Introduction

Originally this was a response to a question here on why the English longbowmen didn't prove decisive at the Battle of Bannockburn, but it kind of evolved into a much longer response that went beyond just Bannockburn and used Crecy and Neville's Cross as examples of how and when English archers were effective. It also became much longer than a couple of replies could contain, and it also took me a lot longer than I originally anticipated to write the answer, so I've instead modified things a bit to work as a standalone post and focused entirely on the two battles in 1346.

In short, this post looks at the roles of the archers during the Battles of Crecy and Neville's Cross and how or why they were effective in each battle. The third part of the post draws some conclusions based primarily on those two battles, with some occasional reference to other battles during the 14th century to make points clearer.

I'll show my cards early, and say that I think Kelly DeVries' argument that bows were both effective and important to the English way of war in the 14th and 15th centuries but weren't decisive is the best reading of the evidence, as opposed to Clifford J. Rogers' view that they were decisive and likely to penetrate even plate armour. I go into this in more depth in the third part of this post, and will hopefully make good enough use of the archaeological and written sources to prove my point to you.

There are also a few bits and pieces in here that is based on fairly recent scholarship and which has not necessarily received widespread attention or been tested in academic debate. An example of this is Bertrand Schnerb's argument that there weren't more than 2000 Genoese at the Battle of Crecy, which is a position I now accept. I won't be calling attention to these, because to discuss the historiography in that depth would make this post even longer than even I want to write, but if you have any questions on this, feel free to ask me in the comments.

With that out of the way, on to the meat of the post!

Part 1: The Battle of Crecy

While Agincourt is probably the best known battle of the Hundred Years' War, the Battle of Crecy is a close second and the first major triumph of the English. While they'd had a sizeable victory at Sluys, some success at Morlaix and the Earl of Lancaster had had two stunning victories at Bergerac and Auberoche just the year before, Crecy was the first time the might of the French Crown, with the king in attendance, was soundly defeated. The King of Bohemia, in addition to nine princes, ten counts, a duke, an archbishop, a bishop and somewhere in the region of 2200 men-at-arms were killed in the battle, in addition to several thousand crossbowmen and infantry.

Unlike the Cambrai or Tournai campaigns where both Royal armies had faced off against each other but didn't fight, an unpopular but sound strategy on Philip's part whose outcome was to his advantage, Crecy was such a decisive English victory that established Edward III as the ascendant king and decimated the ranks of the Northern French nobility in a way that Bergerac and Auberoche hadn't done for the South.

It's not surprising that the English longbows have long been credited with the English victory. This argument predates Charles Oman and ultimately has its origins in the mythmaking of the later 15th and 16th centuries, but Oman's conclusion that "by far the greater part of the loss was due to the arrows of the English archery" is one that has caught the imagination of many and earned its place as the reason for the English victory in the minds of many, despite even Oman's admission that the "steadiness" of the English men-at-arms was as much the reason for their success as the archery.

There is, however, an alternate reason for the many deaths of the French at Crecy, and that some many of their men-at-arms (at least 1500) were killed in front of the Black Princes' battle, so let's dig into the sources and see what they have to say on the matter.

When it comes to sources, we unfortunately don't have any eyewitness sources that describe the battle in detail. The Acta Bellicosa, a campaign diary written by someone on the campaign was incompletely copied in the only remaining manuscript, leaving us with three remaining types of sources. The best of these are those whose authors we know had direct access to a fairly prominent participant (eg: Jean le Bel) or where we can reasonably infer this (eg: the *Chronicle of St. Omer). The second type are those whose authors plausibly could have spoken directly to a participant or who had access to writings by a participant (eg: Giovanni Villani), while the third type are those whose authors relied on second or third hand accounts or who do not record much detail. Some sources are harder to categorise than others, and just because an author had direct access to a participant doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct or accurate on all details.

The traditional narrative of the Battle of Crecy (especially the pop-history depictions of it) has a lot of emphasis on the idea that English archers killed the French - or at least their horses - in droves and weakened the charge so much that it never really became coherent enough to threaten the English lines except once: the famous incident where Edward III refuses to send more than a handful of men to help his son, saying "let the boy win his spurs".

A good number of sources offer a different take on this, however, and have the English vanguard advancing against the French vanguard after the Genoese crossbowmen were routed and the French knights became mixed up in them.

