"Bows (and other missile fire)" Topic

Cap'n Gars: I agree that a blunt is no comparison to a 2 oz, steel-pointed, bodkin shaft at under 100 yds. So we won't bother to discuss that further.

It is likely that more than one arrow would be striking into you at a time, or in such rapid succession, that the combined impact would be horrific.

You didn't address the predictable volume of fire producing hits on joints. And many of the men at arms were not in complete plate, especially in the second line: besides which, it is documented that many warriors preferred to leave the visor off. I suppose in this single instance (Agincourt) that the vast majority would have left their visors on, however, we don't really know.

I tenatively bow to your later reading experience, and allow that there may hve been as many as 7,000 of the original c. 10K archers from the siege. But how can we be sure how many survived as effectives after the heavy casualties suffered in the earlier siege? It seems a guessing game to me, and one guess is as good as another.

I also allow that a 16th century source (Roger Ascham?) cannot be held to apply to earlier longbow usage. But the proportion of strong men to average, and somewhat above average, does not change, imho. The nature of decay in longbow usage wasn't in the percentage of strong archers, it was in the infrastructure: the ceasation of regular practice, and the bow makers and especially the fletchers were a dying breed, insufficient to meet the needs of a hypothetical resurrection of the weapon in large numbers.

But allowing that eventually I agree that the longbowmen were all pulling 100#ers: I would love that: 100% "bow 4" and 15% "bow 5" in my English army: "Here Frenchie, Frenchie, come closer!" In our game, however, the French would not even reach the English lines at Agincourt, being shot at by 100% "bow 4"; so I must disagree with your assumption. "Bow 3" with 15% "bow 4" is deadly enough, and produces historical outcomes to a scripted Agincourt refight on the tabletop: and this is with no more than 5,000 archers too, versus 6,000 100% plate-armed infantry in the first French battle.

Hi

I have seen Currys stuff, and some film associated with it. However, he entered the subject convinced before hand that this "myth" is wrong, and spent a lot of time looking for Proof.

In science, this is called "observer bias".

Oddly, similar tests have been done repeatedly over the centuries by endless observers. I did my own tests(disbelieving it) some 30 years ago. And Curry is the only one who conclusively proves that arrows dont hurt knights.

Errors of assumption:
1)surviving armor is typcial. That is like saying a knocked out tank from WW2 is the one that survives.

2)knights are uniformly protected.

3)One a KILL stops a knight.

4)The french casualties would have full plate knights invlunerable to a bodkin point at 250fps, but being killed by a knife thrust in a eyehole, throat, or joint. Or penetrated by an estoc without a consideration of the force THERE. Now, the massicre of the prisoners is the major event of killing? If they were invulnerable, and outnumberd the english knights, just why did they surrender?

This recent study isn't new, just revisionism.

As to the bows. Again, endlessly, many many bow builders have either made bows from surviving mary rose staves, or duplicated same. By the time they are through actually Producing a shootable bow, these staves become 70-85#. Again, this is OLD news. Try Saxton Pope for an easily aquired example of such a boyer build.

Or, all those old researchers got it wrong.

Rocky

Rocky Russo

Curry actually devotes only a rather limted part of her work to the effect of the english archery and Prof. Curry is a 'she' not a 'he' so you writign clearly shows that you have not read her book nor am familiar with her work in any other way except possibly a TV show. (Battle Field detectives or some such name form the Discovery channel)

It Prof. Williams who has shown that the evolution of armour left the penetratvie power of the arrow behind. And lets see soem quotes and names for those test you claim support your view, were can I read about them. I've provided names for my sources, your's remain nameless except your own test which you have yet to prove were conducted in a scientific manner usign accutately reporduced armour and weaponry. Do so and I'll be happy to respect you experience and testing. Do provide the names of all those many, many bowyers.

So the Mary Rose staves has been used as bows, and reshaped to #70-80 lol!
You are aware that Hardy and Stricklnad have commsioned reporductions which has the same kind of performance as that measured and calculated fromt the original staves

HMMMMM……

"english" archers implied all of the archers in the army, english, welsh, continentals or green (BLEEP) martians, not just archers born in england.

yes i am aware of the differences in various armors, as well as the use of the longbow in places other than the British Isles.

ROCKY alread answered for me about your sources and assumptions being biased or in-correct.

by the way, i cannot remember CHARLES THE BOLD every field 5,000 plus English or Picard longbowmen in any engagement vs the Swiss . . .

but then i cannot remember the Swiss ever fielding 5,000 plus crossbowmen or handgunners vs the Burgundians, either.

lots of halbardiers/assorted polearms and later pikes, not many horsemen, or much artillery, if any at all, until some was captured from the Burgundians.

re-organized French forces (ordnance companies) did inflicted defeats on the Brits/Etc, but, then, these were organized speficially to counter the Brits/Etc.

yes, i seem to remember cummunal spearmen with big pavaises were able to survive the in coming arrows as they plodded forward and inspite of less than complete armors worn by most of the burghers. i also think i remember some cummunal crossbowmen operating with the spearmen, as well as mounted gentry.

another thing i remember is that captured "English" archers had their hand/hands mutilated to prevent them from ever drawing a bow again, too. this mystifies me: expensive to maintain commoner soldiers using a useless weapon vs the best of the best from the upper classes. . . .

surviving armors, that are intact, mean nothing except that the wearer of this particular armor was not killed, wounded or died on the battlefield (the analogy about wrecked tanks is very good one!), drowned, sufficated, scalded to death inside their armors perished from disease or captured and lost everything to some one else who either died in said armor later or sold it to some other soul, or that useful bits were not split up among multiple victors and later lost.

but, you see, i do keep an open mind, and try to consider many other things besides any one particular thing when talking about men and battle.

DAWGIE

Humphrey,
Replacements were brought over from England to fill the gaps left by the men lost during the siege of Harfleur or sent home due to illness. The extensive surviving records clearly show this, it's just that no one before Curry has bother with the painstakign work of goign through them and he prefered the unreliable chronicles instead. Of coursse there are soem calcualtiosn and estiamtes invovled in Curry's work as well and I do think that she does nt take into accoutn the possibility of losses during the march from Harfleur. Which is why I tend to use the lower numbers she provided.

Strenght is increased by practice, lots of practice will produce stronger archers. While not an archer I could fairly easily shoot a 60 pound bow thanks being fit from army training, a friend of mien work hois way up from a 35 poudn bow to a 70 pounder and now shoots a 90 pounder. Neither of us were born with exceptional strenght it's all a matter of training. The English archers would be strenghtend by their ordinary work and archery pratice would increase their skill and strenght further.

I'll get back to you on the number of hits on jints and such, of course such happend and they would have been a alrge part of the effective archery kills.

I study history based on scientific experiments and examinations, not war games rules so I'm afraid I don't regard your wargames based quotes as evidence of anythign but a your appreciation of achery and it's effects and the low value you put on armour.

Hi

Sigh;
Curiously, in previous threads, I have given my sources. Actually, i am stunned, this "revisionism" comes up every 6 months or so.

Prof Curry the woman. Sorry guy. Not a sexist, I don't evaluate authors or anything based on their sex or sexual prefrences. And being born before current politically correct times, I still use the generic terms of "he" and "mankind" and such, even "mailman" even though she is a woman.

I even REFERRED to a source above.

Lets start: Saxton Pope, P.E.Klopstag, Payne-Gallway, Latham and Patterson, F.Greeg. Pope, a hundred years ago, made longbows out of museum staves and did the same tests and used his bow to actually HUNT and KILL both Grizzly and Kodiac.

