"Bows (and other missile fire)" Topic

I'm starting to get back into ancients and medieval games – but I've always hated the way that bows (and often other missile weapons) are so overpowered in almost all rules sets.

In general, bows in Ancient and Medieval games are more powerful than massed muskets are in Napoleonics – often more powerful than artillery. I think that's absurd – and certainly not backed up by any historical evidence.

Even in sets where they aren't outrageously overpowered, I think their effects are modelled incorrectly – by removing casualties – which further skews their effect. Missile fire should be modelled primarily as an area effect that disorders and harries opponents.

While I don't have any statistics at hand to prove you wrong I have this gut feeling you'ver got it by the wrong end.

Precission, reach and rate of fire were IMO much higher than with fireweapons up to the rifled gun. Muskets were notoriously inprecise at anything beyond a very short range.

As for cannon, the early ones with solid shot were a good weapon against a solid cover like a wall, but had relatively little impact on an infantry unit: it cut a path through it alright, but there was no shrapnell or such to make the destruction of the unit complete.

And why would we not remove the casualties? There is historical reference plenty that arrows were quite lethal.

In Shattered Lances, missile fire is separated into 'harassment' and 'volleys'. Harassment is normally done at a distance, with the primary effect being to 'change the behaviour' of the target. E.g. they may halt, or surge forward after their tormentors. This is more consistent with battle accounts (Latin and Arabic) of warriors fighting on with numerous arrows sticking out of their armour. Indeed, there are a raft of Arabic and Farsi words to describe these long-range, often light, harassment arrows. Latin accounts might describe them as 'musca', or 'flies'.

Volley shots are short-range, and can be quite lethal. I believe this is consistent with such Arabic accounts describing such attacks as 'meteor like'. The gaming consequence of this however, is in order to be close enough to do serious damage, such missile units accept the higher risk they may be charged by their opponent.

I think it is difficult to reduce 'both' types of missile attacks into one 'broader' missile game mechanism.

Chthonic regards

B

Well, for starters, in many rule sets it could be argued that removing figures IS mostly just reflecting the disordering of the enemy. Morale is shaken, men slip away when no one is looking, and a few are actual casualties.

Another thing is that in most rule sets, an archer will get one or two shots at an advancing unit. The combat system for the rules has to give the results of random sniping/harrasing then a minute or two minutes of concentrated fire as a unit approaches. This could be done with a dozen rolls with little chance of scoring many kills or a couple of powerful shots. The later works best for most people.

An archer could and should have more firepower then a napoleonic infantryman. The difference is that any dork can be shown how to load and point in the general direction of the enemy. A good archer takes a lot of training (even a little shortbow takes more skill to accurately use then a musket). Training that they didn't have time for in the Napoleonic wars. A musket armed troop could carry on his person a lot more ammunition then an archer. Muzzleloaders had to be careful of moisture but after individually packet ammunition became available a musket could still be used in wet weather. A bow gets all funky and weak (until modern man made fiber strings came about). A moderately skilled archer can fire 3 or 4 times faster then a musket…..

I play Napies as well as ancients/midievals. I run Romans, Authurian Britons, Saxons, and Hitties. No missile strong armies there. I've never had a problem with the power of bows in most rules.

I've gone on long enough.

I believe there was an ?English? Napoleonic general who actually proposed bringing back the bow as armament for some-or-other elite unit due to the reasons given above: good bows were more accurate and longer-ranged than the powder weapons of the time! Sorry for the vagueness of this "historical fact", but I'm sure someone else will have heard of the same proposal and fill in some more details.

I think your problem stems from a more general "decision" you've made (perhaps unconsciously) about "how wargames should work". Consider the following questions:

Can and should a modern-day machinegun cause casualties via "figure removal" – or just cause disorder?

If so, can and should a WW2 rifle cause casualties via "figure removal" – or just cause disorder?

If so, can and should a ACW rifle cause casualties via "figure removal" – or just cause disorder?

If so, can and should a crossbow cause casualties via "figure removal" – or just cause disorder?

What's the difference between any projectile weapon, at the end of the day, except for range/accuracy/penetration/ammo consumption factors that frankly have little to do with whether taking a hit in the eye is going to kill you? Harold Godwinson was killed just as dead by an arrow as he would've been if he was hit in the face by a 5.56mm bullet. Again, what's the difference? Once launched, both are rapid projectiles easily capable of penetrating human flesh and causing fatal damage to our soft inner squishy bits.

It is a rare case indeed where a combatant (real-world or wargames miniature) is clad from head to toe in armour that is 100% effective against the projectiles of the enemy. There's always a weak spot, so there are always going to be actual bona fide casualties – men dropping dead as the arrows (or bullets) rain down on them. Removing some (but rarely all) of the figures in a many-figure unit seems to model this quite nicely.

I think in ancient and medieval times a bow with its impressive rate of fire was indeed a formidable weapon.
The samurai (pre-arquebus) used to focus on the Yumi (their bow) first, the Yari (spear) second, and their swords last. I think that alone speaks volumes.

I could imagine that on any random battlefield in the dark ages a hillside all of a sudden swarming with archers taking aim had about nigh on the same moral impact on enemy soldiers at the foot of the hill as an elephant charging at you at 30mph must have had in ancient times.

I do believe, though, that whatever thusly "unbalanced" rules you might be playing, archers (especially if unmounted) are naturally vulnerable, and most of the rules (few admittedly) I have played myself in these eras have always had some type of mechanism representing the frailty of charged archers.

