As I mentioned in class, I would like you to read the following article. I wrote it for World Book Encyclopedia, hence the strange format. THE VICTORY OF THE ENGLISH LONGBOW AT THE BATTLE OF CRECY Type of event: Time: August 26, 1346 Locale: Crecy, France Significance: The English victory over the French at the Battle of Crecy not only established England as an important military power, but also demonstrated that mounted knights and the age of chivalry were doomed. Principal personages: Edward III (1312-1377), King of England, 1327-1377 Philip VI (1293-1350), King of France, 1328-1350 The Anglo-Norman kings of England were so impressed with the powerful longbow they encountered in their military expeditions against Wales that they adopted it and ordered the inhabitants of every English village to practice its use on a regular basis. Thus the "Welsh" longbow had become the "English" longbow by 1346, when the Battle of Crecy occurred. Longbows varied in length from slightly more than five and one half feet to slightly less than six and one half feet. The advantage of the longbow over its shorter cousins came from the increased leverage that resulted from drawing back its longer "arms." Knowledge of the principle involved was certainly no secret, but the longbow had significant disadvantages that limited its popularity. Its unwieldy length meant that the archer could carry few if any other weapons. He certainly could not put it over his back and use a sword in offensive operations. This limitation meant that it was unsuitable for any situations other than defensive battle. Perhaps more importantly, it was difficult to master without extensive practice, hence the royal order for regular training and practice. Yew was the favored wood for longbow construction. Like the American aromatic cedar, the yew has an inner, red core of heartwood and an outer, white layer of sapwood. The former is strong under compression, while the latter has greater strength under tension. The bowyer took advantage of these natural properties of the yew by splitting the bow staff from the log and shaping it in such a way that the red layer formed the "belly," which faced the archer in use, and the white layer was on the "back" of the bow. Arrows had to be straight to preserve their stability in flight and their accuracy. They were about thirty inches long with feathers, or "fletching," on one end to give stability in flight and a metal tip on the other. The favored tip shape was the "bodkin," which was a very elongated pyramid, square at the base and tapering to a point. On the fletched end was a notch, or "nock," made to receive the bowstring. To prevent repeated "nocking" from fraying the hemp bowstring, its central area had a thread wrapping. An archer might carry up to two dozen arrows, and an intelligent military commander would be careful to have plenty more in his baggage train. Longbows had a "pull" of about eighty to one hundred pounds. They had an extreme range of well over one hundred yards and an effective range of about sixty yards. In other words, a good archer could expect to kill or disable an armored opponent out to sixty yards and could drop an arrow from a high trajectory on a general area as far as one hundred fifty yards away. It is difficult to be more precise, since much depended on the skill of the individual archer and weather conditions such as wind. A skilled man could shoot up to twelve arrows per minute, and this speed was the greatest advantage the longbow had over its major rival -- the crossbow -- at the Battle of Crecy. The crossbow was even more powerful than the longbow. Its power came from the sophisticated combination of materials in its much shorter bow. The bow was hardly more than two feet in length and was, essentially, a sandwich of horn on the belly, wood in the middle, and animal sinew on the back. Just as with the longbow, this combination provided materials strong under compression on the belly and strong under tension on the back but to a much greater degree. Importantly, a crossbowman required little training. All of the crossbow's advantages over the longbow could not, however, compensate for one essential weakness -- it was much slower to operate, and volume of fire is the most important battlefield feature of any missile weapon. Many historians have claimed that the longbow caused a military revolution, beginning at the Battle of Crecy, by rendering the mounted knight obsolete. This is, of course, an exaggeration. The feudal system was already in decline because of political, economic, and social developments before the Battle of Crecy. Even on the battlefield, the success of the longbow was a symptom more than a result. Although an individual on foot is almost helpless against an individual on horseback, formed infantrymen are practically impervious to attack by cavalry as long as they maintain their formation. Newly forming centralized governments were acquiring the administrative and financial skills to field and maintain capable infantry. The Battle of Crecy was the first important battle in the Hundred Years War between England and France that began in 1337. Edward III, King of England, was actually closer by strict inheritance to the throne of France than King Philip VI, and Edward was eager to assert his rights through force of arms. A more substantial and deeper seated cause of the war was the attempt by King Philip to consolidate French territorial holdings and influence at the expense of England, which still had considerable land holdings and economic interests on the Continent. Hostile feelings and words led to open war by the late 1330's. The war proceeded in fits and starts with the French seeming to have the advantage until 1346, when Edward III mounted an invasion of Normandy. Philip came to defend his territory and the two forces met at Crecy on August 26, 1346. The English had about seven thousand longbowmen, some two thousand men at arms (knights), and two or three thousand auxiliaries. Philip had at least twenty thousand men at arms -- the flower of French chivalry, as is often said -- and many other troops. Edward deployed his men on rising ground and awaited the French attack. He could hardly do otherwise, being so badly outnumbered and so dependent on the longbowmen who were useful only in defense. Fortunately for him, the French obliged by attacking and in a very inept way. As the men at arms rode onto the field in piecemeal fashion the sun was going down. Philip decided to wait until the next day to launch his attack after his men had rested and after they had all arrived, but he could not control the unwieldy mass, which continued to press forward despite his orders. He finally decided to make the best of a bad situation and ordered the attack. His Genoese crossbowmen led the assault. A brief shower fell on them, and this has led many historians to speculate that their wet bowstrings caused their poor performance. Whether or not this contributed, they could not withstand the more deadly shower of arrows that fell on them after the rain shower. The Duke of Alencon, stationed behind the crossbowmen, decided they were acting in cowardly fashion when they hesitated and led the mounted men at arms in a charge over them. Neither side realized exactly what a toll the longbowmen were taking because of the dark, and the French continued to press on while the longbowmen continued to shoot into the confused mass at the foot of the rise. The horsemen charged fifteen times and the battle lasted until the "third quarter of the night." Next morning, the English discovered they had killed more than fifteen hundred French nobles and at least ten thousand others with a loss of less than one hundred on their side. Although Crecy raised England's international reputation and led to considerable gains by Edward III, the war drug on. In 1356, at the Battle of Poitiers, and again in 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt, the English were to win important victories with the aid of the longbow. By the end of the war the proud mounted knights were no longer the dominant force on European battlefields. The age of chivalry was over, and the longbow had been a significant contributor to its demise. Further Information Burne, Alfred H. The Crecy War; A Military History of the Hundred Years War from 1337 to the Peace of Bretigny, 1360. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955. A "drum and bugle" account of the battle and its aftermath in the first part of the Hundred Years War. Fuller, J. F. C., The Decisive Battles of the Western World. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1954-56. Contains a detailed account of the battle itself by one of the foremost military historians of the twentieth century. McKisack, May. The Fourteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 1959. This is part of the Oxford History of England Series and is quite large. It puts the Hundred Years War in context from an English perspective. Myers, A.R. A History of England in the Later Middle Ages. London: Pelican, 1965. Also puts the war into a broader context but in the more concise form of a small paperback. Seward, Desmond. The Hundred Years War; The English in France, 1337-1453. New York: Atheneum, 1978. Probably the most readable and best recent account of the war. Philip Dwight Jones Word count: 1570