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

…it was mentioned that the weight of the armour was what meant that the french could not fight. This seems a little odd to me. What is described is the inability to lift weapons. Thi swoudl be more through fatigue than actual physical weight. Logic says they woudln't wear armour that woudl not allow them to lift their weapons….

Exactly right. The weapons themselves did not weigh more than 3 or 4 pounds, usually. The armor itself, for a cap-a-pie suit of plate, would weigh c. 60 lbs. But at Agincourt, this kind of armor was still in the future: the men-at-arms in 1415 wore a mail "coat" and strapped plate defenses on over this. I think the entire getup was heavier than 60 lbs, but not much. The mud sucking at their feet for over 300 yards is what exhausted the French, the arrow storm adding to this by making them keep their heads down, such that their formation compacted and fouled itself (and some literally fouled themselves, I am sure!). The horses routing back and crashing through them would have been a horrendous increase in chaos and shock. Getting up in over 60 lbs. of plate isn't normally a problem, you simply roll quickly onto your face and push yourself up and stand. But doing that in thick mud, tired, and getting knocked about or compressed so that you cannot move freely, would put many French men-at-arms on the ground to stay there. Those that finally arrived at the melee point were a compacted mess, flinching inward from the flanking arrow fire, and trying to drive forward at the same time. And as the Gesta makes clear: once the first ranks and outer flanks fell down, the interior, forward pressure of the main mass of the vanguard pushed the next men over on top of the prostrated, and that horrid "wall" of the fallen was created: nobody inside the interior and at the rear of the vanguard could have seen what their continued advance was doing. The men-at-arms at the front and on the outer edges, the flanks, were literally pushed into the waiting and attacking English, and in their compacted condition were not able to lift their weapons properly. Some of them would have been so exhausted by then anyway, that their weapons would have felt like dead weight.

…Tests (with a few problems to my eye but fairly satisfactory) have proven that the longbow's capabilities against the iron armour used by the majority, at least in the earlier stages, were not actually as great as first thought….

Here's where we get into trouble: the lab simulations are faulty on a couple of points: the impact angle is wrong for anything except fairly long range shooting: and the armor is not 3mm thick, or even 2mm thick, except at the most forward, exposed points. The armor around the back edges and flanks, and rear are all 1mm or even thinner. That is what the Gesta clearly describes when it claims that arrows pierced the visors and sides of the helmets. This idea, that "pig iron" bodkin points could not pierce tempered sheet steel, is not proven in field tests where arrows impact directly into the sheet, i.e. with little or no impact angle.

It seems to me then that there were a lot more wounds than fatal shots and a clearing up of the enemy with no mercy seems more plausible as the main cause of death.

I agree completely. But a wounded man with an arrow still stuck in him is out of the battle.

The original writings were not in english and from what I remember the herce term is hotly debated.

In Anne Curry's collection of edited original and seminal sources, the word "wedges" (in the Gesta) is used as a translation of "herce". In other words, her interpretation tends toward the shape of the formation; while other scholars think the Gesta chronicler was describing the way the archers stood in relation to each other, i.e. like the tines on a harrow, in "checkerboard" formation. Either emphasis works; because what we are required to account for is over 4,000 archers on a compact frontage, i.e. many ranks deep: and their most effective formation would be one that could take the advancing French men-at-arms in the flanks with enfilading fire. Thus, a "wedge" formation for the best visibility, from the flanks, and a "herce" (checkerboard) arrangement of ranks, so that each archer is shooting between the shoulders of the two closest men standing in front of him.

As for supposed eye witness accounts I lay very little faith in them.

I don't share your disparagement of the eyewitnesses. If they said they were there that is very valuable. The Gesta chronicler even said where he watched the battle from and is unique in that context.

Now, the technical capabilities of the longbow and other weapons, the effectiveness of the armor, etc., can be verified by modern reconstructions of the conditions. I am with you on that: I want to have as much hands-on experience as possible. There is no reason why we should even be arguing this question of arrows versus armor: the bows are here to shoot, and the armor is available as well. There is no reason to resort to simulted lab testing; we can do this in the field; the only thing lacking is live bodies inside the armor!

This video link (again, in five parts), is not as good as the Hastings one, imho; but it does begin to examine the arrow versus armor aspect: then it seems part of the narrative goes missing (maybe somebody who saw this on the telly can clarify this). Anyway, we can listen to a bit of Anne Curry in it, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I would have enjoyed listening to an hour of nobody but her!

Lord L,,

"the armor is not 3mm thick, or even 2mm thick, except at the most forward, exposed points" "This idea, that "pig iron" bodkin points could not pierce tempered sheet steel,"

are you saying that plate was made from sheet steel less than 2mm? this is less than 1\16",, closer to 1\32",, sorry i don't think metric.

are you saying that their armor was made from sheet steel,, as opposed to wrought iron? and was actually annealed, hardened,,and tempered?

and lastly,, "pig iron" is what comes in the first process of making wrought iron when first puddled,and must be further worked as it has too many impurities in it to be used in any form…

I am really curious about this,, thanks for your input…

anvil

Hi

I simply hand made the points and armor and shot at them. 1/16th(I prefer english as well) is where the bulk comes out.

My own tests showed something I didn't see in any book. That the shape of the chisel point bodkin tended to "tip" the point. Incoming at an agle, the arrow would pivot on the edge and do a force majure, meaning that all hits were at shallow angle unless int he incoming was in excess of 43 degrees.

A several decades ago, I published this stuff. But my own mind is satisfied. I have SEEN the holes. It is difficult to convince me when the sources in the period describe it and my "mythbusters" attempt at disproving it agreed.

R

Thanks for the in depth answer there.

As for the lab testing I've seen results from the combination of ballista in the lab and in the field and the lab test shows a much weaker result.
I feel I should add more detail to this test I talk about so as not to do it any injustice. Firstly they used wrought iron (or whichever version was the most common at the time) The angles were tested finding that at 2mm the armour could deflect many of the angled arrows (I think this was 45 degrees or there abouts). As for the thickness of the armour the breastplate (and therefore presumably the backplate of the armour, not that it was all in a single piece which is a seperate issue) was 2mm the front of the helmet 3mm and the rest of the helmet around 2-3mm. The limbs were protected by the 1mm. The thing with this test is, as it is a lab test, they didnt bother stating ranges (I may have data for the weights/forces around somewhere).

Now there are further points to this. Firstly the iron armour was only about half the toughness of the steel plate worn later and by those richer. So effectively we can half the thickness penetrated meaning 1.5mm of steel being able to stop an arrow.

