Longbow early history

We are short changed regarding the early history of the Long Bow.  Mainly because the English were on the recieving end of that history.  So for most of us it all starts with Agincourt.

The remarkable thing is that the Longbow dominates medieval war for four centuries which makes total sense.  Early guns had plenty of range problems right up to the nineteenth century but were adopted because they resolved the training problem alongside the crossbow.

Neither could fire as fast as a long bow though so it was on the field until kings gave up training them.  It was always a cost problem to train a man for twenty years.  knights had a similar problem.  So both ultimately left the field of battle even tnhough bnoth had advantages.

Today we can safely put a young man in the field with a high powered weapon and after one year, he will be as good as he will be.  That is pretty efficient.  some may beg to differ on that but luck changes the economics after that and after a certain point they have to be withdrawn so the one year tour idea is well founded..

What ancient battle in history was a slaughter due to one side bringing in shocking new weaponry?

Henrey Bradley

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Amateur Historian, Adventurer

Quora.com

The Battle of Crug Mawr, 1136, the battle that introduced one of the most dominant weapons of the Medieval age.

The Normans had just steamrolled the mighty Anglo-Saxons, one of the great warlike cultures of their time, meaning the Normans were now thought all but Invincible in open battle, and after a few years cementing their control over England, powerful Norman Lords started to turn their attention towards little old Wales, a region of small tribal kingdoms.

Sure, the Welsh had been ruthlessly defending their hills and valleys from invaders for thousands of years, the Anglo-Saxons had battled them to a stalemate, multiple times, even the Norse and Vikings had tried and failed to establish settlements in the land of the Dragon, for the fierce Welsh tribes were masters of their terrain and inherently warlike.

But the Normans were like, bugger all that, those bunch of sheep shaggers won't stand a chance against our mighty Norman heavy cavalry charging.

So, a group of hardcore Norman Lords, with the permission of the King, decided to invade Wales and set up shop, at first they were successful, these Lords established estates and built castles along the border with England, they became known as the Marcher Lords, and after few years they became filthy rich, building loads of castles, and founding powerful towns like Pembroke.

I had to make this map, to highlight the early Marcher Lords' progress into Wales, I’m aware it's not perfect, before all you map critics start chatting shit.

This process was slow, for the small welsh kingdoms routinely fought back, and while the Normans enjoyed a comfortable numerical advantage, the weaker Welsh tribes used effective ambushes and were supplied by the strong unconquered Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd in the mountains of the north.

Then in 1135, King Henry I of England died while campaigning in Normandy leaving his daughter Matilda as heir, and this sent shockwaves through the ranks of the Marcher lords, who quickly pivoted towards England instigating a succession crisis. Large numbers of soldiers were pulled from their tentative Norman holdings in Wales and marched to England with their lords to make sure no silly woman would be Queen.

‘I’m sorry my lady, but the Lords said you can’t possibly rule because you are a woman. They suggested you take up Embroidery and sent this rather lovely collection of fabrics and exquisite threads.’

‘Ohh really, well, we will see about that. Put that goddamn needle and yarn down you imbecile, and fetch me my sword.’ - Queen Matilda.

‘Surprise cockface, how’d you like those Embroidery skills?’

Empress Matilda, Lady of England, went on to wage war against her usurpers for the next decade and eventually, her son and his line would rule England for generations, forming the Angevin Empire the most powerful empire in western Europe. Right, interesting detour over, back to the epic battle.

While the Marcher Lords were off usurping Matilda’s throne, a Welsh army attacked and wiped out a Norman force at the battle of Llwchwr, killing 500 Norman soldiers, and this encouraged the two great Kings of Wales, one in the south and the other in the north, both unimaginatively named Gruffyd and Gruffyd, to gather their formidable retinues and begin a fierce fight back.

The Normans had lost their numerical advantage and their holdings were isolated, strangely the Welsh kept wiping out entire Norman forces leaving no survivors and this caused panic amongst the Marcher Lords, resulting in the powerful Lord De Clare rushing back to his holdings that were being overrun.

Only, when Lord Richard De Clare tried to cross Welsh lands, his force was ambushed in the steep hills and completely annihilated. This once-mighty lord and all of his heavily armoured Norman soldiers were shockingly killed to a man.

