"Charging at Bows" Topic

Writing in Slingshot, Nick Harbud reports that according to reenactors, bowfire will never stop a charge since there is insufficient time to fire.

Do you agree?

Depends on the ground – approaches to the archers, are they longbow? Are they behind stakes, do they have embedded men at arms? Are the front rank kneeling spearman? Are the horses barded? Too many variables.

Real knights probably wouldn't charge at lowly archers if there were better targets anyhow.

I seem to recall that several waves of French chivalry were stopped by bowfire, mud, and stakes, and that the MAA and archers then moved forward and won rather handily.

Granted, not stopped completely by arrows, but no doubt they played a large part in the battle.

French charges were also stopped by arrows at Crecy and Portiers too.

bowfire will never stop a charge since there is insufficient time to fire

Are we talking of just the final charge to contact (the last 20 meters or so), or the whole advance to contact from maximum range? There is a fair bit of difference.

Reenactors have more experience of the physicality of wearing and using Medieval equipment and well versed in the techniques perhaps used.

However, they have absolutely no experience of the morale effect of suddenly finding your family, friends and comrades bristling with embedded arrows due to veritable barrages of arrows fired by longbows.

Any hesitation as a result in range of a longbow might be fatal, resulting in heavy casualties and loss of any cohesion, command and control.

So, whilst in theory its hard to see how even a fast firing longbowmen could discharge enough before being reached in practice as we know bowfire regularly stopped charges dead (literally) in their tracks, and I'd suspect the chaos caused had a lot to do with this.

I suppose we're talking about knights charging here?

AFAIK there's no historical instance of such a charge being stopped by archery. In all the instances mentioned, archery is just a factor in the failure of the charge, but the loss of momentum – and that is what stops a charge – was caused by disorganisation from terrain (eg. Agincourt, Crecy), surprise (eg. Crecy), and/or total chaos (e.g. Poitiers).

Even in Napoleonic times cavalry managed to charge home against steady infantry. That didn't happen often, granted, but why then would armored horsemen on (armored) horses, both trained and experienced since childhood (and regulalry succeeding) to charge into steady spears and pikes do any worse?

So yes, believe the reenactors.

Cheers.

How many re-enactors have fired a real war bow?

How many re-enactors have charged a mass bow armed enemy with a slow moving barded horse while wearing plate armour prone to bodkin arrows being fired by a veteran bowman?

No, don't believe the re-enactors.

Ah, but how many of those re-enactors wore real armor and real shields, riding real war horses, and basically were as veteran as those bowmen?

Later still we find inexperienced horsemen wearing linen, wool or cotton – all rather prone to musket balls – on untrained horses, charging home.

Yes, believe the re-enactors, and the historians that pointed out the surprise flank attacks, muddy terrain and chaotic deployment of the famous examples, the real reasons those charges failed.

Cheers

With regard to re-enactors for confirmation of theories.
For information regarding equipment and usage, perhaps even formations but not being under fire and the psychological effects that causes

You can train 23 hours a day and not be prepared for the death and destruction REAL warfare involves.

Re-enactors are great sources for… re-enacting. period.

Mass casualties in a modern E. R. is not like training for same with moulages. Training and years of experience kicks do in and you function but the actual smell of gangrene, the actual sight of an impaled body (tire iron that ripped the aorta,) and 2nd/3rd degree burns (worked vacation relief in a Burn unit,) none of these were like the training – it took experiencing it to make you function under the stress adequately.

"… Writing in Slingshot, Nick Harbud reports that according to reenactors, bowfire will never stop a charge since there is insufficient time to fire…"

The ones killed and incapacitated (physically and mentally/emotionally) were stopped.

Worthy of note is that the arrows shot by reenactors are quite different to the arrows actually used in combat. After all reenactors do not want to actually injure those on the opposing side.

"Insufficient time to fire" seems questionable to me. Given a decent ground quiver you can get off a lot of arrows very quickly.

Are we talking infantry charge or cavalry charge? Cavalry charge, shoot the horses.

Lots of factors go into bringing a charge home or failing.

Over all though I would look to history. Archers are not reported as standing fast in the face of a charge and stopping it cold very often, If the tactic was a battle winner it would have been used more often.

I tend to believe hostory first and look to reenactors for insight into why history played out as it did.

I need a lot more information than just the claim made above to assess whether I believe the reenactors or not though.

At Crecy and Agincourt, terrain and weather stopped the charge. Archers killed knights mostly when they put down their bows used their polearms to massacre knights who were exhausted and stuck in deep mud. A longbow arrow might pierce a stationary breastplate at 40 feet, but dropping a moving target when he's bearing down on you -- well, a horse covers 40 feet very quickly. It would be very unlikely that a couple of volleys would stop armored knights charging unhindered across solid ground.

If the French mounted knights were effective at charging archers in the Hundred Years' War why did they generally dismount and fight on foot after Crecy?
I've had many friends taking part in various reenactment groups and the only experience they have is of dressing up in fancy clothes and armour, they suffer none of the privations and sickness that the actual troops suffered before going into action and have never seen their fellow reenactors severely wounded or killed in front of them.

