"Ratios archers-MAA in WotR?" Topic

I am working in my WotR Yorkists and I was wondering if a ratio of archers to men-at-arms of 2-1 would be right, or if I should make it 3-1.

Also, does anyone know if billmen fought in the ranks of MAA units as rearguard supports? Or did they form their own separate units?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

My general impressions, from readings a while back, which could be way off base, are:

- archers and billmen would generally be about equal in number, so about 40% each, of an entire army's forces

- MAA would be a much smaller percentage of the overall force, like perhaps 10% – 15% of an army

- cavalry would be about 5% – 10% of an army

- not sure about pikemen, but they were sometimes fielded as well

I believe the billmen generally fought in separate units, though suspect they could be rear support for MAA, and/or intermixed with archers (front support to protect them), if needed/desired. Of course, I may be thinking more of continental units instead, e.g. Burgundians, Italian Wars nations' tactics, etc.

So, I will defer to people more up to speed on the subject, since I am definitely not an expert of the period.

I usually work on the basis of an army consisting of 50% archers, 40% billmen and 10% MAA in full harness.

- cavalry would be about 5% – 10% of an army

If at all. In many battles of the WOTR there were no mounted troops. Even at those where mounted troops are recorded the percentage would be very small (e.g. the "200 spears" at Tewkesbury), certainly a lot less than 5%. The one exception is probably Bosworth.

- not sure about pikemen, but they were sometimes fielded as well

Pikemen were only fielded by foreign mercenary contingents. The pike was not used by English troops.

Also, does anyone know if billmen fought in the ranks of MAA units as rearguard supports? Or did they form their own separate units?

The short answer is that we do not know. There was not really a concept of units as we know them in the 15th century. All the chronicles describe are armies split into 3 or 4 battles. Each battle therefore would consist of a mix of archers, billmen and MAA.

As MajorB says, they didn't really have 'units' in the 15th Century.

Where you stood was probably more to do with who your lord was than what kit you had…..

Contemporary illustrations tend to show a thin skin of archers in the front of blocks of men otherwise armed with shafted weapons.

Phil

There's a long, and very informative, thread on this very topic over on the Lead Adventure Forum: link

There is no evidence that yeomen shot "screened", i.e. behind any other troops than other archers. So, no billmen or MAA in front of archers.

I believe that billmen are simply "archers" who didn't make the grade. This proportion would be increasing as time passed. It takes a lot of practice time and years to make an archer capable of shooting the "warbow". A substitute was the bill. MAA used bills too, so I believe that they massed together. Of course it was also possible that a given archer would have a bill as his backup weapon. When the bows were ditched, probably the appearance of an archer with a two-handed weapon and a "billman" would be almost identical….

True about the pikes, but I heard some were imported into England, for the WotR.

Not sure which side they were on, or if they were in battle.

Thanks for the answers.

My idea was organizing the troops in separate groups according to their weaponry and function in the battlefield. I had assumed that WotR armies employed similar tactics to those used with success by the English armies in France, i.e. wings of archers with a nucleus of heavy armored MAA on foot and small reserves of mounted MAA. However, the narratives of battles I've read are not clear on how the archers were actually deployed, and while in France they look like the decisive weapon -at least until the late part of the wars- in England I was under the impression -again from modern narratives- that it was the melee armed troops who took the brunt of the fight.

There is another problem that I am trying to fathom: how they actually fought? I mean, in WoTR some melees were short affairs, true, but others (Towton comes to mind) went for hours before a decision was reached. Fighting on foot in full battle armour is exhausting. How were they able to fight for so long? Did they have some method in place to exchange the front line fighters for fresher warriors from the rear ranks? Or once the melee was joined it became an affair of short bursts of fighting interpersed with lulls while the warriors caught their breaths? Did they fought in close ranks? Or did they fought in looser formations in small knots of warriors from the same retinue?

PS: I know that "units" weren't a XVth Century thing, actually. I used the word in a "wargaming" sense :D

True about the pikes, but I heard some were imported into England, for the WotR.

Not sure which side they were on, or if they were in battle.

French mercenaries were present at Bosworth, possibly pike armed.
There were Burgundian mercenaries at 2nd St Albans, but they were armed with handguns.

True about the pikes, but I heard some were imported into England, for the WotR.
Not sure which side they were on, or if they were in battle.

