Longbow
The longbow was used in the Middle Ages both for hunting and as a weapon of war. It reached its zenith of perfection as a weapon in the hands of English and Welsh archers.Longbows were difficult to master because the draw-weight often exceeded 50kg. Considerable practice was required to produce the swift and effective fire combat required. Skeletons of longbow archers are recognizably deformed, with enlarged left arms, and often bone spurs on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.
The longbow decided a number of medieval battles fought by the English, the most significant of which being the Battle of Crecy and later the Battle of Agincourt. A variant (bow-staves) was used by 14th-century mercenary troops of Sir John Hawkwood[?].
Good longbow tactics protected archers from enemy soldiers or cavalry with a square or line of pikemen. A skillful general would alternate flights of arrows with cavalry charges, sometimes alternating flank attacks to induce shock and fear in the enemy. The arrows were used as mass bombardment, not as sniper weapons until the enemy got quite close.
To penetrate light armor, war arrows had "chisel" points, not hunting broad-heads. In peace-time, in some regions, carrying chisel points was a hanging offense, because it was thought to threaten noblemen, or they were taken as evidence that one was a highwayman.
The importance of the longbow in medieval English culture can be seen in the legends of Robin Hood and in the "Song of the Bow," a poem from The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
See also:
References and external links: Project Gutenberg copy of "The White Company," ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext97/whtco10.txt
ball in Brussels this so captivated the Duke of Wellington that he
remembered the Napoleonic days, and I thought she had been specially
Goethe.
I remember my grandfather as a stately old gentleman. He, as well as
curly-head, to distinguish me from a cousin called Georg von Gent. I
day, we children took our shoes to put on, we found them, to our delight,
been prepared for us in a room.html">room on the ground floor attracted such a crowd
close the shutters. Of my grandparents' day of honor I remember nothing
I repeated my little verse. I can still see.html">see myself in a short pink
quiver on my back, and a bow in my hand, standing before the mirror very
Cupid's speech, my mother.html">mother.html">mother had drilled me thoroughly in it, so I do not
afforded me the purest, deepest pleasure to be permitted to do something.
I must have behaved with the utmost ease before the spectators, many of
see myself passed from one to another till I fled from the kisses and pet
bride and groom of this golden wedding I remember only that my
to the knee. My grandmother, spite of her sixty-six years--she married
often saw the heavy.html">heavy white silk dress strewn with tiny bouquets which she
death it was left to my mother. Modern wedding gowns are not treasured
distinctly and my grandmother so dimly. I have a clear idea of her
which hung in my mother's room beside her husband's, and is now one of my
portrait painters, executed it, and all connoisseurs pronounce it a
whose noon is darkened by clouds, and which ends in a heavy thunderstorm.
Black clouds had gathered over the house adorned with garlands and
.
On
wordlookup.net
All is still licensed under the GNU FDL.
It uses material from the wikipedia.
|
|