Also, all the way up to before renaissance even infantry was relatively agile, so outmanouvering might become more important and less neglectable than often the case in these eras, if facing an onslought of enemy archers, methinks.

Hall (Weapons and Warfare in the Renaissance) has some intereting examples of large scale casualties caused by bow fire. Some of the worst (I do not have the book here so I can't look up the battle) were cause by suffocation as an advancing formation compressed to the centre to avoid bowmen on both flanks while moving toward a non bow unit forward.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no rules that look at this sort of effect.

Who can say how effective bows were? I think that if you have enough guys firing enough arrows at unarmored, or lightly armored enemies, you are going to cause some casualties.

However, the effectiveness of bows against armor is iffy. In a research project studying the battle of Agincourt, it was determined that the English Longbow, which has traditionally been given credit for winning that battle, would not ave been capable of piercing the armor of the French Knights. In a demonstration that I have seen, a crossbow was unable to penetrate an armored breastplate, after many attempts.

This is not to say that some guys weren't hit in the eye, a joint, or even the hand, but for the most part, in these two studies, it seems that bow fire was more for harrassment than for actually killing armored enemies.

Mandt2, but the majority of the troops were not so heavily armoured, and we also have examples of what happens to heavily armoured knights if the venture to far by themselves. It's lik LMG fire to keep the infantry down and tanks butoned op so you can take them out more easily. When seen like that, the bow was an effective weapon.

The Piquet ancient set of rules Archon, has fire split into undirected fire (the majority) and directed fire. Undirected fire has to be very lucky to damage a target as far as removing casualties, the main effect is to disorder the enemy.

THE "SUFFICATION EFFECT" was unique to the BATTLE OF AGINCOURT where dismounted FRENCH nobility, knights, and other men at arms WERE STRUGGLING to advance across a muddy field being "swept" with an almost non stop shower of incoming arrows.

as for the effectiveness of the bodkin tipped arrow vs personal protection worn by the FRENCH, consider that the FRENCH were forced away from the longbowmen by the concentrated archery (direct shooting, and high angle, indirect shooting, loosed on command as well as at will by individual archers).
bodkin tipped shafts smacking into the crowed mass if slow moving dismounted gentry would have several types of effects:

a. arrows that do not penetrate the armor due to impacting on rounded or slanted surfaces, STILL DELIVERY A KINETIC ENERGY ATTACK to the person on the recieving end, capable of causing individuals to be stunned by the impact, staggered by the impact, or to stumble and fall due to a mistep or being off balance at the time of impact. also remember that the most cmplete armors, still had vulnerable joints and attachment points where a lucky shaft might impact and penetrate!

b. arrows that do not penetrate the armor for any reason also delivery a resounding metallic sound as they smack into the targeted individuals, subjecting him to dozens of non penetrating arrow strikes per minute, or per second as the "clouds of arrows" smack into them, causing involuntary distraction, instinctive "flinching" and dirty drawers. closest thing most modern folks will ever come to experiencing the sounds of such an event would be to be caught out inside an autombile or in a metal building during an intense hailstorm. the noise not only completely negates spoken or shouted cummincation, but is also very un-nerving to a lot of folks.

c. in-coming arrows that miss everyone, or glance off of armor, will hit the earth among and all around the targeted men. this causes a couple of problems for the better armored FRENCH gentry and lesser armored retainers struggling toward the archers. arrows that bury themselves solidly in the earth become respectable obstacles, capable of tripping the dismounted men, while more loosely embedded arrows and arrows that are lying on the ground also become obstables due to uncertain footing! men wearing closed visored helmets or great helms have very limited fields of vision!

d. in-coming arrows do not always glance off of the individual's body armor! remember, the guys wearing the "best of the best" in personal protection were wearing the modern equivalent of a "mercedes" in cost! so, not everyone had the latest, high tech, complete "harness" ! most of these guys were going forward into battle wearing older , hand me down armor worn by grandfathers, fathers, etc, modified by armorers as much as possible to fit THEM, with large amounts of just plate pieces worn over basic mail/other metal protection over padded undergarments. this means areas exposed and vulnerable to penetrating arrow strikes! add the occassional shot dead or wounded man to the obstacles littering the mudy ground, too!

e. FRENCHMEN in need of that gasping breath of fresh air, or wiping away that scalding sweat in the eyes, or just trying to get better battlefield orientation, or trying to be heard when issuing orders, would all have to raise their visors (if their helmets were equipped with one!) and this means that their very vulnerable faces are exposed to the seemingly endless arrow storm impacting on and all arround them! FRENCHMAN dumb enough to be wearing great helms without movable visors, would have to remove the great helm completely in order to get that breath of air, wipe that sweat, or look around to see O is happening around them. the real or percieved danger of geting a bodkin point arrow through aview slit/breathing hole, or sustaining a serious injury from a non penetrating arrow strike (kinetic energy from impact) is WHY experienced combatants lowered their heads (and reduced visibility even further) when advancing or standing still under flights of in-coming arrows.

there is interesting HISTORICALLY RECORED tendency for inexperienced and even some experienced combatants to raise their heads and look at the in-coming clouds of arrows! unlike in-coming bullets, in-coming clouds of arrows were visible to the intended targets!

f. the tests i have seen with a modern made 15th century helmet, or body armor that is solidly hit at short range by an arrowed shot from a longbow (direct shot, not indirect shooting) did result in penetrations at least 25% of the time. i do not know about you, but, 3" – 6" of arrow punching through MY PLATE, the underlying MAIL, and then the padded arming coat and clothing. sure as hell would provide a serious distraction to ME!

now IN ADDITION TO ALL OF THE ABOVE, consider the so-called desire of the waddling armored mass to close with the ENGLISH ment at arms flanking the arrchers, to engage in "glorious combat". by ENGLISH men at arms i am referring to the nobility, knights, and gentry, not to the lower class retainers armed with assorted lethal polearms who made of the majority of the man at arm blocks linking the archer herces in the battle line.

