Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

CHAPTER X.

MEDIÆVAL BOWMEN.

he archers of England were so famous during the Middle Ages that we feel special interest in knowing something about them. As early as the Conquest we find the Norman archers giving the invader a great advantage over the Saxons, who had not cultivated this arm with success. Their equipment and appearance may be seen in the Bayeux tapestry; most of them are evidently unarmed, but some are in armour like that of the men-at-arms. Usually the quiver hangs at the side; yet occasionally at the back, so that the arrows are drawn out over the shoulder; both fashions continued in later times. In one case, at least, an archer, in pursuit of the flying Saxons, is seen on horseback; but it may be doubted whether at this period, as was the case subsequently, some of the archers were mounted, or whether an archer has leaped upon a riderless horse to pursue the routed enemy. The bow was of the simplest construction, not so long as it afterwards became; the arrows were barbed and feathered. Each archer—in later times, at least—commonly carried two dozen arrows “under his belt.” He also frequently bore a stake sharpened at both ends, so that in the field, when the front ranks fixed their stakes in the ground with their points sloping outward, and the rear rank fixed theirs in the intermediate spaces, they formed a cheval de frise against cavalry, and, with the flanks properly cared for, they could hold their ground even against the steel-clad chivalry. Latterly also the archers were sometimes protected by a great movable shield; this they fixed upright by a rest, and behind it were sheltered from the adverse bowmen. The archer also carried a sword, so that he could defend himself, if attacked, hand to hand; or act on the offensive with the main body of foot when his artillery was expended. By the twelfth century there are stories on record which show that the English bowmen had acquired such skill as to make their weapon a very formidable one. Richard of Devizes tells us that at the siege of Messina the Sicilians were obliged to leave their walls unmanned, “because no one could look abroad but he would have an arrow in his eye before he could shut it.”

In the thirteenth century the archer became more and more important. He always began the battle at a distance, as the artillery do in modern warfare, before the main bodies came up to actual hand-to-hand fighting. We find in this century a regular use of mounted corps of bowmen and cross-bowmen; and the knights did not scorn to practise the use of this weapon, and occasionally to resort to it on a special occasion in the field. Some of the bowmen continue to be found, in the MS. illustrations, more or less fully armed, but the majority seem to have worn only a helmet of iron, and perhaps half armour of leather, or often nothing more than a woollen jerkin.

The cross-bow, or arbalest, does not appear to have been used in war until the close of the twelfth century. It was not equal to the long-bow in strong and skilful hands, because a powerful and skilful bowman, while he could probably send his shaft with as much force as a cross-bow, could shoot half-a-dozen arrows while the cross-bow was being wound up to discharge a second bolt; but still, once introduced, the mechanical advantage which the cross-bow gave to men of ordinary strength and of inferior skill caused it to keep its ground, until the invention of fire-arms gradually superseded both long-bow and arbalest. The bow of the cross-bow seems to have been usually of steel; some of them were strung by putting the foot into a loop at the end of the stock, and pulling the cord up to its notch by main force: an illustration of this early form appears in the arbalester shooting from the battlement of the castle in the early fourteenth-century illumination on p. 381, and another at p. 382; but the more powerful bows required some mechanical assistance to bring the string to its place. In a picture in the National Gallery of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Antonio Pollajuolo, of Florence, A.D. 1475, an arbalester has a cord attached to his belt, and a pulley running on it, with a hook to catch the bow-string, so that, putting his foot into the loop at the end of the stock, looping the end of the cord on to a hook at its butt, and catching the bow-string by the pulley, he could, by straightening himself, apply the whole force of his body to the stringing of his weapon. More frequently, however, a little winch was used, by which the string was wound into its place with little expenditure of strength. One of the men in the cut on the next page is thus stringing his bow, and it is seen again in the cut on p. 449. The arrow shot by the cross-bow was called a bolt or quarrel; it was shorter and stouter than an ordinary arrow, with a heavier head. The arbalester seems to have carried fifty bolts into the field with him; the store of bolts was carried by waggons which followed the army.

We have already said that there were, from the thirteenth century, bodies of mounted arbalesters. But the far larger proportion of archers, of both arms, were footmen, who were usually placed in front of the array to commence the engagement.

The arbalest, however, was more used on the Continent than in England; and hence the long-bow came to be especially considered the national arm of the English, while the Genoese became famous as arbalesters. The superior rapidity of fire gave the English archer the same advantage over his foemen that the needle-gun gave to the Prussians in the late war.

Later on, in the fourteenth century, the battle seems to have been usually begun by the great machines for throwing stones and darts which then played the part of modern cannon, while the bowmen were placed on the flanks. Frequently, also, archers were intermixed with the horsemen, so that a body of spearmen with archers among them would play the part which a body of dragoons did in more modern warfare, throwing the opposing ranks into confusion with missiles, before charging upon them hand to hand.

In the fourteenth century the bow had attained the climax of its reputation as a weapon, and in the French wars many a battle was decided by the strength and skill and sturdy courage of the English bowmen. Edward III. conferred honour on the craft by raising a corps of archers of the King’s Guard, consisting of 120 men, the most expert who could be found in the kingdom. About the same period the French kings enrolled from their allies of Scotland the corps of Scottish Archers of the Guard, who were afterwards so famous.