The Battle of Crug Mawr, 1136. Also known as the Battle of Cardigan.

Owain Gwynedd, son of the King of Gwynedd marched into the Norman-controlled lands near Cardigan with an army of 6,000 soldiers, these were drawn from the professional retinues of the two largest Welsh Kingdoms.

Robert Fitz Martin, commander of the Normans had gathered a much larger Norman army, upwards of 8,000 strong, formed of Flemish infantry, local levies, and a substantial force of elite Norman heavy cavalry.

The large Norman army formed up on the side of an odd-shaped hill just outside of Cardigan, taking up a strong defensive position with 3 deep ranks, the Flemish infantry at the front, the levies in the middle, and the renowned Norman cavalry drawn up behind and on the flanks of the hill.

The sight of that much larger force of Normans, their flags billowing in the wind, with front ranks packed with well armoured heavy infantry and a large force of the dreaded Norman heavy cavalry, that dominated the battlefields of Europe, drawn up on the flanks, must have been terrifying.

Yet the Welsh army showed no fear, relentlessly moving forwards, towards the steep hill lined with Norman invaders. The Welsh Army, predominantly heavy infantry, formed up into a single dense line, with the small token force of Welsh Cavalry on the flanks. That Welsh army must have seemed desperate opposite the much larger Norman army, which held the high ground.

This was when the Welsh introduced a weapon to the battlefield, that would become legendary the world over, the weapon that would dominate the late medieval battlefields of Europe for the next four hundred years.

The Welsh army began to slowly advance, and as it moved forwards, some 2,000 Welsh Longbowmen separated from the main battleline and once they were within 200 metres of the enemy, these scruffy men who carried longbows as tall as a man, nocked heavy ash arrows and unleashed an almighty volley into the front ranks of the Normans, who quickly began dropping in large numbers.

“The original Welsh Warbows were ugly, unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large and strong, and equally capable of use for long or short shooting.” - Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223

While the Welsh had used Longbows on a smaller scale in ambushes against the Normans, this was the first-ever large-scale use of longbows on a battlefield, and the carnage inflicted as these large 140lb+ draw weight bows rained heavy arrows onto the unexpecting Normans was unbelievable.

The Normans often used archers and had been on the receiving end of volleys before, but never anything like the Longbows, which quickly decimated the front line of Flemish infantry. The Norman commander Robert must have been shaken by his sudden heavy losses because he ordered his elite Norman cavalry to prepare to charge down the hill.

These Norman horsemen were the most feared force in Europe, they quickly rounded the flanks and formed up at a trot, this fearsome cavalry force of almost two thousand heavily armoured horsemen, began to close on the Welsh lines, when suddenly the Longbowmen switched targets and began pouring volleys into the densely packed Norman cavalry breaking all cohesion and killing many, who fell and became obstacles for the cavalry behind.

But the Norman cavalry wasn’t done yet, they roared a battle cry and began to charge at full speed down the slope towards the Welsh Longbowmen, who unleashed a finale volley before rapidly retreated between prepared gaps in the Welsh battleline, which snapped shut and formed into a shield wall that bristled with sharp steel-tipped spears and savage swords.

That Norman charge crashed like a pitiful wave against a stout seawall, all power and momentum had been sapped by the withering longbow volleys, and before long the famed Norman cavalry became bogged down in a losing battle against some of the finest heavy infantry retinues left in Britain.

With losses rapidly mounting, Robert Fitz Martin ordered his cavalry to fall back, but this merely resulted in disorganised retreat, with the Welsh cavalry running down the fleeing infantry and the Longbows raining long-range volleys on the unarmoured backs of those Normans capable of running for their lives.

The Normans lost upwards of 3,000 dead, while the Welsh suffered negligible losses, not only was this one of the largest battle ever fought in Wales, it was also one of the most one-sided battles ever fought in history.

That battle on a hill near Cardigan, in west Wales, was one of the earliest examples of Longbowmen used tactically on a medieval battlefield, and the result was nothing short of stunning. Within a few decades, the English began recruiting Welsh Longbowmen as mercenaries, and by the reign of King Edward I, the Longbowmen had become the core weapon of the English army and would go on to utterly dominate the late medieval battlefields of Europe.