"The Effective Archery Debate" Topic

Rocky
First off, thanks for the apology.
The reasons that Kriegspiel can come up with "realistic" results is because they had/have known capabilities and parameters to work with. All we have to go on is a vague historical battle played out on a muddy field in France.
Even if we knew every last detail of the battle, you would not, could not, replicate the outcome on the wargames table only the result. (There is no action replays in History,
Or wargames for that matter) There is just one teeny weenie other thing about Kriegspiel & today's governments battle Sims. They are about fighting future battles, not long gone ones.

You say on the Longbow
Another solution is to make it longer. "Longer" reduces the differences. HOWEVER, there is no free lunch. The larger the bow, the more energy is lost just moving it around.

I say
So how much extra weight do you think would have to be 'hauled' around?

You say
So, while some brits have dismissed the whole idea of "simulations", I think that falls into the catagory of an opinion based on unsupported assertians. That MOST wargame designs are fantasy doesn't imply or infer or prove that ALL design is a waste of time.

I say
I don't want to burst your bubble but, I am afraid that all wargaming IS fantasy. See it as an enjoyable pass-time but don't take it too seriously.

You say
The suggestion is that 200,000 arrows produced ca 5000 effective hits. That is why you do volleys. Similarly, even today, tens of thousands of rounds of 7.62 is are fired in combat for a few hits, yet no one suggests that wearing kevlar lets you stride forward and kill people with swords

I say
200,000 Arrows? 5000 hits? More assumptions, & who counted them…

You say
The 5000 at agincourt were the select 5000 out of a population of some 150,000 or so yeoman archers. In short, having studied the detail bow part, the bow was middling, the archers picked were select, but hardly supermen.

I say
Supermen they weren't. But they were born to the bow. A person who has a lifetime of training will always be someone special RE: professional Tennis, Golf, Footballers, etc. All are above and beyond the ordinary guy the 'English' bowman was also a professional and likewise above and beyond any Archer in Europe.

It is entirely possible that the visors and sides of the French helmets were penetrated by archery. Much of the armour at Agincourt was iron or low-carbon steel. Visors and helmet sides were abotu 1mm thick in this period. 1mm of iron armour is pentetrated by a bodkin style head striking with a force of 33-39 Joules if we assume that the side or visors is struck at an angle of 30 to 45 degrees. A 0 degree strike would penetrate at 27.5 Joules.
Test with a 80 pound bow showed that it generated a intial force of 83 Joules using a arrow with a bodkin head.

For low carbon steel the numbers would be 41J (0 degree), 50J (30 degree) and 58J (45 degree)

By comparison the men-at-arms wearing the new Milianese armour of medium carbon steel were much better protected. The numbers for such armour is 60J/73J/86J

Fully hardend medium carbon steel was not yet in existence but when it became available it pretty much made the man-at-arms arrow proof. Even a perfect 0 degree strike would only penetrate a 1mm plate if hiting with a force of 82J.

"Yes: Walsingham (Curry, page 52): "…sending the mounted men ahead who were to overwhelm our archers by the barded breasts of their horses…"

I was actually thinking of the reference in the Gesta, but fair enough.

"The Religieux (ibid, page 106): "…1,000 crack men at arms who had the best mounts…"; Chronique de Normandie (ibid, page 186): "…the French had appointed 300 horsemen in armor…" (redundant, "in armor", because horsemen are always armored, but the horses usually are not)"

Neither of these make specific reference to barded horses so have to be discounted.

"Much of the armour at Agincourt was iron or low-carbon steel."

I must apply the same logic to you as to Rocky et al. What evidence can you supply to support THAT statement?

"By comparison the men-at-arms wearing the new Milanese armour of medium carbon steel were much better protected."

Again, what evidence is there for the quality of Milanese armour?

Of course this is interesting in itself. If there is any truth in your view of the increasing effectiveness of armour through the period, then it makes sense that the power of the longbow might well have increased proportionately in a sort of medieval "arms race".

Mike:

Rocky:"You decided on 250yard effective, without any understanding of how bow/arrows work and penetration."

No, I took the figure from the studies of people far more skilled than I.

We did that, and added the confirmation: which makes us also more experienced than you (and more skilled if you haven't shot the weapons, or done Rocky's physics confirmations).

See above for why you cannot be certain as to how effective a longbow was.

Still better than a guess, or somebody else's guess.

You go with those who are "more skilled". But then you test your rules against history. Seems your rules work, so you guessed well and so did your sources.

But because we don't have enough artifactual weapons testing to be sure that way alone: the physics of bow and arrow come forward to establish a method of testing any bow of a given returned energy to any other bow of the same returned energy. That is why "Bow 3" can be a 50 lb composite recurve or a 70 lb longbow; why "Bow 2" can be a 70 lb shortbow or a 50 lb longbow; why "Bow 4" can be a 70 lb composite recurve or a 100 lb longbow: the physics confirmations, according to Rocky confirming Klopsteg, Nagler, et al., the published physics studies, has provided us with that method of testing bows and assigning them into the game's missile tables. Then the testing against historical battles has shown them to be correct assignments.

"So, essentially, you got it all backwards."

Nope, seems – from your own words – that I pretty much got the size of it.

So you guess, then take your rules to the table and play historical battles that work out: and you are somehow justified in saying that you're just a lucky guesser?

We went at it with testing and confirming or refuting claims we read about: then Rocky turned that into the math to assign the weapons a value in the game. And somehow, because we differ on the idea of how strong a warbow in England typically was, our rules can't be returning historical results? I don't get you. Still….

"The 5000 at agincourt were the select 5000 out of a population of some 150,000 or so yeoman archers."

This is another statement that does not appear to be based on fact. Do you understand how archers were recruited in the 15th century?

I called this an "archer pool" and you said that was inaccurate earlier. So I will clarify.

I understand the indentures method of raising contingents contracted for. But taking the best interested yeomen was certainly what happened. The captain puts out that he's taking 20 archers and 5 men at arms to France in the king's new army. He gets a mob of volunteers. Depending on how experienced and competent the captain is, he knows a great archer from a mediocre one, and he contracts with the best of those who "apply for the job." Hal V automatically gets the best of the lot, no worries. He just has to assure himself of good captains, which is a much easier job than reviewing 5,000 archers himself!

"But because we don't have enough artifactual weapons testing to be sure that way alone: the physics of bow and arrow come forward to establish a method of testing any bow of a given returned energy to any other bow of the same returned energy. … and assigning them into the game's missile tables."

I am not disputing the testing of bows that Rocky has carried out. What I am disputing is the extrapolation of such testing into "the game's missile tables". There are far too many variables to allow this process to be considered scientifically accurate. As i have said repeatedly before, but you still fail to recognise. You can test your replica bows till the cows come home, but I challenge you to produce a scientifically verifiable method to convert such test data into game missile tables.

"according to Rocky confirming Klopsteg, Nagler, et al., the published physics studies,"

I have already pointed that that Kooi took Klopsteg and Nagler's work and updated and refined it, but you have chosen to ignore this more up to date study.

"You go with those who are "more skilled". But then you test your rules against history. Seems your rules work, so you guessed well and so did your sources."

Yup, given the paucity of solid evidence, educated guesswork is the best that anybody, including you, can achieve.

"So you guess, then take your rules to the table and play historical battles that work out: and you are somehow justified in saying that you're just a lucky guesser?"

Yes, pretty much.

"We went at it with testing and confirming or refuting claims we read about: then Rocky turned that into the math to assign the weapons a value in the game. And somehow, because we differ on the idea of how strong a warbow in England typically was, our rules can't be returning historical results? I don't get you. Still…."

My personal view is that the 100lb+ bow was common in the mid to late 15th century. However, I cannot prove that and I have never stated it as a categoric fact. You on the other hand, insist on "proving" that this is impossible and that it must have been a 70lb bow. Sir, the burden of proof is with you and so far you have not produced evidence that satisfies the processes of historical analysis and scientific method. (Interesting. I notice that whenever I mention those terms you gloss over or ignore them).

"I understand the indentures method of raising contingents contracted for. But taking the best interested yeomen was certainly what happened."

Proof, sir, Proof! YET AGAIN, I have to ask you to support bald statements such as this with evidence

"The captain puts out that he's taking 20 archers and 5 men at arms to France in the king's new army. He gets a mob of volunteers."

Would he? I can't imagine the rigours of campaigning would be attractive to the average feudal tenant. Risk your neck for the chance of plunder or stay at home with a guaranteed job and accommodation? Why do you think that bastard feudalism became the norm? Simply because it was easier to pay professionals to do the job that others didn't want to do.

"Depending on how experienced and competent the captain is, he knows a great archer from a mediocre one, and he contracts with the best of those who "apply for the job.""

So the captain holds an archery contest to pick the best men? Show me one contemporary source that illustrates this recruiting method and I might believe you.

dibble 24 Jul 2008 3:13 p.m. PST
Rocky
First off, thanks for the apology.
The reasons that Kriegspiel can come up with "realistic" results is because they had/have known capabilities and parameters to work with. All we have to go on is a vague historical battle played out on a muddy field in France.
Even if we knew every last detail of the battle, you would not, could not, replicate the outcome on the wargames table only the result. (There is no action replays in History,
Or wargames for that matter) There is just one teeny weenie other thing about Kriegspiel & today's governments battle Sims. They are about fighting future battles, not long gone ones.

(Rocky won't be back till tomorrow at the earliest: please permit me to weigh in:)

You offered a conundrum in the same sentence: what is the difference between "outcome" and "result"? Please explain that one.

The model for predicting future battles is founded on accurately simulating known battles, i.e. testing with history. If your rules do that, then if those rules are not a recipe only for Agincourt, but instead are a universal gaming system for all periods, you just might have a "Kriegspiel" there.

I say
So how much extra weight do you think would have to be 'hauled' around?

Are you really requesting a nuts and bolts explanation that you will understand? Or are you closer to Moi, a mathmatical bimbo on a good day?

In purely comparative terms: if a selfbow (shortbow) is 4' long at 70 lbs of draw weight, a properly constructed longbow (selfbow) at 6' and 70 lbs draw weight will shoot better than the shorter weapon (resulting in the difference between our "Bow 2" and "Bow 3"). And somewhere up there in this thread, Rocky did provide some rough numbers on HOW MUCH better. Suffice to say, that the thicker and longer the bow, the greater its draw weight and the less the returned energy for the increased mass. There is an optimal point beyond which single-piece-of-wood technology cannot reach. Composite bows have much better returned energy: Rocky just said "30%" higher at a given draw weight (assuming variations like bow materials and craftsmanship quality).

I don't want to burst your bubble but, I am afraid that all wargaming IS fantasy. See it as an enjoyable pass-time but don't take it too seriously.

And you just denied that "Kriegspiel" works, when you also said it does work? Wargaming in a Govt-supplied environment is somehow possessed of the proper "JuJu" to make their games simulations work? But ours, which does simulate historical battles, is just fantasy? We don't take it too seriously: but we take our fun seriously.

200,000 Arrows? 5000 hits? More assumptions, & who counted them…

Ballpark numbers. Number of archers; known rate of volley and individual fire; somewhere between 125K and 200K rounds, or more. Known effectiveness versus steel sheet of various thicknesses, inside pointblank range; number of seconds it could take a compressed body of men to close the distance to melee; known percentage of armor plate areas either unprotected or thinnly protected (i.e. more vulnerable); and the final result is conservatively 3,000 effective hits. Rocky knows it is more like 5,000: but 3,000 will take out 38% to 60% of that 5,000 to 8,000 strong French first "battle." Morale check time, and seriously reduced combat effectiveness. (Then comes the melee….)

All are above and beyond the ordinary guy the 'English' bowman was also a professional and likewise above and beyond any Archer in Europe.