Foard & Curry's "Bosworth 1485: A Battlefield Rediscovered" cites a document from 1483 in which a Burgundian-Netherlandish (I think) official was to send a consignment of pikes to England – so that would be either Edward IV or Richard III, depending on the exact date, placing the order. As far as I remember, they cite no evidence as to whether the pikes were ever used; quite possibly they were never issued.

But if they _were_, it raises the intriguing possibility that there might have been pikes on both sides at Bosworth, with these weapons opposing Tudor's possibly-pike-armed French!

"Units": as far as I know, "we" don't know.

Ventenars and centenars commanded companies of 20 and 100 men respectively. The companies were lumped together to form "battles", or auxiliary "units" assigned to battles of MAA, which were typically grouped in the center. But sometimes archers were assigned, or maneuvered into position, in front of the MAA.

So the best approach from a war gaming pov is to limit English armies to up to three "battles", which are single commands, or like smaller armies within the whole, and keep the whole thing together. Array, such as whether or not the archers are in front, on the wings, or both, is up to the player/commander. The over all commander (e.g. Henry V at Agincourt) will, of course, assign an order of battle for his whole army, but once the action starts, he has zero control over what the commanders of the other two battles choose to do….

Thanks for the input Great War Ace.

Thanks for the input Great War Ace.

Yes, nice one GWA. Although I'm not convinced by your take on billmen – unless you use the term for any long shafted weapon :-)

I would expect the professional members of retinues to be either MAA or archers, most of the later also being mounted between battles, at a ratio of 1:2. MAA would have had a warhorse, but generally chose to dismount to fight.

To that would be added locally raised forces.

@Queen Kate: That level of mistrust would keep people off the battlefield altogether and inside their fortresses to await better times. The evidence for earlier battles tells me that retinues were always "broken up" and merged into larger commands of like arms. Your picture of WotR battles, with clusters of mixed arms more or less lined up side by side would turn into a giant cluster phuq. In order to achieve cohesion and a united, organized tactical aim the troops would have to be armed the same way. "Billmen" would be alongside, mingled with, or behind MAA. Archers would have backup melee weapons, but would start the battle grouped together separately from the MAA and billmen. That is the only way that a density of volley shooting could be achieved….

The evidence for earlier battles tells me that retinues were always "broken up" and merged into larger commands of like arms.

What evidence are you referring to?

I'm not convinced they were widely separated either. Of course we have Sir Thomas Erpingham being described as the commander of the archers at Agincourt, but that was arguably an honorific.

Perhaps you meant that the evidence came later, such as Burgundian lances?

No, HYW English armies. Erpingham is one example. Eyewitness descriptions insist that the Archers were in discrete "wings", with the possibility that at one point there were thin lines of archers across the front of the "battles", i.e. the MAA/billmen, or, melee troops. There is nothing in the text to show that archers were standing alongside or behind or in front of, their fellow retinue MAA, et al. non archer melee troops, or that such "companies" in their various sizes were arranged beside each other with intermixed arms as is being suggested above….

There is nothing in the text to show that archers were standing alongside or behind or in front of, their fellow retinue MAA, et al. non archer melee troops,

There is also nothing in the text to show they weren't.

To be fair to both of you, despite a relative wealth of sources on manpower, I think we still lack a definitive answer on this point – hence my ambiguity, but I suspect that it may feature in this next year's Agincourt Conference hosted by Anne Curry:

'War on Land and Sea: Agincourt in Context'

link

It seems pretty evident to me that yeomen were described in battle after battle separated from MAA, beginning with Crecy. If the assertion were true that there is nothing in the text to show that they weren't intermixed, we would have had a divided scholarship on the subject of deployment. But we don't see that. The "old guys" of the 19th century were pretty much in consensus on how the English arranged their troops. It is only questioning wannabe apple cart topplers who bring up things like this. If you want to twist the most clear interpretations of the evidence into something "new", have a go. The old interpretations mostly work to explain the outcomes of the battles, still, after all of this new stuff.

It must stink to realize that the vast majority of what needed explaining has already been explained before you were even born. So the only way to embark on a historical scholar career is to look for "the untold story/mystery" angle, or the "never before understood" assertion, then publish and stand back and wait….

But we don't see that. The "old guys" of the 19th century were pretty much in consensus on how the English arranged their troops.

