MEDIÆVAL BOWMEN.

The archers of England were so famous during the Middle Ages that we feel special interest in knowing something about them. As early as the Conquest we find the Norman archers giving the invader a great advantage over the Saxons, who had not cultivated this arm with success. Their equipment and appearance may be seen in the Bayeux tapestry; most of them are evidently unarmed, but some are in armour like that of the men-at-arms. Usually the quiver hangs at the side; yet occasionally at the back, so that the arrows are drawn out over the shoulder; both fashions continued in later times. In one case, at least, an archer, in pursuit of the flying Saxons, is seen on horseback; but it may be doubted whether at this period, as was the case subsequently, some of the archers were mounted, or whether an archer has leaped upon a riderless horse to pursue the routed enemy. The bow was of the simplest construction, not so long as it afterwards became; the arrows were barbed and feathered. Each archer—in later times, at least—commonly carried two dozen arrows “under his belt.” He also frequently bore a stake sharpened at both ends, so that in the field, when the front ranks fixed their stakes in the ground with their points sloping outward, and the rear rank fixed theirs in the intermediate spaces, they formed a cheval de frise against cavalry, and, with the flanks properly cared for, they could hold their ground even against the steel-clad chivalry. Latterly also the archers were sometimes protected by a great movable shield; this they fixed upright by a rest, and behind it were sheltered from the adverse bowmen. The archer also carried a sword, so that he could defend himself, if attacked, hand to hand; or act on the offensive with the main body of foot when his artillery was expended. By the twelfth century there are stories on record which show that the English bowmen had acquired such skill as to make their weapon a very formidable one. Richard of Devizes tells us that at the siege of Messina the Sicilians were obliged to leave their walls unmanned, “because no one could look abroad but he would have an arrow in his eye before he could shut it.”

In the thirteenth century the archer became more and more important. He always began the battle at a distance, as the artillery do in modern warfare, before the main bodies came up to actual hand-to-hand fighting. We find in this century a regular use of mounted corps of bowmen and cross-bowmen; and the knights did not scorn to practise the use of this weapon, and occasionally to resort to it on a special occasion in the field. Some of the bowmen continue to be found, in the MS. illustrations, more or less fully armed, but the majority seem to have worn only a helmet of iron, and perhaps half armour of leather, or often nothing more than a woollen jerkin.

The cross-bow, or arbalest, does not appear to have been used in war until the close of the twelfth century. It was not equal to the long-bow in strong and skilful hands, because a powerful and skilful bowman, while he could probably send his shaft with as much force as a cross-bow, could shoot half-a-dozen arrows while the cross-bow was being wound up to discharge a second bolt; but still, once introduced, the mechanical advantage which the cross-bow gave to men of ordinary strength and of inferior skill caused it to keep its ground, until the invention of fire-arms gradually superseded both long-bow and arbalest. The bow of the cross-bow seems to have been usually of steel; some of them were strung by putting the foot into a loop at the end of the stock, and pulling the cord up to its notch by main force: an illustration of this early form appears in the arbalester shooting from the battlement of the castle in the early fourteenth-century illumination on p. 381, and another at p. 382; but the more powerful bows required some mechanical assistance to bring the string to its place. In a picture in the National Gallery of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Antonio Pollajuolo, of Florence, A.D. 1475, an arbalester has a cord attached to his belt, and a pulley running on it, with a hook to catch the bow-string, so that, putting his foot into the loop at the end of the stock, looping the end of the cord on to a hook at its butt, and catching the bow-string by the pulley, he could, by straightening himself, apply the whole force of his body to the stringing of his weapon. More frequently, however, a little winch was used, by which the string was wound into its place with little expenditure of strength. One of the men in the cut on the next page is thus stringing his bow, and it is seen again in the cut on p. 449. The arrow shot by the cross-bow was called a bolt or quarrel; it was shorter and stouter than an ordinary arrow, with a heavier head. The arbalester seems to have carried fifty bolts into the field with him; the store of bolts was carried by waggons which followed the army.

We have already said that there were, from the thirteenth century, bodies of mounted arbalesters. But the far larger proportion of archers, of both arms, were footmen, who were usually placed in front of the array to commence the engagement.

The arbalest, however, was more used on the Continent than in England; and hence the long-bow came to be especially considered the national arm of the English, while the Genoese became famous as arbalesters. The superior rapidity of fire gave the English archer the same advantage over his foemen that the needle-gun gave to the Prussians in the late war.

