[Rim Andries]

Hello fellas,

I have a question. It is fairly simple, though I doubt the answer will be too. I have been searching the interwebz (including this forum) in an attempt to gain some insight, but I'm afraid I'm still struggling. My hope is this topic and your combined knowledge can liberate me from any doubt on the matter, and by extension allow me to have a good night of sleep once again

Here is the question: at any given time in history, how far east did the (English) longbow get and similar; how far west did the (Hungarian) composite bow get?

And also, related to the main question: is there an area where they were both in use at the same time? If so, when and where? And if there was a gap between the two, can you tell me what kind of bow (besides the crossbow) was most likely in use then and there?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I love sleep and I want it back!

Thanks and cheers!

[Bartek Strojek]

Dunno about 'English' but longbow is rather straightforward, ancient weapon, so it would generally occur everywhere where there was remotely appropriate wood.

Bow from Opole, for example, dated roughly at High Medieval period IIRC.



About 200cm long, unfortunately didn't survive the WWII. :/

The real question is, of course, how widely used they were by regular armies outside of England.

It seems that not very, so far.


As far as relfexive, eastern composites go, IIRC we only have depictions and rare mentions, so it's hard to tell.

Supposedly they've became rather prevalent in whole Rus, since 13th century. due to obvious occurrence of Mongol occupation.

In Poland they seem to appear in very late 15th century.

[Ben Coomer]

So, aside from cultural heritage, I think there is particular reasons why bow types tended towards certain regions.

For longbows, having a relatively large supply of appropriate wood for a complete bow is pretty important and is probably why widespread use confined itself to West Europe. Likewise, when you don't find many trees, composites are more popular because you can piece together a good bow from smaller pieces.

Another consideration should be climate. We are blessed with a number of glues in the modern age, and can easily pick and choose the qualities we want off a hardware shelf. But they were much more limited in the medieval period to mostly animal based glues. These glues can be amazing, but are very susceptible to moisture. Its not unusual for some traditional archer using all natural materials to have their bows come apart on a high humidity day. Imagine what would have happened at Crecy if the rainstorm had made the English bows completely fall apart. But on the high steppes, or deserts of the Middle East, or Southern Europe, composite bows become popular.

At least this is my theory.

[Timo Nieminen]

Longbows were used widely: Europe, Africa, India, SE Asia, New Guinea, North and South America. Obviously, most of these were not English longbows, nor descended from the English longbow.

The Asian-style recurve-reflex composite bow was used widely too, but not as widely. Used in Western Europe under the Romans, and also taken there by the Huns, and used in Spain (into the 17th century?) under Arab rule, and after. Also used in North Africa, Eastern Europe (a standard weapon for Muscovite cavalry - not just from the Mongol conquest, but also due to long-standing contacts with the Central Asia steppe; Russia only became European under Peter the Great), India, Western Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. Bows of similar design (independently developed) were also used in North America. Other types of composite bows were used in northern Europe (e.g., Lapland) and Japan.

But I think you could say that the Hungarian bow didn't really go further west than Germany, and the English longbow didn't go further east than Italy (plenty of English mercenaries fought there, and used longbows). Where they mixed were Germany and Spain, with longbows, composite bows, and crossbows all being used alongside each other. (Apparently composite bows saw significant use in early Medieval Germany, but I don't have details. Crossbows became the dominant military bow by late Medieval times.)

Apart from availability of woods and effect of weather on glues (but note where composite crossbows were used), there's also the question of cost. Longbows are cheap, composite bows are expensive. Where archery is a cheap option in warfare, expect longbows. Where the bow is a knightly/upper-class weapon, expect composite bows. So, for evidence of how far west composite bows were used in Europe, it might be useful to look at hunting art, rather than military art. Look at what the rich people hunt with.

[Pieter B.]

[R. Kolick]

one key thing to remember is that both of these bows require an entire industry to function as viable weapon of war

the only major archery power in western Europe was England and they had laws and bureaucracy to control the materials to make both bow and arrows and maintain the quality required of war bows. this includes inspections of the guild workshops, having trade laws that required traders coming from Italy, Spain, or some areas of the Baltic (areas that have mountains high enough to grow dense Yew) to import a certain number of staves in proportion to the value of their cargo so that they have the materials to make bows and replace old or broken ones.

in the east composite bows require Years to make and most of that time is just waiting for the glue to cure. while you're a small nomad tribe thats not to much of a problem as long as there is a few bowyers with you. I'm not as familiar with this part of the world but once you need to equip an army and have to equip and supply them that delay needs a lot of craftsmen to meet the demand which would require a lot of supporting industries and a lot of cash flow

while pretty much any state that is willing to, can create these industries but once they are established its extremely hard to change from one to the other. composite bow making and self bow making require different skills and knowledge of the materials so that a master bowyer would essentially be a novice rather than a master bowyer. in the west while they did know how to make composite bows they didn't see a need to. it takes years to train an archer to use a weapon that can do anything to a man wearing plate armor, with a crossbow you can train a soldier to cock, load, and shoot a weapon capable of killing a knight in full plate in a few weeks. to the european leaders at the time the crossbow was seen as a more practical weapon (with the exception of England)
maybe not a perfect theory for why as their are probably religious, cultural and a plethora of other reasons but food for thought

[Rim Andries]

Wow guys, what a wealth of knowledge! I knew I was in the right place here. You have provided me with some really helpful answers! But you also gave room for new questions

For instance; how would the English longbow be different from other longbows found elsewhere in the world? Is it matter of lbs? Length or thickness? Or did it simply get the additional title due to it's legendary status as a weapon of war in England?

