Robin Hood and the English Archery Culture

The bow and arrow is one of the most powerful weapons in the cold weapon era, and its greatest advantage is its long-range attack capability. In the 13th century, on the east side of the Eurasian continent, Genghis Khan and his horse archers, who rose from the Mongolian grasslands, swept across the Eurasian continent in a few decades with the composite bow made of ox horns, tendons and wood in their hands, and established an unprecedented and huge empire. These short East Asians, riding Mongolian ponies, without armor, lightly armed, look inconspicuous, but they can shoot down the tall and strong heavy-armored infantry in West Asia and Eastern Europe with giant axes and long swords in high-speed raids.

Not long after the European infantry experienced the power of the Mongolian bow, on the westernmost side of the Eurasian continent, in the 14th and 15th centuries, the English used powerful longbows to defeat the French knights in heavy armor with a few more in France, and defeated them many times in a nearly "massacre" way. Since then, the English longbowmen have become famous all over the world and have become a powerful force that European countries fear. In fact, as early as the 12th century, the important role of archers in the British army gradually emerged in the era of Robin Hood.

Robin Hood is the most famous folk hero in medieval England. He is proficient in archery and is chivalrous and loyal. According to legend, although Robin Hood is a lowly archer, he has a noble chivalry. He risked his life to return the crown of King Richard who died in the battle, but was repaid by the rogue King John, who declared him an enemy of the state and a wanted criminal. He had to hide in the jungle to avoid being chased. In previous novels and movies, Robin Hood's image is usually a sharpshooter wearing a green cloak and shuttling through the jungle. He is elegant and poetic. He is also the prototype of the great elves who are good at using bows and arrows in Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings".

However, in the recently released "Robin Hood", Robin Hood played by Russell Crowe is not such an artistically processed "jungle elf", but an English longbowman with very realistic behavior and clothing. He followed Richard the Lionheart to participate in the Third Crusade and assisted the English nobles in defeating the invasion plan of King Philip of France. In the climax of the film, Robin Hood first led the longbowmen to shoot at the French landing troops from a high position on the coastal cliffs, and then led the cavalry to charge and completely defeated the French.

Robin Hood, played by Russell Crowe, holds a wooden longbow. Note the length of this bow
However, Robin Hood was not a longbowman in the true sense. At that time, the English longbow had not yet appeared. The bow he used was just a variant of the Welsh longbow. The British troubadour admired Robin Hood's character, so he regarded him as the ancestor of the longbowmen, and in the folk songs created by later generations, the longbow was handed over to him.

Historically, longbowmen appeared as an independent branch of the British army more than a hundred years later during the period of Edward "Long Legs" (the old king in "Brave Heart"). The European Middle Ages was the era of knights. With the help of stirrups and spears, heavy cavalry could easily attack infantry. In the movie "Brave Heart", the commander of the British army also said contemptuously when facing the Scottish rebels, "For hundreds of years, infantry has not been the opponent of cavalry", so he dared to rashly command the cavalry to attack the Scots who he thought were a group of "mud legs".

Before the emergence of longbowmen, the main force of combat in medieval Europe was heavy cavalry and infantry

At that time, it was indeed difficult for infantry to resist the impact of such heavy cavalry
Before that, the role of archers was not much different from that of Robin Hood. They just harassed the enemy in front of the battle and disrupted the enemy's formation. They were auxiliary attack roles. But this situation changed with the emergence of a large number of longbowmen. Because no matter how fierce the cavalry is in close combat, a longbowman can kill it with an arrow from a hundred meters away. The extremely brave "Lionheart King" Richard in "Robin Hood" died from a cold arrow shot by an unknown crossbowman when attacking a French castle (according to historical records, the crossbowman who shot King Richard to death was skinned alive).

The knights hated longbowmen very much because they could not hit them, but were frequently shot and could not use their strength. So they threatened that even if they didn't kill the captured longbowmen, they would cut off their right index and middle fingers to abolish their martial arts. However, as the longbowmen became the absolute main force of the British army, the theorem that infantry could not defeat cavalry was completely broken. After the famous Battle of Crécy, the British longbowmen who "slaughtered" thousands of heavily armored knights collectively showed off their right index and middle fingers to the captured knights to show that their hands were still intact (the origin of the V-sign for victory).

In theory, the French knights were not a group of cowards. Most of them participated in the Crusades and often had the upper hand in PK with the fierce Saracen cavalry. Why is the longbow so powerful that it can defeat the brave and warlike French knights? This has to start with the characteristics and power of the longbow. As the name suggests, a longbow is a bow that is longer than an ordinary bow. It is generally as long as the height of the archer, with an average length of 1.8 meters. Some longbows are close to 2 meters, while the length of ordinary bows is generally only a little more than 1 meter. Longbows can be fired at a very high frequency. A well-trained longbowman can fire 12 armor-piercing arrows per minute if he aims and shoots, and 15 per minute if he does not aim. This shooting frequency is higher than that of manually loaded rifles in the 19th century. In terms of firepower density, the combat efficiency of a longbowman is at least equivalent to that of three crossbowmen. Legend has it that a crossbowman wanted to compete with Robin Hood in archery, but before the crossbowman's string was pulled, Robin Hood had already shot 5 arrows.

