South Welsh Archers
According to Giraldus Cambrensis, the South Welsh, especially the men of Gwent, excelled in archery. They had bows of elm so stout that they would serve for cudgels, and could send the point of an arrow through a three-inch door.i It became a rule in later days that the length of a bow should equal the archer’s reach with his arms outstretched, and Welshmen are abnormally long in the arm. Three hundred Welsh archers formed part of the first expedition to Ireland ; and the secret of success in Irish warfare, Gerald says, lay in mixing archers with the troops of knights. The spear was the weapon of the men of North Wales. The South Welsh were Edward’s allies, and in the first war against Llewelyn (1277) there were special corps of sagittarii nearly all of whom came from Gwent.
At Falkirk (1298) five-sixths of the foot in Edward’s army were Welsh. They numbered more than 10,000 men. Falkirk was a repetition of Hastings. y’allace’s horsemen and light troops were soon driven away, and the solid rings or ” schlldrons ” of his spearmen were at length demoralised and broken by the combined action of the English heavy cavalry and archers. At Bannockburn a much larger English army hough its numbers must have been vastly exaggerated by the chroniclers was less skilfully handled and met with disaster. The Scottish and English accounts differ, and may be best reconciled by supposing that Baker describes what took place on the English right, Barbour what occurred on the left. On the right, then, the English cavalry advanced along the Roman road with bogs on either side of them, and floundered into the pits or trenches which the Scots had dug in front of their position covered with grass and brushwood. The archers whom they had left behind, were brought up to help them, but did more harm than good ; for being in rear instead of on a flank, most of their arrows fell short of the enemy and wounded their own horsemen. On the left there was firmer ground, and there the archers were thrown out on the flank, after crossing the burn, to prepare and support the advance of the knights. But they were rolled up and swept away by a well-timed charge of a small body of light horsemen.
At Halidon Hill (1333) the tables were turned. Edward III. was besieging Berwick ; the Scots marched to its relief, and were obliged to be the assailants. Adopting a plan which had proved successful the year before at Dupplin Muir, Edward made his knights dismount, and formed them in three bodies or ” battles ” with wings of archers. The archers were posted in marshy ground which probably secured them from direct attack. The Scots were blinded by the rain of arrows as they advanced, and though they began to mount the slope on which the men-at-arms were drawn up, their courage failed, and they fled. Edward remounted his men and pursued them for several miles. The chronicler says: “Ibi didicit a Scotis Anglorum generosilas dextrarios reservare venacioni fugienciuin et contra antiquatum morem suorum patruni, pedes pugnare.”