Perhaps the most important of these is Jean le Bel, canon of Saint Lamberts cathedral in Liege. Jean le Bel was a friend of Jean de Hainaut, one of the more prominent commanders on the French side at the Battle of Crecy, and the one who finally convinced Philip to give up the attack. However, le Bel was also an ardent admirer and supporter of Edward III - he had likely met the king when Jean de Hainaut was arranging a marriage between his niece (Philippa) and Edward, and had then participated in the disastrous Weardale campaign - and he had interviewed English and German knights who had been present at the battle was well.

le Bel, in his account of the battle, has the English men-at-arms advance on the French after they had become entangled in the fleeing infantry and the archers had begun to wound their horses. In this version, it's the men-at-arms on foot who do most of the killing and they advance against the French to do so. It's also noticeable that the French horses are said to be wounded but not the men-at-arms. le Bel and his sources didn't think that archery contributed much to defeat of the men-at-arms.

This may sound like aristocratic snobbery, but bear in mind that le Bel had actually faced English archery before and had seen men-at-arms fight archers. During the Weardale campaign, a fight broke out between Hainaulter pages and English archers over a dice game, resulting in the archers forming a mob to kill both the pages and their masters. While those like le Bel who were away from their lodgings and couldn't arm themselves defended the houses they were in as best they could, the others armed themselves and formed a company of about a hundred full armed men-at-arms who then routed the English archers, killing 316 in the streets and the fields outside of York. While some casualties were taken by the Hainaulters, their armour protected them for the most part.

In fact, le Bel considered the armour of the English men-at-arms to be outdated at the time and, judging by the Tower inventories and wills from the 1320s, was an accurate assessment. It wasn't until the 1330s that the English began to wear full plate armour (although not quite as complete as later armour). This in turn gives us some idea of what the ideal standard was for French, German and Low Country knights and men-at-arms. Even though we do know that the poorer men-at-arms didn't yet universally meet this standard, the higher nobility and their retinues, along with knights and wealthier men-at-arms would have been wearing this kind of armour, and especially those in the vanguard at Crecy.

Other sources agree with le Bel. The Chronicle of the Este Family, whose entry on the Battle of Crecy was most likely entered in 1347 based on a detailed newsletter from a French/French friendly source, claims that Edward III sallied "from the wagons" once the French nobility were fully engaged, while Giovanni Villani in 1348 has both the Prince of Wales sallying after the Genoese defeat and Edward III later doing the same in order to save the Prince from defeat. These early Italian sources seem to be drawing from a common source, but Villani also had more sources than the Este family given the greater detail he provides about the battle, the campaign and the armies. Other Italian chronicles, like the Pistoian History, also have this story.

In French sources, the Chronicle of St. Omer is nearly as important Jean le Bel. It contains highly detailed knowledge of the English deployment and was almost certainly written by someone who had visited the English army at the Siege of Calais based on other internal evidence. The chronicler also likely had a French source, as he mentions the Count of Blois dismounting, something only mentioned in a poem by Colins de Beaumont, one of Jean de Haunaut's heralds. The chronicle, and the heavily related Chronicle of Artois, also has the story of the English advancing once the French became entangled with the Genoese.

The Chronique Normande, an anonymous chronicle written by someone who was probably a knight and who certainly had both military experience and had spoken to eyewitness of the Crecy campaign, is another source that speaks of such an English sally. The Chronicle of Normandy, the Chronicle of the Counts of Flanders and the Account of a Citizen of Valenciennes also have Edward III (or at least part of the reserve) coming in on the flank to relieve pressure on the Prince.

On the English side of things, Geoffrey le Baker, whose account of the battle appears to be an independent tradition compared with other English chronicles written at about the same time, although not entirely free of some hindsight, also implies an English advance, but is the only English author to do so. Many of the other English authors are paraphrasing newsletters and don't provide much information about deployment or terrain (in contrast to Baker or some of the French and Italian sources), so it's not so surprising that Baker is fairly unique here. He was also very likely relying on oral testimony as he had social connections with Sir Thomas de la Moore of Northmoor and the comital Bohun family, and members of these two families had fought in the vanguard at Crecy.

So, we have a fair number of sources, many of them very early and/or firmly based on first hand accounts, that suggest that much of the killing was done by the men-at-arms - although Villani and Froissart both include the Welsh in this attack, with Edward III's letter to Thomas Lucy potentially implying this, and Villani and The Chronicle of the Count of Flanders include the archers in this melee attack. The most important thing that the English archers seem to have done is put the Genoese (who then seem to have spooked the infantry who were sent with them, but that's another discussion altogether) to flight and to disorder the French cavalry by wounding their horses and making them uncontrollable.