"While not an archer I could fairly easily shoot a 60 pound bow thanks " Could you do 12 rounds a minute for 5 minutes straight? Or 10, or 20? Any archer can pull a bow up to 3 times his comfortable draw weight to show off. I have done so.

At agincourt, if you do the initial position where the archers step from the stakes and fire long range flight arrows to harrass the english into attacking, the range is ca 220yds. This suggests, if you do the math, or merely read Klpstags 47 work "Physics of Bow and Arrow" a 75# draw weight.

Oh, and I have Hardy and others. Hardy is a FAN as is Featherstone. And most of their works are, er, enthusiastic.

As for my own tests. I did them over 25 years ago published same. Did a "popular" version of the artiles in a gaming mag of the time. No reason to make things up to win an arguement with you.

Your version of agincourt requires either "English Longbow" with mallets are better against armor than knights, or 1500 knights could beat, kill and capture the three battles of frence totalling some 20,000 men while the archers annoy them.

Thus, dismounted English knights are worth, oh DOZENS of French in a fight.

Illogical.

Rocky

Strenght is increased by practice, lots of practice will produce stronger archers.

Irrelevant: lots of practice will not increase the proportion of stronger archers: only increase their individual strength by maybe double what it would be without constant training. You as a beginning archer who can pull a 60# bow could not pull such in a battle. Your friend can pull a 90# bow, but not in battle, I warrant. The need is for long periods of demand. An archer pulling his 70# bow in battle COULD pull in excess of 100#: that is not the same thing at all. His war bow is 70#, which he can pull until the cows come home: his 100# shots are "showing off", not something he can do in a battle without wearing himself out. I am totally out of practice: when I practiced every day, I could pull my 55# bow all day at need: but a 70# bow was beyond my sustained capabilities. With better training, I could have worked up to that 70#er, maybe; and showed off with a 90#er. I am of average strength only, imho.

I'll get back to you on the number of hits on jints and such, of course such happend and they would have been a alrge part of the effective archery kills.

Agreed, the majority of effective hits were "joint" hits; and in the face, etc. The rest were in very close on the flanks: remember, that the French first battle was seriously outnumbered by the total English army, if your (Curry's) number revisions are correct: if not, they were still outnumbered anyway, just not as heavily: their c. 6,000 would have been seriously strung out by the time the first French men at arms even reach the English line, and winded too, i.e. "disorganized" by the combination of arrow impacts / woundings, the mud, and distance they had advanced (300 yards). By the time the first of them were getting to hand strokes, the archers had plenty of time to pick their targets and make their shots count.

Rocky,
If you had read Curry's book you'd know that the French army numbered only some 12000 (8000 men-at-arms, 4000 crossbowmen/archers) and that only perhaps some 6000 French men-at-arms took part in the fatal assault as only one of the two battles actually fought. So you have 6000 French MAA attacking some 8600 English (7000 archers, 1600 ment-at-arms) across a very muddy field, through an archery barrage and being routed through by their own cavalry. Small wonder that the French lost. The muddy conditions at reduced the fighting power of the men-at-arms, escpecialy the French who had to move through the mud while it increased the fighting power of the less heavily armoured and more nimble archers. The muddy soil of the field of Azincourt effectively acted as a force mutiplier for the English.

The range at which the English began shooting is a poor indicator of the draw weight of their bows, lots of factors gowern when one engages the enemy with missile weaponry.
The range of ones weapon is only one. The assault rifles the conscripts I train are issued with can hit a man sized target out to 600-700 yards, in trainign they are ordered not to fire at ranges greater than 300 yards and preferably to hold their fire until it's possible to engage the enemy at a closer range.

And if the English were armed with 75# bows those bows would have had great diffciulty in petratign the steel or iron plate armour supported by mail and padding. Jones has shown this as have Prof. Williams. Such weak bows simply does not generate the kenetic energy required to pentrate the armour in use except at very close range and in weak spots. picture

If you want to convice any one familair with the latest research about these thign you'd better chose one issue to defend. Either the English lognbos were weak 70-75 pounders or they had good armour piercing capabilities. The hard facts show that you can't have both.

I study history based on scientific experiments and examinations, not war games rules so I'm afraid I don't regard your wargames based quotes as evidence of anythign but a your appreciation of achery and it's effects and the low value you put on armour.

This is "cart before the horse" stuff. Rocky and I (but especially Rocky) value the scientific approach as the basis for rules design. I wasn't quoting statistics from a game that was invented out of thin air, because it "feels good." Rocky has mentioned some of his main sources for approaching this subject based on physics. He does the mathes, not I: but I trust his work because it produces historical battle results. Agincourt is one of our very few well-documented fights, sufficient to reproduce it and draw conclusions accordingly. So when Rocky mentions the distances at which the arrows were launched, this is based not on wargaming, but on the earlier testers of bow, and the poundage is backed up by the distances the armies were apart to begin with, and visa versa: the distances can be verified by the reproduction bows getting the same results at those ranges.

So when I quote historical results in an Agincourt wargame, I am tacitly implying a great deal of earlier scientific approach: based on the work of bow testers whose work corroborates each other.

Curry is advancing a theory which disagrees with that earlier consensus, which consensus agrees with the descriptions of the original sources. So you see the problem Rocky and I have with Curry, et al, who appear late on the scene and try to make a splash (ever the shared weakness of scholars: this desire to make a "new" discovery previously overlooked by the great names in the field).

So the adminstrative reocrods of the English and French armies isn't "orginal sources" then?
Curry isn't some one out to make a splash she was a well known and established scholar long before ever publishing "Agincourt a New History".

Like any good scientist and historians she evaluated the evindence at hand, added the new evidence she had discovered through painstaking work and drew new conclusions based on hard facts. Your version of how history shoudl be written is apparently that any new information which challenges existing versions of events should be discarded out of hand since it obviously can't be accurate. And God forbidd than one questions a supposedly great name…

Bu the simple and hard fact is that bows mentioned can't get the historical results at thsoe ranges as is establised by modern reserach as Jones experiment shows a 70 poudn bow can't pentrate iron armour well except at 0 degree strikes in the thinnest spots and only on the limbs. Adn infact the addition of mail and paddaed defences will reduce pentration even more. Steel armour posses up to twice the strenght, even Hardy&Strickland who are champions on the longbow acknowledges the superb defensive capabilites of 15th Century plate armour. At Crecy the combiantion of archeryy and dismounted men-at-arms fairly easily defeated the repeated french moutned assaults. At Vernuil the Lombards on the armored horses went throug the english liek a hot knife through butter. In history according to you and Rocky this would not happen, could not happen becausee the archers firing a medieval verions of APFSDS will simply slaugther the cavalry.

Test working form the same set of erronous facts will corroborate each other just as much as experiments based on accurate facts.

So the adminstrative reocrods of the English and French armies isn't "orginal sources" then?

No, I wasn't referring to Curry's history; only the conclusion drawn lately that bows and arrows don't kill men in plate armor. If she adheres to that notion, then I say she is mistaken. Having not read her "New" history, I can't say how much she has to say on that single topic. The business of changing our views on numbers, etc., is something I am always flexible on, and welcome any solid evidence to firm such numbers up. I will have to read her book.

And God forbidd than one questions a supposedly great name…

It looks that way I guess. But nobody's name is sacred in searches for the truth. The truth is all that matters, and anyone refusing to go with it deserves to get run over by the facts.

