Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
Late medieval longbows also mark almost the sole point at which bows were more than ways to harry and inconvenience an armoured enemy.
I believe that those horsebows which were useful in war were also at 100 lbs. or so. I've at least seen several studies with reproductions of that weight.
|
I don't understand. Most low tech troops weren't well armoured, and most low-tech armies included large units of archers. So the fact that a bow with moderate draw is unlikely to penetrate armour isn't an argument against such bows being used in battle. The prevalence of armour on the late medieval battlefield may have something to do with the high draw weight of contemporary longbows and crossbows, but it may be something else. After all, the warbow wasn't likely to penetrate contemporary armour either ...
There's an article in Barry Molloy ed.,
The Cutting Edge (2007) on Scythian bows which has a good summary of the physics involved (although it overstates its argument for the effectiveness of bows with a moderate draw). The weight and design of an arrow set limits on the strength of bow it can be usefully fired from, and we have tens of thousands of arrows from military contexts which could not have benefitted from draw weights of 50 kilos or more. An article "Experimental Archaeology" in
Antiquity 62 (1988) pp. 658-670 has two replica composite bows (one Late Bronze Age Egyptian and one Early Modern Crimean Tartar) based on examples used in war. Both have draws of under 30 kg.