Secondly the angles are a big factor. If we take the helmets as an issue we can see that the earlier helmets were open faced and with the introduction of the great helm you get full face protection. The main issue is obviously later giving the hounskull type a bigger proportion with bascinet and sallet as the other common types. The interesting thing about these helmets is the angles. The great helm was abandoned (except for tournies) for its flat top, the later helmets had good angles, mainly this was to deflect melee weapons but it would have a great effect also on the arrows. For example if we shot directly at the face of a hounskull helmet we would be hitting it at well over 45 degrees at most points, however, make it an angled hit and suddenly you negate the bonus of the angled armour which in fact increases the arrows penetration. Effectivly what I am saying is that with a combination of open faced helms and joints in armour the arrows would not have needed to penetrate the actual plate itself. Not to mention when it penetrated it would need to go at least 3cm deep to cause a decent wound through the aketon.
Thirdly the people being shot at are moving. this creates all sorts of funky angles on the armour making arrows bounce off. The were accounts from the crusades of knights being peppered with arrows and taking around 50 hits which stuck in their armour. Whilst this wasnt longbows or even plate it shows that more than one arrow may be needed to fell a man. Which also begs the question of shooting at the face of the opponent where the armour was easiest to hit and weakest (yes the chest is easier to hit but the armour couldnt always be penetrated).

All of my points lead me to one conclusion, if the longbow was so devestating and the armour so useless why did they carry on using it for so many years? Logically they would have worn lighter more flexible armour giving them a good combat ability and decent enough protection. So therefore by the virtue that the armour was still being used it must have been effective to at least some degree to be worth the expense and effort.

A

are you saying that plate was made from sheet steel less than 2mm? this is less than 1\16",, closer to 1\32",, sorry i don't think metric.

Yes, the lab testing source, "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" (of which much ado has been made), tested impact angles of 30 degrees into 2mm of mildly tempered sheet steel. But a suit of plate armor all in 2mm would weigh well over 100 lbs! A great deal of it was 1mm thick and even thinner on the extremities.

"Commis": As for the lab testing I've seen results from the combination of ballista in the lab and in the field and the lab test shows a much weaker result.

Yes, that is my point: the lab testing is faulty, because the premise is limited and mistaken. To remedy the conclusions, more in-field testing with the actual weapons and armor is needed. But such as has already been done makes the latest lab tests suspect, not the earlier conclusions.

You are correct that the armor was very effective. And a given arrow would most likely come to grief on a high impact angle (i.e. curved surface, not flight angle). But of course the method of longbow shooting was not single arrows, but enormous volumes of missiles from converging angles, i.e. enfilading angles. The higher the volume and the more variety of incoming angles, the higher the percentage chances of effective hits.

I still have problems to see how archery might have been able to stop a cavalry charge.

Archery was essentially massed shooting in wedges or blocks.
A 30 yds deep formation might indeed have been able to produce a 30 yds deep target zone 200yds away.
But the flight time of a cloud of missiles should have been around 6 sec to land into that zone.
A charging cavalry unit in the usually practiced line formation would be able to gallop through that zone in not more than 4 seconds.
To hit a charging cavalry unit the commander of the archers would have to calculate exactly the pace of the chargers, then he would have to calculate when the chargers did reach a point at say 250 yds, then he would have to command shooting with direct execution and then after about 6 seconds the missils would arrive nearly vertical from above at 200 yds in a 30 yds deep zone. Any miscalculations of the horses speed or the distances would have gravest consequences.
I think practicing this with any chance of guaranteed success is already impossible.
And even if it did work, only 20% of the target zone would be filled with targets and all this for just 4 seconds.

And finally there is naturally the kinetic energy issue.
even at point blank range with herculian draw weights the longbow missile did indeed have the kinetic energy of a weak 6,32 mm(23cal) browning acp pocket pistol round.

Those few who hunt horse sized game with bows shoot usually at less than 30 yds and only from a flank to hit the heart or lung of the target with a high precision shot just behind the front legs, even a lung shot would bring down the target only after a few minutes at best. All other shots would only create flesh wounds, which an adrenalin boosted horse would not even notice during the carge.
There were reported cases in the 7yw in which horses kept on charging even with half a leg shot off, horses in combat were no sissies.

A charging cavalry unit in the usually practiced line formation would be able to gallop through that zone in not more than 4 seconds.

Except at Agincourt, where the mud was so bad that the horses could hardly lift their hooves out of it. The forward speed of the horses must have been seriously reduced.

To hit a charging cavalry unit the commander of the archers would have to calculate exactly the pace of the chargers, then he would have to calculate when the chargers did reach a point at say 250 yds, then he would have to command shooting with direct execution and then after about 6 seconds the missils would arrive nearly vertical from above at 200 yds in a 30 yds deep zone.

Yes. It indicates just how precise the veteran commanders and the marksmen in the front ranks had to be to make this work; and why the French and Scots never achieved it: in the case of the French, they never had the body of trained peasants into yeomen, and the Scots never had the national laws imposing mandatory archery practice with the accompanying fines if remise in their civic duty, ergo, the Scots made fine individual archers with the very same weapon as the English yeomen, but did not achieve the density of fire or precision the English did in massed battle formations. Shortly after Agincourt, a sizeable body of Scots Highlander archers duked it out with their opposite number on the English side at Verneuil; and contemporaries insist that the carnage for a while on both sides was impressive; but that was archers shooting at each other in static formations, not archers shooting at charging cavalry.

I think practicing this with any chance of guaranteed success is already impossible.

We are in trouble when we disbelieve what contemporaries said happened. We cannot test this very easily. And besides, how would we ever get a body of experienced warriors with the bow together? "It took a lifetime to grow an archer" is not an exaggeration, when you include the proficiency of shooting in units in volley in the myriad situations that a battle could provide. So when all the sources for Agincourt agree that the horses were shot down and maddened by the arrow storm, it is pointless to disagree with this. What will you claim in its place?

And finally there is naturally the kinetic energy issue.
even at point blank range with herculian draw weights the longbow missile did indeed have the kinetic energy of a weak 6,32 mm(23cal) browning acp pocket pistol round.