Can you prove that? Benevento, 1266: opening phase was roughly the same number of Muslim archers (reputedly very good archers with very good weapons, btw "Bow 3" in our game) versus crossbowmen; standup fight, shooting as fast and furious as possible: crossbows lost badly. The French longbowmen were inferior in numbers not quality. Same for the Scots: at Verneuil the archery was give and take: there just were not as many Scots archers as English, especially of the better skilled sort. The genius of the English system of national archery was the production of many thousands of bowmen where everyone else had hundreds. But quality of archery was not limited to England's yeomen.

Mike,
The data is taken from the works of Prof. Alan Williams who is the foremost expert as far as the metallurgy of medieval armour is concerned. Hist most important work is "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" (Published by Brill in 2003)
Williams have not only tested historical armor ino rder to determine what it was made of and how the metal had been treated, he alos carried out extensive test on the level of protection armour offered and how the level of protection varied depending on the material used.

Improved steel armour slowly entered mass production in the early 15th century and would have been comparatively rare in 1415.

Mike:

Of course this is interesting in itself. If there is any truth in your view of the increasing effectiveness of armour through the period, then it makes sense that the power of the longbow might well have increased proportionately in a sort of medieval "arms race".

Uhuh; because armor is getting stronger, we will increase the dietary daily allowance for our peasants and voila! stronger archers to keep up with the better steel. Mike, the yeoman was an lifetime archer from the getgo. He didn't suddenly, or even slowly become stronger to meet better metalurgy.

You question everything as if it is suspect: go study. Daniel's numbers are exactly in line with what I think I know; including the armor development statements.

Daniel: thanks for distilling more comprehensive impact angle numbers and Joules from Williams' book. I only have access to a digital copy of his chart, and it only gives 30 degrees as the representative impact angle: which is of course entirely not applicable inside 100 yards, not to mention inside 50 yards. It is nice to see quoted numbers of such low Joules ratings, for penetration, at virtually "zero" degrees impact, into the kind of armor that was typical at Agincourt. These stats back up everything Rocky and I have been talking about this time, and before.

Mike:

I am not disputing the testing of bows that Rocky has carried out. What I am disputing is the extrapolation of such testing into "the game's missile tables". There are far too many variables to allow this process to be considered scientifically accurate.

Apparently not so. The physics formulas work for testing, mathematically, bows of the same design/construction, when the weight of the missile remains constant and a bow of a given draw weight HAS been physically tested: you can take a 50 lb longbow shooting a 3 oz missile, and reduce the effects into physics terms: then not possessing any other longbow, you can determine what the energy returned for weaker and stronger draw weights is. Sounds nifty, doesn't it.

As i have said repeatedly before, but you still fail to recognise. You can test your replica bows till the cows come home, but I challenge you to produce a scientifically verifiable method to convert such test data into game missile tables.

I don't know if Rocky can give you any joy. That is precisely what he claims to have done: and he challenged himself with this well over 30 years ago.

I have already pointed that that Kooi took Klopsteg and Nagler's work and updated and refined it, but you have chosen to ignore this more up to date study.

So you've verified that "Koolio" has shown the earlier study to be mistaken? "Refined" and "updated" could simply mean that he verified and proved and expanded on the earlier work.

This should interest Rocky directly, since this is his kind of provence.

Yup, given the paucity of solid evidence, educated guesswork is the best that anybody, including you, can achieve.

I find your lack of faith, disturbing….

My personal view is that the 100lb+ bow was common in the mid to late 15th century. However, I cannot prove that and I have never stated it as a categoric fact. You on the other hand, insist on "proving" that this is impossible and that it must have been a 70lb bow. Sir, the burden of proof is with you and so far you have not produced evidence that satisfies the processes of historical analysis and scientific method. (Interesting. I notice that whenever I mention those terms you gloss over or ignore them).

(I do not)

So our claim to have replicated Agincourt with historical results is nothing scientific, I agree: but it IS "calibration." So-called. It shows something about Rocky's math: and there's plenty of scientific slaim stuff involved in that.

I don't know if he can or will bother to replicate that stuff for any interested (skeptical, enquiring) seeker of knowledge.

"The captain puts out that he's taking 20 archers and 5 men at arms to France in the king's new army. He gets a mob of volunteers."

Would he? I can't imagine the rigours of campaigning would be attractive to the average feudal tenant.

"Feudal tenant?" There were precious few of that class by the HYW! Yeomen were free farmers, not feudal serfs, for the most part. And the average yeoman would enjoy the chance to get rich in one campaign. You make it sound like the captains had to go and more or less coerce guys into signing up. That's not the impression I get from the original sources, talking about the "national" pride in trouncing the French. Besides, why would the middling archers want to sign on in greater proportion to the cream of the crop? A village champion shooter is going to stay home and take the heat while his lesser companion at the butts goes off to the wars?

So the captain holds an archery contest to pick the best men? Show me one contemporary source that illustrates this recruiting method and I might believe you.

Who said archery contest besides you? But in fact archery contests were continuous affairs all over England, and the archers who did well became known, even like popular sportmens names today.

Captains are by definition experienced veterans: and in the case of a leader being a tyro nobleman, he has his veteran second in command who has the reputation to attract good men. The captains know the common vets too, from previous experience: the vets know the best village lads to refresh the ranks and recommend them. I am surprised that you doubt recruiting methods have ever changed. Can you show a contemporary source which indicates that the indenture companies were put together by non veterans of the HYW? There was this momentum going, you see: from the Scottish wars straight to the continent, to the WofR's: one continuous 100+ years of experienced warriors.

Doug
Ok so I should have put battle instead of outcome. I still stand by that argument.

You say
Are you really requesting a nuts and bolts explanation that you will understand? Or are you closer to Moi, a mathmatical bimbo on a good day?

I say (Please no name calling)
An extra 2 feet of wood would not burden a medieval labourer that much…
A US soldier carries a M16 Rifle that weighs 8, lb. A UK soldier carries a SA80 that weighs 11, lb. If a US soldier had to carry a weapon that weighs an extra 3, lb. would the GI suddenly be unable to fight a war?

You say
And you just denied that "Kriegspiel" works, when you also said it does work? Wargaming in a Govt-supplied environment is somehow possessed of the proper "JuJu" to make their games simulations work? But ours, which does simulate historical battles, is just fantasy? We don't take it too seriously: but we take our fun seriously.

I say (read it again)
I have not said at any time that wargames work. All that any of the tabletop, classroom, computer Sims can do (even military exercises) is give a PROBABLE result and when it comes to military exercises, it is all about efficiency in battle & testing different scenarios and technologies. A wargame proves nothing

You say
Can you prove that? Benevento, 1266: opening phase was roughly the same number of Muslim archers (reputedly very good archers with very good weapons, btw "Bow 3" in our game) versus crossbowmen; standup fight, shooting as fast and furious as possible: crossbows lost badly. The French longbowmen were inferior in numbers not quality. Same for the Scots: at Verneuil the archery was give and take: there just were not as many Scots archers as English, especially of the better skilled sort. The genius of the English system of national archery was the production of many thousands of bowmen where everyone else had hundreds. But quality of archery was not limited to England's yeomen.

I say
(Can you prove that?) That's rich coming from you, I have History to back me up, you have what ifs, math'S', calculations on assumed models, & dice.
As you know full well I mean as a whole, the 'English' were the first nation in Europe when it came to military archery.
When it comes to the examples, I say you are (1) pitting crossbows against archery (very dodgy) (2) 71 years before the HYW. 149 Years before the debated battle.
As for the French & Scottish archers, quantity and quality is what you need. Not a nation where a GOOD military archer is as rare as rocking horse .
And I will repeat: the 200,000 arrows, 5,000 hits thing is supposition.
All that Agincourt can teach a modern leader of men is that organisation, discipline, morale, leadership and quality is essential in battle.
As for the argument as a whole, all we are doing is playing statement tennis.

I take my figure painting serious, and enjoy the battles,

Doug,
Perfect 0 degree strikes would be rare on the battlefield. The 30 and 45 degreee impacts are intended to simulate the effects of diffrent armour shapes. The 30 degree stirke woudl by typical of many strikes on a globose breast plate or against arm/leg harness. 45 degrees represent the more extreme shapes.

Also keep in mind that the numbers I quoted are the raw numbers for the plates. They do not take into account the effecs of the layered protection worn in this period. For example the padding worn under the armour would add 50J worth of protection vs arrows. (Although IMO the padding tested was probably thicker than that used on the arms. I'd estimate that 20-35J would be more typical of the padding used on teh arms but more testing is needed on the subject to be certain.)

Mail would provide additonal defence in some areas and so on.

"Apparently not so. The physics formulas work for testing, mathematically, bows of the same design/construction … you can determine what the energy returned for weaker and stronger draw weights is. Sounds nifty, doesn't it."

As usual, you miss the point. I am not disputing your attempts to replicate the striking power of a bow of a given design. What I AM disputing is the "leap of faith" between the test data and a SET OF WARGAME RULES. That's is where all the unknowns come into play.

"I find your lack of faith, disturbing…"

Historical analysis is not about faith. Historical analysis is about taking the available evidence, weighing it up and then drawing conclusions based on that evidence. However, it is very difficult (almost impossible ) to prove anything in history. Yes, when it comes right down to it all historical analysis is educated guesswork. But then I don't need to tell you all that since you are a self proclaimed expert on the subject.

"So our claim to have replicated Agincourt with historical results is nothing scientific, I agree: but it IS "calibration.""

Agreed, it is calibration. But you cannot then use the results to prove history, as in "our game proves they used 70lb bows".

""Feudal tenant?" There were precious few of that class by the HYW! Yeomen were free farmers, not feudal serfs, for the most part."

Generalisation to make a point.

"Yeomen were free farmers, … And the average yeoman would enjoy the chance to get rich in one campaign."

Yes they were free farmers, so why would they want to get rich on campaign?

"You make it sound like the captains had to go and more or less coerce guys into signing up."

You make it sound like there were 150,000 yeoman archers dossing around the pubs of England just waiting for some captain to come along and say "Hey, lads who wants to go fighting in France?". Let's apply historical analysis again. In the Napoleonic period, the army and the navy had to resort to taking the dregs of society to fill the ranks. Indeed the army had a hard job recruiting because the navy were allowed to use the press. Most people do not want to fight. If this was true then, then why should it be any different 400 years before?

Also, if there were that many yeoman archers spoiling for a fight, why did Henry V only take 5,000? Did he say "No, we'll only take 5,000 archers, we want to give the French a sporting chance of beating us" !!! Not only that, but any surplus left behind, and thus deprived of the chance to get rich quick would not exactly be enamoured of the authorities and would be far more likely to cause trouble while the army was in France.

"Uhuh; because armor is getting stronger, we will increase the dietary daily allowance for our peasants and voila! stronger archers to keep up with the better steel."

Make your mind up. Just now you you said they weren't peasants but yeoman farmers. Besides it is not only diet that affects an archer's strength.

"Mike, the yeoman was an lifetime archer from the getgo. He didn't suddenly, or even slowly become stronger to meet better metalurgy."

Yes, he was indeed a lifetime archer, trained from an early age to the bow. I thought you said you knew about archery? If you do then you will know that a youngster will start with a light weight bow and gradually over a period of time as he trains move up to the heavier draw weights. My son was an archer and I saw this happen with him.

Of course, if they didn't slowly become stronger then since the only actual bows we have are 100lb+, it therefore follows that this heavy bow must have been in use throughout the period.

I was actually trying to accommodate your views about the 70lb bows at Agincourt by suggesting that average draw weights might have increased over time to counter the increased effectiveness of armour, but you even shoot that argument down in flames!

Henry was limited by he ability to pay the men. Comapre to the armies of the WOTR which were larger than those used in France. Henry took along alot more than 5000 archers. The surving records show an army of least 11248 fighting men, 2266 men-at-arms and 8982 archers. If one uses the higher Cheshire numbers and adds in the retinues mentioned by earlier researcher but whose indentures have been lost later Henry may well have fielded over 12000 fighting men at the start of the campaign.