PLUS the recorded ability of the more lightly armed and nimble ENGLISH archers to wade into H2H combat with their better armed FRENCH upper class enemies.

seems to me that the massed archery, as long as the arrows lasted, was a very effective weaoon at AGINCOURT, and a lot of other battlefields in medieval times.

yes, i am also aware of the rarer battles where-in the massed archery did not significantly effect the outcome of the combat.

DAWGIE

There are some very lenthy and detailed discussions of bow and casulties at Agincourt in the archives.

Here is a good one….

TMP link

Here's a site about the physics of archery that may be of interest:

link

". the tests i have seen with a modern made 15th century helmet, or body armor that is solidly hit at short range by an arrowed shot from a longbow (direct shot, not indirect shooting) did result in penetrations at least 25% of the time."

And the chances of a solid hit are extremely low. The other point is that at anything except point blank range, an arrow has almost no kinetic energy.

And at point blank range – the archers are going to be very worried about someone closing with them. Archers are usually not melee troops.

Finally, the movie Alexander was at least realistic in the battle scene – where everything rapidly degenerated into a lot of noise, confusion, and dust. Any bow unit would be hard pressed to find a target – and not very eager to stick around when one suddenly appeared at point blank range.

Even if you want to give the longbow in the hands of experienced archers those kinds of effects (which I wouldn't), the other bows certainly wouldn't qualify.

Our valorization of the bow is due mostly to medieval English propaganda.

As for casualty removal – it usually skews the results drastically because there is no way to recover them – as you could from disorder. And again, I think bow fire should be considered more a harassment effect than a permanent degradation of a unit's effectiveness.

Let's be generous and say that bows can disable an opponent about 10% of the time under battlefield conditions (about 10 times as effective as musket fire against a stationary, unarmored, massed target, at point blank range).

We'd also have to postulate that the bow unit had a clear line of fire to the target long enough to fire a few volleys accurately enough to hit a moving target, no other distractions, and was disciplined enough to stand its ground knowing that if the better armed and armored enemy closed they'd be cut to pieces – and further, that the enemy does nothing to help it's situation – no shield walls, no crouching and going prone like the Zulus, no sending out flanking units, no misdirection or pinning by allied cavalry or harrying by skirmishers or their own bows.

Given all that, I think a bow unit might have a 50/50 chance of defeating an opposing melee unit – and have no ammunition left for the next one.

There was no non-stop shower of arrows at Azincourt, the English simply did not have logistics to provide enough arrows to the 7000-7600 archers to allow them to sustain such a barrage. A significant number of arrows would also miss completly since the English archers good that they were did not have laser range finders and targeting computers.

That the English beat those of the 6000 or so French men-at-arms that made the atatck at Agincourt on foot isn't strange. An outnumbered force attacking a enemy in partialy prepared postions across difficult gound and which arrives disordered by archery will loose. The unfavourable ground at Azincourt also allowed the English archers to fight in the melee at a much greater effect than usual.

Teh standard question to ask in any modern testign of armou ris if the armour is high quality reproduction on the elvel of the old master armoureers or simply modern stuff which lloks right but hasn't the right properties? A lot of tests involves sub-standard armour and the resulting penetrations are then held up as evidence that longbow coudl pierce plate armour. As Prof. Williams has shown the lognbow doesn't generate enough impact energy to be an effective man-killer against targets in first rate_steel_armour. The Iron armour in use before the 1410's is a diffrent matter and even steel armour has weak points which can be pentrated. Accounts speak of how the sides and visors of the basicnets were penetrated at close range.
The vast majority of Frenchmen didn't die as a result of arrow wounds or in the melee nor of suffocation but as the English slaugther of unarmed prisoners of war.

In short the main effect of achery versus well amroured targets is disorder not casulties and in order to cause such disorder one needs a huge number of archers well supplied with arrows. If the archers are to few, run out of arrows or are negated by counter fire the armored men-at-arms will be able to close in good order.

"In short the main effect of achery versus well amroured targets is disorder not casulties and in order to cause such disorder one needs a huge number of archers well supplied with arrows."

You're spot on! Armor penetration did not matter nearly as much as the disorder effects.

The problem is to establish when disruption will occur or not. Clearly being well protected increadsed the chances of crossing the "beaten zone" of the archery without suffering disruption as witnessed at Nogen-sur-Seine, Poiters, Vernuil and Flodden.

In most rules melee loses are also excessive.

There is a great new book on Agincourt by Anne Curry who is kind of the reigning maven on the subject at the moment: "Agincourt: A New History." She questions several assumptions about the battle including numbers of troops involved on both sides.

