Chapter 22
Except possibly in a great clan battle in 1688, when Macintosh fought Macdonald, the last occasion on which the longbow was used for war in Britain is said to have been at Tippermuir in 1644. Here the Marquis of Montrose, upholding the cause of Charles I, routed the Covenanters; his army, having little ammunition for their few muskets, used hails of stones and ancient bows to bring them victory. Since there were so many more battles during the next few years of that unhappy period, it is quite likely that the bow was used to good effect on other occasions – it seems unlikely that it should have been completely abandoned in the middle of a civil war. In 1622 the longbow was no longer mentioned in the list of weapons with which the military forces were to be armed.
One of the great puzzles of military history is why artillery and firearms replaced the longbow so rapidly when the latter, right up to the time of Waterloo and beyond, was capable of far greater range, rate of fire, and accuracy. In 1625, in his pamphlet Double-armed Man, W. Neade gave the effective range of the bow as sixteen to twenty score yards and claimed that the archer could discharge six arrows while the musketeer loaded and fired but once. In 1792 Lieutenant-Colonel Lee, of the 44th Regiment, strongly advocated the use of the longbow in preference to the flint-lock musket. To support his case he gave the following reasons:
1. Because a man may shoot as truly with the bow as with the common musket.
2. He can discharge four arrows in the time of charging and discharging one bullet.
3. His object is not taken from his view by the smoke of his own side.
4. A flight of arrows coming upon them terrifies and disturbs the enemy’s attention to his business.
5. An arrow sticking in any part of a man puts him hors de combat until it is extracted.
6. Bows and arrows are more easily made anywhere than muskets and ammunition.
As late as 1846 the effective range of the musket in common use in the British army was, for all practical purposes, only 100 to 150 yards – the common dictum being not to fire until you could see the whites of the enemy’s eyes! Why then was the bow abandoned so early in favour of the crude firearms of the period?
On the battlefield, archery has certain unavoidable drawbacks affecting both the man and his weapon. To use his longbow effectively, the archer needed space around him – he had to stand to deliver his shaft. Not only did this make him vulnerable to the elements, it also turned him into a good target; the whole course of warfare was altered when the breech-loading rifle enabled the soldier to re-load his arm whilst lying down. Although rain had an adverse effect upon the rate of fire of a musket, it completely rendered the longbow useless; wind could also render the archer helpless. However, the crucial factor was that the archer had to be an athlete in the best physical condition, whereas the man behind the gun could function even in the state of weary debility produced by the cold, wet and hunger of extended active service. Mediaeval commanders were well aware of the importance of maintaining both the health and the stature of their archers – they mounted them on horses whenever possible, recruited them from the fixed heraldic rank of yeoman (the highest held by men of low degree) and ever encouraged practice at the butts.
Although the longbow won Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, together with a host of smaller engagements, the Hundred Years War was won by the French. By better adapting themselves to the newly invented and primitive artillery and by using them with a superior technique, the French were able to recapture the towns and provinces lost to the English, eventually nullifying the effects of all the English victories throughout the Hundred Years War.
Perhaps regrettably, today it is only the incurable romanticist who will claim special virtues for the longbow as against firearms. But, in the end, he will have grudgingly to admit that the firearm has proved to be what the bow could not become – a perfectible weapon. Any good shot in an average modern small-bore rifle club can get a ‘possible’ out of every ten shots aimed at a two-inch circle 100 yards away; he will be able to do this consistently and without hesitation. The ‘gold’ of an archery target is as big as a saucer, yet Horace A. Ford held for years the record of 28 hits in 75 shots at 60 yards. No archer, however skilful, can be absolutely certain within several inches where a single shaft will land. It is a degree of uncertainty emphasised by an incident at the inauguration of the National Rifle Association at Wimbledon on July 2nd, 1860, when Queen Victoria pulled a silken cord which fired a Whitworth rifle on a fixed rest and hit only 1¼ inches from the centre of the target!