I am no physicist. But I have shot bow into various kinds of metal surfaces. Rocky's experience trumps mine, as he went more thoroughly in depth with it. That longbow video on YouTub, shooting into armor, that was linked to in one of the earlier posts on this thread: that does not look like the effects of a 25 calibre pistol round! I'm sorry, it just doesn't wash. Part of the problem is the relative weights and sizes of the missiles involved: the kinetic energy of a 4 oz arrow equaling the same energy of a much lighter bullet simply means that the arrow with much greater mass is going to do something far more damaging but without the same raw penetration: the 4 oz missile stuck in the body and wiggling about is far more stressful than a tiny bullet hole. If you don't take out the arrow at once, the further movement will cause further damage to tissue, i.e. increased blood loss and shock from the pain. It isn't as simple as comparing a Joules number.

Those few who hunt horse sized game with bows shoot usually at less than 30 yds and only from a flank to hit the heart or lung of the target with a high precision shot just behind the front legs, even a lung shot would bring down the target only after a few minutes at best.

Don't mix the two situations up. A hunter must get a fairly precise shot or else he risks losing his game. The bow isn't more deadly at 30 yards than it is at 130 yards; close range is required for accuracy, but the damaging capacity is essentially the same at any but long range. Longbows were used like artillery to saturate an area with missiles; but anyone getting hit would be just as impacted at any range within 100 yards and somewhat beyond that: bare (horse)flesh would be penetrated with ease at any range, even with arrows dropping almost vertically at maximum range. It only took seconds to make the horses bolt back out of control, or throw their riders, or willingly turn away from the arrows as their riders abandoned the charge. And anyone pierced fatally by an arrow would most likely have minutes or even hours before they finally expired; but for most of that time it took to die, they would not have been in the fighting anymore. The flesh wounds were enough to destroy the French charge. All the original sources are in agreement on that point.

Verneuil, again, forms an example of how a quickly approaching cavalry charge can overrun the archer line, as you visualize. The Italian heavy horse started well out of range, approached the longbowmen at full speed, evidently, and went right through them like through a goose. The longbowmen, sans stakes at the time, apparently got out of the way the best they could, then reformed their somewhat decimated line to face the rest of the French army. The Italians continued on to attack the English baggage and horse park, then when they returned to the fighting, it was over, the French side had lost, and the Italians lost some men getting off the field due to longbow shooting: it sounds like the Italians had to ride with flanks and rear exposed: from the front, a fully armored horse is much less vulnerable than from the flanks or rear. Anyway, iirc, some source(s) claim that the Italians were seriously shot up getting off the field, and others claim that they got off lightly. Nobody can tell which is right at this point.

CPTN IGLO,,

thanks for the info,, that makes more sense to me.. at that time steel of any sort was at a premium tech wise,,so even the most wealthy would be using wrought iron for their armor. However,, I wonder if you have any info on just what the arrow tips themselves would have been made of? wrought or steel.. If steel, then this would be a major factor in their being able to penetrate wrought iron. they certainly were not made from pig iron,, but they could have been made from a carbon steel,and hardened and tempered,,Considering that arrows are a recoverable resource,, this is possible,, just curious if you have any info on this…

Rocky,,

I am assuming that the points and armor you made would have been from mild steel,,the most commonly available steel we have today.
wrought iron is nearly impossible to come by,,unless you have it imported from a few places over sea's. 'Tis rather expensive, to say the least,, And to find it is not too much of a problem,, but to work an old tire iron down to 1\16" is lol,, a long drawn out process,, to say the least. mild steel is not,, at least,, for most,, a material that can be hardened and tempered,, but it is hands down not the same as wrought iron,, which has nearly 0% carbon in it.

hehe I am more interested in the tech side of this than the other debate raging here.. we do know the results of the English Long Bow vs. French Chivalry..

so any sources on these tests would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance

anvil..

I guess I lost the thread of this conversation… I though it was about English longbows versus Wellington's infantry…

Wellington's infantry is most famous for standing in line formation and firing (thin red line)… if they stand there and accept the fire at a distance from the bowmen, yes, they would probably lose…

But if we put a little reality into it, they would probably charge or drop down out of sight. As a good commander, Wellington would probably send in his light rifles to take care of the pesky bowmen… assuming the rifles do not march in a nice little line and make perfect targets, and so what they were trained to do…

If in fact the English long bow was so superior in combat in the early 1800s against gunpowder, maybe the English should should have fought the French using long bows… parliament must have been paid off by the gunpowder lobby…

There's no-one left alive – must be a draw.
So the blackcap barrons toss a coin to settle the score

Hi

"All of my points lead me to one conclusion, if the longbow was so devestating and the armour so useless why did they carry on using it for so many years?"

Works the other way as well, why did they ever stop using this perfect armor that Gars and others refer to and why were people so stupid as to use these weapons?

It is difficult to have a discussion here when the players start off demanding you believe an extreme.

First: kenetic energy isn't relevent. KE isnt much of a predictor of how a bullet performs in killing or penetrating a target, and arrows don't work by kenetic energy. Take a step back, when you eat , you cut the food with a sharp knife. The actual kenetic energy(unless your roast is like the ones my mom used to make), requires very little mechanical energy, which isn't based on the speed or mass of the knife. Arrows are similar, they dont "shock" the game, they cut into the game, like eating a steak, and cause exsanquination. With armor, again the arrow cuts into the piece.

a .25 cal will not penetrate a bears skin, let alone cut through him and sever a vertibrae as happens every bow hunting season.

The longbow isn't a magic wand, and all longbows aren't like the ones at agincourt, and are not magic.

and armor isn't magic to defeat attack and allow one to wade through the masses invlunerable to all harm.

Got it?

What armor does is reduce the probability of getting hurt. What and arrow does is have a probability of hurting.

A horse moving at 20mph is crossing about 9yards a second under ideal conditions, ignoring the mass slowing from keeping togethther, the terrain and so on. But indeed closing from 300yards, out of range to contact, the horse is optimally exposed to 30 some seconds of fire. 30 seconds would represent 6 rounds from an individual, 3 with the limits of volley fire, meaning in these fights, some 24,000 arrows on the area. In fact, field tests later when we have clocks indicated that heavy cav in column formation move much slower than this, but for the point, we will treat the optimum. 24,000 arrows on a close order formation of horses is still going to kill someone.

A lot of someones, a lot of horses, and each casualty is going to ripple through the formation.

Now, the armor guys would prove thorugh kenetic energy that no one could be hurt, and too many "archery pornographers" like Hardy and strickland would have them all die out there at 300 years.

Now, dismissing these extreme positions, we might actually discuss the issues rather than take stances.

And in the case of the thread, we are talking about wellingtons unarmored troops trudging through the zone.