Again, I am specifically thinking of the effects of bow fire in this context, not the rest of the Agincourt history. I think revisionist historians, who focus on a set of tests with an agenda/conclusion already in mind, are very unreliable.

I don't know why "arrows can't kill men in plate" is such a popular topic; maybe it is nothing more complex than little boys growing into men, and still offended by the reality that a "cowardly" archer can strike down a beautiful knight and his horse: how many little boys imagine being the archer? Most would rather be the knight. The grown man is convinced that plate armor had to be really good at keeping out the arrows, else why bother with it? We have argued from the opposite side: that thousands of archers who couldn't kill their enemies would have been useless, and why bother bringing them to the battlefield?

At Vernuil the Lombards on the armored horses went throug the english liek a hot knife through butter. In history according to you and Rocky this would not happen, could not happen becausee the archers firing a medieval verions of APFSDS will simply slaugther the cavalry.

Verneuil is different because the archers were a much smaller proportion of the "English" army. Most of the battle was resolved by hand to hand. The cavalry you speak of didn't go through any deployed archers like a knife through butter, they rode down the archers before they could get their stakes planted: then most of them went on and attacked the baggage train in the "English" rear; but the horse park there made it impossible for the French and Gascons to reach the carts, and the baggage guard of c. 1,000 archers shot at them until they routed: the Milanese later did the same thing and received the same fate: routed by bow fire.

"APFSDS", isn't that a stretch? We are not suggesting that even cavalry are "slaughtered" at long range. Plunging fire from flight arrows will do no more than gall the horses and have zero effect on the armored men: an armored horse would also be immune from long distance fire. In our rules, "bow 3" (the 70#er) won't even begin to have any effect on plate armored cavalry until they are within 100 yards. As you can see, if the archers are not protected by a line of stakes, they will be ridden down at once (Verneuil fashion :)). "Bow 4" (the 100#er) will only affect plate armored troops out to 150 yards. But we are not advocating that the same proportion of plate was present as you and others seem willing to believe: the leaders and richest men at arms had the "steel" harness; the main mass of men had a mixture of both or only the earlier stuff; any second or third line (what happened to those? I guess Oman, Keegan, et al, didn't know that France could only bring 12,000 to a battle) would be proportionally lacking in full harness at all: and bow fire would affect them at longer distances.

This business of expecting arrows to impact at 30 degrees has me puzzled: within 70 to 100 yards the impact angle is extremely slight to non existent. Within 70 yards the target is still visible above your "point". And within 100 yards the target is still "pointblank": it is only at longer ranges that the bow must be elevated enough to produce a plunging fire, where the arrow impacts at up to a 45 degree angle (for the longest shots); the 30 degree angle would be a c. 150 to 200 yard shot for a 70# bow. And that is outside of our effective ranges for hitting plate and heavy armored troops. If the modern critics of effective bow fire are saying that an impacting 30 degree angle would not penetrate plate, even iron, we agree with them.

Test working form the same set of erronous facts will corroborate each other just as much as experiments based on accurate facts.

Of course. But, if your wargaming results are historical, that might be an indication that you are "guessing"' something right.

Curry isn't much into a detailed study of arms, armour and fighting techniques which can be seen from small errors and misunderstandings here and there in the text. Her interpretation of the effects of archery is more of the traditional school of thought with the archers being able to do "substantial damage"to the men-at-arms though later on on she only mentions "weak spots" (ie joints and gaps) and the visors and helmet sides as the areas vulnerable to penetration. Non-penetrative hits are said to cause "severe bruising". So Anne Curry is not a revisionist hsitorian as far as the effects of archery are concerned though her description of the effects is towards the lower end of the scale.

Can arrows kill a man in steel plate? Yes and I've said so in other postings but they will not be an highly effective means of doing so. Strikes in the few vulnerable areas such as the aventail, visor, armpit & elbow openings and apparently at Azincourt the helmet sides wil produce wounds, even fatal wounds. Given that the French effectively advance into the medieval version of a "fire sack" the outflankign English archers will also have goten of shots at the weaker sides of the limb armour which might very possibly have resulted in additional penetraions which caused wounds, not fatal ones but the man might very well have been "killed" since he was rendered unable to fight
That is assuming that the arrow was shot from the kind of bows described by Hardy&Strickland ie 100-150 pounders.
Such bows will also be capable of causing the kidn of severe bruising that Curry mentions though IMO she to some extent underestimates the ability of armour and padding to absorb blows and thus protect the wearer.

There is no need for the grown man to belive anything or make assumptions about plate armour, he can simply pick up some of the test reports done and read the results, armour pentration is after all a matter of physics so it can be tested provided one has accurately reporduced the quality of the armour plate, the strenght of the bow and the shape and quality of the arrowhead. An iron bodkin will be less effective pentrator than a steel one.

There were 8000 archers and 1800 men-at-arms in the English army at Vernuil. Hardly a small proportion or a small army. The claim that the archers weren't deployed or had their stakes planted seem to me to be a way to explain away and down play the Lombard success in that area espcialy since it's mentioned by sources that the English planted their stakes as soon as they were within bowshot of the enemey. AFAIK it was at Patay that English archers were caught unprepared in that way, not Vernuil. But I'd be happy to take into accunt sources which say otherwise
Matthew Strickland and Michael Jones have provided much improved reconstructions of Vernuil though it should be said that Strickland uses Jones as one of his sources. Ditcham alos discusses the battle in his work on the mercenaries in the French army link

If one wants to find a great English victory during the later 100YW Vernuil is a far better choice than the over hyped Azincourt. At Vernuil the English were outnumbered at the point of contact, they had been hit by at least one effective cavalry charge and they had suffered from effective archery on at least one flank. (The Scots had 4000 archer on their part of the battle field and Waurin vividly describes how the archers on the two sides shot murderously at each other.)

Unless we happen to find the household accounts of every French men-at-arms at Azincourt we simply won't know the proportion of steel to iron harness. Regardless of the material the harness would have to be fairly complete or the man in question would not have been accepted for service. The French army during the Azincourt campaign was recruited by contract much as the English was and the equipment needed was laid down in those contracts/indetures in much the same way. There was no call out of the French feudal levy in 1415.

Regarding the impact angle I bow to your greater experience in the area of hopw to shoot a bow though not even firearms have perfectly flat trajectories at 100 yds. However the shape of the armour will also affect the impact angle and thete are limited areas on a properly made harness that allow for a perfect 0 degree strike. And even with a perfect impact the 70 pound bow only achived effective penetration of the thinnest test plates and this at 10 meters and without padding and mail factored in . Given that steel armour is up to twices as resistant even the limbs would be fairly safe at all but the very closest range (less than 10 meters).

I'd say the point about Verneuil is a good one – that archers could be very deadly at short range (particularly to mounted knights) as long as they had secure flanks and something (stakes or baggage carts) to stop them from being ridden down from the front. But without that – they were very vulnerable.

Warfare is about bringing the enemy to battle on your own terms. Archers are a brittle force and opponents have a number of alternatives to counter them. Unfortunately most rules sets lose sight of that and make them inherently invincible.

Captian Gars I looked at your Prof. Williams link and never mind the arrows, a 2-handed axe only had half the energy to penetrate plate armor. Of coarse the non penetration would probaly result in the target being driven into the ground up to his knees.

Yes and I've said so in other postings but they [arrows] will not be an highly effective means of doing so.

