“Straight he uncased his polished bow, his spoil
Won from a mountain ibex, which himself,
In ambush lurking, through the breast had shot
True to his aim, as from behind a crag
He came in sight, prone on the rock he fell;
With horns of sixteen palms his head was crowned;
These deftly wrought, a skilful workman’s hand
Had polished smooth, and tipped the ends with gold.
He bent, and resting on the ground his bow,
Strung it anew.
His quiver then withdrawing from its case,
With care a shaft he chose ne’er shot before,
Well-feathered messenger of pangs and death.
The stinging arrow fitted to the string,
At once the sinew and the notch he drew:
The sinew to his breast, and to the bow
The iron head: then, when the mighty bow
Was to a circle strained, sharp rang the horn
And loud the sinew twanged, as toward the crowd
With deadly speed the eager arrow sprang.”
—Iliad, iv. 119.
An antique Greek drawing of the time of Theseus has been already referred to, whereon is an Amazon with a drawn bow, the arrow-head being barbed. Agathias, writing in the seventh century, says that the Franks did not use this weapon in war, but it is mentioned in the capitularies of Charlemagne, and there is evidence that it was not uncommon among both Anglo-Saxons and Danes. It was pre-eminently an English weapon of war, though used also in the chase in that and other countries, and was remarkable for range and sureness of aim, as well as for penetrative force. The Germanic nations applied it mainly in the chase, the Saxons especially using a short bow. An illustration occurs in a MS. in the Cotton Library.[41] The English archer became justly famous under the Norman kings, and it was first under them that the bow assumed great importance as a weapon of war. Bowmen in England at this time wore a leathern jacket, which was afterwards adopted by the French and called a “jacque d’Anglois.” On the Bayeux tapestry only one single bowman appears among the Saxon array, while there are several shown among the Norman ranks; these bows are short and thick, and arrows with barbed tips. Harold’s eye was pierced by an arrow, and but for this the Normans would hardly have won the battle. Richard I. was himself an adept in the use of the longbow, and it was the leading weapon of our armies at Creçy and Agincourt; and indeed continued to be so well into the “renaissance.” It will be remembered that at Flodden the Scottish king was killed by an arrow, and this battle may be said to have been the latest won mainly by the longbow.
The proper length of the English longbow was about the archer’s height, say between five feet six inches to six feet, with a bend of nine inches; and those made from the bough of a yew were preferred; but as yew trees were scarce, bowyers were enjoined by Act of Parliament to make four bows of “witch-hazel,” ash or elm, to one of yew; and no persons under seventeen years of age, with certain exceptions, were permitted to shoot with a yew bow, under a penalty of six shillings and eightpence. This Act of Parliament was repealed in Elizabeth’s reign. The string was either of silk or hemp, twisted or plaited, but always round where the notch of the arrow was placed. The shaft was drawn by two or sometimes three fingers to the head, and always towards the ear, when shot at short marks; but towards the breast when used at long ranges. The archer kept both eyes open, and looked only at the object aimed at, holding his weapon perpendicularly. Part of the light cavalry in the thirteenth century consisted of mounted archers. During the reign of Henry VIII. hand-guns had greatly superseded the use of the longbow, but the king himself was a skilful archer. The archer carried his sheaf of arrows, consisting of twenty-four, in his belt; the length was a clothyard shaft, feathered or plain at the base, and tipped usually with a sharp, but sometimes barbed head. These heads were of iron, pointed with steel. The archer wore a leathern wrist-guard, called a bracer, to avoid hurt by the recoil of the string. The arrow with feathers from a goose’s wing was the “broad arrow,” first used as a regal badge by King Richard I. The plain pile, without feathers, was considered to penetrate better. Henry V. enacted that the Sheriffs of Counties were to take six wing feathers from every goose for feathering arrows. Arrows of ash were preferred. They were about thirty-two inches long, and usually tipped with a sharp unbarbed head.
Any ordinary English archer would rarely miss an object the size of a man at 250 yards; and he could discharge his weapon twelve times a minute. The extreme range of a bow was “from sixteen to twenty score yards;” in fact, a “bow-shot” seems to have been used to express a distance of 400 yards, and the minimum range for archery contests was usually 220 yards.
It was the first duty of the archers in battle to send clouds of arrows against charges of cavalry, so as to disorganise their formation by killing or wounding as many of the horses of the opposing host as possible, thus causing confusion in the enemy’s ranks by rendering many riders hors de combat, and though rarely able to pierce a harness of proof, the arrows often found an interstice in the armour. Since the thirteenth century the armies of England maintained large numbers of mounted archers in their ranks, the complement of bowmen to a corps of fifteen hundred fully equipped lancers being from three to five thousand, while each lancer’s equipment was five or six mounted soldiers, at least two of whom were archers.
German and Italian bows rarely exceeded five feet in length. The shape of their arrow tips varied exceedingly. An ordinance of Henry I. provides that when archers were practising and any one had the misfortune to be killed or wounded by accident, it was merely to be regarded as a misadventure.
The form of the longbow of the fourteenth century was thick in the middle, narrowing towards the ends, and it was sometimes coated with paint.
The price of longbows was fixed by statute in the reign of Edward IV. at a maximum price of three shillings and fourpence each; and in order to increase the number available, every merchant vessel carrying goods to London was compelled to bring a certain number of bows in proportion to the weight of the cargo. A statute of Philip and Mary ordains that all temporal persons having estates of a thousand a year and upwards are required to furnish to the State thirty longbows and thirty sheaves of arrows.
Archers carried one or two pointed stakes as part of their equipment, for planting before them in the ground to resist cavalry; also a lead-headed mallet, to drive them in, which was also used for despatching the enemy’s wounded.