Dawgie makes some good points, but Curry reminds us that the French men at arms were aimed at the English men at arms, and really weren't paying much attention to the archers. They'd have had a hard time seeing them with their visors down. Thus, confused and disordered by the missile fire they were ripe for the slaughter by the fast moving archers, and would not have been able to fight back effectively due to the bunching caused by the missile fire.

A couple of other things about archery: Mounted charges were doomed against well placed massed archers. Horses were often maddened by the arrows and became a danger to riders and others. Though often protected frontally by a chanfron and possibly other armor, once the horses turned they were much less well protected, and if they turned tail, not prottected at all. This happened at both Crecy and Agincourt. However, if the archers weren't protected by stakes or pits or trenches or something like that, they were easy meat.

I read recently that though foot knights were well protected, their visors could be penetrated by arrows. Ick!

I'd also recommend Kelly De Vries' book, "Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth century." He examines about a dozen battles involving successful infantry defenses. His point is that these defenses often forced attackers, either through use of terrain or by digging pits or other obstructions, to clump together, reducing their effectiveness through disorder, or diffusing impetus, particularly of cavalry.

Kevin

Always remember Parzival's Definition of "Historian":

A person living hundreds of years after an event who thinks he knows more about what happened than the people who were actually there.

Follow that with Parzival's Maxim on Effective Weaponry:

If a weapon didn't kill people, no army would use it— at least, not for long.

(By the way, the individual who suggested using longbows instead of muskets was Benjamin Franklin, during the AWI.)

Once effective horse armour was developed massed archery lost a significant part of it's pwoer agianst mounted charges. The Lombard mercenaries on their armored horses easily smashed right through the English archers at Vernuil despite the hail or arrows and the stakes planted in front of the archers.

Anne Curry's new work is an amazing piece of research, her one and only weakness is the gaps in her udnerstanding of the fighting techniques of the men invovled and how the various styles interacted. There were alos a number of purely tactical reason for the French to go for the English men-at-arms beside supposed chivalric notions. The area were the English MAAs were positioned would be the only open spot on the field not covered with archer's stakes. Going for the English MAAs would also be the only way to decide the battle quickly by effectively decapitating the English command system by killing or capturing the King and the Nobles.

As other battles has shown defeating the archers was often not enough to win the battle. At Vernuil the Lombard charge killed and dispersed a lot of English archers while the archers and crossbowmen on both sides engaged in mutual slaugther.

I'd point out, as Curry does, that at Agincourt it is not actually certain that the archers had their stakes emplaced at the position the fighting took place. The sources are not consistent and one says the stakes covered the whole frontage.

Also the stakes were an anti-cavalry tactic and there is no indication that they were thought to have had any value against dismounted men-at-arms (and Nicopolis may show that their effect would have been minor).

Additionally, again as Curry points out, the French probably attacked the English men-at-arms because there were deployed on the top of the ridge that forms that battlefield and not down the muddy slopes like the archers – in other words it was easier for them to stay on their feet this way. This was, of course, aided by the effects of the archery.

[A person living hundreds of years after an event who thinks he knows more about what happened than the people who were actually there.]

Funny!

However, remember also that more often than not, the people who were there were writing to further an agenda. So, it may very well take modern historians to ferret out the "truth" (whatever that may be).

Hi

curiously, I am one of the people who has done these sorts of tests and been published on it…..

But I am not into the "my credential can beat up your cedential". I will simply say that anyone who conclusively proves that armor cannot be penetrated, got his/her sums wrong.

In any case…the conundrum. If arrows don't work, then why do they disrupt?

More effective than musket? Anyone here familiar with the russian campaign against the crimean Tartars who just stood out of range and killed off russian line? Russians had to BRIBE them.

Anyway, the primary post here is flawed. Unless we know WHICH rules this guy hates and how they model these conditions, it is impossible to relate to the discussion.

Rocky

I have found that archery is not decisive with most rules. With DBA it is so abstracted as to be non-existent. While the losses can be impressive in a WAB game, archery generally does not make or break the game, morale does (i.e. when a unit breaks in combat). In other rules, the archers get one or two shots before they are charged.

You don't need to kill or wound the men in a formation to disrupt it. Anything that causes disorder will do so be it a barrage of mostly ineffective arrows, muddy ground, a ditch. Anythign which breaks up thje formation or forces a disruptive behaviour among the men will do.

That armour eventually reduced the power of the arrow to insignificance is established beyond all doubt. That's why armies which had previously employed massed archery turned to the pike and the gun, only in conservative and backwards England did one cling to the bow. Partly because the bow could still to could do good service in the wars fought in the Brittish Isles even if it was obsolete in the continental wars.

Hi

Gars…."Beyond a Doubt"?

Comon.

If the arrow is not able to hurt you, why are you disrupted?

England was killing frenchmen in the 15th century with bow, and europe started turning to pike in the 12th century and gun in the 15th. But her is the DEAL, all of europe was still using crossbow, and hiring mercenary gascon, Italian and Spanish crossbow into the 16th.

As the target cannot tell how the arrow was launched, arrows were still effective weapons overlapping your statment.

So, what are you talking about?

Rocky

[If the arrow is not able to hurt you, why are you disrupted?]

As a kid, were you ever pelted with a lot of "dirt bombs" from a bunch of kids in the school yard? Did you not shield your face, slow your pace (or stand still or run away for that matter)? But, did the dirt bomb hurt or kill you?