"Henry was limited by his ability to pay the men."

Seeing as the army was financed by taxes, if he wanted a larger army then all he had to do was raise more taxes.

"Compare to the armies of the WOTR which were larger than those used in France."
"Henry may well have fielded over 12000 fighting men at the start of the campaign."

Most armies of the WOTR were around that figure sometimes much less.

"Henry took along a lot more than 5000 archers"

I know that. The discussion was specifically about archers.

Hi

Mike, the essense of your argument is that you don't know, therefore it cannot be known.

Yup, don't know the bow was specifcally 70#, but as an archer and with the testing, 75 is the plausable number. You indicate you haven't read the histories asserting that Henry took a select 5000(or the attendant points that the pay was so much better than normal life, that troops being mustered out sought work elsewhere as archers rather than go home). I say 70-75 for the simple reason that resupply would be simplifed if they only needed one arrow spine. Illiterate population getting resupplied out of wagons and you have zero evidence of something like color coding.

My assumptions are better than your guesses.

If I am wrong, I am not wrong by 50% or 30% or…well you pick the number on how these variables you don't understand affect how much I might be off in my graphing. The essense is that research, testing and building will give me a better number than "that looks about right".

Dib. As a non-archer you misunderstood the bow mass part. I am not suggesting that a 100#bow weighs so much more than a 70 to make it uncarriable. What I am trying to explain is that the bow doesn't have a choice. It is a spring storing energy. That energy in release FIRST moves the bow, which uses the string to tranfer energy to the arrow. The thicker the bow, the heavyier the bow, the more energy is used to MOVE THE BOW. Thus with any design, the effieciency of the energy return goes down. If you have ever made your own ammo, you know that just doubling the charge doesn't result in doubling the muzzle velocity.

Mike, something else you might have missed in your reading was that Henry was not an absolute ruler, or even as powerful as we think of "kings". In fact, he could not just raise taxes or summon service. Part of the issue was that this revanche in France was establishing his ownership of france which was not in the interest of the English Nobles to help Henry keep his lands. The nobles he could call on were the ones that were obligated to him personally. And just buying troops ignores the whole problem of muster, transportation and PAY. The longbow were paid professionals. We know the pay rate, it was a lot better than being a yeoman farmer. Without unlimited funds, he selected the best. Arguing that the traditional number of ca 5000-6000 was really 12k is a recent one and, getting into comparing sources, not very convincing. But it doesn't affect the concept that there were an estimated 120k to 150k yeoman archers in england, and Henry took a small percentage. A select.

In other "longbowman as superman" discussions, the armor boys usually point out that Agincourt had to be a myth or some sort of freek event because in the Roses, the slaughter of men in armor didn't happen. And thus, as you wern't part of that earlier discussion, you missed the point. We have discriptions. if you pull up the maps and place people, and then look at how close they were when they engaged, you have the obvious that the archers were less effective (and arguably against more poorly armored troops) than in the HYW. To me, this doesn't prove that the longbow was a failure that "got lucky" in france, but the simple point that the guys in France were "select" and in the "Roses" you had the ordinary longbow, the more typical longbow.

A lot of the problem seems to me to be a lack of range in interests. In Europe, most of europe didn't extensively use missile….except in the south. When the French go on Crusade, they suffer greatly from arab and turk missile, and their initial response was simple, they hired italian bow and crossbow mercs. In the sunny south, the byzantines, and their ex-provinces in sunny Italy and greece never stopped having serious bow and crossbow.

Back to the point about the english superman. The concept of yeoman archers killing nobles was unique to the british versus French and germans, but not unique in Europe or the rest of the world. When the Hundred years War had a period of Peace, and Hawkwood took his longbow to Italy to be a Condotta, he was not the only missile on the field.

So, focused on HYW is fine, but being more interested in the wars in italy, I had to KNOW a little more.

A final point about sims. The Dupuys started doing battle analysis in 44 where they looked at previous actions and came up with vaiables that, they suggested, would predict future conflicts and produce a tool to correctly decide what sort of assets could be applied to upcoming fights. The criticism for them was the same one you make aove about "we don't know, battle is chaos". Yet, over the last 60 odd years, the group has been very successful in doing exactly what you state is impossible. Using mike's argument about "top men/experts", I go with the dupuy approach as being valid.

Notice how the guy who started the thread asked why longbow were so hopeless. I respond with, "they are very good and this is what I think was going on". And the response was from one side "you think they are supermen" and from the other side "they were useless how can you say otherwise", and now a third school "You are an idiot, nothing is knowable, throw a 6 kill a frenchman".

Rocky

"Yup, don't know the bow was specifcally 70#, but as an archer and with the testing, 75 is the plausable number."

Plausible possibly, but no more plausible than anything else. I repeat (again and again), you have not demonstrated how you get from test data from replica weapons to wargame effectiveness tables. Without that vital link, your plausible view is no more than a guess.

"You indicate you haven't read the histories asserting that Henry took a select 5000"

Of course I have read several histories that assert that Henry took 5,000 archers on the Agincourt campaign. The pay of an archer was 6d a day.

You and Doug have asserted that the 100lb+ bows were used by only the "top 10%" of archers. If by your reckoning there were 150,000 eligible bowmen, then also by your own reckoning, Henry's 5,000 amounts to the best 3.3% so on that basis ALL of them should have been the elite archers who could pull the heavy bow!!

"you have zero evidence of something like color coding."

Who said anything about colour coding?

"The Dupuys started doing battle analysis in 44 "

Yes, and as you say have achieved good results but they have vastly more data to analyse than a historian trying to understand battles 500 years ago.

"throw a 6 kill a frenchman"

As I have said before, simple rules often generate historical results just as effectively as vastly more complicated ones. Just look at the development of WRG rules over the years. They went from middling complicated (1st, 2nd ed) to complex (6th ed) to very simple (DBA) and (not surpisingly) the simple rules give just as historical results as the complex ones, sometimes more so.

Then again, look at the two up and coming rules sets for ancient and medieval – Field of Glory and Impetus. Both are rapidly increasing in popularity. Are they accurate? Surely if they weren't then (a) the playtesters did a bad job and (b) people wouldn't play them. These and many other sets of rules currently available all generate believable historical results, without the benefit of your expert knowledge of bows, archery and physics. I wonder why?

As an aside you may recall the debate when FoG was released about the short bow range? It was 250m.

As I have said before, UK wargames designers gave up on the "complex simulation" bottom up design years ago, when it was realised that simpler rules can generate historical results just as effectively – and are usually more fun to play as well! (Please note that I am NOT a fan of DBA for the HYW and the WOTR in this context – that is why I wrote my own rules for the period.)

You (repeatedly) claim that your rules are the best thing since sliced bread because they are considerably more accurate than others for the period. How come they are not the most popular rules on the market? Indeed I had never heard of them till I came on TMP.

Daniel S 25 Jul 2008 1:07 a.m. PST
Doug,
Perfect 0 degree strikes would be rare on the battlefield. The 30 and 45 degreee impacts are intended to simulate the effects of diffrent armour shapes. The 30 degree stirke woudl by typical of many strikes on a globose breast plate or against arm/leg harness. 45 degrees represent the more extreme shapes.

Also keep in mind that the numbers I quoted are the raw numbers for the plates. They do not take into account the effecs of the layered protection worn in this period. For example the padding worn under the armour would add 50J worth of protection vs arrows. (Although IMO the padding tested was probably thicker than that used on the arms. I'd estimate that 20-35J would be more typical of the padding used on teh arms but more testing is needed on the subject to be certain.)

Mail would provide additonal defence in some areas and so on.

Spot-on. Obviously, though, an arrow dropping for a default impact angle of 30 to 45 degrees is almost always going to have an impact angle: whereas an arrow coming directly on at a perpendicular target (a standing man), is going to have a considerably increased chance of striking a lot more like "0" degrees impact angle. Then you add in the deliberate aiming of front rank marksmen further increasing the likelihood of an impact in a vulnerable spot.

You (repeatedly) claim that your rules are the best thing since sliced bread because they are considerably more accurate than others for the period. How come they are not the most popular rules on the market? Indeed I had never heard of them till I came on TMP.

Quite frankly, both of us suck at marketing: it isn't part of the FUN.

And our rules are not complex or slow to play. The complexity went into the values, not the way the mechanics operate. The entire game is playable virtually from that single-sided sheet that I linked to way back there….

Of course, if they didn't slowly become stronger then since the only actual bows we have are 100lb+, it therefore follows that this heavy bow must have been in use throughout the period.

I was actually trying to accommodate your views about the 70lb bows at Agincourt by suggesting that average draw weights might have increased over time to counter the increased effectiveness of armour, but you even shoot that argument down in flames.

I don't see draw weight increasing at any time, because human flesh has its trainable limits, and those are reached in the first generation of lifetime archers: it's why I resort to other examples of archer "nations", why they don't use extremely stiff average bows either. So no 100 lb "average" shooters.

Which segues to:

You and Doug have asserted that the 100lb+ bows were used by only the "top 10%" of archers. If by your reckoning there were 150,000 eligible bowmen, then also by your own reckoning, Henry's 5,000 amounts to the best 3.3% so on that basis ALL of them should have been the elite archers who could pull the heavy bow!!

That's why the HYW army list allows up to 20% "Bow 4" (the 100 lb group): double the national 10% over all (according to that apocryphal Ascham quote). Henry V could have recruited the best of the best, but not enough of them would have showed up from ALL OVER ENGLAND to allow 100% of Henry's army to be Bow 4's!

"150,000" archers is just a rhetorical device anyway. In a nation of at least 3 million people, with the laws demanding archery practice from the largest segment of the adult male population, the total number of yeomen archers would have been a lot closer to half a million at least.

"Henry V could have recruited the best of the best, but not enough of them would have showed up from ALL OVER ENGLAND to allow 100% of Henry's army to be Bow 4's!"

Why not? After all this is the basis of your position throughout this conversation, yet now you undermine your own argument.

""150,000" archers is just a rhetorical device anyway. … the total number of yeomen archers would have been a lot closer to half a million at least."

Hmm ~1/6 of the total population? Anyway, if the figure is higher it means my point is even stronger. The 5,000 who went to Agincourt – by your own argument – must have been "the best of the best" (why take anyone else? You yourself said the captains would know who the best archers were) so they ALL must have been the elite archers who could pull 100lbs+

Hi,

I'm afraid I'm going to be off line for the next few days. I'll see what's going on here when I get back.

Best wishes to everyone on this thread.

"Henry V could have recruited the best of the best, but not enough of them would have showed up from ALL OVER ENGLAND to allow 100% of Henry's army to be Bow 4's!"

Why not? After all this is the basis of your position throughout this conversation, yet now you undermine your own argument.

For the very reasons you object to "selective service": where's the evidence that Hal sent out through his kingdom and took all the very best archers into his personal service? It didn't work like that. The "probable" method of recruitment was as I referred to above: Hal had known-captains that his immediate military commanders got in touch with sometime in 1414: those captains knew veteran archers and men at arms. The retinues and companies of former campaigns would not all be available, so new recruits were needed. The word went out and yeomen responded. "Probably", as is normal in any military situation, the majority of volunteers were more like mercenary (that is, professional) grade: but also, for many personal reasons, the lesser sort of archer would show up. Out of this "probable" pool of would-be recruits, the very best would be taken. Given the very large number of archers in England, almost any response would provide more than enough archers for the 1415 army (which, at 15K tops, was small enough): so it is "probable" that there were enough of the cream of the crop to completely fill the ranks (and taking into account the need to simplify arrow manufacture and resupply by all using the same weight bow), all the lesser archers would be left home.

