"Henry V's archers vs Wellington's redcoats: Who would win?" Topic

Think about it. Rate of fire favours the archers. I guess you could pack in the musketeers tighter, but that also makes them a better target. Accuracy is about even. And there's no issue about armour penetration (which was a problem for archers in the 1400's).

I would give the muskets the range advantage, but no decisively.

Is it raining or gusty?

I'd give it to the Duchy of Fenwick.

I think the main problem for the archers would be being outnumbered 10:1 by Wellingtons infantry, they might also find being under fire from massed musketry and artillery a tad scary.

Wellington. He had the numbers and could afford losses as his troops took about a quarter of an hour to train.

There were actually Brit 'Colonel Blimp' types that wanted to return to the longbow even in Wellington's day!

The coffin makers would win.

Muskets would win, they are more scary.

Think of lots of rain, or -10 degrees of frost …

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may be rather useful.

In effect, it is said the Bashkiri were the first to enter Paris in 1814.

- votre ami

A musket could be fired at the rate of what 4 rounds a minute for really good troops, but how many volley fired arrows could let loose in the same amount of time? And how far away.

Benjamin Franklin said during the Revolution something along the lines that he wished the Americans were armed with longbows instead of muskets…

Equal numbers: Longbow may have an advantage.

However, there is those small issues of Artillery and Baker Rifles that would easily tip the balance in a big way.

mjc

<<There were actually Brit 'Colonel Blimp' types that wanted to return to the longbow even in Wellington's day!>>

Some of those "Colonel Blimp" types had seen action in the Peninsula or elsewhere and were also accomplished archers, giving them a perspective on both weapon systems. The biggest stumbling block was that it took a few hours to train a musketeer, but a lifetime to produce an archer.

The only advantage Wellington had was numbers. Ground might be another, but then you have two armies whose basic philosophy was defensive, so it is moot as to which would attack and which would defend. All other things being equal (especially the weather and supplies of ammunition), the archers would p1ss all over any early 19th Century army.

Why?

1) Maximum and effective ranges – 600/300 for the longbow, 100/60 for the musket, 300/150 for the rifle; most field artillery would be massacred well outside canister range, and would be limited to ball, or possibly shell, which would be less lethal.

2) Rate of fire – an archer could put six arrows in the air at a time, as against two rounds a minute for the musket.

3) Effect of fire – a constant stream of arrows, against an occasional volley from much less accurate weapons; also, worth bearing in mind that ANY hit with an arrow would need surgery to remove it, and until then the projecting projectile would inhibit the victim's movement.

4) Morale effect – equal, or possibly worse, than facing musketry and artillery since Henry's men knew something of black powder weapons whereas the sight and sound of the infamous "arrow storm" were unknown to Napoleonic soldiers.

5) The archers would present a much more dispersed target (due to the need for space to use the longbow), compared with close order infantry and cavalry.

6) Cavalry charges would be stopped before they had even started since unarmoured horses would be stampeded by a few well-placed volleys.

7) Weather – adverse weather would be a leveller; however, Henry's army was better trained in (and probably more used to) hand-to-hand combat and would have had the skill to turn a lunging bayonet and then close with its user.

And that, M'Lud, concludes the case for the Prosecution.

>>>>ANY hit with an arrow would need surgery to remove it,<<<<

bah! be a man and just rip it out.

Some numbers:

kinetic energy:

longbow around 70 Joule
Musket around 2400 Joule
9mm parabellum 500 Joule
Ak 47 1600 Joule
98 k 3500 joule

Distance at which the projectile drops the height of a standing man (a good definition of effective range)

longbow around 25 yds
musket 200-250 yds
Ak 47 around 400 yds

By fireweapons standards archery is a joke.

A skilled archer can shoot up to 12 rounds a minute; some sources claim up to 20!!! (Roughly one shot every 3 seconds. And yes, that's doable. Nock, draw, loose, nock, draw, loose…)

Note that these would, of course, be aimed only in the loosest sense of the word, but for mass fire… yowza, that's a lot of pointy sticks.

Got to go with Henry V on this one.

