Bowmen of England

by Donald Featherstone

  ‘And in special, at the first moustre, every archere shall have his bowe and arrowes hole, that is to wytte, in arrowes xxx or xxiv at the least, headed and in a sheaf. And furthermore, that every archere do sweare that his bowe and arrowes be his own, or his mastyres or captaynes. And also that no man ones moustered and admitted as an archere, alter or change himself to any other condition, without the Kinge’s special leave, upon payne of imprisonment.’

  Poachers and outlaws in Sherwood Forest were offered a pardon on condition they served in the King’s army as archers. This was not simply a general or meaningless pardon either; the offence for which each man was pardoned is specified, clear indication of the value put upon them. These criminals (like their descendants in Wellington’s Peninsula army) amply vindicated England’s fighting capacity by gaining a notable victory at Halidon Hill in 1333. When it is considered just how serious poaching was viewed in those days, the pardoning comes into its correct perspective. Brief examination and a speedy fate awaited the luckless Saxon who loved a buck’s haunch more than he feared the penalties of the forest law, or whose wife and children’s piteous pleading for food spurred him to venture forth with bow and arrow amid the trees. A caballistic verse reveals the suspicious circumstances that could bring summary justice to the unfortunate man:

  ‘Dog draw,

  Stable stand,

  Black berond,

  Bloody hand.’

  Thus is indicated the four evidences by which, according to the old feudal laws, a man was convicted of deer-stealing. The first relates to an offender caught in a forest, drawing after a deer with a hound in leash; the second to him caught with a bent bow ready to shoot; the third to bearing away the venison on his shoulders and the fourth to him merely found with hand stained with blood.

  Edward the Confessor’s Red Book contains the following caution:

  ‘Omnis homo abstest a venariis meis, super poenam vitae.’ (Let every man refrain from my hunting grounds on pain of death.)

  A nearby tree would form a ready gallows, his own bowstring the halter by which they strangled him like a hound.

  Realising that the necessary skill with the longbow could only be reached with constant and unremitting practice, the strictest means were taken to ensure that every able-bodied man got in his hours of practice shooting. Peers and churchmen were privileged by law, but no other persons, aliens excepted, could absent themselves from the public exercise ground without incurring what was then considered a serious penalty. So the independent franklin, the wealthy yeoman, the rude peasant and the unwashed artisan all congregated, distinction of rank lost sight of for the time, and adroitness alone giving title to superiority. The ancient public butts were so thronged with archers, particularly at holiday times, that they raked up the surrounding turf by the very arrows that missed, in such a manner that the grass would not grow again in the same spots. The continual tramping of feet as the bowmen circulated about the marks also contributed to destroy the turf and vegetation. In the vicinity of the large and populous towns the concourse must have been enormous and for this reason the archer used but a single arrow when practising. Besides the impossibility of getting in a second shot amid such confusion, he found it necessary to hurry away to the opposite butt in order to catch up his shaft before it was stolen or trodden under foot.

  Notwithstanding all this activity, King Edward I complained by letter to the Sheriff of London that archery had fallen into a grievous condition; he said that skill with the bow was put aside in favour of useless sports and commanded that hereinafter the Sheriff should see to it that such idle practices were abandoned and that leisure time upon holidays should be spent in the noble recreation of archery.

  It fell to Edward III to reap the full benefit of English bowmanship, but his grandfather, seen complaining above, planted and fostered in such a way the seed. Even before his first Welsh war, in 1277 Edward showed his interest in the Welsh longbow; in that year a special force of 100 picked men of Macclesfield in the King’s own lands, were purely archers unmixed with spearmen. They served from the first day of the war, which broke out later in that year, to the very last day at the then extraordinary wage of 3d. per day; whereas the other infantry came up only for short periods. The only other purely bow-armed force of this war came from Gwent and Crickhowell and that, too, served for a longer time than usual.

  The early fourteenth century saw the evolution of a coherent military practice which used in a single tactical scheme the distinctive power of archery, the defensive solidarity of dismounted men-at-arms and, when necessary, the offensive power of mounted troops. Edward had discovered, or comprehended what was already apparent, first the virtues of archery in attack to break up a defensive infantry formation and, second, its power in defence when based on array of dismounted knights and men-at-arms. A beginning was made in the Welsh wars: at Orewin Bridge in 1282 and at Maes Maydog in 1295, the first against the men of Prince Llewelyn, who prepared to stand their ground in a defensive position. The English advanced against them, archers interposed with cavalry – the arrows inflicting sufficient loss on the Welsh troops to cause them to loosen their cohesion and fall into comparative disorder so that the cavalry were able to ride them down. In the second battle, near Conway, the Earl of Warwick used the same tactics. A contemporary report says:

  ‘The Welsh on the earl’s approach, set themselves fronting his force with exceeding long spears, which, being suddenly turned toward the earl and his company with their ends placed in the earth and their points upwards, broke the force of the English cavalry. But the earl well provided against them, by placing archers between his men-at-arms, so that by these missive weapons those who held the lances were put to rout.’