Now, it is conjecture only, that Hal would have even had a "crack" corps of the strongest archers pulling 100 lbs: quite possibly he would have only concerned himself with a standard warbow, downrating archers who could have pulled much stronger, and catering only to uniformity. (And I know that Rocky doesn't play HYW English with any "Bow 4". I, otoh, like as much whallop as I can get, and routinely field the maximum allowed 1/5th "Bow 4". The difference in attitude, here, is that Rocky -- also routinely -- rolls better dice than I do, and I feel I need all the help killing French men at arms that I can get!)

(…You yourself said the captains would know who the best archers were) so they ALL must have been the elite archers who could pull 100lbs+

Except we are back to our problem with "Bow 4" slaying the French too quickly, i.e. an unhistorical outcome.

Either that, or we are in trouble with Rocky's claim that typically archers pulled 70 to 75 lbs, not 100+ lbs.

But if you're right, and Hal could select enough "Brewster Beefcakes" to make up an army, then Rocky's, "I don't have a problem if the 100 lb longbows then were no better than 70 lb longbows crafted today", would work (and the army lists would have to be revised to disallow any "Bow 4" at all; which would only make me unhappy, again because of my mediocre dice history).

Btw, my memory of the Ascham quote about, "one in ten pull the stronger bow", could be in contextual error: he could have been making comparison to archers in his (Hal VIII's) day with the halcyon days of the HYW: it could go roughly like this: "whereas in former days our yeomen could all pull very powerful bows, nowadays no more than one in ten archers can do so." His book, Toxophilus, was written to encourage the degenerating young men around him to take up archery as part of a well balanced life and tonic against sloth and indolence: so I would not be surprised to rediscover the quote about "one in ten" applies directly to a criticism of his own day compared with an earlier and better time, when the yeomen class were much stronger over all.

You may recall that earlier I did allude to the likelihood that archery in Hal VIII's time had degenerated since the 15th century and before. My own experience, annecdotal at best, has been that archers pull much less than 100 lbs; which I have held up as evidence in support of the "one in ten" limitation of 100+ lbs among the archer population. But, as you have raised the point above, with sufficient knowledge and time, it could have been possible (from such a large national body of yeomen) for Hal V to come up with 5K to 8K longbowmen all pulling 100 lbs. If so, then the probable deduction would be that the mass produced 100 lb longbows were no more efficient than well made 70 lb longbows today. It is a certain fact, that playing Agincourt with our rules requires most or all "Bow 3" for it to work historically: ergo, Bow 3 (assuming this line of reasoning) would be the 100 lb "warbow": Bow 2 would be 70 lbs; and there would not be any Bow 4 at all for the purposes of inclusion in armies (any such individual archers would downrate to the standard "warbow").

Hi

Mike, you are makeing errors in assumption about my points. I am clearly boring you with the bow construction and physics parts which you don't understand.

I don't assert 70 is normal, but extra. World wide, overwhelimgly bows are for small game hunting and are more 30#. Big game bows are commonly 50. 70 is upper end. 100 uncommon and larger is for showing off.

This is independant of the design of the bow.

Various bow construction types produces different ranges of energy returned to the bow. The more the draw weight, the more the internal losses, the lower the efficiency. From an efficiency standpoint, the boyer of the english longbow used great technique to overcome the limits of the tech.

The problem is this, as draw weight goes up, the arrow shaft design changes. Any arrow cannot be used with reasonable accuracy from any bow. Thus, the problem mentioned above, if there are a range of longbows at agincourt, there needed to be a method to get arrow resupply to the right bow. I was being sarcasting with "color coding". OR, all the bows were similar enough to use the same arrow.

Now, the battle, lay out the troops, do a time motion study(I know modern Dupuy tools). The story is that they deployed out of range. Above, we have you accepting the assertigan that we deal with a 30degree impact. Maximum rane in your previous tables are for 56%.

The story is that the longbow walked beyond the stakes to shoot flight arrows at maximum range to harass and spur an attack. The problem is that the field isn't big enough for the intitial engagment range for that flight shot if everyone is volleying with 100# bows.

That the effectiveness is lessend in the War of the Roses and engagement ranges are closer (see previous threads on the anti-long bow bits) for the simple reason that wider participation involved the ordinary 50# bow armed yeoman.

That is my thinking based on the research and testing.

How I got from this to bow tables is another discussion involving statistics and probabilities and analogies with artillery and a lot of other factors.

As for why our rules aren't popular or famous to you is another discussion. And there is the question of "does popularity mean quality", say, is Brittany Spears the woman you want to grow old with?

R

Or to put it simply, deriving missle rules after testing researching, understanding the physics, testing the theory of that physics, doing the math and coming to a conclusion is a waste of time.

Just read a few sources and guess!

Rocky

Hi

Someone reminded me of another story about this. Unlike the implication above, WRG-4-7. Not rules I would consider a sim, nor have I seen anything like historical results. Phil explained this to me as the idea was a set of tournament rules for the british big events.

We met in San Antonio in '81 and had a nice time together. I had approached him during a tourny with questions. These were not questions about some killer intrepretation giving my special army a special win, but actual curiosity. Phil was an an amatuer archeologist and had found the first remains of a Martiobarbuli in england. He had published a bit on the subject.

My question was simple. I could derive ranges from old sources for some weapons either mentioned (a fair bowshot being xxx) or engagement ranges, but the martiobarbuli was a mystery. I had no source that said, as with a pila, 30 paces, then 20, or whatever. As Phil had found one, I hoped he knew of a source.

He did not. then asked if I had tried to solve the problem.

I said "so I built several and threw them". He got all excited and said "how very american, in england, I am afraid, we tend to just think about these things instead of getting our hands dirty". We corresponded for some time on these subjects after he went back to england.

We might just be dealing with a cultural difference here.

R

Good lord, even when I lay it out for you you manage to get it wrong.

"But once, however, the king thought that almost all this baggage had reached his rear, [praises to Jesus, Mary etc.], he advanced towards the enemy and the enemy, too, advanced towards him."

The bulk of the baggage was not on the move. It had already reached his rear: "ALMOST ALL THIS BAGGAGE HAD REACHED HIS REAR." Only a small portion of the baggage was still moving. After the bulk of the baggage had reached his rear, he moves out. Not he and his baggage move out. And his cleric was back with the baggage praying. Ye gads, you seem to have no concept of what it took to place the baggage in a defensive position to ward of attackers. You think it was strung out in a line following Henry through the battlefield. You are probably a great archers but you obviously cannot interpret historical sources and understand late medieval tactics; especially since you think the baggage was strung out for 600-700 yards through the battlefield.

Doug: "Empirical experience is hardly circular anything!"

This is what I mean. You didn't even grasp what I was saying. In order to show your empirical experience has value you have to show that the archers fired point-blank. The only "evidence" you have is the cleric's statement. But the only "proof" that the cleric's statement is correct is your point-blank fire. That's circular. It has nothing to do with your "empirical experience" but rather you form of argument: it's circular.

Doug: "You have revealed the weakness of your semantics argument: "could pierce", and "pierced". The Gesta writer says the fear was the piercing ("which by their very force pierced…"), not that they feared helmets could be pierced."

So the fear was the piercing? In other words, the French feared the power of the missiles which pierced helmets and visors. This doesn't change the fact that this was an opinion of our cleric. He was 700 yards to the rear praying. Since we have no corroboration that helmets were pierced, we can take that opinion with a grain of salt. He wasn't there to see this happening. And, the people who were there, Waurin and LeFevre, don't mention any such fantastic feats.

Doug: "At such an immediately close range as this provided the archers, each round of arrows into the French during this brief phase would have been very injurious or lethal."

They would have been lethal had they fired the way you say and not the way the sources said. You really don't understand why the archers would fire arching and plunging fire rather than point-blank. And since you can't grasp what they are attempting to do you ignore it and continue to pretend they all fired direct fire because that's the way you fire.

Dough: "Except that other sources don't allow the heralds any better position to see what was going on: they were evidently grouped together (Vita Henrici Quinti, Curry, page 61): "The priests and chaplains of the king were ordered to remain in divine prayers and supplications, and with the heralds in their tabards took up their offices." So have it your way: the heralds had an equally sucky "view" of the battle."

Oh please, don't tell me you think that that passage says the priests and heralds were grouped together. You can't possibly be trying to say that. Look at the grammatical structure of that sentence. Do you see that comma? It sets off two different thoughts: It talks about the positions of the priests and the heralds. The priests were positioned where Henry had ordered them [700 yards to the rear] and heralds were positioned where heralds were expected to be: their offices on the battlefield.

Doug: "Except Monstrelet (French) says (Curry, page 160): "…the French bowed their heads so that the arrow fire would not penetrate the visors of their helmets." (Waurin and LeFevre): "The French began to bow their heads, especially those who had no shield (pavaix), because of the English arrow fire. The English fired so vigorously that there were none who dared approach them, and the French did not dare uncover themselves or look up." So much for not fearing the arrows, huh?"

Did Monstrelet, Waurin, or LeFevere (the last two actually viewed the battle – unlike our cleric who was 700 yards to the rear praying – mention arrows piercing helmets?

Doug: "This is the opening of the French advance, so there is no reference to side-on damage (as the Gesta mentions)."

But all three go on to describe the French advance without once mentioning the piercing of helmets. Our cleric could not have seen helmets being pierced because he was 700 yards away, where Henry had told them to form the baggage. The two who were there don't say a thing about helmets being pierced.

Let's expand your quote by Tito.

"Then he said to his men, "Advance banners'. Then he stood with his battleline in the order in which they stood, having exhorted all his men to go into battle with the enemy. The usual order of the English, established by the king, was maintained; the first battle line proceeded, then the second and the third followed straight after. The priests and chaplains of the king WERE ORDERED TO REMAIN IN DIVINE PRAYERS AND SUPPLICATIONS, and with the heralds in their tabards took up their offices." [my caps]

The army moves off and the priests remained in pray and supplication. They did not follow the army. They remained in the position Henry assigned them when he first decided to move his army. Our cleric was not looking over Henry's shoulder. And, he did not see helmets pierced by arrows. Only the priests had a "sucky ‘view' of the battle."

Doug: "Instead of denigrating the Gesta writer, you could, as a researcher/game designer, be blessing his (unknown) name. These kinds of specific, graphic details are so very, very rare."

It is important to understand what happened; not what I want to have happened. This "graphic detail" turns out to be our clerics imagination. That doesn't denigrate him at all. It places him within the context of the battle. It helps us understand what happened and it puts into context what he wrote. That is all any researcher would want.

To recap, Henry order the priests and baggage to form up behind his first battleline. And, Tito confirms Henry ordered them to remain there when the army moved off.

Rich

There has been some discussion of where the archers would have come from. A condota or contract not only specified who was to raise the troops and how much they were to be paid but also the area in which troops could be raised. In England the noble military contractor could only raise troops from his own holdings. He could not go into other noble holdings and raise troops from that holding.

Many of the noble landowners were reluctant to have their farmers signup for war. This took valuable farmers off the land. Remember, this is the time of the plague. England lost 1/3 of their population. Thousands of villages were abandoned. Million of acres were left unworked. Nobles were desperate for workers. The bulk of the troops probably came from Henry's own lands. The rest of the troops came from the lands of his military contractors.

Rich

Rich:

And, the people who were there, Waurin and LeFevre, don't mention any such fantastic feats.

Piercing the side of a helmet is not a "fantastic feat"; it is a graphic detail of an eyewitness. The other two were there, but neither offers detail to place himself anywhere on the field: the cleric does so for himself, the only writer we have who provided this kind of detail.