A gun isn't a magic weapon. Don't forget what the Zulus did to English *riflemen* less than a century after Wellington-- and the Zulus didn't even have longbows.

Distance at which the projectile drops the height of a standing man (a good definition of effective range)

longbow around 25 yds
musket 200-250 yds

You forgot that little quibbly thing called "accuracy."

Muskets aren't accurate past 100 yards; that's why the soldiers of the day marched so closely packed together. It was the only way they could expect to hit the enemy in reasonable amounts!

You also can't stick a bayonet on the end of a longbow.

Surely the longbow would have been the best weapon in the trenches of WWI too since you could fire silently, under cover, and have their trajectory land the arrows inside enemy trenches. The psychological effect would have been devastating. Silent death!

Maybe it is the best weapon for Afghan rebels too….

Tell you what – take 40 guys and train 20 of them to be extremely good archers, trained in volley fire techniques, train them to fire enmass on target and then train 20 others to fire a musket. Stick them on a field at 500 yards – preferably very flat – no terrain or intervening conditions and then have them fight it out for 20 minutes. See how many are left standing at the end. Write the widows to inform them of their spouses contribution to scientific research and report the results in a journal.

As for all of the arguments for or against either side – both have merit. The issue is really quite moot as there aren't any historical references where it actually occurred.

If given the option – I'd take the longbowmen – because they were led by someone who actually fought WITH his men – not leading from the rear.

"The biggest stumbling block was that it took a few hours to train a musketeer, but a lifetime to produce an archer."

Exactly. Wellington could replace losses. Archer general couldn't.

The archer threat could be somewhat countered by armour too, and I'm sure Wellington's men would soon have at least steel helmets. The archers helmet and jack would be no use against a musket, but could be salvage of the dead to help protect the musketeers.

Gee guys there must have been a reason the English switched over to matchlocks. Rather pointless arguement dont you think.

[Surely the longbow would have been the best weapon in the trenches of WWI too since you could fire silently, under cover, and have their trajectory land the arrows inside enemy trenches. The psychological effect would have been devastating. Silent death!]

Except for the silence thing, you can and they did do the same thing with HMGs like the Vickers and Maxims firing upwards at 45 degrees and peppering trenches and anywhere else in range. And they could keep it up indefinitely, day and night.

I'm not sure how much use silence would be in ranged fire.

I donīt know how you define accuracy, Parzifal.

Napoleonic skirmisher musketry was calculated with a 10 % hit rate at 300 paces, thats around 220 yds.
All what had to be done was to hold the weapon right and point it at the target.

220 yards was already the ballistic limit of the long bow.
to reach this limit the weapon had to be shot at an 45 degree angle and the missile would come down on the target nearly vertical.
You do need indeed around 5000 men and lots of missiles to create some effect in an actually huge target zone by archery at this distance.
A musket in archery mode would have a range of around 1000 yds by the way, even the (minimal, but arguably quite annoying) effect on the target would be the same.

The longest distance for competition archery with modern recurve bows is 70 meters.
In countries were hunting with bows is allowed, the legally allowed distance is usually under 50 yds, beyond this its illegal. In many countries hunting with bows is completely illegal, with good reason.

The reason they switched over has been debated many times and is mainly due to training time amoungst other things.

Now in this scenario we have henrys highly trained archers against wellingtons veterns so this isnt an issue.

No assuming numbers are equal id give it to the archers. They had the range and rate of fire. They were also probably better in a hand to hand situation.

Now although 400 years exactly separates them, I thought these guys were on the same side.

Who would win? Certainly not the French.

You cannot even stop a determined naked man with a longbow, unless you hit hime directly in the heart, from other hits he might not even take notice.
stopping power is indeed on the level of a weak 22cal pocket pistol round.
The musket on the other hand did have more stopping power than any other infantry weapon in history, all based on a good combination of kinetic energy and ball size.
unlike modern infantry weapons the musket did have no overpenetration issues.

Since Wellington's muskets would be deployed on the reverse slope, they wouldn't have a shot. Whereas the bows could shoot indirect fire at them with impunity.

