The English longbow was not a grassroots movement, it was a heavily subsidized centralized government project, and the "tradition" died out the same moment the funding dried up. None of it survived in the popular culture until the Victorian revival. Furthermore, when reading Acham's Toxophilus, there were no regional styles described, only personal faults. Not something you would expect in a "culture of shooting". Crossbows, on the other hand, proliferated during the high middle ages despite being explicitly banned, and the tradition very much survived in later periods in places like Flanders, Germany, Italy etc. What conclusions can be drawn from this?
>>18652347> heavily subsidized centralized government projectThat’s not how feudalism works, training of soldiers wasn’t centralized like a modern national army
>>18652384exactly, longbow was not a feudal phenomenon. english are always quick to note it was the victory of the common man (i.e. the citizen state) over the knight (i.e. feudalism), paving the way for the modernity as such
>>18652384Except in this case, it was. Training with the longbow was legally mandated and run by the government. England was unusually centralized by the standards of the day.
anyway, my conclusion is that modernism lasts only as long as there is funding, and the very moment Europe turns into a backwater again there won't be enough lamp posts to hang all the faggots and other spiteful mutants
It was grassroots though, but in Wales.
>>18652460extending the rights of God's children to dark hell-spawned demons was a mistake that will fix itself eventually
>>18652347idk wtf is the point you are trying to make. War bows were better than crossbows but were extremely physically taxing (and an overkill for hunting) so farmers would not voluntarily train with them. It's common knowledge, you aren't dropping any truthbombs here.
>>18652669if English had some genetic fondness of archery, as they like to sperg out, they could have continued practicing it for sport, like Koreans or Japanese or Turks etc. or balestrieri in Italy
>>18652727take it to /int/, slumdog
>>18652347You know ""english"" longbows were very often just southern french in the "english" army and that the kingdom of France trained their peasants the same way There's nothing unique about it and the "longbow" is just a mass produced bow
>>18652347>What conclusions can be drawn from this?Few, the assumptions aren't really accurate>subsidizedA bit>centralized government projectNot really, it functioned through mercenary companies, many of which were employed by the king/government but of course many not>tradition" died out the same moment the funding dried upAt about the time, in fact probably significantly after, that longbow tactics were obsolete with proliferation of cannon which they lost the final phase of the hyw to, gee I wonder why mercenaries didn't continue to hire themBut there was considerable attachment to the longbow still, I recall some galaxy brain theorists I think over a century after the hyw in england making a unit who strapped long bows to their pikes, which surprisingly turned out to make neither very effective pikemen or longbowmen, the english military at that point was a bit of a basket case and clung to longbows quite heavily
By the Late Medieval, feudal lords and knights began to actively avoid or resit doing their mandatory feudal military service. It was driven by a major shift in how medieval wars were fought and financed: scutage (taxation in place of service) and contract warfare.Under traditional feudalism, a lord or knight owed their king 40 days of unpaid military service per year in exchange for their land. By the 14th century, this system broke down for two key reasons:The 40-Day Problem: You cannot fight a multi-year campaign in France if your knights pack up and go home after six weeks. Kings needed year-round armies.Scutage ("Shield Money"): Kings began allowing (and preferring) knights to pay a tax called scutage instead of showing up in person.From the King's Perspective cash was far more useful than an unreliable, temporary feudal levy. With scutage revenue, monarchs could contract professional, long-term armies of mixed troops; combining archers, foot soldiers, and veteran men-at-arms paid on fixed daily wages.From the noble's perspective wealthier landowners often preferred staying on their estates to manage agricultural production and local politics, treating scutage as a simple cost of doing business.However, Knights didn't dissapear; they became professionals; the terms of their service simply changed. Rather than serving for free under feudal obligation, noblemen and knights signed military contracts (called indentures). They became paid commanders and elite heavy cavalry who fought for wages, loot, and lucrative ransom money. The rise of common soldiery was the result of kings using cash taxes (like scutage) to buy specialized, professional mass armies that could stay in the field indefinitely.