I'll be clear: this was very important. By so decisively defeating the Genoese (who were badly deployed by the French) and disrupting the first charge they enabled the vanguard to make their critical advance, which was critical to rapidly defeating the initial attack and in setting up the circumstances where Edward III could make a flanking attack and defeating the next major attack (although Edward seems to have been making a hasty attack to stave off a collapse of the vanguard), but they were not decisive in the battle. If Villani is correct, their ability to engage in hand-to-hand fighting may have been as important in the initial success as their archery skills. Given his death in 1348, he can hardly be accused of being influenced by later battles where the English archers played this role, so it's a very interesting possibility.

The success of the English archers against the Genoese crossbowmen also needs to be put in its proper context. Many older narratives included inflated numbers for the Genoese based on less reliable chronicle accounts, while more recent accounts often take Villani's 6000 crossbowmen at face value. It's true that many generally reliable chronicles say that there were 4-6000 Genoese crossbowmen, but there are two important factors to consider here.

The first is that Villani and other chroniclers (like Matthias von Neuenburg) are clear that the English archers still outnumbered the Genoese crossbowmen. One chronicler, the Chronique Normande, provides a very low number: just 2000 crossbowmen, and it's a number worth thinking about. Bertrand Schnerb, in his chapter on the French army before and after Crecy in Ayton and Preston's superb The Battle of Crecy, 1346, makes the point that even in 1340, when Philip mustered 28 000 men-at-arms and 16 700 infantry across the whole of France, just 2000 crossbowmen were employed. There may be some hidden crossbowmen who served out of feudal obligation from the towns of Northern France and wouldn't show on the pay records, but these are unlikely to have more than doubled the number of crossbowmen available.

Additionally, we know from pay records belonging to the Clos des Galées at Rouen that just 1400 Genoese, a third of whom might have been pavisiers, were hired for the enormous army besieging Aiguillon in 1346 - along with an unknown number of Spanish crossbowmen - and that the crews of Carlo Grimaldi's galleys didn't participate in the Battle of Crecy. Additionally, the several hundred Genoese crossbowmen hired to help protect Normandy were likely killed or trapped in the castle at Caen earlier in the campaign, while a Flemish army threatened northern France and likely ruled out crossbowmen from those towns most likely to be threatened. All told, it suggests that King Philip had comparatively few crossbowmen, quite probably in line with what the Chronique Normande gives. The chronicle, after all, provides the smallest number of men under Godemar du Fay at the Blanchetaque and seems to generally have good knowledge of the numbers of forces involved in the campaign.

The English, meanwhile, had somewhere around 7000-7500 archers, at least twice and possibly as many as three times as many archers as Genoese crossbowmen. Even if Philip had had the best, most experience heaviest warbow drawing longbowmen at Crecy, it's had to believe that they could have prevailed against such overwhelming odds. And that's without the probability that the English archers were partially protected by hedges, carts and men-at-arms. The Genoese, in contrast, lacked their pavises and armour, which were back in the baggage train. Had the English only had crossbowmen, and only as many as the French hand, it's still almost certain that they would still have routed the Genoese given these factors. Had the Genoese had their armour and pavises they might have had a chance, but they would still have been at a serious disadvantage through the English weight of numbers.

I think, from all of this, it's fair to say that while English archers were important in the victory at Crecy they weren't decisive, and that French failures combined with the Prince of Wales seizing the initiative (something he would do later at Poitiers and Najera) were more important. The English archers may even have been more decisive in their role as light infantry than as archers.

Bibliography for Part 1

• The Battle of Crecy: A Casebook, by Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries
• Crécy: Battle of Five Kings, by Michael Livingston
• The Battle of Crecy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston
• The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel, tr. Nigel Bryant
• The medieval inventories of the Tower armouries 1320–1410, by Thom Richardson
• Documents relatifs au Clos des galées de Rouen et aux armées de mer du roi de France de 1293 à 1418. Volumes 1&2, by Anne Chazelas
• A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, Volume 2, by Sir Charles Oman

Part 2: The Battle of Neville's Cross

Neville's Cross is an interesting battle to compare to Crecy. The English had previously had considerably success against the Scottish at Halidon Hill, in addition to the success of the English backed Ballilol claimant at Dupplin Moor, and archers had been undeniably decisive in both of these battles. At Dupplin Moor the archery had forced the Scots into a crowd crush, suffocating most of the force, while at Halidon Hill the archers had particularly wounded the faces of the Scots and taken a heavy toll on them as they climbed the hill to fight.

