though various woods were used in their construction, yew was the best. Bows were made from the main trunk or from thick boughs. Under the scaly bark is a layer of white sapwood that withstands tension very well. Beneath this is the red heartwood that is resistant to compression and gives drive to the bow. It is the combination of these two characteristics that results in the excellence of yew for making bows. The maker, or bowyer, had to follow the run of the grain in the wood so as to leave a layer of the sapwood, about“ in thickness, on the outside of the heartwood. For this reason there are, almost invariably, irregularities in the curve of the yew long-bow.
    The left-hand drawing shows a section of yew split from the main trunk. The next sketch shows a part of the rough stave with the thin layer of sapwood left on the outer surface. The two limbs were tapered to give a smooth curve when the bow was drawn. Horn tips with notches—or nocks, as they were called—for the bowstring were fitted to the better bows, but alternatively grooves were cut into the wood. The length of bows varied from about 5’ 8” to about 6’ 4”.
    The arrows were about 30” in length and though many forms of head have been found, the so-called bodkin was generally accepted as the most deadly in warfare. It was basically a four-sided, case-hardened steel spike, as shown in the illustration. The string was of hemp with a spliced loop at one end and secured with a timber hitch at the other. The centre was served with thread to protect the strands from the abrasion of the arrow nock and from the fingers of the drawing hand, on which a leather shooting-glove was often worn.
    With a typical war bow, having a draw-weight of 80—100 Ib, the instantaneous thrust on the string at the moment it checks the forward movement of the two limbs when it is shot is in the order of 400 Ib, so it needed to have a breaking strain of about 600 Ib to allow an adequate safety margin. but they produced plenty of noise, flame and acrid black smoke.
    In addition King Edward seems to have had guns in 1346. This has been disputed, but the previous year he definitely ordered the manufacture of 100 ribaulds. The ribauld was a bundle of many small-bore tubes—a bit like the mitrailleuse of the 1870s—mounted on a cart. Such weapons were seldom lethal, except to those firing them,
    Edward’s army also included large numbers of light infantry, who were paid 2d a day. These scouts and skirmishers were Welsh, Cornish and even Irish ‘kern’, armed with dirks and javelins—‘certain rascals that went on foot with great knives’. Their speciality was creeping beneath the men-at-arms’ horses and stabbing them in the belly, though they seem to have spent most of their time cutting the throats of the enemy wounded.
    Crossbow
    A military crossbow, one of the types used in the latter half of the fourteenth century and during the fifteenth century. The length