Sadly, a lot of 19th century historians simply repeated what they read from other historians without conducting any proper research on the primary sources. When we were researching the Battles of St Albans we were amazed to discover that for one of the primary sources, that of Abbot Whethamstede (an "eye witness" ), there was NO modern translation of the medieval Latin text. To put that another way, as far as we can tell, none of the 19th century historians actually read what the good Abbot had actually written but simply quoted from someone else …

Unfortunately, MajB's point is all too accurate and stretches into 20th century scholarship (eg Charles Oman and Steven Runciman), as well as the occasional modern popular history.

You try challanging a Wikipedia entry that is based on their opinions with modern research though (sigh)…

When we were researching the Battles of St Albans we were amazed to discover that for one of the primary sources, that of Abbot Whethamstede (an "eye witness" ), there was NO modern translation of the medieval Latin text. To put that another way, as far as we can tell, none of the 19th century historians actually read what the good Abbot had actually written but simply quoted from someone else …

But surely every educated gentleman in the 19th century read Latin fluently, so who would need a translation? It's only us classically challenged moderns who feel that need.

As can modern professional historians who specialise in the Middle Ages, and we are all trained to return to the original text whenever possible. Hence, the occasional identification of well-established 'truths' as simple transcription errors, poor translations, regurgitation of another historian's error, undeclared assumptions made to fill gaps in data etc. :-)

Are you asserting that the majority of 19th century medieval scholars, those that we still reference today, were merely echo chambers?…

Not at all, but like some modern popular historians (Dan Snow comes to mind in UK) they cannot be taken at face value. Of course, all historians can make errors, but my biggest concern would be the presentation of deductions based on undeclared assumptions as concrete conclusions. Some of which then get treated as facts by their peers.

However, things have moved on, especially in regards to source handling and the presentation of speculation. So I'd prefer to draw from the research of Anne Curry and Matthew Bennett then Charles Oman :-)

But surely every educated gentleman in the 19th century read Latin fluently, so who would need a translation? It's only us classically challenged moderns who feel that need.

Apparently not. They may have learnt Latin at school (as indeed did I) but medieval Latin is quite different from classical Latin.

Excellent points all round in regard to the recycling of bad scholarship -and top marks to Janner in regard to the reaction that challenging a wikipedia entry can provoke.
WotR is a bit late for me, but this has been a most interesting series of posts.

Curry, Bennett and Oman are all in agreement: that MAA and archers formed into separate "units". The MAA formed "battles", and auxiliary troops formed separately and were then "attached" to one of the battles under the command of the battle commander in chief. Archers were placed according to said-C-in-C's dictates. I don't see this as changed from the "old guys".

What seems to have changed (since "Victorian" scholarship) is the emphasis on terrain, reexamination of the documents to determine more accurate army sizes, and a reassessment of the effectiveness of weapons and armor.

If you could point out to me where modern scholarship has ditched "Oman's" discrete battles of MAA and archers separately arrayed from each other, I'm interested….

Have you consulted Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, edited by Anne Curry and Michael Hughes, Merlin, and Matt's piece in particular?
link
Note that when writing of archers, he is not specifying that they were necessarily distinct formations (though that is possible), but he is merely that their location in relation to the MAA. So they could still have been acting in concert with the other part of their retinue.

Asking as layman in Medieval history, wouldn't be logic to think that mixing archers with MAA battles wouldn't have made a lot of tactical sense? I mean, the common wisdom is that archery gave an edge to English armies thanks to their ability to shoot fast and massive volleys of arrows. How would have been possible to deliver such volleys if they would have been spread thin in the battleline? It seems counterintuitive.

I haven't seen eye witness evidence from this period that indicates that they usually loosed in distinct volleys, B66, but rather it being described as an arrow storm, ie on being given the signal to loose, each archer knocked and released at their own speed until they had used up their immediate supply of arrows – usually two dozen – producing a persistent hail of plunging arrows.

When it comes to effect, as you know, what is important is concentration at point of impact rather than point of delivery. However, with the archers outnumbering the MAAs to such an extent, the spread is unlikely to have been so thin.

You could, perhaps, imagine the archers and MAAs of the same retinue acting in concert, mutually supporting one another, with those archers from centrally placed retinues initially moving in front of the battle (division) to loose, whilst those increasingly further out had to go on the flanks because of the numbers involved and ability to continue as the enemy neared and the prospect of close combat increased.

I hope that makes sense :-)

Yep, it does. Thanks Janner!