Oh, well, that's good to hear. I hadn't seen (that I recall) any comments on this from you before this (interesting) thread. I will agree that it isn't an efficient method of killing; but our casualties are not all "kills." Built into our probability of becoming a casualty (i.e. removing the figure from play) are the 25% who are routing away; the 25% who are still on their feet but so disorganized that they are useless – and haven't even got enough together at the moment to flee; the 25% who are wounded and on the ground; and of course the 25% who are mortally wounded and dead. Therefore, none of the methods of "killing" are efficient, because any figure we take out is only 25% "dead" anyway :).

That is assuming that the arrow was shot from the kind of bows described by Hardy&Strickland ie 100-150 pounders.
Such bows will also be capable of causing the kidn of severe bruising that Curry mentions though IMO she to some extent underestimates the ability of armour and padding to absorb blows and thus protect the wearer.

I think that you are underestimating the close range effectiveness of a 70# bow with a steel bodkin pointed, 2 oz arrow. It doesn't require a 100# bow to do the kind of damage which will take a man out of the battle.

There were 8000 archers and 1800 men-at-arms in the English army at Vernuil. Hardly a small proportion or a small army.

I confess that I have not studied this battle in depth enough to make any other assumtpion than to agree with the over all numbers, but wonder why anyone (e.g. Oman) would assume that the archers were a smaller proportion than at Agincourt: they must have a reason for assuming this. Also, I have read that Burgundian men at arms were with the English army; you do not include them, so I must assume that there is a discrepency in the original sources, and that students are deciding which ones to accept.

I have now read three narratives for the battle of Verneuil in the last two days: the most trustworthy seems to be that link you provided to Ditcham, Chapter Two. He admits that it is a conflicting battle as far as original source accounts goes: he does not mention the English baggage guards at all, and says that the English held the field, when the Lombard cavalry returned: "…[the Lombards] had to struggle back across a stream under English archery to escape, losing a banner in the process – (since a squire from the Dauphine was killed at this point, one suspects that the other cavalry had reacted in the same way)." So whether or not the Lombard and French cavalry came under fire at the baggage park or later seems to not make any difference: they were severely handled by the longbowmen.

There was no call out of the French feudal levy in 1415.

The levy did not produce any horsemen, did it? So are you saying that all the French horse were in full harness? I don't believe that. Each fully harnessed man at arms had other mounted troopers in his "lance", and some of them would have barely had helm and jack. It is my understanding that the entire third line (which has somehow now "disappeared" to reduce the French army down to 12,000) were the lighter armed horse, which rode off without striking a blow.

However the shape of the armour will also affect the impact angle and thete are limited areas on a properly made harness that allow for a perfect 0 degree strike.

True enough. And even mail if struck on the backward curving surface of the body or limb will deflect an arrow. We are not talking about glancing impacts, but the trajectory of the arrow itself. For instance, obviously, an arrow falling at a 30 degree angle (from outside c. 150 yards) is going to impact at zero degrees at the impact point, if it happens to strike directly into the presented, crouching shoulder of a target

But arrows at that range don't penetrate plate or rarely even good mail: so it isn't the impact angle only, but also the range which determines the potential for penetration: and the impact angles are a constant when targetting the human body, no matter what the range: there is only so much straight-on surface presented at a given attack angle: so that this aspect of possible, vulnerable target surface should be a mere mathematical quantity, when shooting into the front of any advancing body of infantrymen. An arrow which has the long range capability lacks the penetrative weight, because it is not bearing the armor penetrating bodkin point: such heavy arrows did not shoot beyond 100 yards or so.

And even with a perfect impact the 70 pound bow only achived effective penetration of the thinnest test plates and this at 10 meters and without padding and mail factored in . Given that steel armour is up to twices as resistant even the limbs would be fairly safe at all but the very closest range (less than 10 meters).

I am still in ignorance on the particulars that produced these stats that you quote: I don't know how heavy the arrow is, or what kind of point is being used, or whether or not the material is typical of the plate defenses in use during the period.

I do know what the original sources said happened, including the ranges shot at (which can be deduced): and I know our rules are designed around bow effectiveness studies, which take into account the physics of the test subjects: and that our rules produce historical results time and again.

We see the English win at Agincourt, but the French usually get to hand strokes with the dregs of the first battle, as they did historically. Then the English have to resort to using longbowmen in the melee to finish off the French quickly: and this too is historical. The second battle sometimes routs (as could have happened) and sometimes comes up to engage. The longbowmen are back behind their stakes by then, and since the second battle is not all in full harness, they take worse casualties than the first battle did: especially if the French first battle routs as it did and gets in the face of the advancing second battle. It all works: and as I said, Agincourt is one of our best test battles for historical accuracy, because the results under the exact circumstances produce almost no variations.

(Our rules utilize so much dice rolling that the chances of a fluked game are extremely unlikely, when playing out a battle as big and one-sided as Agincourt – the archers having their field day with everything their own way – the outcome is almost guaranteed to be the historical one: IF your rules are working right that is.)

Since the feudal levy was not called out for service in 1415 the kind of horsemen it produced horsemen is not of interest for an investigation of the French army at Azincourt. Only paid and contracted troops were used to form the French army and they were summodn by a Semonce de Nobles not a proclamation of the arrier-ban.
It's all the in the original French documents. The same muster rolls show that the men-at-arms were recruited as individuals in to the companies, there was no lance structure in place yet. Some men would brought along military servants, 'gros varlets' with limited arms and armour but these were not paid or recruited by the Crown. such men had not formal tactical role in the army and their inclusion in the "Somme plan" clearly shows that the French were lacking in manpower.

Since earlier historians have not bother with or had access to the adminstrative material used by Curry they have based their army estimates on written sources of a kind which even at best are somewhat unreliable for the numbers and composition of an army. Lots of period writers had their own axes to grind. Other were not present or lacked the miltiary experience needed to provide an accuate account of events

The sources disagree on how many battles the French formed up in. Des Ursins and Berry Herald say two battles, the few other french sources which goes into this kind of detail say three battles. There is no inherent need to remove a battle to get the number down to the actual 12.000 or so fighting men. One simply has to reduce the number of men in each battle. It's possible that the 3rd battle seen wern't a proper battle at all but simply the gros varlets and the misslie troops which had not been used in the battle combined with reforming parts of the main battle and perhaps some remnants from the vanguard.

With regards to casulties I agree that not all losses are men killed, a wounded man can be just as effectively rendered incapable of combat as a man killed outright. However much of the earlier parts of the thread involved the ability of archers to_kill/fataly wound_men in armour, not how well it produced overall casulties. Of course good armour protection reduces the number of wounds as well but given the right circumstances the sheer weight of bow fire will still produce disrupting effects even if the arrows fail to kill or wound a single man. If the archers are to few, the tragets to well protected or the archers have been suppressed by counter fire by crossbow and/or bow you won't even get this kind of disruption and disorder. Poitiers and several other smaller 14th C battles are good examples of this. In terms of wargames rules I perfer to keep actual losses and disorder/disruption as separate effects since a unit can be severly disordered without having lost a single man.

Full details of Jones' tests can be found in "A short history of the Attack on Armour" published in Metallurgist and Materials technologist 1984. And "The Metallography and relative effectiveness of Arrowheas and Armour in the Middles ages" published in Materials Characterization xxix published 1992. Both Hardy and Hardy&Strickland refer to Jones tests in their works and given that they are pro-longbow one can assume that they would have refrained from doing so if they considered the test unfair.