Neville's Cross was a different battle to Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill, though, and was a much closer run thing. Looking at how it played out will help us understand strengths and weaknesses of longbows.

We don't have anywhere near the number of sources as we do for Crecy, but we do fortunately have a letter written by a potential eyewitness (Thomas Sampson), in addition to several local chronicles writing close to the battle itself, others written for the Scottish nobility whose grandfathers had fought in the battle, and several written by English authors who were connected to the English aristocracy and show some evidence of drawing on eyewitness testimony.

Unfortunately, there's sufficient confusion in the chronicles and letters that the precise order in which the English and Scots arrived and who first attacked, although the proposal of Clifford J Rogers that the Scottish were both the first to arrive at the battlefield and the ones to initiate the main attack seems the most sound to me. The battle site was close to the Scottish camp, and the suggestion in Froissart and Thomas Burton that the English needed to send archers to provoke the Scots indicates that David didn't intend to attack. The English held a good position, but so did the Scots and it made little sense for either to attack first unless provoked. The Scottish story of John Graham, Earl of Menteith, managing to get in among the English archers before the battle started, killing some and chasing others away, only having his horse shot out from under him as he returned to the Scottish lines also provides some minor evidence that the Scottish were at least partially deployed as I don't see how he could have succeeded in his solo charge if the English archers were fully in position.

Regardless of who attacked first, there are a few things that stand out about the battle. The first is that the two armies were much more similar than at Crecy. Whereas the French had had as many as 8000 fully armed men-at-arms and another 4000 less well equipped cavalry and only comparatively few crossbowmen, the Scottish had ~2000 men-at-arms compared with 800-1000 English men-at-arms and both sides had significant numbers of archers. This last point probably comes as a bit of a surprise to a lot of people, but the contemporary Lanercost Chronicle heavily emphasizes their presence and the later, but local, chronicle of Meaux Abbey by Thomas of Burton places the Scottish archers on the wings of their formation, mirroring the English formation.

While evidence for Scottish archery is rather scattered, it does suggest a long history of archery and archers available in significant numbers, especially from the Highlands and forested regions. At the Battle of the Standard in 1138, for instance, the original plan was to use their archers to suppress the English archers prior to the Galwegians threatening to leave if they weren't allowed to lead the attack, and Alexander III recruited archers from the Highlands and "the forest". Closer in time to Neville's Cross, William Wallace's seal featured a bow, suggesting even the son of a knightly family might be proud of his prowess with the bow, and Robert the Bruce required the poorest men to have either a spear or a "good bow" and 24 arrows and also increased the number of charters requiring the service of archers. This continued under David II, and we also hear of Scottish knights and lesser lords like Eustace Maxwell entering English service with archers in the 1330s. By the early 15th century Scotland was sending thousands of archers across the sea to fight the English on behalf of the French, in numbers often equal to the English.

These scattered pieces of evidence, especially those from the 14th and 15th century, suggests that the Scots must have had at least as many archers as they had men-at-arms (~2000) and may well have come close to equalling the English for numbers. Their lack of prominence outside of local chronicles makes it clear that they played a small role in the battle, but it's a role that I don't think can be overlooked. At least some of them were probably well trained, well equipped men who were mounted and were relatives of or comparatively wealthy farmers with ties to the men-at-arms in the army, while the others may have been in quantities equal to the English.

On the English side, the archers formed the bulk of the army and mostly seem to have been drawn from the wealthier members of the peasantry as the Yorkshire contingent was almost entirely mounted archers and three quarters of Lancashire archers were mounted. These were men whose lands were worth at least £5 per annum, and were legally required to have a gambeson, iron helmet, spear and "knife", and at least some of them are likely to have met these standards, especially given the ever present threat of Scottish raids.

The Scots, in addition to the men-at-arms and archers, also had significant numbers of hobelars. The Lanercost Chronicles' figure of 20 000 men is definitely an over-exaggeration, and we have no way of reliably determining this number. I suspect there were roughly 4000, given the Chronique Normande's figure of 6000 men for the Scottish army and assuming that, as the English sometimes did in this period, his source was counting the hobelars as a lesser kind of man-at-arms. The English may also have had some hobelars, given their importance in border warfare down to the end of the 1330s, but their presence is almost entirely absence in the sources and is very hard to prove. They may have served gratis, as many of the men-at-arms seem to have done, or else come from the towns and not shown up in the pay records for the county forces.