You addressed none of the timing points to make your picture possible: the fact that the English stood in their ranks waiting for much of the day, before moving forward to start the battle: ergo, there could be no "tail end" of the baggage to be attacked in its original position. It moved ONCE, to follow the army so that it could be "in the rear of the engagement", where it would be safe: it was only the tail end of it that got attacked; the baggage park ("most all the baggage") was never attacked. There had already arrived near the king "most all of the baggage", and he then launched the attack: AT THE SAME TIME as the battle started, the tail end of the still-approaching baggage was plundered (the king's personal property as it turned out).

Your picture is your own and does not address ALL of the facts in the account. You seem so worried about being wrong after expending so much verbiage that you refuse to see what is perfectly clear.

Mentioning the priests and heralds in the same breath (modern punctuation is inserted during translation) is no problem if both were where they could easily see what was occurring.

Our cleric was not looking over Henry's shoulder.

Why the added, specific detail of remaining on horseback throughout the battle, then? Quite a stupid way to engage in prayers and supplications, and quite unnecessary and uncomfortable.

To anyone willing to allow that the Gesta cleric was in fact an eyewtiness (everyone I have read describes him as such, except you), there is no need to explain anything: he was there, he could see what he described, and you have answered all of that with YOUR mental picture of archers 30, 40, 50 yards away, shooting virtually straight into the sky so that arrows can lose all velocity, just so that we can answer a metaphorical description of arrows like "rain" or "hail." The obvious (to an archer and everyone I have ever read on the subject, except you) is that "storm" means like a lashing of rain or hail in a high wind: in your face and moving along almost parallel with the ground, a nasty lashing which in the case of arrows can put your eyes out and pierce your brain pan: the "storm" was that thick with missiles, and they weren't "raindrops keep falling on my head" either.

Hi

Rich, you have baffled me.

Not sure what you point in the above is. With Gesta, you assert he was in the rear and not a witness(and presumably had no first hand knowledge of what people said at the time) and thus….what? Seven hundred yards away(where?) he is, oh some 600 YEARS closer than we are.

But you also said that bow fire is no threat, then refer to the passage about people being afraid of looking up or uncovering from their shields. Afraid of what? The noise like rain on a tin roof.

I understand that you are attacking Doug's use of sources. But you aren't really telling ME anything about your position.

R

He could not go into other noble holdings and raise troops from that holding.

Except that most yeomen were freeholders and could leave for war anytime they personally took a yen to. They were not medieval serfs "tied" to a fief.

Sorry I've been kayaking and camping up in the San Juan Islands by the Canadian border in Washington state. Also, I was having problems with Safari so I had to use the II designation to sign on with Firefox.

It seems both of you want my version of the story.

Henry is forced to halt and defend himself at Agincourt. The next day, Henry forms his initial battleline. His baggage is still in the village where Henry had ordered it to be placed the previous day. Henry waits a long period in anticipation of an attack. It does not come. Henry then decides to advance on the French and force them to fight. Before Henry actually advances he orders the baggage out of the village and to form at his rear. If you know anything about putting baggage into a defensive position you know that the wagons have to be placed on the perimeter and the horses unhitched and led to the center. Most of the baggage had arrived at that position. There was just a few left to come into the defensive ring (not necessarily circular). When he ordered his men to advance, he also told the clerics to stay were they are and the heralds to take up their positions or stations. If you know anything about medieval heralds you know, on the battlefield, they were messengers and experts in heraldry recognition. They were they to record the deeds of the men-at-arms. Their position had to be on the battlefield.

Back at the baggage sat our cleric at what he called the front of the baggage. By definition the place the French attacked was the tail because it was the opposite end of where the cleric sat. Him being on horseback didn't affect the services going on because all he had to do was preside over the services. This also provides him with another benefit. If historians are correct, this was his first battle. If things went bad he could get the hell out of there quickly. So, there is nothing unreasonable about his being on horseback. All of this can be substantiated by the sources.

Henry marches 2 bow lengths from his initial position. This is approximately 600-700 yards. This leaves our cleric 600-700 yards behind Henry's second formation. This second formation has the men-at-arms in the center and the bowmen on their flanks. Not only that but they were advanced forward of the men-at-arms such that they could fire from the flanks of the advancing French foot (I can provide the source). The sources estimate the French foot to be around 5,000 men-at-arms. And, they were formed around 20 ranks deep. This makes around 250 files across. This normally would work out to around 250-300 yards across.

From the flanks of the French, the archers are pouring in high-angle plunging fire. [I discussed this with Matthew Bennet, instructor at Sandhurst and author of books and articles on Agincourt. He agreed with my interpretation. He is also an avid archer. So, Doug I guess you have been discussing this with the wrong people.]

I don't think I said the bow fire was not a threat. It certainly was. As the sources mentioned, the men-at-arms bowed their heads so the arrows would not pierce their visors. I simply said that given the bowfire was high-angle plunging fire there was little fear of helmets being pierced by the arrows. Visors yes. Helmets no.

As to the cleric being an eyewitness "(everyone I have read describes him as such, except you)", you haven't read much. I already told you that Dr. Anne Curry, a leading authority on Agincourt, flat out said the cleric did not have an eyewitness view of the battlefield. This is what the sources say. Therefore it is a bit strange to try to modify other primary sources based on the writings of one who did not see the battle.

Doug, "Piercing the side of a helmet is not a "fantastic feat"; it is a graphic detail of an eyewitness. The other two were there, but neither offers detail to place himself anywhere on the field: the cleric does so for himself, the only writer we have who provided this kind of detail."

You keep insisting the cleric was an eyewitness when the sources and professionals say he was 600-700 yards to the rear where he and the other clerics were told to stay. As to LeFevre, he was on the English side, probably served as herald. He later became herald for the Order of the Golden Fleece. This means he was probably near Henry. Wauren was also an eyewitness was on the French side. I'm not sure what his capacity was. If I remember correctly he was young. Both were on the battlefield not 600-700 yards to the rear praying.

You both responded with incredulity that the arrows would be directed upward and allowed to fall upon the French. I find this incredulous because I have already given you a very good tactical reason for this kind of fire. I have also given you the probable results of this type of fire and how it helped the English to win. But all you can think of is direct fire. And since you think any other type of fire is ridiculous, you grasp at straws to show that the archers fired in the only manner you think should be done.

So there you have it. Except for one thing. Originally I dismissed the Gesta comment about arrows in the side of helmets as fantasy because this was his first experience of battle. But Doug convinced me that the cleric actually did see helmets pieced in the side by arrows. The question is where did he see this. It wasn't during battle. He was too far away. Since this was his first battle, it would not have been in an earlier battle. It is doubtful that he saw such examples of the power of the bow while growing up. As a cleric he was probably from a noble family but was a younger son with no rights of inheritance. Younger sons generally entered the Church at a rather young age. So, where had he seen helmets with arrow sticking out of the sides of helmets?

Then I realized that after battle it was the duty of the clerics to deal with the dead. As a cleric it would have been his job to enter the battlefield, after the battle, and prepare the dead for burial. I'm satisfied this is where our cleric saw the dead with arrows piercing their helmets.

High-angle plunging fire cannot create this type of damage, as both Doug and Rocky have pointed out. When it looked like the battle was over and the English had collected a number of French survivors, a new group of French was seen approaching the battlefield. Thinking he was about to be attacked once again, Henry told his men-at-arms to kill their prisoners. If they failed to do so, he would order his archers to do so. Evidently they did so. At point-plank range it was easy enough to put an arrow into the prisoner's temple through the side of his helmet. This was the quickest and surest was to dispatch the prisoners. When the cleric entered the battlefield, he saw all around him the dead prisoner with arrows in the side of their helmets. This was an unforgettable testimony of the power of the longbow.

Rich

Doug: "Except that most yeomen were freeholders and could leave for war anytime they personally took a yen to. They were not medieval serfs "tied" to a fief."

I think you missed the point. A contractor was allowed to hire men from his own lands. Others could certainly volunteer. But it they were not from that lord's villages they could not be accepted. Only those from the lord's villages could be signed on.

On the question of 200,000 arrows inflicting 5,000 effective hits, if fired perpendicular to the target, I have no problem with the number of effectives. However, the sources quote that the dismounted van consisted of around 5,000 knights and noblemen. We would expect that kind of effective fire on 5,000 men to be noted. The sources certainly noted the effect the archery fire had on the mounted French knights and noblemen. Nothing of the sort is recorded for the dismounted van. In fact, one source, Tito, stated the archery fire didn't do much damage. Tito's is the kind of response one would expect from high-angle plunging fire not perpendicular fire. This would lead to the idea that the English had something else in mind than just casualties; and I've already presented that idea.

Rich

Where's that stake and hammer: it's, it's, ALIVE!

I already told you that Dr. Anne Curry, a leading authority on Agincourt, flat out said the cleric did not have an eyewitness view of the battlefield.

Currey, page 23: "Because [the Gesta] is an early text, written by an eyewitness and with a focused and detailed treatment of the campaign, it is all too easy to assume that it tells us all we need to know." (page 25) "[The priest's] comments read as though they have been picked up from others and from his own viewing, perhaps, of the heaps of the slain." You are overstating Currey.

A quibble and clarification: "our cleric/priest" is nowhere identified as the one in charge of leading the prayers, etc. He participated with the other priests. And nowhere do we get evidence of his war experience, which is irrelevant in any case, as many combatants were experiencing their first battle at Agincourt as well, most likely including Waurin and LeFevre. Even the king himself had not been in such a pitched battle before, nor had the majority of French nobility.

There really is no way to finally decide precisely where the baggage was in proximity to Henry's battle line. The narrative isn't detailed enough for that. All we can do is surmise and apply logic and other evidence. The clearest stated evidence for why Henry moved the baggage at all was to protect it from pillaging: to remove it from the added cover of the village buildings, out into the open, and yet so far to the rear as to be out of contact with the army, makes no sense. To move it out of the village, to follow the king's moving of his army, i.e. maintain contact with the army and tha baggage, does make sense: and it also fits the narrative which places the attack on the baggage only after the king had entered battle, but while the tail end of the baggage was still on the move.

From the flanks of the French, the archers are pouring in high-angle plunging fire.

I have pointed out clearly before: if our battlefield is the 700+ yards wide that most historians allow for, then the French first battle was out of range of c. half of the English archers! Do we really believe that they arrayed themselves so that a large number of their missilemen could only stand and watch? (I am assuming that your acquaintence, Mat Bennet, believes the current popular consensus that all the English men at arms were in a single unit in the center, a la the Osprey Campaign on Agincourt.) Your view of dropping arrows becomes even less possible in such a formation, because at extreme range (200 to 250 yards, just to reach the nearest edge of the proposed French column) the arrows would be dropping into the ground at c. 56 degrees. And such a reach would only be possible at the last extremity of the French advance before contact for melee, and not at all during their progress across the field.

Then I realized that after battle it was the duty of the clerics to deal with the dead. As a cleric it would have been his job to enter the battlefield, after the battle, and prepare the dead for burial. I'm satisfied this is where our cleric saw the dead with arrows piercing their helmets.

Our cleric viewing the dead could indeed have shown him the helmets pierced from the side, and he put that empirical evidence along with what participants up close described for him.

However, these were not the prisoners. The first thing to come off once a man at arms surrendered was his helmet: an over-heated, exhausted fighter does not leave his helmet on for an instant longer than necessary. There was also the matter of establishing social class recognition and future ransoms. The French were bound, at least many of them. Perhaps 1/10 their number of yeomen were assigned to butcher them when the order was carried out. Wasting arrows on such work would not be smart: axes and daggers would have been much more efficient and sure.

I think you are struggling to retain your own fixed view from only reading sources. We have an eye witness clearly stating pierced helmets and visors; other eyewitnesses support this with describing how the French kept their heads down to avoid pierced visors: vertically dropping arrows will not pierce a visor, sorry, they just don't possess the energy (never mind the impact angle also being all wrong to impart any real danger to the eyes, unless you adtually looked up).