Benjamin Franklin said during the Revolution something along the lines that he wished the Americans were armed with longbows instead of muskets…

Boy am I glad that Washington paid no attention to him.
And, Stonewall Jackson wanted pikes, too.

Sharpe vs Robin Hood?

Wouldn't either side rather fight the French?

"You cannot even stop a determined naked man with a longbow, unless you hit him directly in the heart, from other hits he might not even take notice."

I guess it might depend what this "determined naked man" is determined to do. If it's to slake his manly lusts with a willing wench, goat or whatever, I can understand him not being distracted by mere missiles. ;)

IGLO: In many countries hunting with bows is completely illegal, with good reason.

This makes no sense.

Neither does your "drops the height of a man at 25 yards" for a longbow. A longbow would strike at virtually perpendicular (no impact angle) to a vertical target out to no less than 75 yards. The only time the drop counts for anything is at long range.

The OP question is very specific: it isn't about muskets versus longbows, technically. I'd give the win to Wellington. The armies cannot be compared. But if for some reason you had equal numbers, say, 5K missile troops, the advantage goes to the longbow for having a longer range with density of missiles in a given area. However, to achieve that density, the longbowmen would have to pack many ranks deep: and by doing that, it increases the percentage of hits the muskets would get: remember, Nappie period musket lines were only a fraction as deep as medieval lines were. If king Hal thinned out his line to avoid presenting too vulnerable a target for the muskets, he would lose the density of missile saturation. There is a further wrinkle: IF Hal thinned his lines, then each archer would be able to personally SEE the muskets 200+ yards away, and "shoot at will." The rate of "fire" then goes up from six rounds of volley fire to a dozen rounds per minute per man. HOWEVER (again), the way longbows (indeed any archers or crossbowmen) killed at anything beyond "pointblank" (c. 70 yards) range was to do dropping shots, which were trained for in volley, not as individuals. Some of your longbowmen would suck at trying to hit individually outside pointblank range, being accustomed only to shooting to hit the clout, i.e. the saturation area of shooting in a company, in volley.

This is all the long way of saying, both sides would shoot each other to pieces, and, short of actually seeing it done, nobody can say if there would even be a consistent winner.

Archery takes skill and strength; any fool can point and shoot a musket; though, I admit, loading a musket required some ability to think under pressure.

Why refight Castillion?

velocity of a long bow is about 150ft/sec, the missile will need about 1,5 to 2 seconds to hit the target at 75 yds.
If you aim directly the missile will hit the ground by a rough calculation at say 25 yds, gravity sets in the moment the projectile is launched. Its an acceleration process and the first 0.5 seconds can indeed be handled by just pointing at the target, beyond this either adjustable sights or a lot of skills are needed.
With fire weapons its not so much of a problem, a napoleonic musket did have a velocity of 1200 ft/sec.
A ball would fly 200yds in half a second, not just 25yds like a longbow missile.
gravity is always the same.

Personally, I 'd rather face a hail of bullets than a cloud of arrows. At least you can't see the bullets coming at you.

This would be all moot if Napoleon had the H-bomb.

CPTN IGLO, I'm wondering where you get your data. I suspect you're pulling data for modern recurves with pulls of 60 lbs. or less.

The longest competition distance shot for a longbow is over 400 yards. Almost every expert I've read states that the longbows of the period could shoot 300 yards (these bows had pulls ranging from 80 to 110 lbs.), though combat was generally begun at 180 yards or less.

As for stopping power, a whole lot of Frenchmen in armor got "stopped" by longbows at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. So did Scots at Falkirk. In the 20th century, Howard Hill killed a freakin' ELEPHANT with a traditional longbow! I call that "stopping power."

Sure, a musket ball does nasty things to bones and body. But it has to hit you first, and if the enemy is trying to aim with a bunch of arrows sticking out 'em, having been peppered while he tries to get within range, I'm not so sure he's gonna pull that one off.