R

Hi

And for the blacksmithing. I didn't overthink the making. I took common iron and steel rod, cheapest I could get, and ground it to various shapes. Besides the english, most medieval bow using people had a variety of arrowheads, broadheads, armor piercing, long range, singlnaling and so on. And I wasn't trying to prove an extreme, just see if it looked "plausable". I didn't shoot a human. I bought a manikin and built bits of armor, incliding things like lameller in iron, steel, bone and leather and just simply shot at it with bows and crossbows.

Rocky

Hereīs a nice link
the site links to two vids of crossbow vs breastplate tests.

link

No cheap reenactor stuff, the bolts have hardened tips, the breastplate is face hardened to medieval guild standards.
The crossbow bolt was prinicipally a better penetrator than the longbow missile , still the major penetration problem beside insufficient kinetic energy can be seen, the wooden shaft has the tendency to bend or break and spend most of the already measly KE there.
and the crossbow did already have a much shorter stronger shaft than the longbow.

Hi

Ig,,,,,,it isn't about Kenetic energy.

KE from a gun mostly burns off..in a literal sense, it expends its energy as heat. Doesn't apply to a bow and arrow, just as a knife is moving too slow to count. If the stiffness of the shaft is the issue, then the test was done wrong. The concept is momentum and area not raw KE.

R

LLD..

I checked out "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" ,, but it is well beyond my means. I will see if it is avalable at my local library,, thanks for the lead

I have to say that I have followed the longbow debate in this thread with great interest which kinda waned when the mathematicians began to tell us what was and what was not possible. I have to stand firmly alongside Rocky Russo when he comments that ' he has seen the holes ' and implies that all the scientific theory in the world will have trouble convincing him otherwise. I think Rocky's approach to the testing was far more scientific and better researched than mine. He sure knows a hell of a lot more about the mathematics of projectiles in general than I do or ever will. It's the same old story, there are those who have done it in practice and there are the theorists. My qualifications ( and these are not stated for any reason other than to demonstrate a fairly extensive experience with the beast) are 25 years of shooting the things, competitively and for fun, along the way picking up a couple of National championships and by a miracle a world championship in '73. I have kicked around with a bunch of guys in a very minority sport and eat, slept with and breathed longbows for weekend after weekend. A lot of those archers were better than me. I have shot with Hardy and the longbow 'porn' merchants and found them a great bunch of people but disagree with a lot of what they believe. But, more importantly, we have played around with the 'clothyard shaft' of medieval fame and I too have 'seen the holes'. The longbow is no wonder weapon, it is a pig to shoot if you are looking for accuracy. Its fame was achieved in its ability to cast a heavy projectile a fair distance in large numbers. We have heard arguments about the ability of the bodkin to penetrate armour. In my view it is totally irrelevant. On an overcast October day in Northern France in 1415 the arrows fell like rain not on an army of just plate covered high ranking knights but common soldiers, some in mail, some in bits of plate, some with hardly any armour at all. And to make matters worse ( or better if you were on the English side ) the target was packed together so closely that the effect of the arrows was greatly increased. The arrows that caused disaster to the French were mass produced in tens of thousands, were not 'spined' to bows ( which were themselves crudely mass produced ) but just around 33" in length, 1/2" in diameter and tipped with a very heavy and sharp point. No doubt those fortunate enough to have good quality helms and upper body armour would have a better chance than the vast majority but what good does that do you when you are slogging through thick mud, trying to climb over dead and wounded and by the time you get to within striking distance of the enemy find you are so closely hemmed in by your surviving comrades that you can't even raise your arm to strike?

I can't go along with arguments about angles, kinetic energy or what this or that 'eye witness' said. We know what happened at Azincourt, something that didn't happen at Poitiers or Crecy or Sluys. Too many French tried to get into too small a space with everything against them, the ground, the lack of order, the confusion and above all the arrows raining down. If the Brits could have designed their perfect scenario for taking down the French army it could not have been much different to what took place that awful day. And it happened the once and never again.

So how does this leave us with the original question? How would the archers of Henry's army fare against the Napoleonic musketeer? The answer is we'll never know. If the Napoleonic people had a grain of sense and rifles they'd skirmish the archers to pieces. Most of the archers couldn't hit a barn door at 100 yards, not with the government issue bow and arrows. If the 19th century types advanced in column of attack they'd probably be decimated. If they formed lines and advanced that could swing it for them. Like the armour/arrow business, who knows?

F5

Can you see what is going on in those video clips? The first bolt snaps off and bounces away. The second one looks as though the entire head penetrated as the shaft snapped (off out of sight). Very dark on my Windows Media player. But I suspect a bad impact angle. I have experienced poor bolt discharges: when the bolt doesn't match up against the string properly it comes out all skeewumpus, ergo utterly useless.

All this says is that armor could be penetrated, the whole 2mm+ of it on a breastplate. Count in the thinner parts, the areas of the body not protected by plate at all: add in "24K" arrows in 30 seconds; you can see that "more is better"; the crossbow penetrates (sometimes) where a longbow would not, but that's all. The crossbow is not known for creating an "arrow storm".

There is no magic formula to punch a hole into something and it should not be confused with slicing a steak, try to slice a steel plate and you see the difference.
A missile has a caliber too and you need, say, a 9 mm hole to bring a missile through a piece of armour.

There is KE needed, which is the definition of the work force a projectile has.

The excellent hardened breast plate(medieval fabrication methods!!) above would have needed around 400 joule to penetrate it with a 9 mm hole.
A 9 mm parabellum pistol round would have done the job, it has 490 joule.
A missile would have needed a 9mm hole too, to get through, but with 80 joule its obvious the attempt had to fail, 50% of the KE spent for bending or breaking the shaft is indeed quite irrelevant on this level.
A musket ball would have made an 18mm hole, needing much more energy, nearly 2000 joule, but with 2400 joule there was plenty availble.

A musket would have done the job, at least up to 50 yards distance, against a musket ball the hardening of the surface might even have been a disadvantage.
And the center of the breast plate was the thickest part of a knights armour, other parts did did have just one third or less of the thickness, in guild quality, which knights armour did usually have, still to much for a bow or crossbow, but doable for a harcebus.
Once fire weapons became really popular full plate armour and shields did decline quickly.

Falconfive,
you can have your Azincourt scenario exactly as described, without "arrows raining down".
The field might have been far less overcrowded if the French had suffered significant casualties during the advance, they might even have won if something had decimated them into a force which had room to move.
something similar must by the way have happened 1500 years earlier at Cannae.