I think you missed the point. A contractor was allowed to hire men from his own lands. Others could certainly volunteer. But it they were not from that lord's villages they could not be accepted. Only those from the lord's villages could be signed on.

I won't claim to have a deep knowledge of English social strata by the 14th century. But it has been my understanding for many years, that the old Doomsday Book phrase, "he could go where he would" (etc.), which meant the person alluded to was free to take his property (allegiance) to any lord he chose, was not erradicated by the Norman conquest, but rather expanded into the yeoman class. That meant that a yeoman was typically free to sell his services to any lord, or none at all if that was his choice. The peasants on fiefs were a minority class. So a captain recruiting from his own fiefs could and would augment his contingent with volunteers from anywhere.

The sources certainly noted the effect the archery fire had on the mounted French knights and noblemen. Nothing of the sort is recorded for the dismounted van. In fact, one source, Tito, stated the archery fire didn't do much damage. Tito's is the kind of response one would expect from high-angle plunging fire not perpendicular fire. This would lead to the idea that the English had something else in mind than just casualties; and I've already presented that idea.

Tito was no eyewitness. "Our priest", Waurin and Le Fevre all describe dangerous, injurious, fearful archery effects, on both the horses and the dismounted men at arms.

It is clear, that both plunging and direct fire was used (as I said before). The first shooting, well outside of 150 yards, would have impacted with the ground at c. 56 degrees; as the French came closer, the rear ranks of archers would have increasingly resorted to a higher and higher trajectory to clear the front ranks and still drop missiles into the "beaten zone." Without resorting to high trajectory fire, they would have been useless, standing around with nothing to do. Obviously this was never allowed to happen: the front ranks marksmen poured in a direct, pointblank, murderous, rapid, individual fire: the rear ranks shot high and dropped missiles "like hail/rain" on the backs and heads of the French. The combination of direct, piercing fire, and dense falling fire, would have been more disruptive than simply shooting directly into the outer (exposed) ranks of the French, while leaving all the interior ranks unmolested. The closer the French came to the English line, the more compacted they became, offering an even more effective target for plunging fire: the forward movement and compressing inward of the outer ranks (natural flinching away from the effects/danger of direct, piercing fire), would have met the counter pressure of the interior ranks flinching to avoid the dropping masses of bodkins: no training could ever have prepared the French for this experience (as Currey points out), and therefore virtually every man was experiencing it for the first time: also, therefore, the pressures and counter pressures of outer ranks pressing inward to avoid the direct, piercing fire, and the inner ranks pressing into each other attempting to avoid the dropping fire, would have seriously disrupted any battle cohesion the French tried to maintain.

So it was this quivering, compressed, wounded and terrified mass which finally arrived within hand weapon range of the English: and was stopped by the growing wall of its own wounded and dying on the ground, in front and down both flanks of the column. This detail is clearly the most decisive moment in the English victory conditions: the "tumbling effect" referred to by Kegan, et al., and given to us in graphic detail by "our priest" the Gesta writer (either seeing it himself, which I believe is the case, or clearly rehearsed to him as the explanation of the after effects which he saw as he "toured" the battlefield).

Hi

Rich, I don't think there is any real disagreement here. Most of your quibbles are based on assigning positions we didn't take!

"not very effective" means what? I would offer that 2.5% effective hits is "not very" if your expectations are "long bow as nato machinegun", as others have accused us all of holding.

Two bow shots would not be 700 yards, I am not sure where these 350yard bowshots are as applying to the whole army. Sit down with the map, lay out where the baggage is, where first position is, second position, where the three french battles are, and you do not have a 700 yard space.

But that isn't really your point. Your point is that, I think, you believe you know where everthing is, and dismiss Gesta. but in essence, the differences are minor in light of most of the posts that you don't argue with that either take the position of "longbow as supergun" versus the position of "armor is always arrowproof and all the casualties were done in melee". We are in the middle. Bow fire made up the bulk of the army because it worked and it was cheap. Bow isn't a superweapon, the brits had a set of tactics and training that lent it to being a sort of weapon not avaialble to most of europe north of italy.

Sadly, most of these discussions aren't amenable to real discussion, but an insistance on supporting one of the extremes.

Rocky

In case anyone was wondering, I have said all I am going to say on this thread (in some cases I have done so several times). It is clear that we are in entrenched positions and neither is going to convince the other to change their mind.

I remain convinced that the MR bows are the only substantial find of longbows anywhere near the period in question and that their average draw weight is in excess of 100lbs, a view either propounded or supported by nearly all academic experts on the period. If you find the implication, that such draw weights were thus common in 15th century England, difficult to accept then that is your problem not mine.

I also remain convinced that a set of wargames rules, albeit generated from tests and experiments with modern weapons (even if they are claimed to be replicas), cannot be used to "prove" history. Again, you may disagree and that is your prerogative, however IMHO such a position goes against all principles of historical analysis.

So, until we meet again …

In case anyone was wondering, I have said all I am going to say on this thread….

And that makes this thread, "The [Not] Effective Archery Debate". :)

It has been fun.

1. You are overstating Currey.

His position in the baggage train thus enables him to tell us that Henry ordered the train to be placed in the rear but PREVENTS HIM FROM SAYING ANYTHING CONCLUSIVE ABOUT Henry's advance towards the enemy (…) or THE BATTLE.

And why couldn't he say anything conclusive about the battle? He was back in the rear with the baggage and not an eyewitness.

2. A quibble and clarification: "our cleric/priest" is nowhere identified as the one in charge of leading the prayers, etc.

True however I never presented that as an established fact. If you will read my posting I clearly specified that this was conditioned on the belief that he was Henry's confessor.

3. There really is no way to finally decide precisely where the baggage was in proximity to Henry's battle line.

If you mean a GPS reading of where they were positioned then I agree. However we can get a good relative position. Henry pulled his baggage out of the hamlet and ordered it to form behind his first position. He orders the priest who were assigned to the baggage to remain in that position. He then marches his army two bow lengths down the field of battle. I estimated that to be 600-700 yards away from the priests and the baggage.

An aside: Rocky doesn't like the 700 yards.

"Two bow shots would not be 700 yards, I am not sure where these 350yard bowshots are as applying to the whole army. Sit down with the map, lay out where the baggage is, where first position is, second position, where the three French battles are, and you do not have a 700 yard space."

The problem is Rocky, we don't know the exact dimensions of the battlefield. Juliet Barker:

"Most important of all, the woods which six hundred years ago played such a critical part in limiting the field action are gone. Though many trees remain on the periphery, these are of relatively recent growth and cannot be take as the literal boundaries of the original site or even as the direct descendants of the fifteenth-century woodlands."

So, we can't take Rocky's method. Two sources say the armies were three bow shots away. Another estimates the length between the two armies to be about 1,000 paces. I don't know how long the medieval pace was but today it represents 2.5 feet. This would make the battlefield 833 yards. This would certainly be enough room for the English to march 700 yards and still have room to fight. However, I estimated the movement to be between 600 and 700 yards in length not a flat 700. So, if Rocky doesn't like 700, I happy to change that to 600 yards. I wouldn't do this for just anyone. But I will do it for Rocky. This would make the battlefield approximately 900 yards in length. If you take the 1,000 pace estimate, this works out to 833 yards if the medieval pace was 2.5 feet. Given that lengths we not all that exact I think 900 yards to be well within the realm of possibility. We still have our cleric 600 yards to the rear of the battle.

Back to Doug's statement. See that wasn't so hard.

4. "I have pointed out clearly before: if our battlefield is the 700+ yards wide …"

But that is the point Doug. We don't have the evidence to show that the battlefield was 700+ yards wide. In fact, we don't really know how wide the battlefield was.

5. "Our cleric viewing the dead could indeed have shown him the helmets pierced from the side, and he put that empirical evidence along with what participants up close described for him."

So our cleric didn't actually see helmets being pierced as part of the battle. Well, that's progress. So, he relied on what others, who could see the battle, for further information. This is very good progress.

6. "However, these were not the prisoners. The first thing to come off once a man at arms surrendered was his helmet: an over-heated, exhausted fighter does not leave his helmet on for an instant longer than necessary. There was also the matter of establishing social class recognition and future ransoms."

They were not prisoners because all prisoners take their helmets off. They take their helmets off because it was a hot day and they were exhausted. And you have personal experience to prove this. Oh, and they have to have their helmets off so they can be recognized for ransom purposes. What? You think the English carried around with them picture books of all the noble fighters throughout France? Come on! Recognition was by heraldry devices not by faces. It was one of the jobs of the heralds to be able to know who was who simply by the heraldic device. This doesn't require looking at their faces nor does it require the helmets to come off. So you have no proof these casualties were not killed by an arrow through the temple by way of helmet.

7. "Wasting arrows on such work would not be smart: axes and daggers would have been much more efficient and sure."

Let me understand what you are saying. You're saying that hacking away with an axe at someone in plate armor is more efficient that a simple arrow through the helmet and into the temple? You are also saying trying to slip a dagger between some space in the armor, and through the protective clothing worn under the armor is more efficient that a simple arrow through the helmet. What is not smart is believing that line of argument.

8. "I won't claim to have a deep knowledge of English social strata by the 14th century. But it has been my understanding for many years, that the old Doomsday Book phrase, "he could go where he would" (etc.), which meant the person alluded to was free to take his property (allegiance) to any lord he chose, was not eradicated by the Norman conquest, but rather expanded into the yeoman class."

Doug do you even know what the Doomsday Book is? It was a catalog of property ownership. This is from The Doomsday Book Online:

"The Doomsday Book provides extensive records of landholders, their tenants, the amount of land they owned, how many people occupied the land (villagers, smallholders, free men, slaves, etc.), the amounts of woodland, meadow, animals, fish and ploughs on the land (if there were any) and other resources, any buildings present (churches, castles, mills, salthouses, etc.), and the whole purpose of the survey – the value of the land and its assets, before the Norman Conquest, after it, and at the time of Doomsday. Some entries also chronicle disputes over who held land, some mention customary dues that had to be paid to the king, and entries for major towns include records of traders and number of houses."

However, since you claim your phrase came from the Doomsday Book could you possible indicate in which portion of the book your phrase can be found?

9. "Tito was no eyewitness"

True but he did what you state our cleric did. He relied on eyewitness accounts.

10. "Waurin and Le Fevre all describe dangerous, injurious, fearful archery effects, on both the horses and the dismounted men at arms."

I left out the priest. He like Tito was not an eyewitness. So if you could simply point out the passages where they described arrows piercing helmets I would be much obliged.

11: "It is clear, that both plunging and direct fire was used (as I said before)."

Well, if it's so clear that direct fire was used during the battle, can you please show me where in the sources it states this? Just because something can be done is NO proof that it was done.

12. "So it was this quivering, compressed, wounded and terrified mass which finally arrived within hand weapon range of the English: and was stopped by the growing wall of its own wounded and dying on the ground, in front and down both flanks of the column."

I think you are mistaking me with John Keegan. Many people do.

Rich

Rocky: "Rich, I don't think there is any real disagreement here. Most of your quibbles are based on assigning positions we didn't take!"

Quibbles? Hmmmm. I see no evidence for perpendicular fire during the battle. Because something can be done does not mean that it was done. I reject any notion that the writer of the Gesta was an eye-witness to the battle. Armor penetration by bow fire, during the battle, was not very effective to not at all effective. I think the purpose of the archers was to disrupt the French advance making it easier for the men-at-arms to defeat them. So, ‘quibble is not the first word that jump to mind. But, if it works for you, fine.

Rocky: "I think, you believe you know where everything is,"

If by this you mean that I've study the sources of this battle and have the training to interpret historical sources (Ph.D studies Ren & Ref History University of Washington) then yes as far as allowed by the sources.

Rocky: "and dismiss Gesta."

No, I don't dismiss the Gesta. But also what I don't do is to try to make the Gesta say things that it didn't say. To me, that is a sign of respect for the sources.