Later on, in the fourteenth century, the battle seems to have been usually begun by the great machines for throwing stones and darts which then played the part of modern cannon, while the bowmen were placed on the flanks. Frequently, also, archers were intermixed with the horsemen, so that a body of spearmen with archers among them would play the part which a body of dragoons did in more modern warfare, throwing the opposing ranks into confusion with missiles, before charging upon them hand to hand.

In the fourteenth century the bow had attained the climax of its reputation as a weapon, and in the French wars many a battle was decided by the strength and skill and sturdy courage of the English bowmen. Edward III. conferred honour on the craft by raising a corps of archers of the King’s Guard, consisting of 120 men, the most expert who could be found in the kingdom. About the same period the French kings enrolled from their allies of Scotland the corps of Scottish Archers of the Guard, who were afterwards so famous.

We have already given a good illustration of the long-bowman from the Royal MS. 14, E. IV., a folio volume illustrated with very fine pictures executed for our King Edward IV. From the same MS. we now take an illustration of the cross-bow. The accompanying cut is part of a larger picture which represents several interesting points in a siege. On the right is a town surrounded by a moat; the approach to the bridge over the moat is defended by an outwork, and the arbalesters in the cut are skirmishing with some bowmen on the battlements and angle-turrets of this outwork. On the left of the picture are the besiegers. They have erected a wooden castle with towers, surrounded by a timber breast-work. In front of this breast-work is an elaborate cannon of the type of that represented in the cut on page 392. At a little distance is a battery of one cannon elevated on a wooden platform, and screened by a breast-work of basket-work, which was a very usual way of concealing cannon down to the time of Henry VIII.

Bowmen and Arbalesters.

The man on the right of the cut wears a visored helmet, but it has no amail; his body is protected by a skirt of mail, which appears at the shoulders and hips, and at the openings of his blue surcoat; the legs are in brown hose, and the feet in brown shoes. The centre figure has a helmet and camail, sleeves of mail, and iron breastplate of overlapping plates; the upper plate and the skirt are of red spotted with gold; his hose and shoes are of dark grey. The third man has a helmet with camail, and the body protected by mail, which shows under the arm, but he has also shoulder-pieces and elbow-pieces of plate; his surcoat is yellow, and his hose red. The artist has here admirably illustrated the use of the crossbow. In one case we see the archer stringing it by help of a little winch; in the next he is taking a bolt out of the quiver at his side with which to load his weapon; in the third we have the attitude in which it was discharged.

Arbalesters.

The illustration above, from a fourteenth-century MS. (Cott. Julius, E. IV. f. 219), represents a siege. A walled town is on the right, and in front of the wall, acting on the part of the town, are the cross-bowmen in the cut, protected by great shields which are kept upright by a rest. The men seem to be preparing to fire, and the uniformity of their attitude, compared with the studied variety of attitude of groups of bowmen in other illustrations, suggests that they are preparing to fire a volley. On the left of the picture is sketched a group of tents representing the camp of the besiegers, and in front of the camp is a palisade which screens a cannon of considerable length. The whole picture is only sketched in with pen and ink.

The woodcut here given (Royal 14, E. IV. f. xiv.) forms part of a large and very interesting picture. In the middle of the picture is a castle with a bridge, protected by an advanced tower, and a postern with a drawbridge drawn up. Archers, cross-bowmen, and men-at-arms man the battlements. In front is a group of men-at-arms and tents, with archers and cross-bowmen shooting up at the defenders. On the right is a group of men-at-arms who seem to be meditating an attack by surprise upon the postern. On the left, opposed to the principal gate, is the timber fort shown in the woodcut. Its construction, of great posts and thick slabs of timber strengthened with stays and cross-beams, is well indicated. There seem to be two separate works: one is a battery of two cannon, the cannon having wheeled carriages; the other is manned by archers. It is curious to see the mixture of arms—long-bow, cross-bow, portable fire-arm, and wheeled cannon, all used at the same time; indeed, it may be questioned whether the earlier fire-arms were very much superior in effect to the more ancient weapons which they supplanted. No doubt many an archer preferred the long-bow, with which he could shoot with truer aim than with a clumsy hand-gun; and perhaps a good catapult was only inferior to one of the early cannon in being a larger and heavier engine.

Timber Fort.