Hard&Strickland devote an entire chapter to the interaction of arrows and armour and the resulting wounds, they are entirely correct in their conclusion that more test are needed whch takes fully into account the power of 100-150 pound longbows, the diffrent performance of steel and iron arrowheas and the latest research on iron and steel armour as well as plate and padded defences. Especialy in the area of armour metallo-archologists and researchers involved in living history has made great strides in the understanding of armour and it's defensive properties. Arms and armour is simply much better understod than in the days of Oman and Burne.

One simply has to reduce the number of men in each battle. It's possible that the 3rd battle seen wern't a proper battle at all but simply the gros varlets and the misslie troops which had not been used in the battle combined with reforming parts of the main battle and perhaps some remnants from the vanguard.

This is first-rate deduction. I find this post of yours very interesting indeed: especially the observtion about the men at arms being individually signed on, and not "lances."

With regards to casulties I agree that not all losses are men killed, a wounded man can be just as effectively rendered incapable of combat as a man killed outright. However much of the earlier parts of the thread involved the ability of archers to_kill/fataly wound_men in armour, not how well it produced overall casulties.

I am aware of that now, but not a few days ago. Always, when we talk of "killed", I am defining it in my mind as a casualty in wargaming terms, i.e. removed from play. I had neglected to notice that we might be initiating this conversation from very different perspectives, based on a different set of definitions for the same terms. I am not, and never was, worried over the actual number of slain from arrows outright; but merely the immediate effectiveness upon the battle effectiveness of the warriors. This does change the tenor of what we had been saying up to this point, I agree.

Of course good armour protection reduces the number of wounds as well but given the right circumstances the sheer weight of bow fire will still produce disrupting effects even if the arrows fail to kill or wound a single man. If the archers are to few, the tragets to well protected or the archers have been suppressed by counter fire by crossbow and/or bow you won't even get this kind of disruption and disorder.

I mostly agree, however, I wonder just what we are talking about when you say "disrupted." Is it merely being shaken about by the more or less constant barrage / hail of arrows? Added to a combination of worry over taking a hit in the face, so the warriors are all more or less looking down constantly, thus their line falls to pieces, etc.

In terms of wargames rules I perfer to keep actual losses and disorder/disruption as separate effects since a unit can be severly disordered without having lost a single man.

I repeat what I requested earlier: can anyone involved in this discussion (even lurkers) come up with a single, documented example of a body of men being "disrupted", then returning to combat effectiveness later in the same battle? I would consider the requirements to be a demonstrable subjection to heavy missilefire such that the "unit" in question is shot out of the battle, and yet is shown to return later and rejoin the fighting, without any reference to their numbers having been substantially reduced in the recovery period. If said (hypothetical) unit returns but has seemingly lost men (not from subsequent hand to hand combat), then I would say that "disrupted" means something more effective than merely having been shaken up a lot from impacting arrows.

Hard&Strickland devote an entire chapter to the interaction of arrows and armour and the resulting wounds, they are entirely correct in their conclusion that more test are needed…

I look forward to added research being done.

Btw, having been struck in the unarmored brisket by a mere 35 pound bow, pulled back c. 2/3 full-draw, I can assure anyone that a rubber blunt is a painful experience. Any amount of padding or armor layer would be welcomed; but the impact energy would still be largely felt, though distributed somewhat. A falling impact, such as is most common during living history reenactment, would not in any degree be representative of the kind of impact felt by the target of a 70# bow-impelled missile, especially within 100 yards.

Arms and armour is simply much better understod than in the days of Oman and Burne.

I won't disagree there. But seminal narrators of history are perhaps the least important of our sources on which we based the effectiveness of archery in our rules. the physicists and bow makers/testers (e.g. Pope) are the main "original" authorities; plus some testing on our own (admittedly not scientific), and our interpretation of the original sources' descriptions of the battle results.

RABeery,
Quite right which is why all forms of armoured combat in the 15th C saw the thrust as the main form of attack and aimed at getting the point of one's weapon into the gaps of the armour. Trying to cut through the armour wasn't much of an option with sword or axe. Once one studies the old fencing masters such as Lichtenauer, Tallhoffer and Fiore one gets a rather diffrent image of how groups of fully armoured men fought with each other. Forget about hack through the armour, it's all about striking were most of the armour isn't present.
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Hi

Actually HG was impressed with my photos of 1.5mm sheet steel with a bodkin point through it from 100yds with a 70# bow. Big leaves of steel that would ahve "stapled" the armor to the wearer.

That Curry is a revisionist is implied by her use of "NEW".

But lets assume you are entirely correct and arrows are not a danger to armored men(assuming it always hits directly on the brest plate and neve at edges, joints, eyeslits, the horse while running, etc). Even in the MUD, you are saying that 8000 men, mostly unrmored and equipped with cheap daggers and wooden hammers are able to KILL these walking tanks? If you will note the original descriptions of agincourt where specific mention is made where people died(well the marshall did die on a stake), you have people being killed before they reach the contact position.

Psychic kill?

OK, under your rules do you play agincourt and get historical results?

Rocky

Who is HG? What kind of steel, how was it hardend and shaped? How was the bodkin condstructed? And so on. The kinds of materials invovled makes a lot of difference diffrent steels have very difrent restiance properties. The kind of hardend modern steel armour used in my protective vest would stop any arrow dead at 1.5mm thickness since it prevents 5.56 and russian 7.62 rounds from penetrating at short range. (The steel plate is inserted in front of the kevlar and does the main job on incoming rounds)

Without having read a single page of Curry you still bash her every chance you get, all you have to go on is the singel word 'New'. How about some real and serious proof?
This and you habit of making up spurious claims which you then atribute to me in order to refute them doesn't help the effort to keep this thread civil and informative at all.

Heavy wooden or lead mallets can be effective weapons that will knocka target to the (muddy) ground, once the man-at-arms has been knocked down can far more easily hrust "cheap daggers" into the gaps of the armour. Muvh easier than hitting a weak spot on a moving target at 100 yds.
In the difficult terrain like the muddy ground at Azincourt "light infantry" such as the English archers gained an edge in close combat they would not have had on dry and firm ground. Similar to the way the Catalan almughavars outfought the Achean Franks in the diffcult terrain at Kephisos as the knights floundered in the svamp the Catalans had created.

That the english archers were poorly equiped is partly one of the Azincourt myths as well. The mounted archers would generaly have been better equiped than the foot archers, indentures required them to muster with helmet, jack and sword (probably carried with a buckler). Well to do men would have musted with mail and some plate defences as well. The foot archers faced lesser demands but would not have been without arms and armour of some kind.

I've repeatedly said that men were killed by arrows at Azincourt as the range closed and arrows struck the fewweak spots in the armour. Just not a lot of them and it would take big bows in the 100-150 pound range to do that damage.
I've never denied that arrows killed men at Azincourt, just that they were killed by arrows shot by 70 pound bows and that significant numbers were killed prior to close combat.
Two entirely diffrent things which I hope this post makes clear for the 3rd or 4th time.

I don't make my own rules prefering to use either Medieval warfare or Poleaxed 2 (both with house rules. Azincourt is a pointless battle to play under any rules since the force ratio and the difficulties inherent in the terrain gives the English such an advantage that a re-fight is uniteresting if one wants an enjoyable game for both sides. When I refight 100YW battles I go for those which allow for more even fights such as Poitiers, Vernuil, Formigny. I.e those were the French players gets to deployed his anti-archery countermeasures with some hope of success.