In 1360 both sides of the Hundred Years' War have had enough. The Treaty of Brétigny was signed and that's when the world changed. King Edward III of England and King John II of France ordered their armies to immediately evacuate fortresses and disband. Thousands, THOUSANDS of demobilized troops turned to their commanders and said: "NOPE". The war had been a massive engine of social mobility: Common archers, foot soldiers, and landless younger sons had spent decades, sometimes 30 years and had no home to return to. They had been looting gold and treasures, wearing fine clothes, and taking captives. They might have had captured a castle and be living like lords. So why would you go home?So, a new group of military commander emerge. Some stylized themselves as knights whether they had been knighted or not; They formed Free Companies (Compagnies Franches) or Routiers; fighting for neither lord, nor God, but for themselves. They were bands of robbers in a nightmarish scale, some times tens-of-thousands-strong. They swept terrorizing France's countryside. They captured castles and established organized extortion networks called patis. Entire towns and monasteries paid regular monthly fees to the companies just to avoid being burned to the ground. In late 1360, a coalition of routiers seized the castle of Pont-Saint-Esprit. They held the Pope effectively hostage in nearby Avignon, and extracted a massive ransom "a spiritually uplifting amount of money" in gold to vacate. The French crown tried to crush these rogue veterans by force, but a royal army sent against them was completely destroyed at the Battle of Brignais (1362).Because they couldn't be beaten easily, they resorted to exporting them across the Pyrenees to fight in the Castilian Civil War, or south into Italy, where wealthy city-states (like Florence, Milan, and Venice) paid top dollar for professional armies, giving rise to famous mercenary commanders like Sir John Hawkwood and his White Company.
AI slopped hallucinations. If you have nothing to say just don't say anything, jeet.
>>18653185Interesting
It may have been the result of a government effort to begin with, but it soon became a popular pastime. Longbows were used as late as the English civil war.>have set up a new Magazine without Norgate, onely for Bowes and Arrowes, which they intend to make muchuse of against our horse which they heare (though to their great griefe) doe make much increase: and that all the Bowyers, Fletchers and Arrow head makers that they can possibly get the imploy and set on worke there for that purpose. Also that the King hath two regiments of Bowes and Arrowes. It is therefore necessary, that no Arrow-heads be suffered to goe from London towards Newbery, or into any other parts where the Cavaliers may by any means come to achieve or surprise them. And it were to be wished, that the like provision were made by the Parliament here to get bowes and Arrowes (at least some for their Pikeman) it being not unknown what victories have been formerly atchieved in France and other parts by our English Bow-men> Besides the flying of the Arrowes are farre more terrible to the horse then bullets and doe much more turmoyle and vex them if they enterfew other cultures in Europe held this much reverence for the bow
>>18653234>few other cultures in Europe held this much reverence for the bowExcept every other culture i guess
>>18653251hungarians liked bows, I think
>>18653234Because medieval armour was optimized against them so only the most extreme longbows were worth it by that point.
The Civil Service was born to centralize the supply of arrows for longbowmen.
A force of 5,000 archers firing 10 arrows per minute burns through 50,000 arrows every single minute. Early feudal supply chains couldn't handle mass-producing millions of standardized shafts, iron bodkin heads, and goose-feather fletchings, nor could they transport them across enemy territory.
>>18652420Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. Just because something is written in law, doesn't mean that it was practiced and enforced. Based on historical records, we have no real idea if the crown was actively enforcing mandatory longbow training.
>>18653277the crossbow begins to seem relatively affordable once you start counting in the ammunition and how simpler bolts are than arrows, but most people grew up on rpg's so they have no clue
>>18653553*also the accuracy makes every bolt count
>>18653542There's enough records of shooting competitions among commoners, along with clear evidence of a pretty big pool of archers to draw from, that we know some noteworthy part of the population was indeed shooting.
>>18653621Yes, but we are talking about equipping thousands with millions of arrows. Logistics become very important here. Sometimes the cheapest, mass-produced, easily deployed solution is the right one when doing things at scale. This is the same logics as crossbowmen being more popular on the rest of continental Europe than bows, because training them was less hard even if a crossbow was a complex device.
