I'm a medieval history nut. The era of knights and swords has always spoken to me. In fact, it's so much a part of me that I study and teach medieval martial arts in my spare time.
That interest and this job rarely meet, but a post on X made a claim that grabbed my attention. It claimed that American riflemen were the spiritual successors to the English longbowman.
Europeans will hate this but its obviously true..
— Memory Medieval (@MemoryMedieval) April 8, 2025
The American Rifleman is the spiritual successor to the English Longbowman pic.twitter.com/JSxxw14nBB
First, yes, that's a shotgun, not a rifle. It doesn't change the overall point the gentleman behind the account is trying to make, though.
What matters is whether or not he has a point.
To answer that, we need to look at some broad strokes of medieval history. This is going to be very simplified and lacking in nuance because, well, no one wants a dissertation on medieval warfare when they're looking at gun stuff.
So, with that...
The medieval knight was, for all intents and purposes, not the equivalent of the modern infantryman. They were the equivalent of the modern tank. They were pretty much invulnerable to anything the peasant levies could wield against them and, as we get into the era of plate armor, even what other knights and well-armored men-at-arms could do.
Yet, at the Battle of Agincourt, English archers with their legendary longbows took down the French knights--the flower of French chivalry--and allowed an outnumbered English army to win a decisive victory.
In England, archers were the thing. Every male was required to practice archery from a young age, and that meant archers could be deployed in any war in great numbers. They made the tiny island of England a powerful force it probably shouldn't have been.
But does that mean American shooters are the spiritual successors of these warriors?
Well, yeah, kind of.
First, the English archers owned their weapons. They practiced with them regularly and often used them for hunting--though not necessarily as publicly as an American might due to the hunting laws of the time. They had the best bows in the world at the time. They were the force the English king could count to to defend his country in times of trouble.
Now, let's look at the Minutemen for a second. They owned their guns. They shot regularly. They used those arms to hunt. They used the best weapons on the battlefield--the rifles owned by the militia were superior to the smoothbore Brown Bess guns the British used, at least with regard to accuracy. They were part of the plan to defend this nation both before the Revolution and after.
One key difference is that no one makes Americans practice shooting.
We just do it because it's awesome.
The question now becomes whether there's any potential "spiritual successor" closer to the longbowman's point of origin, and the simple answer is, "No."
America is a warrior culture. We venerate our combat veterans. We celebrate our heroes. We remember our fallen. There's a certain pride in your child enlisting to serve or being accepted into a service academy. That pride is present when they join their college's ROTC program. We play sports like football and we wrestle. Our kids take Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
We embrace the warrior identity.
Europe didn't lose that. They smothered it in its sleep and said, "Good riddance."
So yeah, we're it.
We're the ones who harken back to the day when you didn't have to just worry about the professional troops, but the regular folks who could also kill you just as skillfully as pros.
As a medieval nerd, this warms my little armored heart.
As an American, the little bald eagle in there is screaming, "AMERICA!"