Has anyone already pointed out- they would get together and give the French another good thrashing!

So they wouldn't fight each other.

IGLO, you seem to disbelieve first-hand accounts of making HOLES in steel. And likewise hunters cutting through bear bones. I spoke with a guy whose firsthand experience puts the lie on "a hole is still a hole": he had a protective mother black bear after hin, and he shot all six of his arrows on his bow clip into the bear, on the run: he used trees to pivot with one hand, turning inside the charging bear, and shot and ran and reloaded: his last shot was with his back to a tree, the bear had him finally, and then after making one swipe at him, tearing through his coveralls and scratching his chest, she fell backward dead: he had scored with three shots, two were buried up to the fletching and one had passed clean through and out the back side, the entire arrow, tip to fletching, was covered in the bear's gore. That's called cutting power, utilizing razor-edged broadheads. You prefer lab numbers instead. Fine with me. But there really is a difference between crushing and cutting your way through to make that 9mm hole.

Hi

Ig, drag goes up with the square of the speed. This really is important when facing steel. Your 9mm becomes a "wad cutter" hole, that is it is going so fast, and in an infintesimal instant trys to make a 9mm hole while moving at 1100fps or so. If you actually try this shot, and touch it afterwords, you will find it is HOT to the touch. Most of that energy is spent as heat. First heated in the passage through the air then lots of heat on the metal.

An arrow is moving too slow to generate measurable heat either in flight or at the target.

Kenetic energy is calculated as "velocity squared". Which produces an interesting number but that doesn't translate to actual effect as a weapon. The lack of velocity of the arrow, and the POINT being infintessimally small means that the pitiful Ke, or rather F-MA is focused on a tiny point that cuts into the surface. Not a brute force "wad cutting" presence of a bullet. Thus, the number you want is footpounds of energy on a .1sq.mm versus energy spread over 9mm x 4/3 pi R squared.

If you need to see the energy, you have to express it as both over time and area.

Back to the simple point, we have done this. Observation.

Falkon, Saxton Pope wrote a book about an american indian whose tribe had hidden from the white guy in the pacific northwest, and studied the last survivor and wrote a book. "Ishi, last of His Tribe". One of the points he make is about indian archery. The guy made bows and arrows, and on a target range was a total flop at shooing. What he WAS good at was walking through the forest and snap shooting at stray bits on impulse. I took up bow shooting in competition as a little boy, won a local event for 10 and under…and didn't find it very interesting. Some of the local kids were navajo and hopi and they all did the "ishi" type bow shooting. I found it more fun, and still do, to wander in the wilderness and shoot. I admire your dedication, and the work it took to succeed as a target shooter.

Rocky

Foot pounds concentrated on 1 sq mm will not produce a 9mm hole, but you need such a hole to carry a missile through a breastplate. Steel doesnīt magically give way if you use an arrow point.
Naturally things get warm if you punch a hole through steel.
Work is a transitional process, energy is burned, thats a result of work.
Those who find "Joule" to alien, can use foot pounds, Newton meter, Watt seconds or even calories, its all the same.

Its indeed a key decision to either believe period or modern tales or to rely on facts, physics is facts.

A nice example from the napoleonic era is corporal Plunkettīs claim to have killed a french general at 800 yds with his baker rifle.
800 yds is actually slightly beyond the utmost ballistic range of the weapon, the ball would not have reached that distance, even when shot at a 45 degree angle.
According to period trials the propability to hit something with the first shot of a patched round ball rifle is gone already beyond 200 yds, at 400 yds its sheer luck.
Those who shoot round ball rifles in competitions agree with this.
But there are still a lot of period and modern tale tellers who try to tell us otherwise.

the gesta has already been mentioned a few times, it contains indeed interesting details on Azincourt, some consider it a fabricated propaganda piece written anonymously very likely by an english monk on orders from the king.
This might be right or wrong, sufficient to say that the model for medieval writing in most cases was the bible, serious military studies were unknown.

Hi

An example of a single shot isn't repeated statements from both sides of the fight agreeing that knights were shot down.

And I shoot guns and bow, and I do and have repeated the repreenstation.

Thus, this isn't a single mythical shot from hundreds of years ago, but repeated observations both ancient and modern.

A .22 won't penetrate bear skin based on foot pounds of energy, or kill a deer, both of which happen every year with bow and arrow.

Try again.

Rocky

IGLO, can't you see the incredible difference between razor sharp tip and edges, and the blunt force imparted by a bullet? This is the difference between two ways to apply momentum. The bullet "crushes", the arrow point "cuts." The arrow is slow by comparison, but its sheer weight imparted to the HEAD makes up for all the difference in speed to create a very effective momentum. Again, if you play with the toys we are talking about, you'll change your mind.

I donīt want to convince anybody, but all those attempts by medieval romantics to brainwash modern thinking people is quite upsetting, after all this thread is crossposted on the napoleonic forum and we do live in the 21 century.

Take your momentum, half the mass and multiply it with the squared velocity and you have the working force contained in the projectile, thats KE.
Momentum makes some sense in a closed system, like playing billiard for example, if you want to crush billiard balls you need KE.

It even helps for modern daily live, if you drive twice as fast and crash into something you produce not twice but 4 times as much damage.
And a smart car at 50mph will hurt your Toyota much more than a heavy Suv at 20 mph.

Those who want to enjoy bear hunting with bows can enjoy a lot of clips on youtube, even an funny longbow vs bear clip.
These people are (with good reason) incredible proud if they hit their game at the right spot just behind the front legs at 15-25 yards distance, still it usually pulls away quite dynamically and they have to follow the blood trail to find it.

You canīt stop a determined attacker with such a weapon.

You canīt stop a determined attacker with such a weapon.

So the French were stopped by something else then, at Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt? The Scots were stopped by something other than the bow and arrow at Homildon hill? Or they weren't "determined' enough?

Have you shot a powerful bow into steel, or shot anything at all? "Modern, 'thinking' people". Uhuh. I think I saw my steel crossbow bolt punch through that oven door, and that wasn't even with a bodkin, but rather a "chisel" point. I think the sheer volume of missiles make the odds of the vulnerable bits taking hits impossible to ignore. I think that there isn't anything "romantic" about volley shooting 4 oz, bodkin-pointed arrows into masses of men and horses. A romantic view would be to claim that all the French died at 200 yards because the yeomen of England were that good at sharp shooting.

