Mounted Archery Last time we discussed the age of the great warbow. As important as the warbow was to late medieval warfare in Western Europe, the bow really achieved its most brilliant deployment as a military technology among the horseback archers of Central Asia.  Mounted archers in the east deployed different tactics than the longbow and crossbow archers of Europe who tended to dismount and fight in organized ranks. They were used in rapidly moving…

Heavy warbows came into their own in western Europe when they began to be deployed in mass volleys, the so-called “arrow storm,” by the Normans. The primary purpose of the arrow storm was to disrupt, weaken, and dishearten an advancing enemy before they could close in for battle. The arrow storm proved more effective at this than firearms until the advent of the repeating rifle and the machine gun—which replaced the arrow storm with a…

   As I noted in my last post on archery tactics, the bow was long used as a weapon of ambush. In the English-speaking world, the yew longbow has become synonymous with noble outlaws, such as Robin Hood, who defied injustice to live in the green woods, where they ambushed the rich and gave to the poor.    As with all myths, the story contains kernels of truth but is historically inaccurate. By the time…

Hi all, I recently came across a translation of a Latin inscription about a Syrian soldier in the Batavian legion of the Roman army named Soranus. He died in 118 AD and left a remarkable epitaph. Here it is: “I am the man who, once very well known to the ranks in Pannonia, brave and foremost among one thousand Batavians, was able, with Hadrian as judge, to swim the wide waters of the deep Danube…