Archers killed knights mostly when they put down their bows used their polearms to massacre knights

Archers had polearms?

Pechenegs stop charging Byzantine cavalry by shooting en masse at the halt. I think it sepends upon how well the archers hold their nerve and adjust their shooting as the opponent advances upon them.

A trained, veteran bowman can fire 20 arrows per minute. There's plenty of time for such a force to fire a mass of arrows at charging cavalry.

So the question I have is "which reenactors? All of them? Or just a select few? Or the ones he heard from? Were they bowmen or cavalry? Did they have a bias? How experienced are the bowmen at actually shooting military grade long bows in rapid volley fire? How experienced are the cavalry at military charges against the same? How many archers are shooting? 10? 20? 200? 2,000? Because unless the number is closer to the latter, the experience can't possibly be the equivalent.

I also find it hard to believe that *all* reenactors believe as the article claims, and would need proof that a scientifically valid survey was done to support this claim. Otherwise, it's just hearsay and cherry-picking to support a view already held by the author.

I'll credit reenactors with a lot of knowledge about costume, organization and the known details of whatever battle they are playacting at (same as wargamers), but actual knowledge or experience of real battle conditions, not so much.

If they could stop a mounted charge with arrows, why did they need stakes?

"Writing in Slingshot, Nick Harbud reports that according to reenactors, bowfire will never stop a charge since there is insufficient time to fire."

English Longbowmen carried stakes for that reason, they didn't have 'em at Bannockburn and were rolled over by Scots light horse.

I probably agree that archers on their own can't stop determined shock horsemen, but foot archers seemed to be good at driving away non-shock horse. But I can't recall any battles other than 100YW where shock cavalry was used on archers though?

A trained, veteran bowman can fire 20 arrows per minute.

Phew! Not even Hardy and Strickland would agree with that! A more realistic rate would be 10 – 12 shots a minute. A sheaf of 24 arrows would be gone in less than 3 minutes.

You don't have to kill the men to stop the charges, if they are riding horses.

As mentioned in historical accounts, the archers frequently targeted the horses of their opponents, leading to panic, and mayhem in the ranks.

In one of the battle accounts I read, for Crecy I believe, supposedly the archers had 60 – 72 arrows each.

It was also mentioned that the firing rate of their 150 lb. draw bows was about 6 – 10 arrows per minute, so given that, they could maintain a high rate of fire on their opponents for 7 – 12 minutes (assuming 72 arrows each).

Shooting at will is up to twenty shots per minute now?

Twelve per minute is enough already!

Volley shooting is half that. The first part of the charge by cavalry is going to be subjected to volley shooting, so no "aim for the horses chaps" happening there. Once inside pointblank range, the front couple of ranks are going to be laying on as fast as they can draw and aim, c. twelve shots per minute, and taking down horses directly. That's why plate armor was invented for horses. If they could charge warbows on naked horses and reach the archers in pretty good shape, there would have been no need to invent and pay for horse armor.

There is plenty of time to shoot cavalry to bloody ribbons, but some will always get there. They may be enough to rout off the archers. They may not be enough.

Trenches (Morlaix), pots (Crecy), hedgerows and carts (Poitiers), stakes (Agincourt, Verneuil, not deployed), were all deemed necessary additions to any battle line where archers occupied a large portion of the frontage. They bought time for more archery and broke the charge. Shooting alone was never relied upon to stop a cavalry charge….

Freecloud – there's really no reason to think that Scots cavalry at Bannockburn were 'light', but there are two other considerations;
-The English archers were still forming up and those who were in already action when the cavalry hit were shooting at the Scottish infantry and were thus outflanked.
– The application of the longbow had not yet developed to the standards of Dupplin or the HYW.
I'm not at all clear what you mean by 'non-shock' horse?

As referred to above, did the researchers interview the horses?

As my doctor said: he won't use the words 'never' or 'always'.

I've had a re-enactor tell me (quite forcibly) that an armoured man could *never* close with a longbowman.
I did point out that armoured men did get to grips with bowmen at Poitiers and Agincourt , albeit badly disordered, but he wasn't interested in troubling himself with facts that contradicted what he believed.

We know from eye witness accounts of actual battles that armoured men could and did weather the arrow storm and get to grips. The question, of course was always what state they were in by the time they got there. English archers were themselves quite well armoured and well armed for close combat, too.
If the knights are sufficiently disrupted or tired (e.g. by plodding through mud as at Agincourt) then the archers will finish them off. If they are not, then the archers will not fair so well.
If the knights are mounted, and the archers don't have stakes, then the archers are going to have to shoot very well indeed to stop them. Charging cavalry cover the ground fast.

The bottom line is this: We have plenty of eye witness accounts of encounters between longbows and knights. Why not use those instead of re-enactors?

Well said Dexter! Same applies to selecting secondary sources because they say what we want to read and to idle historians re-hashing those secondary sources 'cos they can't be bothered reading the primary material – or not bothering with record evidence because narratives are easier to come by. Then there's the problem of not really getting the best out of the narratives because they don't engage with the records.