I donīt want to convince anybody…

Yeah, right. You're the first on this thread to claim that! I aint buying it….

I hate myself for wading into this but…

Reading the accounts of Cortez' expedition to Mexico, one is struck by the reports of wounds received and how in fact it was perfectly normal to go on fighting with a great many wounds each, when fighting for one's life. I believe that the arrows from the longbows did not kill off many knights but would have left the majority of them and their horses with wounds of various severities. Now, once you have a few such wounds, you cannot turn back. You continue on and you do so slowing down.

I suspect that a few arrow wounds when wearing heavy armour would result in long pieces of wood sticking out of corners of one's armour and flesh. It would be the much vaunted pilum effect, would it not?

Me, I'd rather be wounded by a sling than an arrow, especially if I was expected to slog through mud for a few hundred yards with the wound.

What killed the French was momentum. They could only continue moving forward and could not carry combat effectiveness forward with them. They arrived at the enemy lines exhausted, wounded, and weighed down by mud. Then despair settled in and they were finished.

The same result MIGHT have resulted from receiving the fire from shortbows.

While you might hit a tank with a low velocity 72 round 20 times for no effect- unless it hit the right place, a 88mm would go right through with one hit.

Having the right amount of power makes all the difference. There may be not a huge amount of difference between one bow and another- but having the necessary extra little bit can make all the difference. The English encouraged power above all else with the longbow, which I think is a vital piece of evidence in this arguement.

Well i've made it to the 20thC- think that puts me infront of 1815 ;)

Hi

Ig, so now the arrow will penetrate, but it only hurts?

The first statement was that armor makes you invulnerable.

Ig, KE describes blunt force penetration. It doesn't address objects that cut into the target. You deride people hunting with bow…ignoring the point that one doesnt take on major game with the .22 or even a 9mm. Blunt force penetration of either precludes penetration at, say 100yds, a range that people have taken major game with bow.

This alone should suggest that you reconsider your entrenched demands on KE.

And you accuse people of perpetrating myths. As I have shot through armor, as have others, what myth are you addressing?

R

rocky,
I donīt deride those who hunt with bows.
Its those people who claim to hunt deer up to 200yds and that bows can easily take out even elephants who deride them.

I respect people who can kill a bear at 25 paces distance and see this as a major achievement, as said, the bow in my opinion has serious limitations as a hunting weapon.

9 mm is measured to penetrate through 25cm of wood at 20 meters and 2mm of steel at 200 m.
those who hunt with guns might see no reason to do it with 9mm parabellum if they can use 308Win, a serious hunter wouldnīt do this anyway because this would be contrary to a real hunters ethos, hunting is not playing around with weapons.

In many countries hunting with bows is prohibited by law by the way.
After seeing some Youtube vids I even have begun to gain some respect for bow hunters, at least for those who do really a close in at the very close distance which is necessry to set a deadly shot with these weapons.

I still have no respect for those who think they can shoot at deer at 100 yds with just a minimalistic chance to score a deadly hit, all just to satisfy their egos. There is an ethic background behind serious hunting.

I hate myself for wading into this but…

It's a sad thing, to see someone with so little self control….

Reading the accounts of Cortez' expedition to Mexico, one is struck by the reports of wounds received and how in fact it was perfectly normal to go on fighting with a great many wounds each, when fighting for one's life.

Well, there is this little difference: Cortez's boys had nowhere to run "home" to. the French at Agincourt were on their home turf with fortifications not far away. Many, many of them simply abandoned the field altogether without a scratch. The Gesta does emphasize the lack of valour shown by the French at Agincourt.

I believe that the arrows from the longbows did not kill off many knights but would have left the majority of them and their horses with wounds of various severities.

I believe that too. Mortal wounds were in the minority. The wounds on the horses, at least, were severe enough to make them uncontrollable; most threw their riders and (or) bolted back in rout through their own dismounted vanguard.

Now, once you have a few such wounds, you cannot turn back. You continue on and you do so slowing down.

Many routed before hand combat occurred. So turning back was an option for many. Those in the front, bieng pushed forward by the momentum of the mass, were as you surmize, trapped into going forward.

What killed the French was momentum. They could only continue moving forward and could not carry combat effectiveness forward with them. They arrived at the enemy lines exhausted, wounded, and weighed down by mud. Then despair settled in and they were finished.

That's a pretty fair assessment, imho.

The same result MIGHT have resulted from receiving the fire from shortbows.

Lutonjames has it right. Power is always to be desired.

In our rules, the armies lists for the HYW English put all the "Warbows" at "Bow 3" with 20% "Bow 4". At home, the English main mass of longbowmen are shooting "Bow 2" (c. 50# longbow, the equivalent of a 70# shortbow), with 25% "Bow 3" and 10% "Bow 4". It is a difference of hand-picking your army for operation oversea, or fighting with all the locals where a battle at home takes place, i.e. the WOTR: the archers who would never be picked to fight in Hal V's army are still bodies to swell the ranks in a fight at home.

The "painful wounds" of an arrow have already been mentioned above.
Thats another illusion.

link below gives a short comparison of gun shot and missile wounds.

missile wounds are less painful than gunshot wounds and have unlike gun wounds no stopping effect whatssoever.
the target often doesnīt even take notice of being hit.
The missile effect relies exclusively on blood loss, so a chirurgical shot is needed hitting the heart or cutting important veins or arteries, to fell the target there are still minutes, often hours needed, unless you hit the heart naturally.
The broadhead used for these shootings is totally unsuited to deal with armour, and to place a chirurgical shot the target has to be static in the right position at not more than 20 yards distance.

link

such a weapon was completely unsuited to break an assault of a determined attacker.

Massed archery was used to harass and dislodge a static opponent and provoke him into an attack, like at Hastings or Agincourt.
alternatively archery made some sense as counterarchery for the defender like at Crecy.
Defensive battles were won in melee and by skillfull use of terrain in an epoque were disciplined assault infantry was nonexistent.

They didn't use broadhead arrows, they used bodkins for penetration. This has been explained at least once in previous posts.
I have to say I'm fascinated that the English used a weapon for several hundred years and had great success on the battlefield but that the two are apparently unrelated. :)

No hardened longbow Bodkin has ever been found, all surviving bodkins are mild steel. so its more likely the Bodkin was just a flight arrow for range and not made to penetrate plate.
The vid above shows that even hardened bodkins of a crossbow do not even come close to penetrate hardened plate, hardened plate was actually the standard for knights armour, most surviving medieval knights harnesses are hardened.
The behind armour effect of such a warhead would have been nearly nil anyway, the broadhead at least cuts tissue.

