English longbow

The English longbow, also called the Welsh longbow, was a powerful type of bow about 2.0 m (6 ft 6 in) long used by the English and Welsh during the Middle Ages both for hunting and as a weapon of war. Longbows were most devastatingly put to use during the Hundred Years War against the French.

Usage

Longbows were difficult to master because the force required to draw the bow was very high by modern standards. Though the draw weight of a typical English longbow is disputed, it was at least 36 kgf (360 N, 80 lbf) and possibly more than 65 kgf (650 N, 143 lbf). Considerable practice was required to produce the swift and effective combat fire required. Skeletons of longbow archers are recognizably deformed, with enlarged left arms, and often bone spurs on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.

Related Topics:
Skeleton - Bone spur

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To penetrate plate armour many war arrows had "chisel" (or "bodkin") heads and were quite massive. Bodkin arrows have tips like elongated pyramids, which result in a very sharp and very narrow point. With their bodkin points these massive war arrows probably weighed around 65 to 100 grams (1000 to 1500 grains, grain being a unit of measure often used for arrows and bullets). This is 2 or 3 times the weight of wooden or aluminum arrows used today and 4 to 5 times the weight of modern carbon fiber arrows or pre 20th century "flight arrows," used in distance shooting contests. In peacetime, in some regions, carrying chisel points was a hanging offence, because it was thought to threaten noblemen, or they were taken as evidence that one was a highwayman. Specialist war-arrows were designed to tackle the problem of different types of armour. For example, arrows with thin and sharply slanted heads were used to pierce chainmail suits, breaking one ring and consequently 'popping' a huge hole in the armour as the force of the impact knocked the other rings out of place. Many war-arrows had heads that were only attached with a small blob of wax, so that if they were to be removed conventionally only the shaft would come out, leaving the head lodged in the victim which would almost certainly cause an infected wound. The effects of a longbow are illustrated by this 12th century account by Gerald of Wales:

Related Topics:
Arrow - Bodkin - Grain - Highwayman - Chainmail - 12th century - Gerald of Wales

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:...in the war against the Welsh, one of the men of arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron cuises, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal. (Itinerarium Cambriae, (1191))

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On the battlefield, English archers stabbed their arrows upright into the ground at their feet, reducing the time it took to notch, draw and loose (as drawing from a quiver is slower). An additional effect of this practice was that the point of an arrow would be more likely to cause infection. Bowmen relieved themselves on the same ground, but this is unlikely to have any additional effect. The only way to remove such an arrow cleanly would be to tie a piece of cloth, soaked in boiling water or another sterilising substance, to the end of it and push it through the victim's wound and out of the other side — this was incredibly painful. There were specialised tools used in the medieval period to extract arrows if bone meant that the arrow could not be pushed through.

Related Topics:
Infection - Water - Bone

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:Prince Hal (later Henry V) was wounded in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). The royal physician John Bradmore had a tool made which consisted of a pair of smooth tongs, once carefully inserted into the rear of the arrowhead, the tongs screwed apart till they gripped its walls and allowed the head to be extracted from the wound. Prior to the extraction, the hole made by the arrow shaft had been widened by inserting larger and larger dowels of wood down the entry wound. The dowels were soaked in honey, which contains natural antibiotics. The wound was dressed with a poultice of barley and honey mixed in turpentine. After 20 days, the wound was free of infection.

Related Topics:
Henry V - Battle of Shrewsbury - 1403 - John Bradmore - Honey - Antibiotics - Poultice - Barley - Turpentine

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Hunting arrows generally had what is called a 'broad-headed' arrowhead, though specialist hunting arrows did exist. Broad-head arrows leave wide cuts when they pierce flesh, which results in rapid blood loss. A well-placed arrow that struck a deer through both lungs or the heart would kill it in seconds. But even a wounding shot with a broadhead might cause the animal to bleed out and die relatively quickly. An arrow with a head shaped like a crescent moon was used to knock birds and other small animals out of trees so that both the animal and the arrow could be retrieved with relative ease, when a normal arrow would have pinned itself and the animal to the tree, making recovery difficult. At one time it was thought that the crescent headed arrow was used at sea to cut ropes on enemy ships, but the fact that an arrow rotates in flight would mean that cutting a rope at distance — requiring the crescent arrow to remain exactly horizontal — would be nigh-on impossible.

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