A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [50]
This was the longbow, derived from the Welsh and developed under Edward I for use against the Scots in the highlands. With a range reaching 300 yards and a rapidity, in skilled hands, of ten to twelve arrows a minute in comparison to the crossbow’s two, the longbow represented a revolutionary delivery of military force. Its arrow was three feet long, about half the length of the formidable six-foot bow, and at a range of 200 yards it was not supposed to miss its target. While at extreme range its penetrating power was less than that of the crossbow, the longbow’s fearful hail shattered and demoralized the enemy. Preparing for the challenge to France, Edward had to make up for the disparity in numbers by some superiority in weaponry or tactics. In 1337 he had prohibited on pain of death all sport except archery and canceled the debts of all workmen who manufactured the bows of yew and their arrows.
Another new weapon, the gun, entered history at this time, but meekly and tentatively and much less effectively than the longbow. Invented about 1325, the first ribaud or pot de fer, as the French called it, was a small iron cannon shaped like a bottle which fired an iron bolt with a triangular head. When a French raiding force at the opening of the war sacked and burned Southampton in 1338, it brought along one ribaud furnished with three pounds of gunpowder and 48 bolts. In the next year the French manufactured more in the form of several tubes bound to a wheeled platform, with their touchholes aligned so that all could be fired at once. But they proved too small to fire a projectile with enough force to do serious damage. The English reportedly used some small cannon at Crécy without noticeable effect and definitely had them at the siege of Calais, where they proved powerless against the city’s stone walls. Later, when cast in brass or copper and enlarged in size, they were useful against bridges and city or castle gates or in defense of these, but stone walls withstood them for another hundred years. Difficulties in re-loading, ramming the powder, inserting the projectile, and containing the gas until it built up enough explosive force, frustrated effective firing throughout the 14th century.
In the sea fight at Sluys, with Edward in personal command, the longbowmen dominated the English armament, with one ship of men-at-arms placed between every two ships of archers, plus extra ships of archers for reinforcements if need arose. Not naval power but the strength of soldiers and archers on board ship determined sea battle in this era. They operated from high-decked cogs of 100 to 300 tons fitted with fighting platforms or “castles” for the archers. The battle was “fierce and terrible,” reports Froissart, “for battles on sea are more dangerous and fiercer than battles by land, for on the sea there is no recoiling or fleeing.” Under the archers’ attack the French were driven from their decks and, pursued by ill-luck and error, were engulfed in defeat.
No one dared tell the outcome of the battle to Philip VI until his jester was thrust forward and said, “Oh, the cowardly English, the cowardly English!” arid on being asked why, replied, “They did not jump overboard like our brave Frenchmen.” The King evidently got the point. The fish drank so much French blood, it was said afterward, that if God had given them the power of speech they would have spoken in French.
The English victory led nowhere at the moment because Edward could not deliver sufficient force on land. His various allies from the Low Countries, acquired at great expense in subsidies, were slipping