As for muskets with a 10% hit rate?!? Meaning they missed a man sized target 90% of the time!!! That's not exactly a convincing display of accuracy. Basically, you're saying that a trained man with a musket is more likely to miss at that distance than anything else. (For the gamers among you, that means they have to roll an exact 10 on a d10 to hit. You'd roll for it, but you wouldn't bet your forces survival on it, would you?)

Who would win?

The odds makers in Vegas!

Sharpe vs Robin Hood?

Which Robin Hood? Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner? I think Errol qould take Bean, but not Costnor.

Brent

Iglo, I have to say Parzival's comments make sense. Those archers at Agincourt were killing charging cavalry mounts with their shots. You could argue it would take 2 or 3 hits to stop 1 horse, but you couldn't exactly do that with a light .22, could you?

As well, armourers across Europe were devising new ways of cold-hardening plate to turn away arrows. Seems to me that the arrows in that period were hitting with considerable force.

Whichever ones had the better paint job.

First, training. Longbowmen spent years learning their trade. And kept practicing. Musketmen spent months learning how to load the musket to get a rate of fire between 2-3 rounds a minute. What they didn't do was practice to hit people. Very little powder was expended by regiments to learn aiming. Just level the musket and fire. And there was no practice at "aiming higher" to get a longer range.

Two lines of troops,each of 300 men, one musket armed, one bow armed. Range is 400 yards. Brit musket armed troops MUST approach within 100-60 yards to have any chance of hitting the opposition.
Bowmen will begin firing at 300 yards. Marching pace of a line of troops is 60 paces per minute, or about 50 yards. Got to maintain that order or your firepower suffers. So our musketeers spend four minutes in the beaten zone before they will fire. (Note that there are several sneering accounts by British officers that the French opened a totally useless fire at 200 yards, mostly to make themselves braver. A British officer who opened fire at such a range would never hear the end of it. Just not done doncha know). So we will allow each of our 300 archers to put six aimed shots in the air per minute. So 7200 arrows will rain down on the line of musketeers before they will open fire. So if only 10% of those are hits, then 720 men will become casualties. Nearly twice the number of men in the regiment. Most hits will be in the head and upper torso as the arrows will come down at a steep angle, so more DRT's than a musket will cause.

The musket has other disadvantages. No sights so no way to really aim, but not a problem since aiming isn't part of the plan. Mass effect is what you are going for. The lock. A mechanical device prone to breaking. The cartridge. You bite it open, pour a portion into the pan, pour the rest down the barrel, then stuff the wad of cartridge paper and ball in on top of it. Some unknown amount of powder will always spill, and it varies man to man. So the range and hitting power of the musketball varies from man to man. (There are instances of men being struck by musket balls at fighting ranges and having either the thickness of their clothing or their crossbelts stopping the ball). The powder itself. Clogs the barrel to the point where you can't shove another ball down it.

Advantages. Anyone can use it with a minimal amount of training. Anyone can make cartridges.

The longbow. Disadvantages. The string. Get it wet and it won't work worth a darn. The ammunition for it consumes a much greater amount of space than the ammo for a musket.
And it's biggest disadvantage is the amount of time spent in learning to use it. Years to become proficient, and regular shooting to maintain that proficiency. The ammunition is, compared with cartridges, expensive to make, and far more time consuming. So, compared with the musket, a longbow is a very labor intensive weapon to produce, and therefore more costly. Economically, the musket is a much better investment. But matched against the musket in combat, with men who know how to use the bow, it will win hands down. I'm pretty sure a single clothyard shaft sticking out of my brisket will encourage me to lie down and bleed awhile, not to mention what a second one would do.

The archers would desert in droves for the rum and tobacco.

For myself I really don't care one way or the other.

I'm a Francophile and a admirer of Napoleon so anything against Wellington is good for me.

As for Henry the Vth i really don't detest him as much as Wellington,but that's that.

So as for this question i really don't give a rat's ass but this is my two cents.

