From Arquebus to Rifle: The Pursuit of Perfection
After the last great victory of the English longbow at Flodden, writes Charles Chenevix Trench, three centuries of experiment passed before an accurate long-ranged firearm was devised.
Up to the mid-nineteenth century the longbow was the most deadly personal weapon known to man; but its last great victory, at Flodden, took place in 1513.
Then, for more than 300 years, men tried in vain to produce a firearm as accurate, long-ranged and fast-shooting as the weapon that had massacred the French and Scots in one battle after another.
It is not easy now to say exactly how accurate was the medieval longbow; there are abundant legends, but few reliable statistics. But nineteenth-century English archers used very much the same weapons, a ‘self’ bow made of a single stave of mountain yew, and wooden arrows.
The best of these, H.A. Ford, uniting great physical strength with a keen, inquiring mind, could at 100 yards put sixty-nine out of seventy-two arrows into a circle with a twenty-eight-inch diameter, and at shorter ranges put them all in.
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