So we have a warhead without stopping power who could at least produce bleeding wounds and another one without stopping power with a minimal wounding and a nonexistent armour piercing effect.

The epoque of the longbow saw the rise of France and Spain and the Habsburg empire, and England being thrown off the continent, the 100yrs war was indeed lost, the next 150 years was insular infighting for the English. What did make England/Britain great again was colonial expansion, not the mighty longbow.

CPTN IGLO.

for what its worth, there was no mild steel at that time. Mild steel is a product of the 20th century.

If they used a carbon steel for their arrow tips. they would have been heat treated. the expense to use a carbon steel, and not have done this is something that just wouldn't have been done. if the heat treating were done in a quick and dirty manner,, it would have been done on the last forging heat,,if they wanted more precision, it would have been annealed(cooled slowly), hardened(quenched at a higher heat to maximum hardness), then tempered(the hardness drawn back to a specific hardness determined by the same types of colors you see when you sharpen your knife on a grinder,,and see that bluish color on the cutting edge,, hehe then you have screwed your knife's hardness, btw). either way is not a time consuming process.

In my shop i can take a sharp pointed chisel with no hardness and with my 2.5 lb hammer pierce a piece of 1\4" wrought iron,,with a 1\4 inch punch(flat on the end is the difference here, with the same hammer, i can only dent the same piece of wrought iron.

If i use 3\16" contemporary mild steel, I can get the same results. mild steel is not heat treated, wrought iron cannot be heat treated as it has no carbon in it.

the area of contact on the tool is what makes all the difference.

not really sure here, but i think this is called foot pounds per square inch,, this goes up asymptotically as the area of contact decreases.

you can try this at home if you have a grinder and a hammer. grind a short tapered point on a piece of half inch square or round,, and give it a shot.. try the same thing with say a 1\4" flat on the end. I don't think a framing hammer will do this,, but not sure,,

Make sure you wear safety goggles,,and have a space under where you are punching,

anvil

Hi

How does that "harassment" work? If you cannot in your armor be hurt, why would you be harassed? further why dismount? Or even be forced to attack. No one gets hurt.

You keep shifting your arguments around about bow effectiveness.

A bodkin is way too heavy to be a "flight arrow". Again, I am struck by the idea that you own armor, but have no experience with weapons.

this is the cool part, you disparage the poor steel of the tip….and then go on about 9mm of jacketed lead penetration.

So, have armor, shot at armor, penetrated same.

R

'alternatively archery made some sense as counterarchery for the defender like at Crecy.
Defensive battles were won in melee and by skillfull use of terrain in an epoque were disciplined assault infantry was nonexistent.'

Could say the same musketry in every Napoleonic battle.

next CPTN IGLO comments on about hardened steel for armour, if it was necessary to harden the arrows to defeat such armour- if that was a military necessity, they would have done so- maybe it wasn't necessary!

If you can surply an army with a million arrows- you can harden the steel to same leval as used for the armour.

details of warheads aside, hereīs another person (one of many actually) who sees things like me, as the author states KE(kinetic energy) is king and the defining parameter for penetration.

link

by the way the author states that modern powerful compound hunting bows have sufficient penetration capabilities,his view is based on the correct assumtion that a well placed shot at the right distance doesnīt need so much KE against an unprotected animal, while a not so well placed shot is bound to fail with a bow, regardless of KE, the KE level on all bows is simply to low to achieve a substantial effect with any thing but a chirurgical precision shot.

lutonjames,
the video above shows that even hardened bodkins have no chance to penetrate hardened plate even with point blank shooting, so why harden bodkins?
what they can penetrate, they will do without hardening, if hardening is needed they will fail anyway.

anvil,
youīre naturally right with the mild steel.
the problem with a tip is that you need a hole large enough to bring a projectile through, the tip is just a starting point and the remaining material will not magically give way.
On a certain level projectile shaping for armour penetration is indeed an interesting topic, on 80 Joule level it is not.

Assuming what you say is true, Iglo, why was the longbow thought such an effective weapon in the late Middle Ages? Were they simply shooting at horses?

The Hundred Years War was lost because of poor diplomacy and over stretching our forces. We couldn't defend everywhere and couldn't force a major decisive field engagement. It wasn't lost on the battlefield.
My brother showed me a quote from a Dutch artist of the late 1400's (his name escapes me) who, in his diary, said of a rainstorm that 'the rain was falling like English arrows'. I would assume that if English archery was ineffective it would be used to describe a light shower rather than a torrential downpour.
Hardly proof positive of the effect of Ennglish longbowmen, just a bit more contemporary commentary that many see fit to ignore. Just because we can't prove in a lab that every English arrow could kill a completely armoured French knight every time doesn't mean we should ignore what contemporary sources tell us.
According to CPTN IGLO English archers (and by extension any archers) should just leave their bow at home as it's a waste of time. Personally I'll believe that these guys knew a lot more about the medieval battlefield than we do and had a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn't.

huevans,
I would not want to stand amidst missiles raining down on me, its not only unpleasant, it can be deadly, no doubt about this, and all wounds will become quite painful after some moments, with the medical standards of the day even a flesh wound could create problems overtime.
not everyone did have full body protection.
At Hastings and even at Agincourt archery did provoke the oppenent to attack, this is already a tactical success.

Thats one side, the other question is if archery could stop a coordinated massed attack or even engage a fast moving opponent, I doubt this.
the weapon did have no stopping power at all and was highly inflexible.

Virtually no one was running that wild about the longbow, one must ask if even the English did.
The English kings were short on men at arms, so filling the ranks with longbowmen might have been a good idea.
The tactical concepts for their use at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt was obviously sound.
In all cases it was the French who were forced to attack under unpleasant circumstances.

I think the basic medieval idea behind missile weapons was to lure a defensive opponent out of his strong position into open terrain where they could be crushed by the men at arms on horseback.
I think the brilliant idea the English had was that a defender just needs a superior missile component to avoid this.
It would not have worked against the redcoats.
They would have brought up a battery and shot these huge blocks of archers to pieces.
alternatively they could have used their skirmishers.
I doubt if archers would have been able to stop a fast advance in line, preferable en echelon.

The only interesting scenario for me is a static firefight at say 200 yds distance.
Might have been like at Islwandlwana or Little big Horn perhaps, perhaps not.
the redcoats would have had a lot of tactical options, no need to chose the worst.
I canīt see any tactical options for longbow archery, it was a static business.

