What made the longbow so lethal was the amount of power it gave the flight of the arrow. At anything up to 90 pounds of pressure, it could discharge its missile at a range of up to 200 yards, with the result that it was capable of piercing body armour. The armoured soldier had traditionally been the impregnable fighting unit on the battlefield: the longbow changed all that.

The image we often have of English armies of the Medieval period, of conscripted peasants acting as unwilling sword fodder, is quite misleading. Bowmen were among the elite forces at the country’s disposal. Beginning their training as small boys, they were hand-picked for the army as a result of the prowess they displayed at public archery contests. More than just armed combatants, they were craftsmen too.

Creating the longbow…

The longbow is thought to have been modelled originally on a Welsh design that had been used in battle against the English, but it was to become a considerably more ferocious weapon than its prototype. The best bow was what was known as a self-bow, or one made from one single piece of wood. Yew was most favoured for its excellent tensile properties, and when England’s own supplies of yew wood looked in danger of running short, it was imported from the continent. At one time, a royal decree stipulated that every cargo of wine shipped in from the south of France had to be accompanied by a quantity of yew timber for bow-making. Where yew wasn’t available, the next most favoured wood was ash.

Why was it called the longbow? Because it was more or less as big as the man himself. Each archer had his bow made to his own specifications, depending on his height. It was carved into a D-shape, with the thickest part of the shaft in the centre where the arrow was released. There was no groove or rest for the arrow, which was simply balanced on the archer’s finger. Tautly strung with hemp, the longbow had a typical draw length of around 30in. The archer wore his arrows in a leather quiver hanging from his belt. So practised was the crack bowman that, in the heat of combat, he could unleash an arrow about every five seconds. The quiver worn slung around the back, familiar to us from many a Robin Hood dramatisation, would have been an unnecessary handicap during battle, and was actually only used when hunting.

… and arrows

The arrows themselves were fashioned from a lighter wood than the bow – willow, aspen, poplar or elder – and were fitted with swan’s or goose’s feathers to assist their flight. Different arrows might be used in different circumstances. A lighter arrow would travel further if it had to. On the other hand, a heavier one, perhaps made of yew or ash like the bow, would be more penetrating at closer range. A telling delivery was capable of piercing virtually every type of body armour. There are numerous accounts, by no means fanciful, of arrows shot in battle passing through an opponent’s armour, his flesh, his horse’s saddle and embedding in the horse itself. By the 15th century, it was not uncommon for the arrowhead to be designed with a row of small barbs along each edge, meaning that even the most grimly determined victim of a bowman’s hit couldn’t just pull an arrow out of a wound and carry on. In any case, it may well have penetrated his flesh to a depth of something like 4in. Excruciatingly, the only way of removing it was to push it through.

Victory and decline

Longbows won England the battles of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, and many a skirmish against the Welsh and the Scots during campaigns of occupation. At Agincourt, famously, in 1415, an English force depleted by sickness and exhaustion, and outnumbered by French troops to the tune of three to one, achieved the most improbable victory on the continent until the Battle of Trafalgar.

The sight of the English archer in his white tabard emblazoned with the blood-red cross of St George didn’t quite last out the 16th century. The longbow was abandoned as standard military equipment in 1595, in favour of the musket, as the era of firearms took over.

If you want to see a military body equipped with longbows today, Edinburgh is the place. The Royal Company of Archers has been acting as a bodyguard force for the sovereign in Scotland since the the time of George IV.