Captain Gideon

Assuming an open field in clam dry conditions, the archers would win.
Why?
-range: the effective range of a longbow was 100 yds the musket was only 80 yds
-accuracy: muskets had only a 40% hit rate at 100 yds at a target sized 5ft by 10ft for an archer thats too big to miss

Muskets replace bows because muskets were easier to use. If gunpowder hadn't been discovered crossbows would have played a larger role in warfare of the period

Isn't one answer to look at how each coped with a cavalry charge? The muskets' firepower couldn't stop a charge and they had to form square, whereas the longbowmen stopped them dead.

"whereas the longbowmen stopped them dead."

I think the morale was a main factor for that apart from oher differences, the armoured knights were not expecting such rate of fire from bows and the charge was broken because the losses were from horses, also an armoured horse carrying a knight is much slower than the heaviest napoleonic cavalry so they are much more time under fire. The Napoleonic cavalry new they were going to come under fire and usually was not used as a shock force to break lines unless massed.

If the archers could stop a cavalry charge "dead" then why did they need to deploy stakes? Why did medieval commanders make sure they were supported by the men-at-arms and latter by billmen? Indeed if the archers were really as deadly as the hagiographically challenged wargamer thinks, then why were the famous longbow battles in the Hundred Years War ultimately decided by swords and bill wielding melee troops and not the archers? Even the French charges supposedly stopped "dead" reached the English lines where the archers had to resort to their own hand weapons.

English (and Welsh) longbowmwn were simply part of an effective combined weapon system- although we seem to have placed a mythological aura of invinceability upon longbowmen and forgotten everyone else.

Oops, forgot to say my money would be on the redcoats…as others have said earlier I doubt if they would present a good target for longbow fire until the range was under 100-150 meters and at that range their own fire would be telling. One thing no one has mentioned that I feel would be relevent, is training in respect to being shot at. We know the longbow was effective against the Scots and French who largely presented targets who did not shoot back. In the Wars of the Roses archers did take shooting but again largely slugged it out without decisive effects and again teneded to have their formations stiffened with billmen. Battles being decided with hand weapons. I tend to think that the redcoats would stand their casualties better than the archers would theirs in any hypothetical contest between even numbers as by the eighteenth century infantry was drilled enough to advance, keep order and remain a viable unit even under fire.

On a lighter note..if both armies used their likely historical tactics it would be a no show anyway. Wellington's lads would be out of sight behind the slope and the archers would be lined up behind their stakes- both waiting for the enemy to attack.

Well the stakes were carried because there had been a number of instances en route where small numbers of knights had given the archers some grief.
They needed massed archery to stop determined knights and it's a bit of a bore foraging en masse.
Just because they thought massed archery would probably stop the knights doesn't mean they're not going to want a plan B just in case.
So by the time of the battle they had the stakes and may as well use them.
IIRC No mounted cavalry reached the English at Agincourt.
The French plan involved a load of knights getting off their horses precisely because they were pretty sure they'd get shot to pieces like in previous battles.
I think there's less difference between the horses really used by knights in battle than some people seem to reckon.
The emphasis was on speed and manoeuvrability in horses for for battle, big heavy ones for jousting.
Besides, the proper fully trained warhorse was incredibly expensive.
It'd be like taking your ferrari to the demolition derby.

On bow weights.
110 Lbs is an old estimate, since revised upwards based on real bows out the Mary Rose.

300 yards is the range Henry's archers are supposed to have opened up at.
There was a mix of quality in archers – not all were experts by any means.
Of course that didn't really matter much since pretty much every english man and was familiar enough with a longbow to
ass to the arrow storm.
This is described as a pretty fearsome thing of itself BTW.
When they talk about darkening the sky, they ain't jolking. Plus there's supposed to be a clattering noise from the shafts of thousands of arrows ratling against each other.

A modern longbowman fired a bunch of shots comparing his RoF to a crossbow on one of those history channel progammes.
I think 20 shots per minute was lower than that guy attained.
It's 5 seconds to lean forward, nock, lean back, pull and fire.
Been a while since I did longbow… a long time.
If I had the arrows in the ground I think I could achieve 5 seconds a shot for a while.
Resupply of arrows is was by young lads run through the open order formation.

Equal numbers, I think the longbowmen would easily win but the alien space bats would take over the world eventually.