I think there is something to be said for the hail of arrows causing disruption, even if the arrows probably did noty penetrate the armor or cause any serious bodily injuries.

Yes, beyond a doubt, witness the effect of even muntions armour at the battle of Flodden or the low French losses from missile fire at Formigny despite several failed assaults. Yes, archery still killed men in the 15th C but fewer than in previous times and far fewer fully equiped men were killed or injured. The main part ot the losses were suffered in the melee and rout, not in the archery phase. Read the Knight and the blast Furnance and/or join the ARS to learn the lastest and most uptodate research in the field of armour and it's interaction with weaponry.

Mounted charges were suddenly both possible and effective again as witnessed by Vernuil and Formigny.

The longbow was the common missile weapon in France as well as Burgundy by the 1420's onward tough it never fully replaced the crossbow. The crossbow was still an effective weapon and did well in sieges as well and did better agianst amrour than the longbow which is why it was retaiend by the Gascons as the longbow was finaly abandoned by the French army in the 1510's.

Burgundians also employed English longbowmen as mercenaries on occasion.

Griefbringer

I still say that removing DEAD figures is a lot more fun than saying that "your unit is disrupted." (pooh)

Can anyone produce a historical example of target units which got "disrupted", and later in the battle recovered and were no longer "disrupted?" I can't, off hand.

So removal of "disrupted" and DEAD, and routed / wounded figures as casualties is realistic. If the figure isn't coming back, why bother to keep it in play? This is a simulation game, and removing figures is the most *elegant* method of showing us who is winning: not some abstraction, requiring colored markers or some such indicator to show what the actual condition of the unit in question is.

Just my humble but experienced opinion, of course.

BEYOND A DOUBT?

MUNITIONS ARMORS ISSUED AT FLODDEN?

at FLODDEN we are talking about 3/4 plate armor, plus a rather large pavaise carried by the first ranks of the SCOTS pike columns . . . . and said first ranks of those pike armed columns were a minority when compared to majority of the lesser armored rank/file pikemen who were one hell of a lot more vulnerable to indirect and direct loosed flights of armor piercing arrows . . .

as said column moved briskly down a steep slope, with an unexpected bit of creek and boggy ground at the bottom, between these pike columns and the waiting English army of gentry, retainers, shire levies and marines from the fleet.

FLODDEN like the majority of battles between the ENGLISH and SCOTS was lost before it began because of bad leadership and tactics.

the majority of the battles between ENGLISH and SCOTS, ended with the SCOTS gentry and mounted retainers doing little if anything, while foot retainers and levies armed with long spears or pikes, other melee weaponry and damned few missile armed troops of any type, were shot to pieces by ENGLISH/WELSH archers using self bows and iron tipped arrows . . .

well, lemme see now . . . . according to modern historians the ENGLISH armies recruited vast numbers of highly skilled men armed with ineffective weaponry and ammunition that could not penetrate contemperary plate armors except at point blank range . . . .

and said archers will always flee from any better armed man that too close to them . . . .

the ENGLISH armies of massed bowmen backed up by lesser numbers better armored/armed nobility, gentry, and close combat retainers, no doubt lost most of their battles? hmmm . . . . i must be from an alernate Earth than the one under discussion, because, history (from both ends of the arrow) seem to indicate just the opposite thing where i come from . . .

FRENCH raised imitation, poor quality archers armed with the longbow and crossbow in an effort to counter the useless ENGLISH/WELSH/ OTHER trained archers . . . .

FRENCH KINGS raised a bodyguard corp of imitation longbowmen titled SCOTS ARCHERS, and the BURGUNDIAN ARMY sought out mercenary longbowmen for some unknown reason, too . . .

it takes time and constant practice to make a good archer. not just any bozo can be handed a self bow/arrows and titled "archer" . while it is easier to shoot a crossbow, these are "high tech" and expensive, usually found in the hands of skilled mercs, foot retainers and civic militias . . . .

neither crossbow or handgun was ever fielded in comparable numbers vs the lonogbow, and troops armed with these nearly always suffered badly in any exchange of shots with longbowmen . . . .

longbows were incredibly lethal vs any lesser armored mounted or foot troops who ventured within range of them . . . .

as far heavily armored horses willingly closing with blocks of infantry armed with long sharp pointy things, i think the record shows the horse often had more brains than the riders, and would refuse to close with same. at least that is how i remember it happening a lot of times from my reading.

have any of y'all gents ever experienced a non penetrating kinetic energy impact from any kind of serious weapon? i have, and i can tell y'all whether it was from a bullet, big splinters from rockets, mortars or recoilless rifles, a hand thrown brick or stone or soda/beer can filled with cement, or better still any of these launched from a sling or catapult, or dumped from above, the result is almost always the same.

SMACK! (THUD! THUMP! WHAM! CLANG! CLUNK! BONG! or WOTEVER sound effect of choice inserted here) can cause a man to stagger, mistep, or fall on his ass or face, followed by a painful blunt trauma bruise (if you are lucky!) at the point of impact beneath said scalding protection, seeing stars, and etc . . . .

and a side effect of this is the way even the best protected man will involuntariy flinch away from incoming visible objects, or duck down, hoping to be missed by same . . . .

if you have a shield and raise it to stop in-coming indrect objects, then those dastardly baddies will throw/shoot nastiness below that raised shield: this hold true to this very day.

and the classic ROMAN testudo did not make many appearances on any HYW, or WOR battlefields that i recall.

by the by, did y'all know that the bumblebee cannot fly according to experts?

