Bows had been used since prehistoric times, and Norman archers played an important part in the Battle of Hastings. At shorter ranges their needle-pointed arrows could pierce armour. Ideally made of a single bough of yew, ‘war bows’ had a range of well over 200 metres. The longbow was the most decisive weapon in both the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses. But at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, Edward I’s defeat of William Wallace’s Scots army was mainly accomplished thanks to a newly popular weapon, the longbow.

Their infantry support was generally provided by spearmen and crossbowmen.Ĭrossbows were powerful but shot slowly, and their most experienced users were often foreign mercenaries.

Mounted knights, equipped with increasingly sophisticated armour, still dominated the battlefields of the Plantagenet kings’ wars with their barons, and against the Scots. This culminated in open warfare between rival aristocratic factions striving to control the weak Henry VI and his realm.Īctual fighting between the ‘red rose’ Lancastrians and the ‘white rose’ Yorkists occupied only an aggregate of five months between 14, but during this civil war the English Crown changed hands six times. The final English defeats of the Hundred Years War coincided with an increasing breakdown of order in England. Instead, many Englishmen profited greatly from ransoms and plunder, the proceeds of which helped pay for the building of castles such as Farleigh Hungerford, Somerset. Apart from the occasionally raid on the south coast, England suffered little direct war damage. It had been fought almost entirely on French soil. Following glorious runs of victories under Edward III, his son the Black Prince and the all-conquering but short-lived Henry V, the long-running conflict with France later known as the Hundred Years War eventually ended in total defeat for the English.

Medieval battlefields in england