At Poitiers re-fights the mounted charges will generaly fail (as they ought to) but as in actual history the crossbow men will stay on the field throughout the battle and at times suppress the English archery to such a degree that the dismounted men-at-arms can close in good order whcih makes for stiff but even fight which puts superior French numbers against the strenght of the (strong) English position. If all 3 of the French battles get into in the fight they can usually wear down the Anglo-Gascons to a point were they break as the final battle gets to grips with them.

At Vernuil the French have enough crossbowmen and (mostly Scots) archers to do real damage to the English archers on at least part of the field. Add in the armoured Lombards and the battle can go either way. The Egnlish of course gets the benefits of the superior morale and discipline they showed on the day.

And so on for the other battles.

We've done Agincourt allowing The French player(s) to do unhistorical tactical revisions. Only when we "script" the French into doing the exact same historical attacks that they made do they lose consistently. Almost ANY other approach works to create a French win. Examples of this include: Making an all out mounted charge with the entire first battle; using the large number of crossbowmen and archers on the French side to duke it out with the English (thus weakening the English missile capability before the main battle); outflanking with a battle before launching a frontal assault.

I have not played Verneuil, but have played Formigny a couple of times. The English are lucky if they win that fight. Playing Poitiers is a toss up, as you observe. Crécy can be fun. The French usually lose though, in a strictly historical refight where they only come onto the field piecemeal.

To clear something up: Rocky's tests were all done where I was not, and as he infers, I heard about the results later: I have no memory of actually seeing pictures of the steel plates after being pierced by the arrows: this was many years ago, in fact back in the mid to late 70's, and he lived out of state: we only physically met a couple of times a year in those days, but were working together on "Art of War", a collaborative effort. He was doing the physics studies and the math; and the missile tables are the result of all that work (labor of love).

When he says that something is not right with the places where "revisionists" say the men mostly went down at Agincourt, and where the sources say they did, he is exactly right: and that is a point that you (Cap'n Gars, et al) should not lose sight of. Something isn't right about the "new" conclusions, because they call into question the original sources. And anytime this happens, I get suspicious that something "new" isn't allowing the people on the field at the time the natural intelligence of eyewitnesses. That to me is a preposterous position to begin from.

I assume those Azincourt re-fights have been using the 25.000 man army assume by earlier historians? And 6000 or so English. Puting 12000 French against 8600 English will give a diffrent re-fight even if one allows the Frenc to deoplyed between 1000-2000 gros varlets.

In the 3 re-fights I've done of Formigny the French has won twice and the English once. The key to an Egnlish victory is to beat one Fench force before the other. The scenarios rules I use encourages the player acting as Clermont to attack rather than sit still and wait for Richemont though the later is an option.

How many of the authors of the written sources describing Azincourt were actually eyewitnesses? How many were completly unbiased and did not have their own axes to grind? How many did have the military experience needed to fully understand what they were seeing? All that must be taken into account when evaluating the written source material. Not all period soruces are of equal value as historical evidence and a properly trained historian can evaluate them through hard work and study. It isn't simply a matter of chosing those which say what you want.

My copy of "The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations" is out of the house at the moment so I can't check directy on which describe huge French losses by archery. To judge by the quotes used in "The Great Warbow" and a few other books the main sources for such losses are Walsingham and Titus Livius. Walsingham was a Benedictine monk, wasn't present at the battle and his claim fo 140.000 French at the battle gives us a hint of how accurate and thrustworthy his account might be. He's clearly working of second hand information.
If a written source describe events which are contradicted by scientific experiments then that source must be called into question especialy if it is written by a non-eyewitness without miltiary experience.

Do show which of the original sources the 'new'conclusions of say Curry calls into question, then we can establish if those sources are themselves valid or not. Curry relies on the period soruce material for her reconstruction of the battle, as I've shown she clearly appreciates the effect of archeyr but still she comes to the conclusion that the blodiest parts of the battle were the melee and the mass killing of the prisoners, conclusions which are supported by the sources.

Since Rocky don't seem have read the works he criticises nor have yet produced a a detailed critiscims of them citing sources to support his view I take his criticism lightly so far.

a note on the weaponry of the English archers:
According to Waurin the English archers at Azincourt foguth with swords, hatchets, mallets, axes and becs de fauquon. Monstrelet noted the use of falchions as well. The lead mallet used could very well have been an effective polearm if it was the same kind of combined weapon and toll that was described later in the 16th C by Barrett.

As can be seen they had a bit more to chose from than just cheap daggers and wood hammers. Or are the period sources wrong about this Rocky?

Humphrey,

The way in which the word "lance" was used by both the French and the English during the 15th C has caused a lot of confusion. Intialy "lance" was simply another name for a (fully equiped) man-at-arms and the term can be found in both French and English records such as indentures. The English even distinguised between the "lance a cheval" which had to be equipped and trained for mounted combat and the "lance a pied" who only fought dismounted. When the Compagnies de Ordonnace were established the administrative/tactical subunit was called "lances fournies" or "lances garnies"which often was shortend to simply "lance/lances" thus creatign the possibility for a lot confusion. The French army of the 1400-1445 period and it's structure is to some extent still poorly understood and examined. The French were using paid troops recruited to set ratios of men-at-arms to missile troops (2:1 in 1415) but it was still not was well established and developed as the English system which isn't strange since it was a considerably younger system. Nor did it prodcue the number of missile troops needed to counter the number of archers in the English armies of the 15th C. Hence the need for the Compagnies d'Ordonnace and the Francs-Archers.

Anyway most of the credit should go to Curry for digging up and publishing the new details about the French army in 1415. The conclusions about the 3rd battle ar my onw though, I looked throgu the accounts see just what kind of troops remined after the Vanguard and the Main battle had gone forward to defeat. The gros varlets and gens de trait had not been used and we know from the soruces that parts of the French men-at-arms got back to the "start line" were some contiuned to flee while others wanted to reform and re-engage.

Do note the you and I define disruption in somewhat ways, for me a disrupted unit is one suffering form disorder and internal disprution which reduces it's combat effectivness. Such disorder can be induced by losses but a unit can also simply absorb the losses it suffers and keep on fighting in good ordereven when suffering sustantial losses.
Disorder & disprution can also arrise form events that not involve losses at all the, events you describe such as 'constant' (?) punding by arrows, the fear of a face strike, the looking down and so on disrupting the order of a formation would be typical of this. Or the nature or the terrain or being in the path of routing troops.

For me disruption doesn't cover being "shot out of the battle" and then returning to battle, this for me would be a failure of combat morale, resulting in a rout and then followed by the unit rallying and returning to the fray. Or at best a repulsed unit withdrawing in reasonably good order to go again but most of the time the French were repulsed in close combat, not by archery alone. For me disorder & disruption explains those times that the French were subjected to (heavy) archery, apparently suffered few losses but clearly fought at a disadvantage in the melee. Hence when the losses are not the cause of the disruption beacuse the losses suffered are so few that they don't disrupt or the unit is able to absorb the losses but not the other punishment it recivies.

With regard to the "constant" arrow barrages I'm questioning wether English logistics and arrow supplies allowed the archers to contiously shoot contiously for more than a few minutes. Regardless if one uses the 10 arrows a minute or 15 arrows a minute rates of shooting the amounts expended would be enormous and IMHO the problems invovled in arrow supply would effect the rate of shooting seen over a longer period of time.