DAWGIE

"by the by, did y'all know that the bumblebee cannot fly according to experts?"

Sorry Dawgie, that's an urban legend. Feel free to find any scientific journal that actually states this.

Ralph

[neither crossbow or handgun was ever fielded in comparable numbers vs the lonogbow, and troops armed with these nearly always suffered badly in any exchange of shots with longbowmen . . . .]

On the continent, the arquebus replaced the crossbow, not the longbow. The longbow was a bit of a "fad" weapon on the continent for awhile, but ultimately it did not catch on too well.

And, by the way, crossbow did not always suffer badly in an exchange with longbow. Medieval "urban legend" I'm afraid.

URBAN MYTH ABOUT THE BUBMBLE BEE?

MY INSTRUCTOR'S "TOLD ME A FIB" WHEN DISCUSSING THE FLYING CHARACTRISTICS OF THE BUMBLE BEE!

I AM SHOCKED!

JOHN HOLLY, exactly what part of "nearly always suffered badly in an exchange with longbowmen" did you misunderstand? i think that does indicate that crossbowmen did not always "do badly". i was not relying ono "urban myth" when i typed that statement.

the FRENCH, JOHN, ole pal, tried to recruit their own corps of longbowmen from among the lowlifes of the realm, in an effort to duplicate ENGLISH archery. they never succeeded.

SCOTS ARCHERS in the bodyguard of FRENCH kings were originally armed with longbows.

as i recall, the BURGUNDIAN ARMY never fielded longbowmen in the same numbers as the ENGLISH ARMY, and therefore was never able to achieve the same results vs formations of lesser armored troops that the long bow did.
i do tend to think that if CHARLES THE BOLD had ever fielded 5,000 -7,000 longbowmen vs the SWISS, those poorly armored, fast moving columns of melee trained and equipped footman, supported by crossbows and handgunners would have come to grief when subjected to massed arrow flights . . .

the reason the longbow was a fad weapon on the continent was there was never a serious effort made outside of ENGLISH contoled areas to spend the years of constant practice that was required to produce a longbowman
. twas much easier to train crossbowmen, and handgunners. the early handguns evolved into the much more efficient armor busting and faster loading arquebus as i recall.

i never stated the handgun replaced the widespread use of the longbow on the continent, you did.

now all of this is indeed well and good, and is very interesting, but i thought this was a list for pre-historic talkie-talk kinda place?

DAWGIE

[i never stated the handgun replaced the widespread use of the longbow on the continent, you did.]

No.

Great discussion!

BTW, the Bumblebee thing is a case of using rigid wings vs. flexible wings. With rigid wing maths, they "can't fly", but with flexible wings (the kind they actually have), they can. So once aerodynamic science caught up with reality, all was well again.

Dawgie – in spirit, I think your instructors were right in the sense that things that look impossible are sometimes only impossible because you don't know enough about the situation from where you're standing.

Hi

John, the italian militia of the dark ages as decendents of the Byzantine Thematic system used a bow superior to the "longbow" a composite middle eastern style short bow. The crossbow replaced THIS weapon.

If you have ever known an italian with the name "Turco"(there was an actress on a TV show with the name Ann Turco), it is likely the name dates back to the period where Venice paid a bunch of comp bow builders from the crimea to come to sunny Italy. They made them a GUILD.

Anyway, armor cannot tell the difference between an arrow launched by crossbow and an arrow lauched by bow. Crossbow is just WAY easier to learn. I have taught archery, and it takes years to reach the point where you can kill at 200yds. But I can have you doing so with a crossbow in a very short time.

Rocky

3/4 plate, almain rivet, muntions armour, knecht harnisch, diffrent name same type of armour.

Most of the english losses have been conveniently forgotten by english language historians.

Those "poor quality" French archers were good enogu to slaugther the English at Castilion and did great damage to the English archers at Vernuil. The mounted archers of the Ordonnace Companies were neither low quality nor recrutied from low lifes. The other French archer coprs the Franc Archers were effective enough that French kign spent large sums on expanding the corps thoug in the end the proved a failur partly due to a lack of training, partly due to being armed with an obsolete weapon.

The majority of Burgundian archers were natives, mainly Picards, Picardy was famous for it's skilled archers and Picard longbowmen played an important role in the strign of victories won by the Burgundian Dukes in the early and mid 15th C
The English archers in Burgundian service failed miserably against the Swiss and were outshot by Swiss handgunners and crossbwomen at both Grandson and Murten. Charles the Bold and his predecessors common had large numbers of archer sin their army, 4000-6000 were not uncommon.

Sweden possesed armeis of massed longbowmen as early as the first decade of the 13th C, som much for only longbows in English controlled areas.

The longbow didn't cease to be effective overnight but by the 1470's the writing was on the wall as the Swiss slaugthered Burgundian and English archers alike and the Flemished overran the French archers at Guinegatte.

Can we assume if English archers were as bad as described above, that one English knight must have been as good as 10 French Knights? I'll adjust my rules to suit.

The English archers weren't bad, they were armed with a weapon that was rendered ineffective by the way in which armour evovled over a long period. At Crecy 1346 the English archery cause significatn losses among the horses upon which the French men-at-arms were mounted. At Vernuil 1424 it didn't. By the mid 15th C the armour of the proffesional infantry man be he armed with bow or polearm had evovled into a very effective combination of brigandines, mail, padded armour and plate armour.