  In later battles with the other hereditary enemy, the Scots, the effectiveness of combined archery and cavalry action against immobile infantry formations was shown. Such were the beginnings of the use of English infantry to be a power in war; the seventy years which followed the opening of Edward’s Welsh wars saw striking developments both in military organisation and tactics. Both led to the same culmination – those English victories which astonished Europe in the opening stages of the Hundred Years War. It remained for Edward I in his later campaigns, and for his grandson Edward III, to get the English to become expert in the use of the longbow by practice, and to learn to act as a disciplined corps. Yet even after the Battle of Halidon Hill the English had no military reputation whatsoever. Jehan le Bel is quite explicit in showing that their triumph at Crécy came as a complete surprise to the whole of Continental Europe.

  Chapter 3

  The Armies of the English and the French

  In spite of having a population three or four times larger than that of England, France was never able, until the latter stages of the Hundred Years War, to put into the field an army capable of standing up to the English forces. There were a number of factors responsible for this, but mainly it can be laid down to superior English methods of recruitment, allied to the fact that they could command from time to time both Welsh and Irish troops; this was only slightly offset by bodies of Scots under French command. For the first part of the war, England, like France, constituted their army on a feudal basis, backed by the National Militia (the Fyrd). Edward III revolutionised this system by instituting a method of organisation that was certainly the most significant development in the history of the English army in the late Middle Ages. From the campaign of 1341 Edward III had replaced the old feudal levy with a system of written indentured contracts between the Crown and the captains of armed retinues, a method of raising paid professional soldiers for service in the field that was to remain until the end of the Hundred Years War.

  By these means a commander contracted with the King to provide a specified force for military service; the force generally being of all arms such as men-at-arms, mounted and foot archers and foot spearmen. The indenture laid down precisely the size and the composition of the force, its rates of pay, the place of assembly
together with its obligations and privileges. The length of service varied, the shortest period being the traditional forty days and the longest time was normally one year, after which a man took his discharge or signed on again for a further period. The English army had lifted itself from the dragging chains of the feudal system to become a paid, professional short-service army in which the mounted noble and the yeoman archer served overseas at the King’s wage. It was a highly trained and disciplined mercenary army; a soldier drawing regular pay for his services is more amenable to discipline than the man dependent on looting and plunder. Edward’s army was the most powerful and highly trained force of its day.

  France, on the other hand, never succeeded, or even tried, to rid herself of the feudal system of raising troops until the closing years of the war. Her army was the usual feudal host, composed of a heterogeneous collection of lords all claiming equality with the other, backed by jealous retainers – all subject to the slenderest control by the Constable of France. The old conceptions remained, infantry were scorned and the knights not only regarded themselves as the backbone of the army but considered that they were the army! The usual local levies produced ill-trained infantry who were strengthened by foreign mercenaries such as the Genoese crossbowmen, and occasionally aided by bodies of courageous Scots carrying on, in different fields, their perpetual struggle with the English. At the very beginning of the war Crécy proved the stock example of French disdain for any form of co-operation between aristocratic cavalry and all other despised arms, it was a lesson that France took nearly a century to learn.

  In spite of the length of the war there were surprisingly little changes or developments in arms, armament or method of fighting, with the sole exceptions of artillery, which showed marked progress in power and effectiveness, and in armour, which gradually changed from mail to plate. In the matter of arms and armament the soldiers of both countries were not dissimilar. Both sides had men-at-arms (knights were men-at-arms but men-at-arms were not necessarily knights) armed similarly with sword, lance, dagger and sometimes battle-mace, helm, shield and spurs completing the equipage. The knight had three armed attendants, who might be pages to clean and polish his armour, help him in and out of it, hold his horse and assist him to mount; they also groomed the horse; then he had two mounted archers and one swordsman; the whole constituting a ‘Lance’. He also had three or four horses, including two heavy chargers (destriers). Men-at-arms were covered in armour from top to toe (cap à pie), but as the development was in a stage of transition in the fourteenth century, it is difficult to describe their equipment with certainty. The increase in plate-armour reduced the mobility of the man-at-arms as it reduced the effectiveness of the arrow. They do not seem to have been great horsemen. It is recorded that sometimes they were tied to the saddle; but the horses were undoubtedly difficult to manoeuvre – the bits were too weak, the cumbrousness of the saddle and the weight of the armour were obstacles to good horsemanship. From the end of the thirteenth century the horses themselves wore defensive armour. To protect its head the horse wore a chanfron, whilst the neck was covered with a crinet with mail attachment. The front of the horse’s body was protected by the peytral, its sides by the flanchards and its rear by the crupper. A strong horse had no difficulty in carrying this defensive covering which in the later stages of its development only weighed just over seventy pounds, including saddle and mail.

  The shield gradually became obsolete owing to the effectiveness of plate-armour and its ineffectiveness against cannon-balls. Briefly, armour improved slowly from about the middle of the thirteenth century when mail was worn, with a flat-topped barrel helm; then from about 1280 it was reinforced with plate and the helm was ‘sugar-loaf; from 1300 there was further plate reinforcement, and a visored helm (the great bascinet), and in the fifteenth century complete plate-armour was common – this was undoubtedly the finest period of armour.

