Anybody going to draw a parallel between this, and modern gun-control efforts? Or is that too contentious to be helpful in illuminating this centuries-old issue.
Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
101–110 of 180 posts
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#102Makes me want to learn how to use the longbow. It seems a challenge that this skill has been lost, and is interesting in that how long it took to develop.
I own one and they are very fun to shoot. But it take a lot of practice to be accurate with one. There is no sight or even an arrow rest on authentic english longbow so learning to shoot consistently takes a while.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I remember correctly (and I'm still looking for a better source than this[1]), the Duke Of Wellington had requested a corps of longbowmen be made ready for use against the French in the Napoleonic wars, but was advised that no one with the skill needed to train them still existed (the training being the most difficult part of the technology). The last use of trained english longbowmen seemed to have been by some o…
> the art of dogfighting was deemed to have been lost for a brief period between WWII and the air war over Vietnam, and had to be re-engineered. That's the premise laid out at the start of the Top Gun movie. That the Top Gun school was created to bring back the art of dogfighting.
I highly recommend _Boyd: The Fighter Pilot that Changed the Art of War_ (http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9780316796880). He was lead instructor at the USAF Fighter Weapons School.
The previous commentator is right that there was a loss of air combat skill but the advent of jets and missiles lead to a diminished emphasis on Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM) and over-emphasis on technology. Boyd was one of the "fighter pilot mafia" that pushed a return to basic combat flight skills and the improved kill ratios proved him and others right.
The book details the battles waged inside the Pentagon over ACM, the F-15, the F-16, the OODA Loop, the reformulation of the Marines into the tip of the spear they are today, and maneuver warfare in general. Boyd was in the thick of it all.
Interestingly, Gen. Schwarzkopf doesn't come out looking that great.
EDIT: added lots more about the book.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: "light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe" Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands. Also, despite Europe's fortifications, a scouting party led by Subutai of 20,000 horse archers, widely wiped out a much more significant force of Central Europe soldiers,…
Fortified european cities caused a lot of troubled. Most Mongol siege victories in Europe where Pyrrhic, with massive losses that couldn't be replaced that far from their homeland. They ended up controlling most of the Hungarian countryside, but almost none of the key fortified cities, the same in Croatia and other areas, rendering their gains useless, since forces could march out at any time from the multiple forces…
I don't know much about Mongols in Central Europe, so probably true: they were far away from the steppes, probably lacked siege machines, etc.
Also, in the lands of Rus' stone fortifications were a very rare thing - there's almost no suitable stone for contstruction, so most castles and fortresses were wooden, so they did burn.
None of the stone fortresses in the north, where there are suitable materials, were plundered, AFAIK, so you must be right.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#105Interesting. Although this point of view might be a bit simplified, there's another example of a weapon, which was both relatively cheap to make - and really hard to use unless the whole society was built around the skills required to use it. Mongols! Light cavalry using composite bows was both unbelievably effective and hard to copy for everybody but steppe nomads. All Mongols were hunters, they practically lived wi…
The commenters in this thread are experts at Age of Empires II.
Yeah! I was remembering that campaing mission with the mongols where you had to conquest three chinese civs.
And on multiplayer the mongols are quite hardcore too
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#106tl;dr: The abstract does a wonderful job. It is will worth reading. Longbow was cheap and technically superior, but required training. Crossbow more expensive, required less training. Rulers of England less worried about rebellion, OK to invest in training. Rulers of France/Scotland not so happy because of fear to give potential of overthrow to the people (Scotland not in title, but in article along with France). Per…
If I remember correctly (and I'm still looking for a better source than this[1]), the Duke Of Wellington had requested a corps of longbowmen be made ready for use against the French in the Napoleonic wars, but was advised that no one with the skill needed to train them still existed (the training being the most difficult part of the technology). The last use of trained english longbowmen seemed to have been by some o…
> the art of dogfighting was deemed to have been lost for a brief period between WWII and the air war over Vietnam, and had to be re-engineered.
The air war in Vietnam was radically different from WWII so I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. The art wasn't lost, the state had just changed so radically that it was no longer applicable and new strategies had to be devised.
