Military Archer in the Time of the Hundred Years War

This book chronicles the overwhelming importance of the military archer in the major battles of the late medieval period. The longbow played a central role in the English victory at the battles of Crecy and Agincourt, and dominated the less well-known Battle of the Herrings in 1429. Used with complete disregarded for the chivalric code that governed war in the Middle Ages, the English longbow completely undermined the supremacy of heavy cavalry on the battlefield, demanding a wholesale reassessment of the tactics that had gone before. Richard Wadge explains exactly what made England's longbow archers so devastating on the battlefield, detailing the process by which their formidable armament was manufactured and the conditions that produced men capable of continually drawing a bow under a tension of 100 pounds. Wadge looks at the economics behind the supply of longbows to the English army and the social history of the military archer - what life was like in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and what were the advantages of joining the first professional standing army in England since the days of the Roman conquest. "The Military Archer in the Time of the Hundred Years War" paints a vivid portrait of the life of a professional soldier in the war which forged English national consciousness.

Richard Wadge is an archery expert and head of the Ancient Archery Association.