Archery was not the single decisive factor in the many English victories. The use of man made obstacles, very good positions, dismounted tactics, superior army morale during a period in the 15th C all played a part.

[John, the italian militia of the dark ages as decendents of the Byzantine Thematic system used a bow superior to the "longbow" a composite middle eastern style short bow. The crossbow replaced THIS weapon.]

Yes, mostly, but not in all areas. Otherwise, I generally agree.

Hi

John, of course we agree. Except with politics I think we usually do! Ain't we brilliant.

I would dispute the "dirtclod" thing. Nice analogy, but more correct would be "would you hesitate to attack someone throwing dirt clods at you when you hold up a garbage can lid and no dirt clod can get you dirty"…this is the assertian behind the "disruption" argument. I have played too many rules sets with "disruption" that never explained what it actually ment. Being hit, pelted with useless arrows means….walking slowly?

Again, I argue that so much of our hobby is driven by a Napoleonic perspective. With the advent of guns, unit drill changes for various conditions: columns for quick advance, skirmish order to reduce volley effects, line to increase firepower and so on. In the renaissance, there is a famous example of someone beating on the Swiss by shooting them in column when they wanted to be open, and attacking with cav when open forcing them to close. But "disruption"? A napoleonic column taking fire is "disrupted" as it takes casualties, tries to stop out of range and spread or retreat from effects. The disruption reflects that the taking casualties means the officers loose control, but things are happening.

Those "things" are casualties. At agincourt, archers killed people. Or you believe all those casualties were from folks falling on each other and "drowning" in the mud and the 200,000 arrows were merely annoyances. Not logical. I did see the recent documentary "proving" things like this about Agincourt, and most of what they talked about had either errors in assumption, or just ignored the people who were there and wrote about it.

Gars: I have never never asserted any of the "English Longbow" myth. Actually, 25 years ago writing on this subject for a gaming magazine, I explained that the "Welsh" long bow actually was derived from a 9th century VIKING weapon. They evolved the "yew- 'D' shape, reinforced knock, sinew reinforced version of the long bow. They did not develop army level massed volley fire as the english did from the Welshmen.

"Longbow" was independantly invented in a lot of places. In Brazil, for instance, some indians "invented" the weapon using "ironwood".

What is happening in the HYW is a confluence of events: drill, technology(bow, arrow head), and tactical conditions, political conditions and so on, that produce the effect of a "Agincourt", but still losing the war.

Again, it is too easy to confuse effects from technology in hardware, technology in drill, and political/social reasons and effects into an OPINION.

Optimum armor under some conditions might stop or defelct an arrow, but foot knights are not blockhouses. The effect of the armor is not uniformly perfect. All knights dont have the same armor, not all the targets were knights and so on.

Rocky

Rocky,
The comment about only English lonbows was made by Dawgie not you hence that part of my reply was directed at him not you.

The single largest cause of French deaths at Azincourt was the English large scale mass-murder of unarmed prisoners of war, the second cause of death was the close combat and the lethal wounds inflcited in it. Arrows at best come in third place, lower if the English archers were armed with 70# bows as you claim in the "Pike and Shot" thread. (More about this below). Achers did kill people at Azincourt, just not in large numbers. 'Annoyances' can be just as dangerous on a unit scale as anything which kills or injures. If the soldiers on the reciveing end are to busy with dealing with the effects of the incoming rounds (be it arrows or 120mm mortars (been there, done that)) to perform their task(s) well it doesn't matter if the missile weaponry doesn't inflict a single casulty. The unit has still been affected, disordered or disrupted if you will.
Of course it's far better if the missile barrage also infclits a ton of casulties on the enemy but anything is better than nothing and anything might just be enough to tip the scales in your favour.

Disruption and disorder have alwyas been present as soon as warfare became orgnaised, you can read about in text from acient Greek and so on. Any unit which depends on an ordered and cohesive formation for command, control and fighting power can be disordered. At times by casulties, at other times by the terrain, obstacles and so on, even advancign to fast can disrupt ones formation as some members of a unit can't keep up.

If the 7000-7600 (not 5000) archers had been armed with 70# longbows the French would have a lot easier time of it since even at close range a 70# bow has problems with pentratign iron armour. A 70# bow was tested against 1, 2 and 3mm wrought iron plates by Peter Jones at the Royal Armament Reseach and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead. The yew bow was shot by John Waller at the range was 33 feet/10meters.
The 1mm plate which represented leg armour thickness was pentrated to a deapth of 4-5 cm's, at a 40 degree impact angle the arrows were defeated and actually shattered.
The 2mm plate (ie breastplate thickness) was penetrated to only 1.1 cm's at best and penetration was only achived at a zero degree angle of impact, at 20 degrees the arrows were defeated. and the 3mm plate (helmet thickness) was not penetrated at all, at any angle. Remembers this is at 10 meters, pentrations at longer ranges would be less or not achvied at all.

Now these surfaces were flat, not rounded as armour would be nor was there addtional padding or mail behind the plates so the actual performance of the bows would be worse that quoted above. And at Azincourt improved steel amrour was in large scale use either as full suits or as parts of armour. Steel armour has up to twice the resistance of iron armour depending on the quality of the steel.

