The Shadow of Arrows: Thomas de Montagu and the Longbowmen of the Hundred Years’ War.

At times, especially within historical investigations, things become fleeting and elusive. The past ceases to be a fragile record and becomes the superficial memory of a chronicler. However, there are moments when it stirs, gathering a strange, electric energy, and suddenly breathes anew. The dead are brought back to life, then they cross our path and stand next to us, you can hear their breath, feel their presence. Through years of searching, I have learnt to wait for these moments, to unearth them from the shadows of forgotten manuscripts. And with Thomas de Montagu, the fourth Earl of Salisbury, they came in whispers of stretched yew, in the cold weight of war, in the cruel arithmetic of arrows.

Montagu is not a figure history gives up easily. He is neither villain nor hero, not quite forgotten, but never truly remembered. To the English chroniclers, he was a brilliant commander, the finest general of his generation. To the French, he was the sharp edge of invasion, a shadow cast over their fields and fortresses. To me, he was a puzzle.

It began, as these things do, with a footnote. I had been working on my thesis, tracing the military evolution of archery in the later phases of the Hundred Years’ War, when I stumbled upon a reference to Montagu’s command at Orléans. Every account of the siege spoke of the longbowmen, of their devastating volleys, their ruthless precision. But who placed them there? Who decided when to fire, how to maneuver them against stone walls and cavalry charges? The sources were vague, as if the presence of these archers was a natural phenomenon, something that happened rather than something that was orchestrated.

I couldn’t leave it at that.

Over the months, my research progressed at a calm, unhurried rhythm, imbued with the smell of old volumes and the gentle whisper of the archives. I journeyed between London and Paris, wandering through dusty municipal libraries and the austere halls of the British Library, pursuing the phantom of Montagu. Bureaucracy, naturally, stood in the way. One archive had been relocated. Another had restricted access. There was a moment in the Archives nationales in Paris (Fonds J//245) when I found myself filling out a form in triplicate, only to be told that I needed an additional signature from an official who was on holiday for the next three weeks. I argued, I pleaded, I waited.

But persistence has a way of bending the world. And in a quiet, dimly lit reading room in Orléans—Archives départementales du Loiret, série E—I found what I had been looking for: a set of contemporary letters, not grand declarations for posterity, but practical, urgent directives from Montagu himself. Instructions on where to place archers, calculations of range and supply, details of wind direction and field position. They were the letters of a man who understood the bow as more than a weapon—he understood it as a force, a strategy, a living, breathing extension of war itself.

One letter, dated 12 October 1428, written from Montagu’s camp at the Château de Meung-sur-Loire, addressed to John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, struck me:

“Our bows are in place. The ground holds firm, though the rain may come. The towers will serve as vantage, but the bridge must be held at all costs—if they cross, our numbers shall be of little use. We loose at first light. Make ready.”

(Archives départementales du Loiret, E 1717)

It was almost curt, devoid of unnecessary flourish. Montagu was a man of efficiency, of precision.

Another letter, undated but likely from late October 1428, carried a more desperate tone, addressed to Lord Scales, who commanded forces reinforcing the siege:

“The French move in erratic numbers, but their intent is clear. They seek supply, not battle. If we hold our ground, they will break upon us. The archers, positioned on the southern parapets, report favorable shots. But we require fresh strings and arrows—if there is delay, we shall be fighting with blunted teeth.”

(Archives départementales du Loiret, E 1721)

It is easy to admire a man like Montagu—to see him as a master of war, a strategist whose mind was as sharp as the arrows he commanded. But war is never that simple. There is something almost tragic in his brilliance, in the precision with which he conducted his campaigns. He did everything right, and still, he fell.

Jean de Wavrin, the Burgundian chronicler, later wrote of the English siege, noting:

“They thought themselves untouchable, these archers in their towers, until the thunder of French cannon shattered their illusions.” (Chroniques d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet et Jean de Wavrin, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. fr. 2675)

On 27 October 1428, Montagu stood atop the besiegers’ newly captured Tourelles, the fortification at the end of the bridge of Orléans, when a French cannon fired from the city struck the wall beside him. The stone shattered, and shards of rock and metal tore into his face. He did not die instantly, but his wound was fatal. He was carried back across the Loire, lingering between life and death for days before succumbing.

His death at Orléans was a reminder of history’s cruelty. A cannonball, an early whisper of the age of gunpowder, shattered the skull of a man who had perfected a weapon soon to be obsolete. The irony would not have been lost on him.

By the time I pieced together the full picture, it was impossible not to admire him. He was not a hero, not in the way that history likes to fashion them. He was a man bound to duty, to the grim necessity of war, and in the end, it killed him.

I had planned to stop there, to finish my dissertation and let Montagu rest. But history does not let go so easily.

There were others. Jean de Brosse, the forgotten commander who had shaped the battlefield for Joan of Arc. Charles the Bold, who had gambled an empire on the strength of his archers. Philippe de Commynes, who had recorded the twilight of an era. Guillaume du Bois, a man who has been all but forgotten, yet it was he who forged the victory at Bouvines. Gaspard de Coligny, carrying a bow over the blood-soaked battlefields of the Religious Wars. These six men and their stories are like threads in the fabric of war and its inexorable evolution.

I write these not just as a historian, but as someone who has stood on a field with a bow in hand, who has felt the weight of history settle like a ghost on his shoulders. There is something primal in archery, something that speaks across centuries, that binds us to the men who once fought with yew and sinew and feathered shafts.

Montagu is long dead, his bones lost to time. But his arrows still fly, in the stories left behind, in the echoes of war, in the quiet corners of archives where history waits to be found.