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

Post by wollstonecraft » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #98

noir-york wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I wonder if the advantages of a democracy - political stability and a (usually) advanced economy - also translate into the modern battlefield. Yes. There was an article that reached the top page here about the cultural/organizational problems of information-age Arab armies from the perspective of a US Army soldier who had worked with several. Let me see if I can dig it up.

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

thearn4 wrote: post #50

zhte415 wrote: post #30

tl;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…

Post by kqr » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #113

ucaetano wrote: post #81

Earlier 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…

The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates What kind of glue bound the layers of wood together on a longbow?

Post by Moto7451 » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #113

ucaetano wrote: post #81

Earlier 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…

The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates What kind of glue bound the layers of wood together on a longbow?

Post by cmdkeen » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #59

notahacker wrote: post #39

Earlier 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…