Research and Discussion Forums

Jeanry,
You have hit that one right on the head. Many military historians seem reluctant to acknowledge that alcohol has played a large part in combat for a long while. Keegan and Holmes in Soldiers make mention of this in the section on Fighting Spirit

James, The composite recurved bow actually does have a substantially longer cast than the longbow. The records on the shooting grounds of Constantinople list ranges of 625 to 838 yards. If you check Stone he quotes shots of 462 and 482 yards made using a "turkish bow". This would be using ...

The truth of late medieval cavalry tactics is rather comlex, most of the chroniclers were of the same social class as the knights themselves. This has coloured their observations to an extent which often gives a distorted view of the battlefield. You can see the same distortion of historical record ...

Just to add my two cents;take a look at Robert Hardy's Longbow and Jim Bradbury's The Medieval Archer. They both discuss the physical changes in the bodies of the archers recovered from the Mary Rose.The third edition of Longbow has a quite detailed Appendices that discuss the design and materials o...