Rocky: : Bow fire made up the bulk of the army because it worked and it was cheap."

That statement is extremely problematic. Bow fire worked but not the way you and Doug have been arguing. Archers were less expensive to hire than men-at-arms but this hardly accounts for the large number of archers to men-at-arms towards the end of the HYW. Your statement implies a cost/benefit analysis underwriting medieval decision making that is anachronistic. I think it makes more sense to say the ratio was so one-sided because it became more and more difficult to hire men-at-arms.

Rich

3. There really is no way to finally decide precisely where the baggage was in proximity to Henry's battle line.

If you mean a GPS reading of where they were positioned then I agree. However we can get a good relative position. Henry pulled his baggage out of the hamlet and ordered it to form behind his first position. He orders the priest who were assigned to the baggage to remain in that position. He then marches his army two bow lengths down the field of battle. I estimated that to be 600-700 yards away from the priests and the baggage.

I know you've read this passage quite a few time by now, as have I: but I want you to be very sure about what you are saying, that the Gesta is saying. We've quoted it enough, both of us must by now feel sure about that. But we are still seeing different things here.

You keep talking about Henry's moving of the baggage to behind his original position, then marching his army away to engage the French: which, if you are correct, would indeed put the baggage park now out in the open and several hundred yards to the rear of the English battle line.

However, that's not what the Gesta says: and what you say doesn't follow any logical reason for moving the baggage out of the protection of Maisoncelles.

You've mocked a picture of Henry's army moving with the baggage train traipsing along in a string behind it. That's not correct: Henry orders the baggage to move out because he's going to advance to engage the French. When he's convinced that "most" of the baggage has arrived so as to be in the "rear of the engagement", then he advances to engage: this is not referring to the advance of "two bow shots" forward of the original position, but, rather, the moment when he sends his archers beyond their second staked line to goad the French cavalry into an attack. And the Gesta assures us that at that moment, when the battle was begun, the "tail end" of the baggage was pillaged (clearly, "most" but not "the tail end" of the baggage had reached the king's rear when he advanced and started the battle). But "our priest" was already with "most" of the baggage behind the battle on horseback where he remained the whole time.

4. "I have pointed out clearly before: if our battlefield is the 700+ yards wide …"

But that is the point Doug. We don't have the evidence to show that the battlefield was 700+ yards wide. In fact, we don't really know how wide the battlefield was.

That's true also. Much speculation goes into this. The present field MAY fit the approximate medieval dimensions (cultivated fields tending to remain quite consistent, as Keegan points out). But just as easily, the present field could be quite a bit wider than it was in 1415: I would tend to assume a more narrow field than it is today. 700 yards is quite a bit narrower than the present field's c. 1,000 yards between wooded margins.

I have a limit of 500 yards, however, as the narrowest practical frontage: simply because I know that any narrower would put the "5,000" longbowmen into a depth exceeding 16 ranks, and there has to be a practical limit on how deep archers could expect to be and remain in contact with what's going on out in front of their formation. (Btw, IF the field were c. 500 yards, this would make the present consensus placing all the English men at arms in a single body in the center, with all the archers on the wings, a viable hypothesis -- in spite of the complete disregard of the specific details given us by the Gesta: which disregard I have never understood unless the proponent for such a disregard is, like you, assuming "our priest" was no eyewitness at all.)

5. "Our cleric viewing the dead could indeed have shown him the helmets pierced from the side, and he put that empirical evidence along with what participants up close described for him."

So our cleric didn't actually see helmets being pierced as part of the battle. Well, that's progress. So, he relied on what others, who could see the battle, for further information. This is very good progress.

"Our cleric" could have been severely myopic too; how would we know? Or he could have had eyes like a hawk's; how would we know?

Even if he was watching from c. 100 yards back, over the heads of the English infantry from horseback, he would have been hard-pressed to actually see details like helmets being pierced from the side. Later, as he walked among the dead and compared the aftermath with what he had seen from further away, he would positively have seen helmets pierced in the side: he would have seen this in any event, no matter where he had been during the battle. He would have had participants answering his questions, making further sense out of the rows of piled French dead and wounded (that must have, even as he watched, been pulled apart to separate the living from the dead).

6. and 7. "the helmets pierced from the side were not those of executed prisoners"

…You are also saying trying to slip a dagger between some space in the armor, and through the protective clothing worn under the armor is more efficient that a simple arrow through the helmet. What is not smart is believing that line of argument.

Did you know that bows have a minimum range too? You cannot shoot anything accurately within 6 to 10 feet, because the arrow is still flexing around the bow stave and straightening out. This physical limitation means that to shoot a prisoner through the temple the archer would have to stand back that far. The prisoner is going to hold still for this? Is this more efficient?

The prisoner is bound or held down, and the axe brains him (no helmet), or his throat is cut (no helmet). Simple butcher's work. (You are the only person I have run across who even suggests that bows and arrows were used to dispatch the French prisoners at Agincourt.)

Doug do you even know what the Doomsday Book is? It was a catalog of property ownership.

Yes, rather. And it is also a statement of the conditions of previous ownership.

However, since you claim your phrase ["he could go where he would"] came from the Doomsday Book could you possible indicate in which portion of the book your phrase can be found?

It shows up numerous times throughout. E.g., from the Sussex volume, entry 9,2: "Waring holds CATSFIELD from the Count. Alfhelm held it from King Edward. He could go where he would with the land." Then follows another four consecutive entries declaring the same free man status for previous holders. Ibid, 9,10 says: "Olaf holds 1 virgate from the Count in this Hundred. Hernetoc held it before 1066; he could go wherever he would." Etc.

9. "Tito was no eyewitness"

True but he did what you state our cleric did. He relied on eyewitness accounts.

Quite a difference, though, don't you agree? "Our cleric" was there, walked the field, examined the dead, asked questions on the spot: may even have seen quite a segment of the battle with his own eyes. Tito, et al. the "secondary" historians/chroniclers, only got information second-hand.

….if you could simply point out the passages where they described arrows piercing helmets I would be much obliged.

Come on, Rich, we've been over this enough already. You know as well as anyone following this topic, that the pierced sides of helmets is a singular detail provided by our most immediate and reliable and cogent eyewitness. You want him to be blind, and keep insisting he's no eyewitness at all: Currey calls him an eyewitness, so does everyone else (as I said before, everyone but you).

Well, if it's so clear that direct fire was used during the battle, can you please show me where in the sources it states this? Just because something can be done is NO proof that it was done.

You've admitted that helmets were pierced, but not admitted (yet) that this occurred during the battle itself. I've shown clearly the lack of reason behind assuming that hundreds of French prisoners were standing/lying about with their helmets on, waiting for archers to tell them to "hold still" so that they could target the temples of their victims from ten feet away.

Plunging fire does not pierce any armor, much less the side of a helmet.

An added weakness (as if we need more) of your hypothesis, that only helmeted prisoners were what "our cleric" saw dead on the ground with arrows through the sides of their helmets, is that where the prisoners would have been lying dead would not match up with the sequence of events "our cleric" clearly lays out. The pierced helmetted dead Frenchies would have to be lying out in front of the English line -- where the French divided into three attack columns: otherwise, if the pierced helmets were behind the English line where the prisoners had been held, "our cleric's" claim that fear of helmet penetration might have been a reason for the division into three attack columns would make no sense. In fact, you would have to dismiss "our cleric" as a complete fraud, making up details without any subsequent physical evidence to back it up.

Hi

Rich, what does "disrupt" mean to you? I have never claimed "plunging fire" penetrated helmets.

What I said was that arrows don't decend vertically as is stated above. When shooting a bow for maximum range, the launch at 43 to 45 degrees will impact at about 56degrees.

I only know this from testing and measuring.

I know that arrows will indeed penetrate armor if the impact angle on the face is under 35degrees. Again fron testing. And I know that the tip on the "bodkin" point is clever in that upon encountering a survace often "tips" unto a shallower impact angle.

As I have seen the penetration, I have difficulty with 5000 archers only causing annoyance, like a hard rain.

Or that the British MAA and english unarmored yeoman with a hammer hand to hand can defeat french armore MAA out of british superiority. Sort of a variant of the "fanboys" who have english longbow killing the same french at 400 yards like a .308.

When I first looked at Agincourt, I was an analysist with a pentagon think tank, and merely applied the tools in place as we were doing for other things to reach conclusions.

Now, read all the sources mentioned, sadly I don't read medieval french, so I have to trust the translators. HOWEVER, I also added in that I can do bow math AND did a lot of building and testing to direct how I view these sources. I haven't walked the field, and I have sevearal maps from various period.

I know nothing for certain, but in my mind I have established a preponderence of period and modern evidence to come to a conclusion. That you read and accept curry's, say, is doing the same thing, well except for the testing part. At least part of your point, and Mike's, would require that I ignore my own experiences as a boyer and armor maker!

R

Here is the Gesta text yet one more time.

"He had previously arranged that this baggage, together with the priests who were to celebrate the divine office and make fervent prayer for him and his men, should await him the aforesaid hamlet and closes, where he had been the night before, until the fighting was over."

The baggage was spread out throughout the hamlet and closes (land and buildings surrounding the hamlet). It was placed there the day before. It was still there when Henry organized his first battleline.

"And so he decided to move against them sending for the army baggage in order to have it at the rear of the engagement lest it should fall as booty into the hands of the enemy."

To protect his baggage, he orders them out of the positions, scattered among the hamlet and it's closes, and had concentrated behind him and at the rear of the battle. The Gesta doesn't specify how much spaced existed between the baggage and the battle. He simply states "at the rear of the engagement."

"And at that time French pillagers were watching it from almost every side, intending to make an attack upon it immediately they saw both armies engage.; in fact, directly battle was joined they fell upon the end of it where, owing to the negligence of the royal servants, the kings own baggage was, … "

Obviously Henry thought the baggage too scattered and could not be adequately defended where it was in the hamlet and closes. He orders his baggage to form up together where it can be better defended.

At this point Henry hadn't yet moved.

"But once, however, the king thought that almost all this baggage had reached his rear, …. he advanced towards the enemy and the enemy, too, advanced towards him."

He waits until almost all the baggage had reached his rear. This also tells us the gathering point for the baggage was to the rear of Henry's first battleline. Henry's position was with the battleline thus any position to Henry's rear had to be to the rear of that first battleline. Tito is a bit more specific:

Tito: "The usual order of the English, established by the king, was maintained; the first battle line proceeded, then second and the third followed straight after. The priests and chaplains of the king were ordered to remain in divine prayers and supplications, and with the heralds in their tabards took up their offices."

Tito is clear that while the army moved out, the priests did not. They remained behind. This agrees with the Gesta saying nearly all the baggage had formed behind Henry's first position when Henry advanced with his army. While not all the baggage was collected yet, the priests were with the already gathered portion of the baggage. Henry told them to stay where they were and to pray. All this occurred before Henry had advanced towards the French. That is where the priests and baggage were, 600 yards to the rear of the engagement or 600 yards at the rear of the battle. We know it was about 600 yards to the rear of the battle because Henry, his men-at-arms and his archers advanced two bow shots from where he left the priests and the baggage.

Doug: "However, that's not what the Gesta says: and what you say doesn't follow any logical reason for moving the baggage out of the protection of Maisoncelles."

Sorry Doug but that is exactly what the Gesta says. I wrote it out above. And the reason the move doesn't make any sense to you is because you have no idea what "hamlet and closes" means. Had you understood that you would have understood that the baggage was not well protected there.

Doug: "but, rather, the moment when he sends his archers beyond their second staked line to goad the French cavalry into an attack."

Not so. Tito tells us specifically that Henry ordered the priests to remain where they were while he, the men-at-arms, and archers marched off.

Doug: "And the Gesta assures us that at that moment, when the battle was begun, the "tail end" of the baggage was pillaged."