At fol. l v. of the same MS., a wooden tower and lofty breast-work have been thrown up in front of a town by the defenders as an additional protection to the usual stone tower which defends the approach to the bridge. The assailants are making an assault on this breast-work, and need ladders to scale it; so that it is evident the defenders stand on a raised platform behind their timber defence. See a similar work at f. xlviij., which is mounted with cannon.

The practice of archery by the commonalty of England was protected and encouraged by a long series of legislation. As early as Henry I. we find an enactment—which indicates that such accidents happened then as do unhappily in these days, when rifle-shooting is become a national practice—that if any one practising with arrows or with darts should by accident slay another, it was not to be punished as a crime. In the fourteenth century, when the archer had reached the height of his importance in the warfare of the time, many enactments were passed on the subject. Some were intended to encourage, and more than encourage, the practice by the commonalty of what had become the national arm. In 1363, and again in 1388, statutes were passed calling upon the people to leave their popular amusements of ball and coits and casting the stone and the like, on their festivals and Sundays, and to practise archery instead. “Servants and labourers shall have bows and arrows, and use the same the Sundays and holidays, and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball, and other games called coits, dice, casting the stone, kailes, and other such inopportune games.”In 1482 a statute says that the dearness of bows has driven the people to leave shooting, and practise unlawful games, though the king’s subjects are perfectly disposed to shoot; and it therefore regulates the price of bows. This crude legislation, of course, failed to remedy the evil, for if the bowyers could not sell them at a profit, they would cease to make them, or rather to import the wood of which they were made, since the best yew for bows came from abroad, English yew not supplying pieces sufficiently long without knots. Accordingly, in 1483, another statute required all merchants sending merchandise to England from any place from which bow-staves were usually exported, to send four bow-staves for every ton of merchandise, and two persons were appointed at each port to inspect the staves so sent, and mark and reject those which were not good and sufficient.

Still later the erection of butts was encouraged in every parish to prevent the accidents which the statute of Henry I. had directed justice to wink at; and traces of them still remain in the names of places, as in Newington Butts; and still more frequently in the names of fields, as the “butt-field.”

Our history of ancient artillery would be imperfect without a few words on the modern artillery of metal balls propelled from hollow tubes by the explosive force of gunpowder, which superseded the slings and bows and darts, the catapults and trebuchets and mangonels and battering-rams, which had been used from the beginning of warfare in the world, and also drove out of use the armour, whether of leather, bone, or steel, which failed to pay in security of person against shot and cannon-ball for its weight and encumbrance to the wearer. A good deal of curious inquiry has been bestowed upon the origin of this great agent in the revolution of modern warfare. The Chinese and Arabs are generally regarded as the first inventors of gunpowder; among Europeans its invention has been attributed to Marcus Graecus, Albertus Magnus, Barthold Schwaletz, and Roger Bacon.

The first written evidence relating to the existence of cannon is in the ordinances of Florence, in the year 1326, wherein authority is given to the Priors Gonfalionieri and twelve good men to appoint persons to superintend the manufacture of cannons and iron balls for the defence of the Commune Camp and territory of the Republic. J. Barbour, the poet, is usually quoted as an authority for the use of cannon “crakeys of war,” by Edward III., in his Scottish campaign, in the year 1327. But since Barbour was not born till about that year, and did not write till 1375, his authority was not contemporary and may be doubted, especially since there is strong negative evidence to the contrary: e.g. that all the army accounts of this campaign still remain, and no mention of guns or gunpowder is to be found in them. In 1338, however, there is unquestionable evidence that cannon of both iron and brass were employed on board English ships of war. In an inventory of things delivered that year by John Starling, formerly clerk of the king’s vessels, to Helmyng, keeper of the same, are noted “un canon de fer ov ii chambers, un autre de bras ove une chamber, iii canons de fer of v chambres, un handgonne,” &c. In explanation of the two and five chambers, it appears that these earliest cannon were breechloaders, and each cannon had several movable chambers to contain the charges. The same year, 1338, gives the first French document relating to cannon. It is doubly interesting; first because it relates to the provision made for an expedition against Southampton in that year, and secondly because it was a curious attempt to combine the cannon and the arbalest, in other words, to make use of the force of gunpowder for propelling the old short quarrel. It was an iron fire-arm provided with forty-eight bolts (carreaux) made of iron and feathered with brass. We learn that a tube received the arrow, which was wrapped round with leather at the butt to make it fit closely, and this tube fitted to a box, or chamber, which contained the charge and was kept in its place by a wedge.[397] In 1339 it is recorded that the English used cannon at the siege of Cambray. In 1346 experiments on improved cannon were made by Peter of Bruges, a famous maker, before the consuls of Tournay. At the siege of Calais, in 1347, the English built a castle of wood, and armed it with bombards. In the household expenses of Edward III., commencing 1344, are payments to “engyners lvii., artillers vi., gunners vi.,” who each received sixpence a day.