Very interesting discussion, by the way.

I have both of Curry's books on Agincourt.

The first time I even had the possibility of this discussion's "mingled" arms occur to me was in this discussion. I have not run across the notion before.

I think it is unsupportable. And I cannot think of a reason why "we" would want to start playing our medieval battles that way. Why would England be different from the Continent? Examples can be multiplied of archers distinctly arrayed from MAA or dismounted knights and other infantry. There are also examples of archers/crossbowmen being intermixed, e.g. the battle of the Standard, where they take station within the ranks of infantry and/or just in front (with their subsequent position being back into the "phalanx" or moved out to the flanks when the hand to hand starts). All of these earlier cases are with archers/crossbowmen vastly outnumbered by infantry.

Later England is a unique case in Europe of archers dominating the army, even on a ratio of five or six to one. Nobody else has such numbers of archers. Even when total archers/crossbowmen reach something like a parity with infantry, the marksmen are either arrayed behind and shooting "screened", or they are on the flanks or out in front. There is nothing to suggest that each retinue's marksmen stay close to, and work in concert with, their own infantry. This would impose a stringent limitation on the ability of the C-in-C to array his troops as deemed tactically necessary. I don't doubt that the archers of the same retinue stood with each other, and obviously the MAA of a retinue remained cohesive.

Taking Agincourt as a clear example (to my mind anyway): the eyewitness accounts speak of the French and English MAA engaging in melee, THEN the archers go into it on the flanks and rear of the French, when they run out of arrows. This is exactly what we expect if the archers are on the flanks of the MAA. Once the archers are done with the first battle, they move into the second French battle as it comes up in the face of the routing first battle, and engage it before the English MAA do. This is what would occur if the archers joined on the flanks and rear of the first battle: the archers would be more forward than the English MAA, and therefore the archers would engage the second battle before the English MAA could. And that's how the sources read. If the archers were arrayed with MAA in their midst, i.e. staying together as retinues of mixed arms, then archers and MAA would be contacted simultaneously by the French first battle, and the archers on the flanks would be indistinguishable from the rest. MAA scattered up and down the line, almost hidden by the mass of archers, would hardly present a target of "equals" for the French MAA to attack….

The first time I even had the possibility of this discussion's "mingled" arms occur to me was in this discussion. I have not run across the notion before

I think you are misunderstanding what we mean. As far as I am concerned, I see no evidence in the chronicles to support the notion of archers acting as completely independent units in the WOTR. All the accounts speak of so-and-so's battle doing this or that rather than referring to different troop types doing different things or acting in anything other than consort.

FWIW I envisage a battle being made up of so many ranks of archers with so many ranks of MAA behind. If the archers outnumber the MAA then by all means put the extra archers on the flanks. This maximises the effective frontage for the "arrow shower". At the critical moment and by command, the archers can withdraw through the MAA (or the MAA advance through the archers) allowing the MAA to engage in close combat. The archers are then free to move round and engage the flanks/rear of the enemy (but only if they can do so without being flanked themselves).

YMMV and that's fine.

Oh. Well, I don't have any problem with what you just clarified for me. That's how I define it in my games. A "battle" is usually composed of different arms. But the over all command structure does not allow for separation: the whole battle must remain in cohesive proximity. If, as at Agincourt, elements pursue, or are pursued, such that they break away from the main "parent" body of the battle, then at their earliest opportunity they must move in resume physical contact with the "parent" body of the battle. If the battle is broken up such that no single "parent" body can be shown, then the separated elements must move into physical contact as soon as allowed. Failure to observe this rule requires a morale test each turn of failure to move to reestablish the battle. Failure of the morale test removes that testing fragment from the game table: i.e. those men have moved beyond the command control of the player and no longer constitute a tactical element in the game. Artificial, yes, but simple and effective. Players with any sense do not break off segments of their battle to form smaller tactical "units" to try for advantage, as such shenanigans will get your troops taken away pronto.

A battle composed of two or more subunits nevertheless is ONE "unit" for command control purposes and must perform the same function as the other subunits on a given turn. For example, if a "run" move is made, then all troops must run that turn. If the battle is commanded to stand still, then you may not make "parade ground" maneuvers with parts of the battle while the rest are standing still. Stock maneuvers, such as passing through the ranks by missile troops, etc., are understood to be the exception to the rule….

