The fourteenth century has a reputation of a bad time in history, but on the contrary, this century introduced many technological advances in weapons. The advances in weapons technology appeared in the 100 Years War; the most significant advances were longbows and the use of gunpowder-based weapons. The implementation of these weapons took away from the standard style warfare of charging with swords. The longbows was arguably the most effective weapon used; a soldier was able to shoot an arrow accurately up to a quarter of a mile away. With well-trained archers a military was able to defend/attack without losing as many soldiers compared to sword combat. As for gunpowder-based weapons, these were not used until the end of the 100 Years War.