Also is it safe to assume that there was at least a small change one could encounter both longbows as well as composite recurves, next to crossbows in the Netherlands of the 15th/16th century (under the rule of Burgundy and Habsburg I believe)?

Finally, was it indeed a composite bow that the Indians of North America used? I was always under the impression it was some kind of selfbow/flatbow?

Thanks again brothers! You have been great. I appreciate it a lot!

[Timo Nieminen]

[Rim Andries]

Thanks a bunch Timo! Are you an archer yourself? Greetings from the Lowlands to Down Under!

[Pieter B.]

[Timo Nieminen]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

The easternmost point where we have solid evidence for strictly English longbows is Prussia, since Henry V went on crusade there and took a company of English longbowmen with him. Their performance apparently impressed the Teutonic Knights, though it didn't lead to the adoption of the English longbow -- probably because similar bows already existed in the area and the Teutonic Knights (and their German settler allies) already had perfectly good crossbows that suited them well enough for their purposes.

On the other hand, I'm no longer so sure that the composite recurved bows vanished entirely from Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Here's Mike Loades' analysis of horse archer figures in the Utrecht Psalter and Bayeux Tapestry; while of course the Utrecht Psalter figure could simply be showing a recurved self-bow, the sheer degree of recurvature makes it more likely that it had some sort of composite or at least laminated construction. Besides, we also know that the Norman rulers of Sicily and Southern Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries were pretty notorious for making use of "Saracen" archers and crossbowmen recruited from among people of Arab and North African descent who still lived in the area in those times.

Would that justify composite recurve bows in the Netherlands in the 15th or 16th century? Probably not outside of hunting contexts, and not in the hands of anybody lower than the royalty and high nobility. If it's just recurves, though, we know that Burgundian Ordonnance archers were sometimes depicted with recurved longbows; the length and gentle recurvature of these bows, along with a two-tone colouring similar to the kind often used to indicate the English longbow's D-shaped cross-section, suggest that they might have been self or at most two-wood laminated bows instead of full-fledged composites.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Argh. Forgot to post the link to Mike Loades' FB post:

https://www.facebook.com/mikeloades/posts/841054249266527

[Will S]

Just a quick point - the D shaped cross section is not actually how the medieval warbows were made. The now famous D section is actually a Victorian adaptation to improve stability and accuracy at lower weights. True medieval bows were circular, oval, galleon or rectangular in cross section. This can be seen with the Mary Rose bows, and is the best type of section for very heavy bows with complementary tension/compression wood.

If you were to make a heavy bow using a tension-strong wood like ash or elm (both woods were also used regularly during the middle ages) you trap the back to make it narrower than the belly, but the cross section is still very flat or round, not D shaped.

A D shaped section shifts all the stresses into the curve of the belly, which at high poundage often causes failure by means of stress fractures (known as "chrysals") or simply breaking. Bows over about 80lbs shouldn't be D shaped.

Yew is one of the very few woods that CAN tolerate a D section, but only at light target archery weights.

[Will S]

This is a typical cross section of a Mary Rose bow (and subsequently of pretty much any heavy yew bow from the medieval period)



This would fall into the category of "galleon" section, and is one of the safest methods of maintaining maximum heartwood for the power and minimum sapwood for safety without causing unnecessary stresses to the belly at heavy poundage.

[Ralph Grinly]

I think the comparison between "English Longbow" compared to Eastern-style composite bows is often looked at from the wrong viewpoint. It's not so much a case of "The Longbow is better/worse because of...such and such methods of construction and so on. It's more a case of looking at the Longbow as a complete weapons "system". For one reason or other..the ruling classes in England decided their best way of fielding a relatively effective army was to develop an efficient corps of archers. This involved long periods of compulsory training for archers to become effective with their weapon. Very few other European rulers felt they could risk their "lower classes" being trained to be such effective potential soldiers, and to be equipped with such weapons under their own control.

[Rim Andries]

[Timo Nieminen]

[Will S]

You're right - I should have been clearer! It's the narrow, hard edged D section (that looks like the letter D in fact) that most people assume to be a proper longbow section, when like you mentioned it's far more rounded (although of course as you mentioned you can find examples of all sorts of section if you go back and look at many bows.) With lighter Victorian bows the strong edged D section was fine, as the weight was lower. You could make the bows incredibly light and fast using that D section.

I've seen the MR bows, and some of the best replicas made by guys like Joe Gibbs and Ian Coote, and the common shape is galleon, not D. It's called galleon as it resembles the cross section of a galleon ship - the sides are wider than the back and belly, almost swollen. That's certainly how I make my own heavy yew bows, with a crowned back, galleon section and no edges anywhere.

Having a crowned back is a benefit for some yew - specifically very good quality with a high sg and ring count. For lower quality yew a flatter back section is preferable.

I've got Weapons Of Warre somewhere which details every single bow and its measurements and cross sections etc so I'll find the distribution and post it, but I'm reasonably confident that the oval, galleon and circular sections are as common if not more so than the D section. I may well be completely wrong of course!

[Will S]

Weapons of Warre identifies 4 basic shapes - round D, Deep D, flat d and slab sided.

It seems that while the slab sided bows are quite rare, and are only the very largest bows "most can be said to have the basic 'D' exhibiting a rounded belly and flatter back. These can be sub-divided based on the roundness of the back, into those with a rounded back (almost circular in cross-section), the traditional flat back 'D', and a deeper 'D' where the cross section is squarer as the depth of the belly is exaggerated."

As for numbers, in the section by Keith Watson a small study of 108 bows showed that 9 were rounded, 9 were D, 76 were deep D (which is known as "galleon") and 14 were flat D, with the 8 biggest being slab sided. This puts the galleon section way ahead in terms of popularity, but obviously that can only be said for those 108 bows.