That's precisely the sort of mutual support I was trying to describe, GWA :-)

Mind you, just as in Matt's article I linked in an earlier post, we are all products of our experience. So just as Oman may well have brought a Peninsula War viewpoint to bare, and Burke was a gunner, I strive to overcome my own prejudices. In short, I really appreciate the way you challenge our arguments.

Don;t know how relevant this is being a century and more earlier, but in the 14 th C. in addition to the vintenars and centenars there were alos millenars in charge of (notionally) 1000 men. The units seem to have contained both archers and spearmen It seems that this was a matter of articulation so that a portion of the army could be detached for a specific task and would comprise a balance of archers and spears, but that the unit would not necessarily be arrayed as an entity for a general engagement, rather that the archers and spearmen would be separated off into different bodies.

Any chance of a source, UFB? It's not that I don't believe you, I just very interested to know what it is :-)

Off the top of my head I think CDS and Rot. Scot for calendared documents and Prestwich 's Medieval Warfare; the English Experience' for discussion. As I recall (and it's been a while) Rot Scot also has a couple of conscription-type documents showing recruits being issued with spears and bows. Mail me… thathistoryblokeATbtinternetDOTcom ….and I'll see what I can find for you.
Of course this may all be completely irrelevant by the 1450s.

Great, unsurprisingly I have Prestwich ;-)

The Soldiers (Chapter 46)

from here

Wars of the Roses

Doesn't list the orginal sources which would have been helpful

CAG – Would n't really recommend it as a bit of scholarship.

I enjoyed this part of the website author's pen picture,

attaining the rank of Sergeant on three separate occasions.

I guess he never qualified for his Long Service and Good Conduct medal then lol

My father tells me he was 'three times a gunner and twie a bombardier', but my grandfather (WW1) said that the army was so fond of him that every time he went home on leave they would send a special welcoming party to escort him fro his house to the railway station.

The Soldiers (Chapter 46)
from here
Wars of the Roses

Wouldn't really recommend it as a bit of scholarship

Neither would I.

All that text and not a single mention of bastard feudalism …

Just one quote from that page:
"the archer had to wear a heavy leather glove on the left hand and wrist to prevent damage to the tendons by the bow string."

-- Really?

Lots of talk about Agincourt, where the few, the proud, the marines, erhm, band of brothers, whatever, fought against the Frenchies as a unified force.

Less about the WOTR.

Based on the idea that what was true and good in the HYW was also true and good in the WOTR.

Which of course is not necessarily true …

In a larger battle, where everyone with a pointy object was turned out, then OK, the ratio of archers would drop.

Don't agree with this premise. Even at the larger battle of the WOTR, the fighting troops were nearly all retinue troops – i.e the paid professionals.

Before that, it was a DBA Big Battle, and of course that game forces you to use discreet units.

Well if you consider an element to be a unit then yes, but a typical WOTR battle would consist of several thousand men so if an DBA element represents about 500 men then a battle will consist of a number of elements.

yes, by "unit" DBA means one stand of troops that whatever their individual differences have a resultant uniformity on the table, and are able to move seperately [if you've the PIPS to do so].

True, but in practice most players move DBA elements as groups.

My thought for larger battles is that the forces would scrape up everyone they could, including the long-stick whackers,

According to the chronicles, when they did do as you suggest e.g. the Lancastrian campaign of 1461, when it came to the actual fighting the levy (i.e. those "scraped up" that you refer to) found they had urgent appointments that required them to be elsewhere …

Overall, I assume the billmen are a less skilled bunch,

Why would billmen be less skilled? Not all men-at-arms (or their lord) could afford full plate harness, so billmen are what we call thosed with lesser armour, but if retinue troops are still trained in the use of pole weapons.

I think that it is logical to take English HYW practice as the base tactical system and apply the WotR differences to it. HYW practice did not die away but it was modified by domestic circumstances.

Cate's observation of paranoia in the civil war atmosphere is the biggest change from the HYW venue. But that would mainly effect how often battles occurred, and then morale as the possibilities of betrayal stood uppermost in everyone's mind. I don't see the actual tactics and drill/training changing much throughout the whole period of the WotR. Arms and tactics changed slower in Britain than on the Continent (e.g. Henry VIII's antiquated, "quaint" army including yeomen archers didn't impress anyone on the Continent three generations later).

So in a war game sense, a HYW army list ought to work for the most part to represent WotR army organization and tactics….