>>18653739Bows were raping crossbowmen wherever they appeared until the advent of firearms, simple as.>bbutt - you need more ammo if you shoot five times as fast!!!!you don't say
>>18653757A skilled warbow archer required a lifetime of physical conditioning to pull draw weights over 100 lbs (often leaving physical deformations on their skeletons). In contrast, a raw recruit could become an effective crossbowman in just a few days, making crossbow armies vastly easier to field and maintain. Crossbows packed immense kinetic energy, could easily penetrate contemporary armor at moderate ranges, and allowed the shooter to hold a drawn shot indefinitely while aiming or hiding behind a pavise shield. In siege defense, naval warfare, and standard European clashes, crossbows were overwhelmingly preferred.Most bows are too low-powered. Standard self-bows, shortbows, and light composite bows were adequate against padded gambesons, leather, and open maille. However, they lacked the kinetic energy to dent or pierce hardened steel plates. Even heavy English longbows firing specialized steel-tipped bodkin arrows struggled against 15th-century plate armor.By the 15th and 16th centuries, the rapid defense capability of plate armor outpaced traditional bow technologyFirearms took over for the exact same reasons crossbows had been popular: cheap soldier training, high armor penetration, and ease of mass production. Traditional bows never pushed crossbows out of service.
>>18653770NTA but When you mean lifetime conditioning that also applies to any general strengths achieved in career by modern farmers, tradies and soldiers who lift every week without body building. It doesn't take too much training to draw as long as it's not something rare like 140lbs.
>>18653234Bows were only used sparingly during the English Civil War. The Double-armed man (the pikemen with a bow of your pic) was the brainchild of William Neade and was never put to practice safe for a single demonstration. And your qoute is from a parlamentary newspaper that did was newspapers do: selling a story. >>18653621There were multiple issued laws on the mandatory training with longbows precisely because the commoners didn't do it and the english crown feared to loose their supply of capable bowmen.>>18653757>Bows were raping crossbowmen wherever they appeared until the advent of firearms, simple as.Do you have any examples of this besides the Battle of Crécy, where the italian crossbowmen were deployed without their key equipment and their main supply of bolts?
>>18653984>Do you have any examples of this besides the Battle of Crécy, where the italian crossbowmen were deployed without their key equipment and their main supply of bolts?Everywhere around the world for millennia. It wasn't that the crossbows were some secret technology unknown beyond Europe (China had repeating crossbows btw); the bows were the main ranged weapon nevertheless.Crossbows did make a passable poor man's option.
>>18654054Go ahead and post a few battles where crossbows were out shot by archers, anon, we'll wait.
>>18654055>Battle of Dorylaion (1097)>Battle of Hattin (1187)>Battle of Arsuf (1191)>Battle of Poitiers>Battle of Blanchetacque>Campaigns of the Han Dynasty against the Xiongnu (2nd Century BCE – 1st Century CE)>Tang Dynasty Border Skirmishes with the Göktürks and Tibetans (7th – 8th Century CE)> Song Dynasty Wars against the Khitan (Liao), Jurchen (Jin), and Mongols (10th – 13th Century CE)
>>18654068cont btw, Benjamin Franklin once proposed that the Continental Army should be equipped with bows instead of firearms (the greatest war strategists he wasn't let's say) but notice that he didn't suggest _crossbows_. The superior position of a bow was beyond contention historically.
>>18652347The government support for Longbow training dried up as soon as the first early firearms became both effective and cheap enough for widespread military use; they were the superior weapon because even with lower range and a lower rate of fire at that point it didn't take years to train a guy to use one. Even after that there were elements within the British government and military calling for the longbow to be reinstated (at least for specialist units) well into the 1800's. >tl;dr, as usual OP doesn't know what he's talking about.
>>18654068>No>No>No>NoYou're an autistic with a bow fetish, aren't you?
>>18654135I swear it, at this point there are probably grown men out there gooning to Joe Gibbs
>>18654135I don't give much crap. I do dislike autists dropping their "truthbombs" tho (which for some strange reasons usually happen to be anti-historic, revisionist and of the gud bois dindu nuffin and the anglos were perfidious kind)
>>18654090Guns didn't have a lower range. They didn't have lower accuracy either, by the way.
>>18653542Some of the original Indentures (contracts of service) for the Agincourt campaign are viewable in the National Archive and they set out the pay and conditions agreed upon between the King and the different groups that signed on for his Army it appears that an Archer cost 20 marks a year while a man at arms cost 40 .
>>18654152Yeah, half of the fucking uk. >>18654179You're conflating "one side had crossbows and they lost" with "crossbows were out shot by longbows"Those are wildly different things. You could straight up swap the equipment of the two sides in those battles and very little would change.
