Flocculencio
Donor
Yep. While on the other hand, crossbowmen were easy to come by as any idiot who knew how to point one in the right direction could use one.
American frontiersmen use longbows as well as muskets/rifles
- Thread starter Melvin Loh
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Yep. While on the other hand, crossbowmen were easy to come by as any idiot who knew how to point one in the right direction could use one.
Riain
Banned
It took 83 years for the French to come to terms with the longbowmen, and Patay was a surprise victory at that. And the popular pastime of archery had waned by Patay so their skills weren't replaceble. But if you have the skill base available, as in England in the 1300s but not the 1400s, and in the proposed American frontier of the 1700s the power, range and rate of fire of the longbow makes it more effective than crossbows and muskets until the range and rate of fire of the rifle picks up.
I don't know that Davy Crockett using a bow instead of a rifle is that farfetched, actually. First of all, Davy Crocket was born in the backcountry. As a result he would have been required to develope strength from chopping wood and bringing home game animals on his own back and so forth. In addition, native peoples of North American were highly profiecient bowmen, having used bows for hunting and war for thousands of years. I don't know if longbows would have seen widespread use in North America, but the skill sets for building and maintainting bows are definetly there.
Flocculencio
Donor
That's a big if though. You have to somehow keep the practice of longbow archery at a level high enough to sustain mobilisation for three to four hundred extra years, in the face of much cheaper and more efficient methods such as mobilisation of the large pike-and-musket armies that finally put an end to the mediaeval style of warfare.
Riain
Banned
It wasn't Royal command which created the situation whereby longbow armies were able to be formed, the yeomanry were using bows on a widespread basis. Seeing this the army leaders decided to harness this social trend, when this social trend ended of its own accord the dominance of the longbow ended as well. It was then that the King made laws regarding archery, to prolong a social trend for his own military benefit. If there was a widespread tradition of archery on the American frontier then American military leaders could harness it. But they couldn't create the skills basis on a command, the skills had to be there to begin with.
how does one pronounce Riain? Flocculencio
Donor
Yes, I realise this- what I'm saying is that even with Royal encouragement this social situation where longbow archery was part and parcel of the culture didn't really survive much past the 16th C. How then do you propose to have it continue even though there's no real advantage to it?
The idea of longbows being used in the Revolution is intriguing, if only because of the superior rate of fire archers could bring to the black powder battlefield. The comments about draw weight of the English longbow are accurate, but those had to propel bodkin-tipped arrows that could penetrate armor. Personal armor wasn't unknown in the British army by the 1770s, but it was limited to officers for the most part. (Some heavy cavalry units still used armor IIRC.) Common soldiers were unprotected.
So rather than 150-pound longbows that required years of training to shoot accurately, archers in the Revolution could theoretically get by with lighter bows -- say 75-pound bows that were well within the strength range of any New England farm boy. And massed units of archers would not have to worry so much about individual accuracy. They could be trained to fire at certain angles (for certain ranges) at command in the same way (and likely less time) that a soldier could learn to load, aim, and fire a musket. So archery becomes less a matter of individual skill and more a matter of learning to keep the pointy end of the arrow toward the enemy.
Which still leaves the question of why the concept of archery warfare would have survived into the latter 1700s. Or perhaps have been rejuvenated by circumstances.
1. The Continental Congress recruits warriors from friendly Indian tribes and forms them into archery units.
2. A shortage of firearm manufacturing facilities above the village smithy level and lack of reinforcement and supplies from France.
3. A persistent and intractable shortage of gunpowder and/or the desire to reserve gunpowder for artillery.
4. A desperate commander, perhaps cut off for months in northern New York or somewhere in the western territories without access to resupply, falls back on memories of a childhood among local Indians and stories of Robin Hood to turn part of his troops into archery units as stores of gunpowder and spare musket parts begin to run low.
So rather than 150-pound longbows that required years of training to shoot accurately, archers in the Revolution could theoretically get by with lighter bows -- say 75-pound bows that were well within the strength range of any New England farm boy. And massed units of archers would not have to worry so much about individual accuracy. They could be trained to fire at certain angles (for certain ranges) at command in the same way (and likely less time) that a soldier could learn to load, aim, and fire a musket. So archery becomes less a matter of individual skill and more a matter of learning to keep the pointy end of the arrow toward the enemy.
Which still leaves the question of why the concept of archery warfare would have survived into the latter 1700s. Or perhaps have been rejuvenated by circumstances.
1. The Continental Congress recruits warriors from friendly Indian tribes and forms them into archery units.
2. A shortage of firearm manufacturing facilities above the village smithy level and lack of reinforcement and supplies from France.
3. A persistent and intractable shortage of gunpowder and/or the desire to reserve gunpowder for artillery.
4. A desperate commander, perhaps cut off for months in northern New York or somewhere in the western territories without access to resupply, falls back on memories of a childhood among local Indians and stories of Robin Hood to turn part of his troops into archery units as stores of gunpowder and spare musket parts begin to run low.
I think that one of the primary advantages of the musket in this era (along with cheapness and ease of use) is its ability to function as calvary deterrent in a pinch.
A longbow on the other hand is less than worthless at close range. A body of archers without pike support that isn't dug-in or fortified is going to be massacred by cavalry or by bayonet-armed infantry. While they could certainly carry swords that's an added expense and bayonet is easier to weild in melee anyway (assuming no serious training with sword).
A longbow on the other hand is less than worthless at close range. A body of archers without pike support that isn't dug-in or fortified is going to be massacred by cavalry or by bayonet-armed infantry. While they could certainly carry swords that's an added expense and bayonet is easier to weild in melee anyway (assuming no serious training with sword).
Riain
Banned
It's not my thread, so I don't propose to give the reasons why social conditions in colonial America give rise to popular longbow archery,I just assume it happened and speculate on the results in the ARW. As for the vulnerablitiy of longbowmen, it took the French cavalry 83 years, that's 83 years, to gain an unexpected victory over longbow armies, which were usually about 3 archers to 1 man at arms. Their power/range/ROF makes them ideal for anti-cavalry work, they can blanket a killing ground with arrows and prepare simple field obstacles to further delay cavalry in this killing zone. Gun armed cavalry could dash in and out to fire on the massed ranks, but gun armed cav usually used very short range guns and thus would he hideously vulnerable still.
Except that you can argue, not unreasonably, that much of this had to do with the early brilliance of English leadership compared to French leaders (often due to things beyond their control) making mistakes all over the place.
There are also problems in the fact that Longbows were very dependent upon finding good fixed positions to defend themselves from Cavalry charges. Fine in the 100 years war.. (fading out by the end but no matter) since cannon are in their infancy. By the 18th century.. cannon are a bit more advanced and numerous are they not? Surely the risk is that the fairly dense clouds of longbows shall have to effectively sit facing cannon fire and more over be incapable of leaving their position without the risk of being completely destroyed by a strong cavalry charge.
There is also the question of how often you can rely on relatively fixed positions in the far larger and less populated American theatre. Surely they could quite simply be surrounded, have their supply lines cut, and starved out of their position?
Maybe they're not used in that way then. Maybe they're used to harry and harrass British supply lines and troop columns. They could be very effective for that kind of work.
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