"HYW Crecy" Topic

From the wikipedia entry on the battle:

"Knights' armour had not yet evolved to the stage where longbows could not penetrate, and the knights' horses were barely protected at all. The storm of arrows killed or disabled the knights' mounts, and left the knights floundering about in the mud on foot beneath a withering fire."

how accurate can we take these statements to be?

It sounds about right, remember there was a heavy rainstorm just before the battle as well.

Sounds about right to me, too. Having done some penetration tests using my longbow (admittedly lower power (~40lb) than the medieval warbow) I was quite able to put an arrow through a reproduction (not brilliant quality) helmet at thirty yards. In a completely unscientific extrapolation, I'm quite happy to believe that a 100lb bow could put a heavy ash shaft through all but the most up-to-date plate armour at 50-100 yds half the time, with minor wounding/lucky shots possible up to 150 or 200 yds.

And the rain would have left the ploughed ground an absolute quagmire after a couple of hundred horses had charged over it.

I read the article and have a funny feeling that the author might have been confusing Crecy and Agincourt in places (although I could be wrong). I didn't realise that 'ploughed', 'waterlogged' ground was that much of an influence at Crecy, and the the writer seems to use 'cavalry' and 'infantry' interchangeably when referring to the French men-at-arms. No doubt a lot of French knights would have found themselves on foot during the battle, but there would be a world of difference between dismounting as a conscious tactical decision prior to combat, and falling from a dead or wounded horse; not sure if men-at-arms in that position would stay combat-worthy enough to really merit the term 'infantry'. The catastrophic failure of mounted men-at-arms at Crecy did contribute to the French policy of fighting dismounted in later battles (even when it wasn't such a good idea).
Like I said though, I could be wrong.

Cheers
Paul.

Oops – Paul's right – ploughed field was Agincourt, not Crecy.

According to Froissart, however, there was rain before the battle at Crecy (probably reducing the range of the crossbows by wetting the strings – longbow strings would have been removed during the rain to maintain their strength). This rain would have inevitably have led to mud slowing the advance. Quickly rechecking my Froissart, something I had missed before was the fact that the sun was in the eyes of the French. I wonder how much effect that had?

I believe the English dug holes in front of their line to trip the horses up? Not as good as the stakes used at Agincourt, but something to consider.

More to the point, the French arrived on the field piecemeal and each group charged as they arrived.

From a purely riding point of view I would prefer to face stakes than potholes. You can see the stakes but should your horse find an unseen pothole you are in deep trouble… especially if there's a load of other horses/riders all around you. Ouch!

Hi

During rain storms, one carries strings and spares under the hat.

And there have been other threads on this subject on TMP. I also shoot and did test 70# at range on targets. Hitting and hitting at a certain angle gets penetration, some will deflect, some will go through empty space and some will miss. But they put a lot of rounds on target.

Just like any fire fight in history, most miss.

Rocky

Rocky – your comments on deflections reminded me of something I have often pondered – how much danger would there have been from deflected arrows, especially to unarmoured/partially armoured horses? My understanding of shaped armour's success (and I've been shot at with blunts to test some of these theories, only by people I trust and only in my full plate and mail!) is that very little energy is absorbed by the armour, so I figure that the redirected arrows would be a significant threat, especially with such a volume of missiles.

What do you reckon?