Wrong Doug. What the Gesta said was , "directly battle was joined they fell upon THE END of it [baggage] where, owing to the negligence of the royal servants, the kings own baggage was, …"

No reference to "tail end". That's your invention. Now, which end of the baggage was attacked? Was it the north end or the south end or the west end or the east end [all proper uses for the word ‘end']? We don't know. All we know was it was the end containing Henry's possessions. There was no "tail end".

Doug: "this is not referring to the advance of "two bow shots" forward of the original position, but, rather, the moment when he sends his archers beyond their second staked line to goad the French cavalry into an attack."

Once again, wrong. The Gesta simply says "he [Henry] advanced towards the enemy and the enemy, too, advanced towards him.". No mention of just the archers advancing. That is unless you think Henry advanced with just the archers.

If you wish to challenge this please provide source quotes with your assertions.

4. We agree that the French width cannot be accurately established.

5.
Doug: "Even if he was watching from c. 100 yards back"

As established above, he was watching, when he wasn't praying, 600 yards back.

6&7
Doug: "Did you know that bows have a minimum range too?"

Yes but I didn't know the range. I'm sure the English archers did and would have taken that into account.

Doug: "The prisoner is bound or held down, and the axe brains him (no helmet), or his throat is cut (no helmet). Simple butcher's work."

I have no doubts some of that occurred. We are also told that about ten Frenchmen were herded into a building. When the order came to dispatch the prisoners, the building was set a blaze. So there were all manner of methods used to kill the prisoners. I see no reason to exclude the idea that some of the French, who had not yet removed their helmets had their helmets pierced by English arrows. I consider it a strong possibility especially since Henry sent a around 200 archers to insure that the prisoners were killed. I think it was those who had not yet removed their helmets [prisoners were still being collected from the battlefield] and were dispatched by an arrow that the writer of the Gesta refers to when he comments on the power of the longbow. He certainly didn't see this event during the battle.

Doug: "Tito, et al. the "secondary" historians/chroniclers, only got information second-hand."

Wrong. Tito interviewed leaders and main participants of the battle. Thus, he got his information from the same sources as the writer of the Gesta did.

Doug:" … that the pierced sides of helmets is a singular detail provided by our most immediate and reliable and cogent eyewitness. You want him to be blind, and keep insisting he's no eyewitness at all: Currey calls him an eyewitness, …"

"Our most immediate and reliable and cogent eyewitness" was Wauren and Lefevre. Neither mention this detail. Currey calls the writer of the Gesta and eyewitness to the campaign. She calls him a poor witness to the battle itself. And, the cleric never claims he saw this piercing as an aspect of the battle. Of course he couldn't. Therefore he must have seen the pierced helmets after the battle. As you say: "Plunging fire does not pierce any armor, much less the side of a helmet." So, the piercing of the helmets must have happened after the battle when the prisoners were being killed.

Doug: "if the pierced helmets were behind the English line where the prisoners had been held"

The prisoners were held singularly and in groups, as the event of the burning build demonstrated, all over the battlefield. In fact, the English were still combing through the French casualties to find those still alive that could be held for ransom. The piercing of helmets could have happened any place on the battlefield. So ends another of your suppositions of my so-called weaknesses.

Rich

Rocky: "Rich, what does "disrupt" mean to you?"

Monstrelet: "When they [English and French] came together they [the French] were so closely packed one against the other that they could scarcely lift their arms to strike their enemy" This is a common reaction to threat on the battlefield.

Rocky: "As I have seen the penetration, I have difficulty with 5000 archers only causing annoyance, like a hard rain."

I don't call what Monstrelet described an annoyance. I would see it as critical.

Rocky" "At least part of your point, and Mike's, would require that I ignore my own experiences as a boyer and armor maker!"

I don't speak for Mike. For myself, I see no reason why you would have to ignore your experience. I don't. But you must know what that experience can and cannot do. It can tell what is possible. It cannot tell you what actually happened. For that you need the sources.

For example, as a boyer and armor maker you know that plunging fire cannot pierce helmets. We have no evidence from the sources that perpendicular fire was used during the battle. You also know that perpendicular fire is required to pierce those helmets desctibed in the Gesta. Therefore it is perfectly plausable that the perpendicular fire occurred after the battle as part of the killing of prisoners. As a boyer and armor maker you know that what I outlined is very plausable. Now the trick of the historian is to pin down that plausability through the primary sources available to us.

Rich

To protect his baggage, he orders them out of the positions, scattered among the hamlet and it's closes, and had concentrated behind him and at the rear of the battle. The Gesta doesn't specify how much spaced existed between the baggage and the battle. He simply states "at the rear of the engagement."

I realize that I have fallen into a false concept of where the baggage was, in all our bantering: it was not, according to Curry, IN Maisoncelle, but a lot closer to the road between Tramcourt and Agincourt, where the field has its highest point and is visible in both directions toward the French camp and Maisoncelle. She quotes the Gesta:

(The Battle of Agincourt, A New History; starting page 198) "Henry made ready for the field, 'which was at no great distance from his quarters.' This does not mean that the English position was established at Maisoncelle. If that were the case, it makes no sense of Henry's later order to bring the baggage up to his rear. Furthermore, if the English could see the French lines from their initial position, which the Gesta and several other writers suggest, then their lines had to be well forward of Maisoncelle, otherwise the French would be hidden by the slope between Maisoncelle and the road between Agincourt and Tamecourt. The land falls away on either side of the field between the current D71 E and D104, (see Curry map picture ) and woodland probably came closer up to those routes in the period. Therefore, given the description we have of Henry's position, it is likely that he drew his lines at least midway between Maisoncelle and Agincourt and probably nearer to the latter."

She places Henry's first position at the spot called la Cloyelle, and the French on the higher ground, "at the mouth of the funnel" between the woods at the spot called les Soixante: this establishes the described "1,000 paces" between them.

(page 199) "Henry was at risk making the first move. His awareness of this is represented by the fact that before ordering the advance, he commanded that the baggage be brought up to the rear from its existing position at the overnight encampment. The Gesta's interpretation is that this was to protect the baggage, by not leaving it exposed at a distance from the army, but there are other possible reasons for Henry's order. The first is that he wanted to use the baggage train as a form of rear defense. It has already been suggested that he feared a French flanking move around the back of his army. The drawing up of wagons would help to protect his rear. Secondly, should his army be faced with defeat and the need to retreat, it would be sensible to have the baggage and horses as close as possible, so that there could be a speedy evacuation. This tactic was likely used by Edward at Crécy. In reality, however, the baggage had not been fully brought up to the rear by the time the English advance began. This is demonstrated by the author of the Gesta, who comments that as a result pillagers were able to fall upon 'the tail end' of the baggage, where the king's valuables were found."

No reference to "tail end". That's your invention.

Curry (Sources and Interpretations), page 35: "…; in fact, directly battle was joined they fell upon the tail end of it." And see above, just quoted from her other book.

Henry, "before ordering his army to advance closer to the French, commanded that the baggage be brought up to the rear from its existing position at the overnight encampment." And he advances when he sees that "almost all this baggage had reached his rear". Yet the baggage cannot remain immediately behind where Henry's first line was, or else moving them "no great distance" from the encampment would simply reproduce too much separation with the army: worse even, since "no great distance" cannot be the same as "1,000 paces"?! So the description "almost all this baggage had reached his rear" must mean that most of it was on the move and in contact with the army as it advanced. For moving it at all to make any tactical sense, it must remain "at no great distance" where the army was moving to; which was finally some 500 paces further on where the battle was joined just beyond the road between Trmecourt and Agincourt. The baggage, of course, would be behind this, possibly astride the road itself or close to that point. To my wargamer's mind, "at no great distance" (as I have said) should not be farther away than 100 yards. And for a hypothetical use of the baggage train as cover for the rear of the army it would be better if it were even closer.

The Gesta simply says "he [Henry] advanced towards the enemy and the enemy, too, advanced towards him.". No mention of just the archers advancing. That is unless you think Henry advanced with just the archers.

I don't think it, I got it many years ago from Keegan's efforts to clearly see how and why the French would charge enstaked archers! Keegan presumed that a logical reason would be if the French did not see the stakes, i.e. the archers were standing in front of them. This would only be possible if the archers advanced out beyond their stakes: for surely, at only a little more than a bowshot away, the French would have had a clear view of the archers driving in their stakes again. So the only way the French could have launched a cavalry charge into apparently vulnerable archers is if they had advanced beyond them to shoot; that they got quickly enough back behind them is obvious from the described effects of the charge right up to the stakes; which caused horses to fall down or get impaled.

"Advanced" in the Gesta does refer to the advancing of both armies toward each other. As I rereread it, I can see that I was placing too much emphasis on the immobility of the French until the archers goaded them into attacking. But as other sources place the battle contact "20 paces" from Agincourt, this means that the Gesta's description of the French advancing as the English advanced is correct.

4. We agree that the French width cannot be accurately established.

Nor the English width for that matter. But we can make good guesses.

5.
Doug: "Even if he was watching from c. 100 yards back"

As established above, he was watching, when he wasn't praying, 600 yards back.

It should be getting obvious, that if Curry is at all accurate in reconstructing the English encampment position, first English army position, second English army position, French encampment, battle engagement position, that there is not even 600 yards between the first position and second position where battle was joined. If Henry's first position is la Cloyelle ("to glue to the spot"), the battle is barely half the distance to the French camp at les Soixante; which, even IF the English baggage did not move from la Cloyelle (the "rear" of Henry's first line), is under 500 yards from the road between Tramecourt and Agincourt ("our cleric" continues to get closer, despite all your efforts to fix him in place, eyes glued shut in prayer at "to glue to the spot" -- you gotta love that coincidental meaning of the location of the first English position).

I think it was those who had not yet removed their helmets [prisoners were still being collected from the battlefield] and were dispatched by an arrow that the writer of the Gesta refers to when he comments on the power of the longbow. He certainly didn't see this event during the battle.

I agreed with that likelihood.

Doug: "Tito, et al. the "secondary" historians/chroniclers, only got information second-hand."

Wrong. Tito interviewed leaders and main participants of the battle. Thus, he got his information from the same sources as the writer of the Gesta did.

Rich, Tito ONLY got his information secondhand; he wasn't there, but "our cleric" was.

Doug:" … that the pierced sides of helmets is a singular detail provided by our most immediate and reliable and cogent eyewitness. You want him to be blind, and keep insisting he's no eyewitness at all: Currey calls him an eyewitness, …"

"Our most immediate and reliable and cogent eyewitness" was Wauren and Lefevre. Neither mention this detail.

The Gesta doesn't mention "pavised" men at arms either; and none of them mention breastplated horses; and all three provide different details the other two don't share. So WHAT? The effects of the arrows through visors and helmets were there for "our cleric" to see, even if only after the fact. Does the failure of Waurin and Le Fevre to mention any further graphic details mean "our cleric" is wrong, or just more savvy at remembering those details when he sat down to write?

Currey calls the writer of the Gesta and eyewitness to the campaign. She calls him a poor witness to the battle itself.

Really? Can you quote where she says he was a poor battle witness? I only see her saying he was an eyewitness to the campaign, of which the battle is the climax. Her books are about "the battle"; the campaign leads up to "the battle": "…it is all too easy to assume [the Gesta] tells us all we need to know." That's more of an endorsement, with a caution to search all the sources.

The piercing of helmets could have happened any place on the battlefield. So ends another of your suppositions of my so-called weaknesses.

I'm not calling you weak, just your argument.

You toss the point entirely: to be describing accurately what made the French bunch into three attack columns, "our cleric" must see pierced helmets on the ground at that place where the columns were formed; not here and there and everywhere else. Pierced helmets anywhere else BUT there would make "our cleric" a manipulator of facts to suit his narrative. We have no reason to assume he was that kind of writer.