A 70# bow was simply not an effective wepaon on a battle field durign the 100 years war, which is why the archers used much more powerfull 100-180# bows as proved by the Mary Rose bows. Indeed even the iron age and early viking age longbows recovered at various locations in Scandinavia
average around 90-100#

Which English bow expert in the 16th century (iirc) said that one in ten archers could draw a 100# bow? (It's been too long since I read up on this stuff.)

I will stay out on my proverbial limb, and say that "7,000" archers at Agincourt, all pulling 100# plus longbows, pegs my disbelief meter all the way: that implies a total of no less than 70,000 longbowmen picked over to get the 10% best. Not to mention that there is zero evidence that such picking over occurred. Now, the 70# draw weight guys are still only 25% of the total, but far easier to screen a bunch of recruits and send the weaker guys back home. To screen them for "7,000" beefy types (pulling 100# plus) would take far too long.

Cap'n Gars: I would like to know exactly what kind of arrow heads and weight were employed in addition to those penetration stats you quoted.

Also, ANY plate armor, I don't care if it's made out of titanium, has JOINTS in it; a lot of them, especially from the flanks and rear, which is why the English and others typically continued to array themselve in forward, enfilading formations as much as possible. Helmets have open faces, and eyeslits, and breaths, all of which will admit any arrow/missile. This was the age of troops without shields: that means the men at arms had to keep their heads down or risk an arrow in the face (there's your first factor in disruption: nobody wants to risk a peek up to see how close you are getting to the enemy, and to keep the formation ordered: the longer you move forward without looking around, the poorer the formation gets).

Consider that even a 70# bow shooting a 1.5 to 2 oz arrow is going to knock you around a LOT when it hits you, no matter where: each man at arms taking a hit, with his face down, is going to stagger and disrupt his fellows nearby.

And within 100 yards or so, the impact angle is virtually non existent. That means that anyone NOT wearing the latest steel plate (the vast majority of French men at arms throughout the HYW) is going to have arrows sticking in him anywhere except in his breatplate and helmet if he takes a hit. Arrows which glance off a curved arm, shoulder or leg, will still travel, many of them striking into the men close by.

The sheer volume of missiles launched is staggering by itself: every 60 seconds, "7,000" (I still buy into the smaller number, btw) archers will send 42,000 arrows into a mere 6,000 slogging men at arms: they get to do this for no less than THREE MINUTES by the time the men at arms make contact with the English men at arms – probably at Agincourt, even longer because of the mud: that's no less than 18 rounds per archer for a total of 126,000 rounds: the last 42,000 rounds are all the heavier sheaf arrows specifically designed for piercing plate. At those "pointblank" ranges, the front four ranks are shooting at will at twice the rate of fire, and the shots are all AIMED at specific targets, i.e. the weak joints. All the most experienced archers would be in the front ranks.

Under such conditions, what chance (do you suppose) does a given French man at arms have of NOT being struck numerous times during those three or more minutes, and at least once in a weak spot in his harness? (And at this, the archers have not even emptied their first quiver of 24 shafts yet.)

One last point, on the archeological finds: I have no trouble accepting that on renaissance English ships they used the best of the best longbowmen a lot, thus the Mary Rose heavy bow staves. Heavy bows have been found in Viking graves to be sure, but so have the 70# and lighter ones; I wouldn't know what the "average" draw weight of these earlier bows is. But not enough of them have been found so far to draw any conclusions reflecting what the "average" might have been. Until more discoveries are made, stipulating otherwise, I will continue to go with the "rule" which says that 25% of your archers will pull c. 70#, and 10% will pull 100#; the rest are ordinary men who pull c. 45# to 50# (this, btw, is typical of the vast majority of bowmen in the WOTR, and I dare say it holds true today).

After the early 16th C the skill and ability of the English archers began to 'decay' according to most sources, writer bemoan the lack of men to fire "strong shots" and/or to fire rapidly and accurately hence 16th C written sources about the state of archery in that century tells us litte which is usefull about the skill&ability of the english longbowman in the 14th and 15th Centuries.

I've ben shot at by 70# bows while wearing full plate harness, while the blunt tip used of course reduces the impact somewhat the knock one recives isn't enough to cause a lot of problems since the armour and padding effectively absorbs the impact energy. Does it cause some problems? Yes but not enough to generate disorder signifcant disorder unless you have a lot of bowmen which is why such disorder occured at Azincourt but not at Poitiers or Vernuil

I've examine a lot of actual period bascinets and none of them have breathing holes big enough to let an arrow pass through, they eyeslits are a sligthly diffrent matter. I'd agree that those areas are slightly weaker and would allow for easier penetration at close range.

It is of course your right to cheerfully ignore the advances in reserach made about the size of the English army at Azincourt, the evidence for the larger army is rock solid and based on the adminstrative records of the army in question. Ofcourse it busts a dearly held English myth so I'm not surprised that many want to ignore the outstanding research of Prof. Curry.

Steel armour quickly replaced iron armour after the 1410's due to several reasons, production or iron armour was reduced and even fewer full harness were made of iron, the losses suffered in the 1410's and 1420's emant that there was a huge need to rpelace lost armour, the number of men-at-arms in the French army became lower and lower and only the best equiped were admitted for service after 1445.

I'll get back to you with the titles of Jones works.

I just downloaded Shattered Lances. I like the way it handles missile fire. I'd like to see some more rules do that. We've seen a lot of changes in the way rules handle command control in recent years. I think it's time to see some changes in missile fire and effects.