Testing accurately re-produced arms and armour is quite expensive which is why so few such test have been done. The Armour Research Society has commisioned a project in which 14th C Italian mail will be re-produced and then tested with re-produced weaponry. The metallurgical anlysis alone cost $6,000 USD each. Small wonder that most researchers use various kinds of impact machines for the tests instead.
Jones used plates of victorian wrought iron which according to him had the same kind of metallurgical properties as 14thC iron armour.

Regarding Vernuil I used the grand total provided by Heath which I assumed included both English and Burgundian troops. The presence of the Burgundians would be the explain of the large number of men-at-arms.
Vernuil is still a fairly poorly studied battle and the sources present both confusing and at times contradictory versions of events. According to Jones, far from shooting down the Lombards the baggage guard of 500 archers were scattered in flight carying with them the news of the supposed English defeat and the Lombards set to plundering the camp and chasing fugitives. That the English reformed, fought on and won the battle is to me a far geater achivment than anything done at the somewhat over hyped battle of Azincourt.

I do note that you left out this part of Ditcham's account "… The Lombards certainly seem to have smashed through the English archers opposed to them (one can, I think, discount Cousinot's claim that they fled without coming to grips, since all other sources are unanimous on this at least) (174) but instead of remaining to break up the English reserves they scattered to pillage the English baggage (175) slaughtering horses and servants and sending fugitives fleeing far and wide, whose tales of disaster provoked a minor revolt in part of Normandy (176)…" Which gives a somewhat diffent perspective to your claim that the Lombards were "severly handled" by the longbowmen, that a disorder force of at best some 600 cavalry had trouble with an entire army as they returned in dribs and drabs to the field isn't surprisning , nor is indicative of how well the armored horsemen performed against longbowmen. The fact that they did "smash through" the English archers in the intial stage of the battle is. Period sources such as Thomas Basin descibe how the English line was "deeply pentrated". If wargames rules allows only one of the events of the battle (thee Lombard defeat) but not the other (the initial success) then they are biased in favour of the longbow IMO.

Rocky,
The Marshall did die on a stake??! Jean Le Maingre aka Boucicault, Marhsal of France survivded the battle despite being taken prisoner. An historical fact which is easy to verify. So he didn't die on a stake in the battle
Charles d'Albret the Contstable did die in the battle but was killed by Henry's bodyguards while surrendering to the King. As far as I can tell the King's bodyguards were wielding swords, lances and pollaxes not stakes.

Now William de Saveuse did get his horse stuck on a stake but he was thrown of and killed by archers as he lay on the ground next. He wasn't the Marshall nor was he killed on a stake but at least a stake figured in his demise.

Hi

Gars… curiously, you attack me for not reading your single source, and then attack my sources that you are unfamiliar with.

AND, you tend to not read the whole post, but just jump in with the first hint of disagreement. So, why are you here?

"HG" is "Humphrey Goldenbollocks". or however he spells it. I did not criticise Curry except to say that other sources came to different conclusions. And these conclusions seem to consistantly agree. Usually when I see a book start with something resembling " A new intrepretation"…I am guessing that they either have NEW sources, or are just being a contrarian. As a contriarian myself I recognize the format.

In the case at hand. Lets see. I have been in real fights with real steel and real blood. I have been an archer for over 45 years. I have been shooting antique guns for over 35 years. So, i have been around and around on these discussions. I think if you haven't seen the work done on bow by Saxton Pope then you may be missing out on the bigger picture. If you have not seen P.E.Klopstag's "the Physics of Bow and Arrow" an actual refrence by a real world physicist taking an actual physicists scientintific testing approach on how bows work and how the arrows do their job, then we have trouble communicating.

I totally agree that there have been enthusiass like Hardy and even our wargaming pioneer Donald Featherstone.

But here is the deal. You keep harping on the concept that I am some sort of "Longbow myth" supporter. I am not. Nor, however, am I some sort of "Plate knight fantasy" supporter. Nor am I a "medievalist" like HG. I had a memory of an important personage impaling his horse on a stake. I apologize for conflating that with the Marshal of France. Not important.

Anyway, I agree, a SINGLE arrow, archer, is unlikely to have shot once and killed a knight. But in the battle, thousands of archers weren't there waiting around to kill knights in close order combat either. It is a silly argument that an unarmored archer can kill a knight with his backup weapon, but not his primary weapon.

As far as the discussion that knights crushed together were a "crowd control" problem as is alluded to by yours, and by the recent documentary, the "New" fact is reported commonly, by the refrences at the time AND quoted by Oman. The new idea is that archer's don't kill anyone, they just "disrupt" the formation. I am not sure why "disrupting" the formation has any meaning when they are out of reach, or any meaning when they are crushed together with the English. What does "disruption" mean during the 400yd advance of the first battle on foot? That it takes twice as long to advance? Why would that matter?

Rocky

Actually I've been searching for both Pope and Klopstag sicne the first time you mentioned them but neither are avaialbe throug my usual libraries. The only book i've foudn so far is a P.E Klopsteg's "Turkish archery and the composite bow" Is Klopstag sometiems spelled Klopsteg? I've ever commented directly on either of them in this thread, th eonly thign I've have commented on is your claims about the poundage and pentrative power of the bows used.

And since you apparently haven't read "The knight and the blast furnace" by Alan Williams, an actual reference by a real world metallurgist taking a metallurgist's scientific approach to the analyis of armour and how it works, you are missing out on the bigger pciture on that subject. I could make the same comment about other works which I have read but you seem to have not and which have shaped my understanding of these matters. I've written earlier in this post I'm trying to find the sources you have refered to in order to read them and thus improve my knowledge, of course they'll have to stand up to the same kind of critiscims I'm trained to view all sources with.

I'm not as old as you are so i cvan't put the same kind of impressive numbers in front of my experiences. As for havign been in a real fight, been there done that more than once in the line of duty and have scars outside and inside to prove it. I've been and archeologist and historian for 16 years and have devoted the last 10 or so to the study of close combat weaponry and armour, their actual use and their interaction with each other. You know bows, I know armour, which would explain our diffrent approaches on the subject. Have you ever handled and examined actual medieval or renaissance armour? I have.

As I've said ealier I'm not an archer but I'm a praticing several other Western Martial Arts such as armoured and unarmoured longsword and poleaxe fighting as taught by the great masters Lichtenauer, Talhoffer and Fiore. I've spent a lot of hours and cash to ensure that my gear are first rate, accurate reproductions of medieval gear and my finest pieces are made by acknowledged master in the field working with the same techniques as the masters of old. Had we been located on the same side of the Atlantic I would happily have let you take any number of shots from any range at my breastplate and leg armour with a 70 pounder. I guess the results would settle that part of the dispute quickly.

If you read my posts I'll find that I've repeatedly acknowledged that the archer could kill/inflict a fatal wound a men-at-arms either by a an arrow striking weak spots in the harness. Just that it would not be a very common event versus men-at-arms clad in steel harness and not too common against the earlier iron harnesses which began to develop to full harness in the 1360's.
Non-fatal wounds are another matter as iron limb armour could be penetrated at closer range but steel armour would have resisted even close range shots well. Of course areas only protected by mail and/or padding would be much more vulnerable.

Also I flatly challenge that such penetration of the plates could be achived by 70 pound bows at ranges much longer than 10-20 yds versus iron armour and not at all versus steel armour at any tacticlay meaning full range. I've quoted scientific experiments proving this. The bows claimed by Hardy and Strickland to be in use, i.e powerfull 100-150 pounders would be another matter and more testing is needed to determine exactlly how such bows interacted with steel and iron armour.