English longbow made of yew wood
In addition to frequency, the longbow also had extremely terrible penetrating power at the time. The arrows it fired could penetrate chain mail at a distance of 200 meters, scale armor and steel plate armor at a distance of 100 meters, or 10 cm thick oak boards. This power was almost indestructible on the battlefields of the Middle Ages. Large numbers of longbowmen could cause great damage to the enemy. They did not shoot at individual targets, but made high parabolic intensive shooting at the places occupied by the enemy. If we calculate that 6 arrows can be accurately shot per minute, 5,000 longbowmen can fire 30,000 arrows at the dense enemy formation in 1 minute. This kind of attack can cause great trauma to the enemy. This is exactly the case with the Battle of Crécy. Some people describe the battlefield as being covered with arrows like snow. Before the emergence of muskets, 10,000 longbowmen were almost invincible on the battlefield.

However, it is actually not easy to obtain a large number of longbowmen. Because the power of the longbow comes entirely from the archer's arm strength, each arm needs to exert at least 40-50 kilograms of tension to fully draw the longbow. You should know that the combined tension of 5 spring tensioners that we usually see is only 30 kilograms. People who can easily fully draw 5 tensioners are not common. Because of frequent strong training, the spines of longbowmen may even be deformed, and the bones of the left forearm and right hand fingers are abnormally thick, which can be seen from their unearthed remains. It is the extreme requirement for strength that makes the training of longbowmen long and arduous. The English adopted the method of national archery training. King John's son Henry III ordered that all English men with healthy limbs must participate in archery practice and upper limb training after the age of 7. The English maintained this policy for hundreds of years, thus obtaining high-quality longbow soldiers.

England is the birthplace of modern football, but in the 14th century, playing football was prohibited by law. This was not to prevent football hooligans from causing trouble, but mainly to avoid wasting men's energy and let them concentrate on archery. At that time, the only legitimate livelihood of English farmers was to train longbows and upper limb strength in addition to farming and hunting. After church every Sunday, they would go to the shooting range near the church for training. There would also be various competitions during the period. The winner would be the one who shot the fastest, farthest and most accurately, and would receive additional material rewards, usually a large piece of bread or bacon. In addition, these winners are more likely to win the favor of girls. For young men from ordinary families, becoming a longbowman was a very respectable job at that time. Because as longbowmen played an increasingly important role in battle, they gradually formed their own class in England. Although they were lower than cavalry, they were higher than ordinary infantry. After winning, they could share the spoils of war, and their income was much better than being a farmer.

The English people's bow and arrow culture allowed them to select those young people who were tall, strong and skilled in archery to join the army. Excellent longbow troops made up for England's shortcomings in numbers and equipment. Another feature of longbowmen compared to heavy armored knights is that they are cheap. In the mid-13th century, a knight's full set of standard equipment, including armor, spears, long swords, and war horses, was worth about 30 pounds in total, while a longbowman's full set of equipment, including bows, arrows, daggers, helmets, and leather vests, only cost 1.6 pounds. Therefore, the English government stipulated that Englishmen with an annual income between 2-5 pounds must own a longbow.

Since the French suffered a great loss from the longbow, why didn't they vigorously develop their own longbow troops? In fact, after the Battle of Crécy, the French army did take measures to promote the longbow. Soon after, the French longbowmen grew rapidly, and their tactical quality was no less than that of the British longbowmen. However, the King of France was worried that once these archers of civilian origin united, they might become more powerful and more difficult to control than the French nobles who were heavy knights. It was based on this worry that the King of France finally decided to suppress the development of the longbow troops, because the political system of France at that time did not have room for a civilian army.

The peasants in England were different. They had always been against the nobles but not the king. After the Middle Ages, the English gradually formed a class called "Yeoman". Yeoman was between the nobles and the poor, and had his own land, a bit like the middle class today, unlike the French peasants, who had no land at all and could only work for the nobles. As property owners, Yeoman had a higher fighting morale, especially in the battle to defend their hometown. The longbowmen in England mainly came from the Yeoman class. The king also recruited longbowmen through the conscription system, so that he could have the power to check and balance the knight nobles. Because the Yeomans were skilled in using longbows, the nobles as knights had to treat them carefully and respect their basic requirements when necessary to prevent the Yeomans who could use longbows from rebelling and ending up like the French knights. Rights come from power, and power comes from force. Out of the instinctive fear of force, the English nobles knew how to respect the rights of the lower classes better than the nobles of other countries, knew how to listen, and were more open-minded. The most primitive democracy in the modern West was also indirectly born under the promotion of the English longbow culture.