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Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

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Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#51

Post by mhd »

lambda wrote: post #33

I think that the way this paper discusses on the longbow as being the superior weapon may obscure a key fact here. Man for man, a crossbow is a superior weapon; requires less skill to operate, has longer range, much easier to aim, better penetrating power. The main advantage of a longbow is how simple and cheap it is. Speed of reloading is another advantage the longbow has, but I think this article overstates it. Whi…

Actually, some papers written about crossbows seriously doubt that the penetrating power was that much better -- if at all. The poundage certainly was, but it had to be -- crossbow arms are short and the arrow doesn't travel as long, thus less time is available to transfer energy.

And "large populace" makes it sound like they just handed out crossbows to peasant levies, instead of them being very highly paid mercenaries. I mean, I can hand a bill or halberd to a peasant, too, but that didn't stop the Swiss from getting hired by most of Europe...

Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#52

Post by lambda »

mattmanser wrote: post #37
lambda wrote: post #33

I think that the way this paper discusses on the longbow as being the superior weapon may obscure a key fact here. Man for man, a crossbow is a superior weapon; requires less skill to operate, has longer range, much easier to aim, better penetrating power. The main advantage of a longbow is how simple and cheap it is. Speed of reloading is another advantage the longbow has, but I think this article overstates it. Whi…

You are directly contradicting a researched paper that explicitly contradicts everything you just said. Why do you think you're right? Read page mid-page 691-693. I'm also not sure what the point is of you talking about today's modern crossbows which are unsurprisingly easier to reload.

First, this research paper is about a game theory analysis about a political situation that may have made the French and Scots leery of being vulnerable to usurpation by arming a large population. The material on pages 691-693 is all background material, not the actual research material of this paper.

I did read 691-693. I am not contradicting any of the information in it; merely saying that I think they are overstating the direct superiority of the longbow. Strategically and tactically, it's clear that arming a large number of archers and using them in the early battle is superior, and the cost and simplicity of the longbow makes that much easier; but it's not because a single longbow is better than a single crossbow. I think that the longbow was a superior weapon, in the sense that the armies that adopted the longbow strategy clearly beat those that relied on crossbows, but I think that the way that the paper couches its introduction makes it sound like, side by side, a longbow was a superior weapon to a crossbow.

I'm not talking about modern crossbows, I'm talking about reproduction medieval crossbows. I do medieval recreation as a hobby, I shoot longbow, I know people who shoot crossbow. The longbow is faster, though as I mention, I know people who can reload and shoot from the hip and get 6 accurate shots off in 30 seconds. And the crossbow is more accurate, gets better range, delivers more power, and is easier to shoot.

Now, I don't shoot a 160 pound warbow, I don't have the strength for it. If I did, I would get some more power and range out of it, at the expense of accuracy and speed, as I would fatigue much more quickly. With a crossbow, you can use both arms and brace against your hip to draw, so even without any stirrup or crank, you can shoot a much heavier crossbow than you could a longbow. That extra power means more penetrating power and a flatter quicker flight (or more range if you increase your angle), and the fact that your muscles are not straining to hold the bow drawn means you can aim more accurately.

Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#53

Post by marktangotango »

noir-york wrote: post #40
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sharpe author Bernard Cornwell wrote a couple of novels set in / around Agincourt and from memory there are a few extras to throw in - but I love your last sentence's conclusion 1. The extra training was enormous - thik of an army of a thousand Arnold Schwarzeneggers - these guys cold deliver hundreds of foot pounds from their arms. Robin Hood would have been built like The Rock, not Kevin Costner. 2. The "cheap"…

> finally, crossbows really are the better weapon - once you start factory-making them, your army can be raised and trained faster But the army you raise is less effective; quantity vs quality. A country which did not want or could not afford to train longbow men may have had a deeper flaw: its model. Perhaps the real reason England could beat France had been a long time in the making: a strong economy, and political…

The quote from Stalin comes to mind, quantity has a quality of it's own.

Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#54

Post by Kurtz79 »

ajuc wrote: post #45
Kurtz79 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a concrete example ? I really can't see this assumption made anywhere in the paper.

> For over a century the longbow reigned as undisputed king of medieval European missile weapons. Yet only England used the longbow as a mainstay in its military arsenal; France and Scotland clung to the technologically inferior cross- bow. > England alone, for a 150-year window in late medieval Europe, was politically stable enough to render the longbow its rulers’ optimal technology choice. In contrast, in France a…

Yes, I read those, but I still don't see the assumption made.

The first more general sentence does not imply that the all the countries mentioned in the second make up the entirety of Europe.

It makes sense that the author would make a specific comparison with the countries involved in the war, rather than doing so for all the countries in medieval Europe.

Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#56

Post by Wildgoose »

arethuza wrote: post #15
msh wrote: post #11

I fail to see their references to support the claim that france or scotland was more politically unstable. Also how about the rest of european powers, I am not certain there is support that england was the only politically stable entity is europe during the middle ages.

Well, England did have the distinct advantage of being the largest power on an island - while they didn't manage to conquer the Scots the Scots weren't really much of a threat to them. So they got a certain amount of stability largely through geography.

Not strictly true - Cromwell conquered Scotland after yet another of the interminable invasions of England by Scotland. It was more a case that after Edward I, England simply wasn't interested in conquering Scotland - there were richer prizes elsewhere.

Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#59

Post by Mvandenbergh »

notahacker wrote: post #39
gobbo wrote: post #8

I see a possible problem with this theory: in few words, according to the authors the French and Scots did not adopt the longbow for fear of rebellion. Still the nobles participated to the very battles that saw them being defeated by the English and their longbow. If the longbow was cheap and relatively easy to adopt, a noble aspiring to the crown would have been able to develop the technology independently from the…

There's another major problem: preventing peasants from being a threat whilst still yielding some benefit from the longbow could easily have been achieved by restricting archery training to nobles and selected privileged guards, who had more time and inclination towards military training than the peasantry anyway. This would have resulted in less firepower than the English mass armies, but far more than the crossbows…

>There's another major problem: preventing peasants from being a threat whilst still yielding some benefit from the longbow could easily have been achieved by restricting archery training to nobles and selected privileged guards, who had more time and inclination towards military training than the peasantry anyway.

That was pretty small number of people in the middle ages, and they would already have been trained as mounted knights or men-at-arms so retraining them as archers would not be a net gain unless one archer was more valuable than one man-at-arms which I don't think is likely.

The advantage of the longbow is that once trained, you could raise a large army quite cheaply but that army only worked as part of a combined arms operation that also had armoured infantry and cavalry. That means that you don't want to sacrifice the other elements of your army in order to build a longbow capability.

Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?

#60

Post by Mvandenbergh »

ajuc wrote: post #38

It's funny how the article quietly assumes "Scotland+France+England" = "Europe".

It's an article about the military advantages the English had because of the longbow while fighting the Scots and the French and why the latter never adopted it as a weapon.
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