Thanks for the info on the longbow....so it was around much earlier than what the “Conventional Wisdom” states?
It seems to have been around, in one form or another, for a very long time. I think the reason that so many people associate the longbow exclusively with England is because that country made a very conscious and determined effort to make it an important (vital) part of their military. For hundreds of years, people in every village were required to train with the longbow.
The French could have done the very same thing - they certainly had a first-hand understanding of how effective the longbow could be, they had yew and they had many examples of English longbows, but they chose not to. The French were more concerned with maintaining their established order, rather than have well-trained, well-armed peasants upsetting things.