Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Map
- 1 Some Observations Regarding Barbarian Military Demography: Geiseric's Census of 429 and Its Implications
- 2 War Words and Battle Spears: The kesja and kesjulag in Old Norse Literature
- 3 The Political and Military Agency of Ecclesiastical Leaders in Anglo-Norman England: 1066–1154
- 4 Couched Lance and Mounted Shock Combat in the East: The Georgian Experience
- 5 The Battle of Arsur: A Short-Lived Victory
- 6 Prelude to Kephissos (1311): An Analysis of the Battle of Apros (1305)
- 7 Horse Restoration (Restaurum Equorum) in the Army of Henry of Grosmont, 1345: A Benefit of Military Service in the Hundred Years' War
- 8 The Indenture between Edward III and the Black Prince for the Prince's Expedition to Gascony, 10 July 1355
- 9 Investigating the Socio-Economic Origins of English Archers in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century
- 10 War and the Great Schism: Military Factors Determining Allegiances in Iberai
- List of Contributors
- Journal of Medieval Military History 1477–545X
9 - Investigating the Socio-Economic Origins of English Archers in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Map
- 1 Some Observations Regarding Barbarian Military Demography: Geiseric's Census of 429 and Its Implications
- 2 War Words and Battle Spears: The kesja and kesjulag in Old Norse Literature
- 3 The Political and Military Agency of Ecclesiastical Leaders in Anglo-Norman England: 1066–1154
- 4 Couched Lance and Mounted Shock Combat in the East: The Georgian Experience
- 5 The Battle of Arsur: A Short-Lived Victory
- 6 Prelude to Kephissos (1311): An Analysis of the Battle of Apros (1305)
- 7 Horse Restoration (Restaurum Equorum) in the Army of Henry of Grosmont, 1345: A Benefit of Military Service in the Hundred Years' War
- 8 The Indenture between Edward III and the Black Prince for the Prince's Expedition to Gascony, 10 July 1355
- 9 Investigating the Socio-Economic Origins of English Archers in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century
- 10 War and the Great Schism: Military Factors Determining Allegiances in Iberai
- List of Contributors
- Journal of Medieval Military History 1477–545X
Summary
On 25 May 1383 the soldiers of an English army advanced out of the gates of Dunkirk to confront a Flemish force attempting to remove them from the Low Countries. According to Froissart, a herald sent across the field to negotiate was butchered by the Flemish. With tensions already high, this act seems to have sparked a battlefield encounter. The English chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, was in no doubt as to who was responsible for the subsequent English victory.
But among all and before all it was our archers who on that day deserved praise and glory. For they sent such a rain of flying arrows upon the enemy that at the end of it no more armed warriors were still on their feet than if the very arrows had been piercing bare bodies. Such was the density of the flying arrows that the sky grew dark as if from a black cloud, and such was the frequency with which they were loosed that the enemy dare not lift up their faces.
Walsingham's account of the battle, like many of his depictions of warfare, can easily be described as colorful hyperbole. Indeed the veracity within fourteenth-century chronicles of accounts of war, of which many authors had no practical experience, has rightly been questioned.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Journal of Medieval Military HistoryVolume XII, pp. 173 - 216Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014