  There is plenty of evidence in the chronicles of the French wars that if men-at-arms, covered completely in plate, advanced against English bowmen without their too-vulnerable horses then they would stand at least some chance of coming to handstrokes. When a body of fully armoured men-at-arms plodded with bent heads into the storm of arrows, however powerfully the shafts struck the hard, smooth, curved surfaces of the armour, they would glance off unless they found lodgement where plate overlapped plate. There were no exposed joints except for the weak spots at the shoulder where the spandlers met the armholes of the breastplate. Realising this, the English archers often fired at the face and throat, so that, when the man-at-arms unwarily lifted his visor or removed his gorget during a hot day, he often received a shaft in this most vulnerable spot. Chroniclers claim that few men who lifted their visors in battle ever lived to close them again! Later, at Towton during the Wars of the Roses, Lord de Clifford, faint with pain, heat and thirst, took off his gorget – instantly an arrow passed through his neck and killed him.

  However, if the arrows did not penetrate the armour their effects were such as though they did, for the presence of archers in the field eventually compelled the French to advance on foot. Though plate-armour is not much heavier than mail, and is most flexibly jointed, it is not meant for marching in. The necessity of having to trudge a mile or more, often uphill or over ploughed land or through long grass and scrub (as at Mauron in 1352 and at Poitiers in 1356), and to fight at the end of it, was almost as devastating to the French men-at-arms as having his horse shot from under him. More often than not, he died in either case. It is most marked that in all the English victories during the Hundred Years War it was always the French who attacked and trudged up the hills in their armour. The English quietly stood about, waiting in their strong, carefully chosen defensive positions, perfectly fresh for combat when the exhausted Frenchmen came to grips with them.

  And that was not all. In having to face the deadly shafts of the English longbowman the men-at-arms had to suffer the extremely bewildering and nerve-racking effect of the deadly missiles hissing and humming past them, smacking on their armour and ricocheting off it. Few soldiers have had to face arrows and musket-balls at the same time, but the evidence of those who have (in India with Clive) unanimously agree that the arrows were more demoralising than the balls.

  When the French attacked on horse it was their practice to pack their men-at-arms into a close and solid mass; until the moment of action there was only sufficient space allowed for each horse to turn in its own ground. But for the actual attack ranks and files closed up as tightly as possible to maintain a compact array so that it was recorded that an apple thrown into the middle of attacking French knights would not have reached the ground. These methods played into the hands of the English archer, who, even if he was not always able completely to prevent the French attack striking home, was able so to decimate its ranks that it was weak and disordered when it reached the English position. A man-at-arms was not a headlong galloping cavalier, his attack could not be very rapid unless it was made in disorder; it was shock-action, but shock of a ponderous column moving at a moderate rate.

  The words put into the mouths of his fictional characters by Conan Doyle give a reasonable idea of the character and courage of the French soldiers, besides illustrating the difference between the peasant classes of the two countries.1

  ‘The French are … very worthy men. We have had great good fortune in France, and it hath led to much bobnance and camp-fire talk, but I have ever noticed that those who know the most have the least to say about it. I have seen Frenchmen fight both in open field, in the intaking and the defending of towns or castlewicks, in escalados, camisades, night forays, bushments, sallies, outfalls and knightly spear-runnings. Their knights and squires, lad, are every whit as good as ours, and I could pick out a score of those who ride behind Du Guesclin who could hold the lists with sharpened lances against the best men in the army of England. On the other hand, their common folk are so crushed down with gabelle, and poll-tax, and every manner of cursed tallage, that
the spirit has passed right out of them. It is a fool’s plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war. If the nobles had not conquered the poor folk it is like enough that we should not have conquered the nobles. The men of the law are strong in France as well as the men of war. By my hilt! I hold that a man has more to fear there from the ink-pot of the one than from the iron of the other. There is ever some cursed sheepskin in their strongboxes to prove that the rich man should be richer and the poor man poorer. It would scarce pass in England but they are quiet folk over the water.’

  The English infantry consisted of archers and foot spearmen; the latter were mostly from Wales. Although the longbow originated in that country, it soon crossed the border and first Cheshire men and then archers of other counties were armed with it; all the archers in Edward III’s army were Englishmen. Edward III created a mounted archer corps in 1334, but foot archers were almost indistinguishable from mounted archers once the battle began. Both were similarly armed with a longbow, sword and dagger, both wore breastplates or padded hauberks and a steel cap; spearmen were similarly attired except that they seldom wore breastplates. The archers could discharge the longbow six times a minute at an effective range of 250 yards with an extreme range of 350 yards. French archers were armed with the crossbow, more powerful than the longbow but four arrows could be fired in the time it took to discharge one bolt. Usually used by Genoese mercenaries, it was more inaccurate and had a shorter range.

  Little was heard of artillery in field operations, only surprise reaction being claimed for the cannon that Edward carefully nursed all the way to Crécy. But in siege operations the power of the cannon was steadily increasing, so that in the last years of the war it had a predominating effect in securing the surrender of defended towns and castles.