In WWII the dogfighting was typically between interceptor aircraft engaging bomber escorts at high altitude. You won the day by either out maneuvering or out gunning your opponent. At the end of WWII, arguably the best dogfighter in service was the P-51D Mustang which was incredibly fast at the time with a top airspeed of ~430 mph and was equipped with 6x 50 caliber machine guns. It was designed as a high altitude bomber escort and was one of the fastest and most maneuverable aircraft of the time with a high offensive yield.
In Vietnam with the introduction of long range air-to-air missiles and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), close air-to-air combat was thought to be a thing of the past by the US. Tactics had shifted from bombers escorted by fighters to extremely high altitude bombers which hoped to avoid missiles by sheer range, and close ground support aircraft like the A-1 Skyraider and A-6e Intruder which utilized low altitudes, slow air speeds, and high maneuverability to avoid being engaged by SAMs. Fighter aircraft like the F-4 would provide theater support and engage enemies at range using air-to-air missiles. These tactics were designed around engaging the Soviet Union or other Super Powers, the Vietnamese however were utilizing Mig-17s, which still prescribed to the WWII method of air engagement, and was a natural evolution of the WWII fighter being fast, maneuverable, and heavily armed for air-to-air combat. What you ended up with were a bunch of aircraft ill suited for engaging one another.
The A-1 and A-6 could fly incredibly low and slow in comparison to the Mig-17 and with much greater maneuverability at low speeds making it difficult for the Mig-17 to engage them with missles. The Mig-17 would have to perform slicing runs with machine guns which made it vulnerable to those aircraft coming and going. The Mig-17 could easily outpace them however making it difficult for either US aircraft to act offensively.
The F-4 could offensively engage the Mig-17 at range and could easily out run it if necessary but the F-4 was far less maneuverable and lacked on-board machine guns making it ill suited for a close range dogfight. The gun pod on an F-4 was initially hampered by the fact that it couldn't operate at low speeds because it was air turbine driven and also lacked lead sighting so the gun was inaccurate at high speeds. F-4 pilots used a spray-and-pray approach if engaging a target in close air combat. The F-4 though was not an easy target for the Mig-17 because it was equipped with electronic counter measures and raw engine power that dwarfed the Mig.
In the end completely new tactics had to be devised and lots of lessons were learned from the mistakes in Vietnam but there really wasn't a losing and rediscovering of an art.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to compare Mongols to Europeans. The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates. Also, light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe, specially when you don't have huge, flat battlefields that allow light cavalry to circle any target. In other words, Mongol wa…
"Huge, flat battlefieds" were a norm everywhere. Medieval battles were ONLY possible on flat surfaces, as the main force of the time - heavy cavalry - requires that. Besides, Mongols completely plundered Rus' and the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, and most of those lands were and are forests/lakes/swamps. For example, they used rivers in winters to travel through the countryside. Also, after conquering China they also ha…
Agincourt wasn't fought in a huge, flat battlefield. Neither was Tours, Hastings, Crecy, Poitiers, Patay, etc.
European wars were fought in a very diverse range of battlefields, and most commanders, specially the outnumbered ones, would try as much as possible to use the battlefield in their advantage.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#108A paper about the hundred years war that doesn't cite a single French-language source except Froissard? Not very serious.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
At the very least though, you'd have thought they could have sacrificed crossbowmen to achieve that improved rate of fire from longbows. Presumably the reason they didn't had less to do with fear of better bowmen and more to do with inability to provide the quality of longbows and training that would convince crossbowmen to change their weaponry.
Re: Why didn't France adopt the longbow like England did?
#110Kevin Hicks is a great resource on the longbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvKJcxa8x_g He is also very knowledgeable about all things from this period of history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUYd6pNy6QU There is also some more detail regarding the make up of the "English" army bowmen here: http://www.bowyers.com/bowyery_longbowOrigins.php Sidenote: - Bowyer: Makes the bow - Fletcher: Makes the arrow - String…
Sounds like somebody figured out the single responsibility principle