With regards to the battle, however it actually played out - as mentioned before there's no firm agreement on who started the battle or who attacked first - it's clear from the sources that it was a near run thing. Thomas Sampson, who either saw the battle or talked to people who had immediately afterwards, mentions that the English archers were driven off by the Scots twice, and the Pakington Account says that the convent of Durham was able to chant the Seven Psalms and the Fifteen Psalms twice (approximately one hour) "before anyone could see who would gain the victory". Geoffrey le Baker also writes that the Scottish shields and helmets "frustrated" the arrows of the English as the Scots advanced up the hill.

It's possible that one of the times the English archers were driven off was the Earl of Menteith's bold solo assault on them, which the Scottish sources say was effective in scattering the archers until he rode back to the Scottish lines, and then the second rout happened after the first Scottish advance. On the other hand, the Historia Roffensis says that the two sides drew back three times for a brief rest and the two routs and rallyings of the English archers may have occurred during this time. Ultimately the when matters less than the fact that at Neville's Cross the English archers were unable to check the initial advance of the Scots and that, twice, it was only the English men-at-arms and hobelars who prevented the complete collapse of the English.

Why did the English archers perform so poorly here compared to Halidon Hill or Dupplin Moor? They were likely better equipped than the foot archers present at the earlier battles, or those at Crecy for that matter, and Edward III had deliberately not drawn any of his army from the Northern counties in case of invasion, so the overall quality was also likely to be high. Morale and cohesion are likely to have been lower that at Halidon Hill or Crecy, as this was an emergency force, assembled in haste and not the participants of a long campaign or siege, but given the previous performance of the English archers this shouldn't necessarily be a major factor.

One likely answer is that, once David II had reached his majority and begun to properly enforce his will, the machinery for ensuring that men were meeting their military obligations was put back into motion and overall levels of equipment improved. During his minority there had been almost a state of civil war within Scotland and intense rivalries between major noble families, and it seems likely that Robert the Bruces' exacting standards for inspection of equipment was discarded in this turmoil. The fact that the Scottish helmets and shields were effective at Neville's Cross but aren't anywhere in evidence at Halidon Hill or Dupplin Moor may point to this. Alternatively, shields may have come back into use after Halidon Hill and prior to this long two handed pikes might have been the dominant weapon for the Scottish infantry.

The Scottish archers are also probably part of the puzzle. While they don't seem to have played a prominent role or completely suppressed the English archers, I believe that they were used on the wings against the English archers as Thomas of Burton says, and that this both reduced the effectiveness of the English archery against the Scottish infantry and quickly sapped their morale. It's very difficult to remain steady while under a rain of arrows and having a steady body of infantry advancing against you, so this is a completely understandable reaction to the circumstances. However, the very high quality of the English archers as a whole compared to the Scottish archers, who must have mostly been poor men without armour, is likely that allowed them to be rallied and sent back twice.

Additionally, the archers did play a major role in the final stage of the battle, pinning the Scottish and forcing them into a huddle that, despite being less lethal than at Dupplin Moor, still gave the English men-at-arms enough of an advantage to break their morale and put the bulk of the Scottish army to rout.

Bibliography for Part 2

• Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century, by Kelly DeVries
• "The Scottish Invasion of 1346", Clifford J Rogers in Northern History 34 (1998): 51-69.
• “Three New Accounts of the Neville's Cross Campaign,” C. J. Rogers and M. C. Buck. Northern History, 34 (1998): 70-81
• The Chronicle of Lanercost, tr. Sir Herbert Maxwell
• The orygynale cronykil of Scotland by Andrew of Wyntoun, ed. David Laing
• Scotichronicon by Walter Bowers, Volume 7, ed. and tr. A.B. Scott and D.E.R. Watt with Ulrike Moret and Norman F. Shead
• "Sir Thomas Ughtred and the Edwardian Military Military Revolution", Andrew Ayton, The Age of Edward III ed. James Bothwell
• Scotland's Second War of Independence, 1332-1357 by Iain A. MacInnes
• David II 1329-71, by Michael Penman
• "Mounted Infantry in Mediæval Warfare", J.E. Morris, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vol. 8 (1914), pp. 77-102
• "Scottish Spearmen, 1298–1314: An Answer to Cavalry", David H. Caldwell, War in History, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 267-289
• The Chronicle of Geoffrey Le Baker of Swinbrook, tr. by David Preest
• Arrowstorm, by Richard Wadge