The date of the first appearance of cannon in the field is still disputed; some say they were used at Crecy in the year 1346. Certainly, in 1382, the men of Ghent carried guns into the field against the Brugeois; and at the combat of Pont-de-Comines, in the same year, we read bombardes portatives were used.

Long-bow, Arquebus, Cannon, and Greek Fire.

We have already given several illustrations of cannon. Siege cannon for throwing heavy balls which did not need very great accuracy of aim, soon superseded entirely the more cumbrous military engines which were formerly used for the same purpose. But hand-guns were not at first so greatly superior to bows, and did not so rapidly come into exclusive use. And yet a good deal of inventive ingenuity was bestowed upon their improvement and development. The “Brown Bess” of our great continental war was a clumsy weapon after all, and it may fairly be doubted whether a regiment armed with it could have stood against a row of Robin Hood’s men with their long-bows. It was really left to our day to produce a portable fire-arm which would fire as rapidly, as far, and with as accurate an aim as Robin Hood’s men could shoot their cloth-yard shafts six hundred years ago; and yet it is curious to find some of the most ingenious inventions of the present day anticipated long since: there are still preserved in the Tower armoury breech-loaders and revolving chambers and conical shot of the time of Henry VIII.

The woodcut on the preceding page, which is from the MS. Royal 14, E. IV., contains several figures taken from one of the large illuminations that adorn the MS.; it affords another curious illustration of the simultaneous use of various forms of projectiles. On the right side is an archer, with his sheaf at his belt and his sword by his side. On the left is a man-at-arms in a very picturesque suit of complete armour, firing a hand-gun of much more modern form than those in the former woodcut. A small wheeled cannon on the ground shows the contemporary form of that arm, while the pikes beside it help to illustrate the great variety of weapons in use. The cross-bowman here introduced is from the same illumination; he is winding up his weapon with a winch, like the cross-bowman on p. 442; his shield is slung at his back.

Cross-bow.

But we have specially to call attention to the two men who are throwing shells, which are probably charged with Greek fire. This invention, which inspired such terror in the Middle Ages, seems to have been discovered in the east of Europe, and to have been employed as early as the seventh century. We hear much of its use in the Crusades, by the Greeks, who early possessed the secret of its fabrication. They used it either by ejecting it through pipes to set fire to the shipping or military engines, or to annoy and kill the soldiers of the enemy; or they cast it to a distance by means of vessels charged with it affixed to javelins; or they hurled larger vessels by means of the great engines for casting stones; or they threw the fire by hand in a hand-to-hand conflict; or used hollow maces charged with it, which were broken over the person of the enemy, and the liquid fire poured down, finding its way through the crevices of his armour. It was, no doubt, a terrible sight to see a man-at-arms or a ship wrapped in an instant in liquid flames; and what added to the terror it inspired was that the flames could not be extinguished by water or any other available appliance. On the introduction of the use of gunpowder in European warfare, Greek fire seems also to have been experimented upon, and we find several representations of its use in the MS. drawings where it is chiefly thrown by hand to set fire to shipping; in the present example, however, it is used in the field.

Battering-ram.

Lastly, in the above cut we give a representation of the battering-ram from an interesting work which illustrates all the usual military engines.[398] It contains curious contrivances for throwing up scaling-ladders and affixing them to the battlements, from which the inventors of our fire-escapes may have borrowed suggestions; and others for bridging wide moats and rivers with light scaffolding, which could be handled and fixed as easily and quickly as the scaling-ladders. The drawing of the ram only indicates that the machine consists of a heavy square beam of timber, provided, probably, with a metal head, which is suspended by a rope from a tall frame, and worked by manual strength. The cut is especially interesting as an illustration of the style of armour of the latter part of the fifteenth century. It gives the back as well as the front of the figure, and also several varieties of helmet.