[osagebowman]

Even the English Longbow Archers carried secondary weapons, a short sword and commonly a hammer. A bow is just a really nice stick when you run out of arrows. The bowmen would pound a six or eight foot long stake into the ground then sharpen it with the sword or ax. The rows of sharpened stakes provided some safety from the mounted knights. The bodkin point was armor piercing at ranges of 200 yards. The pull on an English War Bow was 120 lbs and up. The average hunting bow nowadays is about fifty to sixty lbs pull. I'll quit before the reader's eyes glaze over. :-) dvp

[Overtaxed]

Of course, in a pinch, a mace will do:

Or Sam Gamgee's weapon of choice:

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I'll quit before the reader's eyes glaze over. :-) dvp

Your description of English longbow techniques was nicely illustrated in Kenneth Branagh's version of Henry V some year's back. It was particularly good at showing the sharpenned stakes, and not just the flights of arrows, like most movies of archery. Of course archery in war is not like the close up stuff they showed in Fellowship of the Ring, I hope they show this properly in The Two Towers.

[ksen]

Winston Churchill made the claim in one of the volumes, the first one I think, of his History of the English Speaking Peoples that it was the English long bow that was responsible for England's might way back during the middle ages. I will try to find the exact passage if you like, when I get home.

-Kevin