Part 3: Conclusion

What can we say about the English archer given what I've argued so far? Well, we can say that he was a vitally important part of any English army. At both Crecy and Neville's Cross archers made up a majority of the army. Admittedly it was a very slim majority in the hundreds at Crecy, but Crecy was also one of the last times large numbers of Welsh spearmen were deployed by the English in France. Later large English armies did away with Welsh spearmen and used mounted or foot archers as the bulk of their forces instead. Smaller mounted forces tended towards equal numbers of archers and men-at-arms, but it's clear from the sources that the archers were an integral and valued part of these small armies.

Their numbers alone made them valuable members of the army, and their archery in both battles proved important. At Crecy, English archery routed the Genoese and other infantry of the vanguard, and then killed or maddened the horses of the French knights as they became tangled up in the retreat. Without this, the Black Prince couldn't have advanced to kill the disordered men-at-arms and would have had to withstand a full and unchecked charge.

Similarly, although they were routed twice, the English archers at Neville's Cross did nonetheless manage to provoke the Scots to advance across unfavourable terrain and keep their heads down during the initial attack. They also, in the later stages of the battle, restricted the movement and vision of the Scottish infantry, even killing a good number, so that the English men-at-arms could finally break the Scottish army.

Still, in neither battle could they said to be decisive. Indeed, at Crecy the archers may have killed more French men-at-arms in hand to hand combat than with arrows if Villani's sources were accurate, and they acted in this role in the battles of Cocherel and Auray. Here Froissart writes that the shields and armour of the French forces made the archery of the English useless, so they ended up fighting on the flanks of the English men-at-arms, wrenching battle axes from the French knights and killing them. This is also the role they took up in the much more famous battle of Agincourt where, according to Jean le Fèvre and Jean de Wavrin, they did most of their killing.

This doesn't mean that English archery was ineffective, just that it wasn't the only or even always the largest contribution of the archers to the battle. Of course, in some case, like Nájera, they had spectacular success against other light infantry, light cavalry and even mounted men-at-arms, but in most of the battles where they were used their role was mostly to shape the approach of the enemy, wearing them down and, when appropriate, to also engage in hand-to-hand combat. They were a versatile form of infantry, but were not the most lethal soldier on the battlefield, as centuries of pro-archer propaganda has made out.

English archers existed within a system where they supported the men-at-arms, rather than being supported by men-at-arms, as a centuries of pro-archery propaganda has drilled into popular culture. This is, in theory, no different to how other kingdoms arranged their armies, but the English were almost unique in the high proportion of archers in their armies. Only Portugal, with a system designed to raise as many as 5000 crossbowmen, Scotland, 15th century Burgundy and France in the last few decades of the Hundred Years War sought to deploy archers in any significant numbers, and all except Scotland did so as a direct result of encountering the English or being influenced by them.

It was this ability to field more (and often better equipped) missile troops than their opponents that, for most of the Hundred Years' War, gave England the edge. It allowed they to drive off the enemy crossbowmen/archers rapidly enough that they could then focus on harassing the enemy men-at-arms, disrupting their formations, sapping their morale and even killing some of them. Their comparatively low wage allowed them to be fielded in these large numbers, and their willingness to fight hand-to-hand meant that the English could match the size of enemy armies, or at least approach their size.

There's no doubt that the English archer was vitally important to the English strategies and tactics of the Hundred Years' War, but hopefully this little essay has helped show that their importance lay in more than just their archery and that they weren't some sort of legendary weapon mowing French knights down like machine guns. They had their limitations, often quite severe ones, but were sufficiently flexible to fill multiple rolls and fight at all ranges.

Bibliography for Part 3*

• The Great Warbow, by Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy
• Arrowstorm, by Richard Wadge
• "Catapults are not Atomic Bombs: Towards a Redefinition of Effectiveness in Premodern Military Technology", War in History, 4(4), 454–470
• To Win and Lose a Medieval Battle: Nájera (April 3, 1367), a Pyrrhic Victory for the Black Prince, by L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay
• "Crossbowmen in late medieval Portugal and Sweden. A comparison", População e Sociedade CEPESE Porto, vol. 33 jun 2020, pp. 30-51