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as the French learned to their cost
Query: since the French learned the value of this weapon, why did they not in subsequent generations adopt the use of the longbow?
The French could have easily understood and duplicated it; the technology was readily available. How extraodinary that a people, vanquished by a superior weapon but having the technological sophistication to produce it for itself, did not do so. Why, historically, did they not?
And can anyone present historical cases of like inaction? I am aware of only one.
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Max, here's a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the Median army's weaponry by Herodotus. Scroll down to "Equipment," though the rest of story is an intriguing read, too. Large bows are mentioned, but no references to their being made of metal. Found this by tracking down leads through the Archaeology Magazine site search. I may be back with more... http://members.ozemail.com.au/~ancientpersia/org.html
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long bows
And this, Max, from "The History of the Long Bow" article. I never imagined that archers could launch arrows in a fusillade of this magnitude:
In a battle against the French at Crécy in 1346 the English archers as a whole probably fired off close to half a million arrows, at up to 70,000 a minute. Their formation was staggered, like the edge of a serrated knife, so that all of the archers could see where they were shooting. This deadly hail of arrows spelt disaster for the French.
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I think that a possible explanation of French failure to match English archery is that it would have required the French aristocracy to empower their peasants in a way they were unwilling to do.
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It would also have meant admitting that perfidious Albion had *ever come up with an idea to rival that of the magnifique French! This stubborn weakness in later wars was to also hold them back in such patently ineffective troop movements as the massed column so loved by Napoleon, and so regularly shredded by the spread lines of English guns... but Napoleon had fielded the world's first mass armies, so what were a few thousand more dead peasants...? La gloire, la belle France!Could have *something to do with the fact that the French have never won a single war in what, about 500 years? 
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Keiva:
What is little known about the medieval battles between the English and the French is that the French were justifiably terrified of the efficacy of the crossbow. Shakespeare immortalized the battle of Agincourt in Hank 5. Most of the French army was wiped out with the loss of few if any Englishmen (and none of any account). See in this regard Kenneth Branagh's awesome film Henry V.
ANYWAY! The French feared the longbow so much they began to return captured bowmen minus the middle finger of the right hand, so they could no longer pluck the string on the bows, which were usually made of yew.
The English rank and file soon marched into battle with their middle fingers raised to show they were still a force to be reckoned with. Rather than a rebel yell, of course, they called out repeatedly, "Pluck yew, pluck yew, pleck yew."
I LOVE history, even when it's made up.
TEd
TEd
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I went to our local archery club's open day many moons ago. An Englishman was there and had brought a yew bow and arrows made from the same materials as those used by the bowmen at Crecy and Agincourt. He was amazing. He fired his first arrow from the usual distance for archery competitions (don't ask me numbers, here), and hit the target more-or-less in the centre. The arrow went damned near all the way through the target (which had a large bale of old hay behind it). The arrow's trajectory was nearly flat. By comparison the archers using modern bows and arrows were having to fire much more up in the air to hit the target.
After that, he fired from much further back.
He was able to fire eight arrows a minute, and he only missed the target once. The arrows made a different noise in flight to modern arrows, too.
Impressed the hell outta me, that! I can imagine what thousands of them at once might have done to the French ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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