Survival Arts

Conquest: Bow & Arrow on History Channel, repeated 13 & 14 January 2003

I saw this last night on the History Channel, narrated by "Actor and fight master Peter Woodward":

One of man's earliest effective hunting weapons, we learn why the bow and arrow became so dominant in history. Our combat team is sent to the woods to make their own as we study the craft of the bowyer and fletcher. We learn about Egyptian bows and try to fire accurately from an Egyptian chariot, and experiment with North American Indian bows--composite bows of horn and wood. And reenactors, using rubber-tipped arrows, recreate what it was actually like to be subjected to a "cloud of arrows". TV PG

It was quite an entertaining show, with some interesting tidbits such as the ability of the English longbowman to deliver 2 arrows simultaneously... by delivering one in a parabolic arc on target - like a mortar round - and quickly following through with a directly aimed second shot with a correspondingly short time on target. Amazing stuff.

I hadn't appreciated how underappreciated the bowman was on the European medieval battlefield, akin to the despised Japanese rifleman I've mentioned in another post here. A well trained, strong bowman with good equipment - the best of the English longbowmen, for example - was a relative rarity on the European battlefield. Vastly more common was the ill-trained, unmotivated, barely fed, despised-by-the-regulars draftee bowman, who was given little or no support from infantry or mounted armor.

When knights were captured, they were often ransomed. When archers were captured, they were usually killed.

One lesson from the show: if you're an archer, use your only advantages - quick mobility and ability to project force - by drawing your encumbered enemy into (to him) disadvantageous terrain, which means get the armored knight into the woods... where you can pick him off from behind trees - for that matter, from high up in trees - and separate him from his mates.

The program will be repeated 13 & 14 January 2003.

Posted by Russell Whitaker at December 30, 2002 11:18 AM | TrackBack