Trow, M. J. The English Bowman in the Hundred Years War

The Secret Weapon of the Middle Ages

They were often half starved and marched through a foreign country with few signposts and no maps. They frequently suffered from dysentery, their trousers had slipped down and sometimes they fought with their lower bodies naked. They were paid 6 pence a day the same as a civilian craftsman and swore like the soldiers they were. That is why the French called them Goddamns (damned) and both the king and the peasants feared them. With their yew bows and metre-long ash arrows, they were victorious in countless battles during the Hundred Years' War and in the three great battles of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt. They robbed, pillaged, raped and murdered, often in the name of their king. But they won battles, and it is no exaggeration to say that England became a powerful nation thanks to them. If they were captured by the enemy in battle, the fingers they used to draw their bows were cut off and their throats were slit. We know very few of their names. Unlike the knights they fought for, they were not worthy of ransom. Most of them ended up in mass graves or in an unmarked spot of earth beside a French road. The vast majority were illiterate, so there are no eyewitness accounts of the archers themselves about their campaigns. Despite all their victories and glory, despite all their indirect help in strengthening the power of the common people, they are like ghosts hovering over the battlefield.