Specimens of the English longbow are of the greatest rarity. The unfortunate loss of an English war vessel, the Mary Rose, which sank off Spithead during the reign of Henry VIII., in 1545, furnished us with some actual specimens of the period. The whereabouts of the wreck was known, and in 1843 divers recovered several bows, a couple of which are preserved in the Tower of London; they are six feet four and a half inches long, and are made of yew.
There was a Northumberland English longbow still to the fore early in the present century, and the late Mr. Matthew Culley of Akeld, in a letter to the Newcastle Society, dated Nov. 26, 1814, wrote concerning it: “This bow had long been used by the hereditary bowmen of Wark Castle. It is described as having been formed of various coloured wood inlaid together, and of great length and strength. From the joining of different sorts of wood very valuable properties are derived, which are well known to mechanics, and more especially to ship-builders. This weapon, so dreadful in the hands of its ancient possessors, being no longer in request, was consigned to the children as a plaything.” There is an English longbow at Dover Castle.
The longbow continued in use long after the introduction of firearms, but was practically superseded by the harquebus in the sixteenth century. Though used at the siege of Rochelle in 1627, its reputation had sunk so low in the reign of Charles I. that that king granted two commissions under the great seal for enforcing its use, and another to prohibit the enclosure of fields near London, which would have had the effect of interfering with the practice of archery. A curious fact in connection with the longbow is that Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1776 to equip the colonial forces with the weapon.
PART XIX.
THE CROSSBOW.
The Latin equivalent is arcus balistarius or balista manualis. The weapon does not appear on the Bayeux tapestry, but the Princess Anna Comnena, who calls it “tzangara,” mentions it as forming part of the armament of the Crusaders, late in the eleventh century; and that it was in use by English and French soldiers in the twelfth century is shown by a bull of Pope Innocent II. in 1139, which fulminates against its barbarity, and only sanctions its use in warfare with the infidel, meaning thereby all nations still unconverted to Christianity. Such prohibitions were, however, soon brushed aside, like others of a similar character both before and since. Guillaume Guiart, writing towards the end of the thirteenth century in the Branche des Royaux Leguages, mentions the weapon as being in use at the battle of “Haringues” in 1297. The first form was a simple hand crossbow, which consisted of a steel bow let into a stock which was strung for use by the action of the left foot and right hand, and discharged by a trigger, which probably gave rise to the lock of the hand-gun. During the second half of the thirteenth century various mechanical contrivances were adopted, which, while materially increasing the projective power, rendered the weapon much more unwieldy. The crossbow was in constant use during the fourteenth century, when the Genoese made it a speciality, and the services of these mercenaries were in great request in the wars of the period; it was, however, never a favourite weapon in England. At the battle of Creçy the English army used the longbow, while the French king had a body of six thousand Genoese crossbowmen in his pay, but these were unavailable by reason of the rain. The English archer could shoot twelve arrows while the crossbowman discharged his three quarrels, for it took so long to wind up the “moulinet”; the crossbow had, however, the advantage of a lower trajectory; moreover, the longbow was much lighter and more portable, besides being more easily preserved from the action of damp, than its crossbow confrère. It does not seem that the extreme range of the crossbow has been accurately determined, but it certainly did not exceed three hundred yards. Part of the light cavalry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries consisted of mounted crossbowmen.
The introduction of the pavise, a large shield kept propped up before the archer, was a great protection against missiles; and a miniature from Froissart, in the Bibl. Nat. de Paris, shows crossbowmen shielded in this manner. According to a manuscript in the British Museum, the Genoese crossbowman wore a jacket with long sleeves, an iron helm, brassards, and greaves.
The steel used in the construction of crossbows was of the strongest and most elastic kind. An enactment in the reign of Henry VII. forbade the use of the crossbow under severe penalties, and in the sixteenth century crossbows were mostly used for the defence of fortresses, and on warships.
The windlass crossbow, called à tour by the French, was largely used at Agincourt, and the form of that time continued practically the same for centuries; indeed, up to early in the seventeenth, bows on this model were made at Malines, in Belgium, by a “confrérie de tir.” The author has one of these bows in his possession, and it is, he believes, the exact counterpart of the Agincourt bow.
