Quick Question - rules for heavy bows

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Surely the simple answer would be that the people we're talking about didn't practice horse archery, and the people you're talking about fought as cavalry?

If your nobles, knight-equivalents and gentry practice archery enough so that they can shoot warbows while mounted, they are obviously not just amateur archers. That connotes a society where archery is central to the image of a warrior and the warrior aristocrats fight as mounted archers. This applied in many steppe societies, Indo-Iranians like the Persians and Parthians, which was then adopted by East Roman armies from certain regions, it was famously true of many Indian peoples, the Japanese samurai and, of course, Turkic and Mongol steppe empires.

When I mentioned that aristocrats didn't bring their hunting bows to war, I meant in societies where amateur archery, for hunting as a sport, was practised by the aristocracy, but archery was not part of the ideal of the warrior aristocrat in wartime. It was seen like modern football, perhaps, in that some modern military officers might have played high school or even college football and are proud of their football prowess as a peacetime demonstration of martial virtues, but they don't bring a football to war.

The societies I'm talking about, in context, were Norman and other French nobles, Saxons, the Welsh, Scots and other societies part of battles where yeoman archers fought. I assumed the context was fairly clear by the way 'yeomanry' was there in the text. In those societies, aristocrats often used bows for sport and probably achieved similar skill as modern hobbyist archers.

On a battlefield, that kind of amateur archer does not add any meaningful value to the archers who were raised to shoot heavy warbows. Because even a skilled amateur hunter will not have the experience or capability to shoot as far as the distance between two armies during the maneuvering that happens on a battlefield. There, distances where archers loose might be 200-300 meters, especially for harrying fire, meant to distract and slow the targeted formation.

No bow hunter shoots at that kind of range. Their bow doesn't have the power and they don't have the skill to hit at that range, not even when the target is a whole formation. Experiments on how hard it is to hit even large formations of men at a long distance have been performed. Without extensive practice in judging range and adjusting stance to account for it, most people, even skilled bowhunters, don't even hit close enough for the targeted formation to notice that they were the target.

The hobbyist skills of bowhunting and the ability to use a warbow as it was used in medieval European warfare are not close enough to each other for the hobbyist bowhunters among the warrior aristocracy to bring their hunting bows to war, any more than a lieutenant in command of a mortar platoon would bring their football to war, even if they played quarterback for the Army Black Knights in college.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Having your cavalry force join your foot archer blocks would be all kinds of weird.

Even warrior aristocrats where the ideal of a warrior was a horseman and knight fought on foot when it was more practical. Plus, pre-modern warfare consumed horses like modern armoured warfare consumes fuel. They died so fast that most armies in the field started to run out, even if each aristocrat brought several horses.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Even warrior aristocrats where the ideal of a warrior was a horseman and knight fought on foot when it was more practical. Plus, pre-modern warfare consumed horses like modern armoured warfare consumes fuel. They died so fast that most armies in the field started to run out, even if each aristocrat brought several horses.

Fighting on foot where appropriate and merging into otherwise homogeneous formations of common troops are distinct propositions.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

(Curious whether they avoided shooting bows during sieges as well, though. It's something I never hear about.)

They mostly used crossbows.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Rupert

They mostly used crossbows.

When he was sick at the Siege of Acre, Richard of England had himself carried into a shelter to shoot with the crossbow from his sickbed. Presumably he had people to span the bows for him.

Lots of videos of people shooting heavy bows on YouTube these days eg. Tod's Workshop channel