archer: Definition from Answers.com

Archers formed a significant element of many medieval armies, though their numbers, tactical deployment and thus their effectiveness varied widely. As medieval European warrior elites generally preferred close-combat weapons and eschewed the bow except for hunting, archers were drawn from non-noble classes. English victories in the Hundred Years War served to increase the social status of the archer, although in late medieval France fear of peasant insurrection and the availability of mercenary crossbowmen restricted the development of an efficient archer corps until the reforms of Charles VII.

At the battle of Hastings, William ‘the Conqueror’ demonstrated the great tactical potential of combining a significant body of archers with cavalry against a strong infantry formation, while Harold's deficiency in archers proved a grave weakness. Archers also played an important role in the battles of Bourgthéroulde (1124) and the Standard (1138), operating on the defensive with dismounted knights, though these successful tactics were not to be repeated until the 14th century. For obvious reasons, archers were particularly useful to both sides in siege warfare, a prominent victim being Richard ‘the Lionheart’. Welsh archers supported knights during the Anglo-Norman conquests in Ireland from 1169, and were employed during the Crusades to combat the relentless Turkic horse archers who harried crusader armies on the march and tried to shoot down the knights' vulnerable chargers.

From at least the 11th century, crossbowmen appear as an elite, with their bolts capable of penetrating mail armour, so much so that in 1139 Pope Innocent II prohibited the use of ‘the deadly art, hated by God, of crossbowmen and archers’ against fellow Christians. This was of course ignored and in the Franco-Angevin wars crossbowmen formed the mainstay of castle garrisons, drawing higher wages than other bowmen. Civic militias, particularly the ferociously independent Swiss, favoured the use of the crossbow, but even aristocratic armies employed mercenary crossbowmen, most famously the Genoese.

The growing importance of longbowmen in English armies stemmed from their deployment in very large numbers during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), who levied thousands for his Welsh and Scottish wars. The serious problem of very variable quality was addressed by commissions of array, in which royal officials selected the best men from those mustered in the shires. This improved standards, but it was the growing reliance from the 14th century on contract armies, whereby the king contracted for a certain number of knights and archers with his nobles, that ensured the necessary standardization.

The second major developmet was tactical. Whereas in his defeat of William Wallace at Falkirk in 1298, Edward I had used archers offensively in support of his cavalry against the bristling Scottish schiltroms, the great victories of Dupplin Moor (1332) and Halidon Hill (1333) against the Scots were won by adopting a strong defensive position in which the archers were protected by dismounted knights, who only charged after the former had winnowed the enemy. This system was then used to great effect against the French throughout the Hundred Years War, from the battles of Morlaix (1342) and Crécy (1346), to Poitiers (1359), Agincourt (1415), and Verneuil (1424). The proportion of archers in English armies grew steadily until longbowmen constituted almost the entire infantry force, and, by the early 15th century, the normal ratio of archers to knights was at least three to one. Henry V is estimated to have had around 900 men-at-arms and about 5, 000 archers at Agincourt.

The exact nature of these English formations has been much debated. The traditional view, held by Sir Charles Oman, Alfred Burne, and others, was that wings of archers were placed on either flank of each unit (known as a ‘battle’) of knights, thrown forward to give enfilade fire, and forming an apex or ‘wedge’ when they adjoined the archers on the wing of a neighbouring ‘battle’. This view was contested by Jim Bradbury, who argued that archers were only placed on the extreme wings of English armies, and not in wedges between ‘battles’. While in some engagements archers do seem to have been posted on the wings of each battle (definitely the case at Halidon Hill and possibly so at Agincourt), a consensus has now been reached that the position of archers did not conform to a rigid blueprint and they were deployed in a variety of formations, including forming a screen in front of the knights, which could change during the course of an engagement.

Where possible, archers defended themselves against cavalry attack by the use of pits (Crécy and Aljubarotta), broken ground and hedges (Poitiers), and subsequently by sharpened stakes (Agincourt), planted not as a solid palisade but like a chequerboard, allowing the archers freedom of manoeuvre while hampering mounted knights. This flexibility was vital, for archers not only fought with the bow but were highly adaptable as universal light infantrymen. At Agincourt, for example, the archers put down their bows after their initial volleys and attacked the French knights, now hopelessly crushed together by their weight of numbers, with axes, daggers, mauls, and other close-combat weapons, wreaking terrible slaughter.

Little is known of the archers' command structure, though there were officers in charge of 100 men (centenars) and deputies in charge of 20 (vintenars), while overall command might be given to a veteran captain such as Sir Thomas Erpingham at Agincourt, who threw up his baton as a signal to shoot. It is likely that their leadership style was quite modern, in the style of Shakespeare's Henry V. Some archers wore virtually no defensive equipment and were even barefoot, carrying perhaps a small buckler as well as a sword, dagger, or lead maul. Others, such as those depicted on the famous Beauchamp Pageant (c.1485-90), wore a helmet and a short mail coat under a jack or brigandine, a form of doublet lined with small, overlapping metal plates. Whatever they wore would be useless against a carelessly released shaft at close range.

As an individual infantry weapon, the longbow was superior to most firearms until the advent of the rifle, but it had serious disadvantages. It required great physical strength and skill, acquired through constant practice (skeletons of archers found aboard the Mary Rose revealed significant distortions to vertebrae, arm, and shoulder bones), and it was with increasing desperation that royal statutes prohibited football and other pastimes in favour of archery practice at the butts. Nostalgic Tudor commentators regarded the decline of the longbow as synonymous with the decline of England's military might, but men whose forefathers had despised the crossbow took readily to the ‘fiery weapon’ as both powerful and simple to learn. By the later 16th century few professional soldiers doubted that the arquebus, musket, and effective field artillery were now the real arbiters of the European battlefield.

Bibliography

Bennett, Matthew, ‘The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War’, in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (eds.), Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1994).
Bradbury, Jim, The Medieval Archer (Woodbridge, 1985).
Hardy, Robert, The Longbow: A Social and Military History (Cambridge, 1992).
Oman, Sir Charles, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (London 1898, rev. 1924, repr. 1991).
Prestwich, Michael, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (London, 1996)

— Matthew Strickland

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