Agent Brown,
its the fanboys who claim that England was a medieval sparta in which every 6 year old was already trained to shoot the longbow, its them who claim that the longbow was a mass anhilator able to kill everything from elephants to french knights with precision at the farthest distance.

From this perspecive its only natural to ask why the war was lost.

On the other hand, if England was not a medieval Sparta and if the longbow perhaps was not the mystical superweapon, then the performance of the english army during the hundred years war indeed looks quite admirable.

Hi

Iglo, no one here is a "fanboy" and no one here has made the claims you dismiss.

And I have to tell you a simple fact, if your source defines modern bows as capapble, you have a problem. The ARROW has no idea what kind of bow loosed it.

It is too bad that you cannot see the difference of 80joules on a point versus 80 joules on a 9mm circle.

Yes, the brits lost the war, but they won the battles. History is repleat with examples of that happening. To leap in and demand this "proves" anything, is backwards.

A further disconnect is that you disparage the soft steel of the bodkin, but are sangquie with a 9mm in lead with a soft copper skin as a penetrator.

And finally, so many of us here have actually shot and penetrated, which puts your ideas into the dustbin.

R

IGLO, "No stopping power" is a meaningless phrase. Yet you have allowed that it takes "moments" before the effects of arrow wounds are realized. Earlier, I asked, "just how quickly did the battle end?" In other words, a few minutes of being wounded with one or more arrows would be sufficient to remove most wounded from the battle: while the sheer volume of arrows delivered makes significant casualties inevitable. If the time it takes to "bleed out" is several, or even many, minutes that is "stopping power" and good enough: it doesn't have to be instantaneous. And the original sources do not imply that arrow storms "stopped" fully armored attack formations in their tracks (they did do that to unarmored Scots schiltrons, however).

A "determined" assault is impossible to define from the wording in the original sources. The Gesta specifically mentions, in amazement, that the French behaved at Agincourt with an unprecedented "unmanl[iness]". Any "determined" assault will fail when blood loss and fatigue set in: e.g. Hattin, Nicopolis, Agincourt, all missile dominated battles.

If you take the modern experiences in the field, compare that with the sheer volume of arrows delivered, and arrive at a probability of wounds received, the picture is entirely different from your "…missile wounds are less painful than gunshot wounds and have unlike gun wounds no stopping effect whatssoever." You're evidently thinking of the movies, where each arrow shot man reels backward and falls dead. Nobody here, as far as I can tell, has been claiming that arrows have some kind of kinetic force to knock down the target: there is no "shock" value to an arrow, but as Rocky clearly explained (and you either missed or disbelieved it), arrows CUT into the target, they don't impart any crushing, kinetic or hydrostatic shock.

To claim that an arrow is less painful, still sticking into the body, than a bullet hole, is, imho, simply . Pumped on adrenalin, no wound will take immediate effect unless it physically disables the "machinery" of the body: short of direct and instantaneous destruction of the heart, spine or brain, only bloodloss will take the target down: I agree with you on this.

But to make a facile comparison of kinetic energies, when the two missiles operate on entirely different penetration principles, is blindly missing the facts of that comparison; and denying the empirical experiences of those of us who have shot the weapons into the "armor" and seen the results.

England had a population of around 4 million, Sparta about 140000 link- link

England didn't need to a medieval Sparta, but it did need a good selection system, which it developed. Our brain chemistry hasn't changed much in 5000 years- why do you assume that everyone was an idiot before 1600 (or 1789).

lutonjames said "Our brain chemistry hasn't changed much in 5000 years- why do you assume that everyone was an idiot before 1600 (or 1789)."

But surely they must have been, since they abandoned archery for utterly inferior gunpowder. Completely daft, i tell you!

If only Washington had heeded Ben Franklin's advice to issue longbows to the Continental Army, the Revolutionary War would have ended three years earlier, and much less loss of life.

"England had a population of around 4 million, Sparta about 140,000 link."

No, you copied the wrong text. ATHENS had the 140,000 population.

Lordloveadoug,
The statement about arrow wounds being less painful than gun wounds is not from me, its from those hunting people.
The shaft sticking out might impress our armchair imagination, on the field , just break it off and keep going.

I donīt know if you understand the different penetration principles in full.
The guys on hunting websites are quite explicite on this.
With the minimal KE there is no chance to create significant shock or trauma, they clearly state there is NO STOPPING POWER, the shooter can not count on this to bring game down.

The answer to this problem is the broadhead, which cuts.
The target is brought down by cutting arteries or veins, cutting through the lung or ideally straight into the heart.
With the exception of the heart shot the goal is blood loss, in case of a double lung shot the target will drown in its own blood, otherwise it is sheer blood loss alone which requires time.
In all cases chirurgical shot placement into a 10x10cm target zone at very close distance is needed, otherwise you have just a flesh wound which is not even very painful, at least not according to the hunting people.

all this might work on a good hunting day in a peaceful hunting enviroment, its not the way to stop a determined attacker or a charging horse.

It has nothing to do with armour penetration, armour penetration requires KE and the broadhead gets no bonuspoints, the cutting formula only works with soft materials, not wood or iron.

And a pointed tip gets no substantial bonuspoints either, what counts for penetration energy is the diamater of the whole projectile if you want to push it through.
As a penetrator the longbow missile is just a 9mm projectile with a superfluous wooden shaft and just 80 Joules of kinetic energy.

All happens on a very low energy level, the longbow is not powerful, it is a low energy weapon.

in comparision to this, the napoleonic musket is a high energy weapon with around 2400 joule KE.
stopping power with a 17mm lead ball is excellent, the musket ball is the most powerful and effective anti personal round in military history.

Even the accuracy issue should be seen in the proper perspective.
Ballistically the musket ball drops the height of a man at a distance of around 220m.
With the point blank adjusted at around 120m shooting up to 220m requires just pointing the weapon at the center of the man, thats simple.
The much slower longbow arrow drops already nearly 20m at 100 m distance, the beaten zone at this distance is just around 5m. I would say that aimed shooting with the long bow at that distance is already impossible, or at least much more uneffective than musketry.
What ruins musketry effectiveness naturally is volleys, but from a military standpoint it was a quite effective skirmisher weapon at up to 300m distance.

the musket as an effective military weapon is massively underrated, mostly because of the sick manner to shoot in close order formation, the longbow is massively overrated.