I've never refered to the "crowd control" poblem as presented in the TV show since I don't buy it and the test was based in inaccurate information. According to the sources the French had enough space to divide into three columns as they assaulted the English line and since the English got 8600 men into the the same kind of frontage as the French put 5000-6000 men the space cannot have been as constrictive as the TV shows claims.

By 1415 the primary effect of archery against fully harnessed men-at-arms were disprution. Killing and fataly wounding men-at-arms was a secondary effect. Massed archery was not an effective means of killing large numbers of heavily armored men. Archery alone never repulsed a French assault, it took close combat fought by the English men-at-arms, supported by the archers to do that. What the massed English archery did was that it negated the French numerical advantage, not by killing lots of men but by indirect means which gave the English the edge they needed in the melee.

The disruptive effects of the arrow barrage on the French Vanguard would include the units becoming disordered and not beign able to mantain a cohesive fighting formation. The men-at-arms physical and psycological fatigue would have been increased by being battered by non-penetrative hits,the fear of a face or throat striek would cause men to look down which would have made keepiong ordered ransk even more difficult. And of course some men would be killed and other wounded. All of this would lessen the ability to fight effectively once the French men-at-arms reached the English line. Being subjected to continous disprtion as the advanced would be vital since it would make it diffcult or even impossible to recover from the effects or reform the ranks of the formation into good order.

Do provide the date and time when I've 'attacked'your sources. I've question and challenged_your_claims or pointed out when they are erronous. Never have I mention the sources you have named by title or by author. I've relied on and named multiple sources when posting in this thread, Curry is but one. I do read all of your posts, I just disagree with a lot of what you write in them.

While searching for the works of Klopstag/Klopsteg and Pope as well as the others you mentioned earlier I noted that the dates these works were published precluded them from having had access to the latest Mart Rose finds, of which the only which are the only properly preserved Mary Rose bows are a part. The Mary Rose bows recovered and later auctioned off in the mid 19th C would not have been properly preserved since the necessary techniques were not yet developed. So any work based on those bows would be flawed due to the damage poor conservation would cause to the bows.

I assume those Azincourt re-fights have been using the 25.000 man army assume by earlier historians? And 6000 or so English. Puting 12000 French against 8600 English will give a diffrent re-fight even if one allows the Frenc to deoplyed between 1000-2000 gros varlets.

Yes, the "old" numbers for the French. Thing of it is, though, the third battle never gets to grips, so they might as well not even be there at all: the "25,000" just makes the English win seem more impressive. In fact, in the refights of Agincourt that I have done, I don't think that even 12,000 of the French effectives came to hand strokes.

How many of the authors of the written sources describing Azincourt were actually eyewitnesses?

I don't know. And I have never done a read of any actual (translated) original sources, except as quoted in seminal works. Oman is one of the best (still) for offering copious quotations of his original source material in his footnotes: and that feature alone makes reading him quite useful. Keegan (iirc) quoted a number of passages, but I could be mistaken about that. Anyway, it's been many years and you know what our memories are like.

The feature which stands out in my mind clearest is the description of the dead, how they piled up in rows and impeded subsequent French attacks. It was mainly the result of arrows which made the hand to hand combat so one-sided when it came: and the longbowmen killed and captured a large number of Frenchies in hand to hand combat. The method portrayed for taking down a French man at arms was: a longbowman would draw the man at arms out by presenting a target, then his buddy would clobber the man at arms to the ground and they would either drive a bodkin through his eye or take him prisoner. Most effective, and quick: the whole thing over in a very few minutes: the rest of the French first battle withdrawing/routing into the second as it slowly comes up.

How many were completly unbiased and did not have their own axes to grind?

Come on, do we need to speak rhetorically? We both know that original witnesses are anything but unbiased. That's why we hope for writers from both sides to study. Agincourt, as I recall, is blessed with a more than usual amount of both.

How many did have the military experience needed to fully understand what they were seeing?

That is always a legitimate concern. The French and English heralds watched the battle progress in a body (they belonged to a formally recognized "guild" and had immunity as impartial witnesses) probably contained both the ignorant and the sagacious. They gave the battle its name on the spot. And it seems to me that a casual look over the stricken field would have offered little room for doubt on the manner of death, and where it occurred. As Rocky said, the killing started further out than right in front of the English lines, according to eyewitnesses: many of the bodies were piled short of the English lines. Also, it is original accounts which state that the French first line reached the English men at arms and drove them back "a spear's length." So there was enough strength in it when it got there to do battle for at least a short while.

I think what we are talking about is a combination of events which killed off the French: first the slow advance into arrows which got actually deadly within 70 yards; a lot of slackers who hung back and joined the second line; a sharp melee all along the frontage of the English men at arms, with longbowmen getting around the flanks and into the rear of the French battle. The second battle broke much quicker and with less loss of life than the first battle. The third battle (which as you say may have been nothing more than dregs and varlets and unused marksmen) did nothing.

Not all period soruces are of equal value as historical evidence and a properly trained historian can evaluate them through hard work and study. It isn't simply a matter of chosing those which say what you want.

I "fully" appreciate what you say. As far as Agincourt is concerned, as I said already, I have only original source quotations to go on included within seminal works. (Now, if you want to discuss the crusades, and especially Hastings, I can quote readily enough from many of the extant original documents at length: the HYW has never been any forté of mine.)

If a written source describe events which are contradicted by scientific experiments then that source must be called into question especialy if it is written by a non-eyewitness without miltiary experience.

I couldn't agree more. But for Agincourt, the description of the battle seems highly probable for the most part. (I don't recall Walsingham directly, nor Titus Livius – been too long I'm afraid.)

Do show which of the original sources the 'new'conclusions of say Curry calls into question, then we can establish if those sources are themselves valid or not.

My total exposure to Curry to date is yourself. And from what you've said, she doesn't portray the results of the battle much differently than the way I see it: i.e. lots of arrows caused the effectiveness of the French to go way down, and the English worsted them in the hand to hand because of it.

she clearly appreciates the effect of archeyr but still she comes to the conclusion that the blodiest parts of the battle were the melee and the mass killing of the prisoners, conclusions which are supported by the sources.

And I agree with this. Actual killing was done up close and personal for the most part. A man at arms already afflicted with arrow wounds is far from dead in a full harness (unless he was one of the unlucky ones): and his final demise was carried out by archers or English men at arms in the melee; or, as you say, executed as a prisoner. I would personally estimate the 6,000 French dead as 80% killed by hand, the rest by suffocation and arrows: the largest part being the arrows, although many or most of these would have died slowly, even during the night from exposure, and in the morning when the English mercy killed all the wounded that they found.

…but most of the time the French were repulsed in close combat, not by archery alone.

If "the French" referred to are men at arms, I would go further and say, that there is not a single instance where a battle of French men at arms only, were ever driven off entirely by arrows: the fighting always ended with a hand to hand episode.

With regard to the "constant" arrow barrages I'm questioning wether English logistics and arrow supplies allowed the archers to contiously shoot contiously for more than a few minutes. Regardless if one uses the 10 arrows a minute or 15 arrows a minute rates of shooting the amounts expended would be enormous and IMHO the problems invovled in arrow supply would effect the rate of shooting seen over a longer period of time.

The sources state that usually the English logistical "machinery" was good for it: but sometimes, such as at Poitiers and earlier at Morlaix, they ran out. If you consider that the industry of making arrows at such a prodigious rate was an English phenomenon, and that they only turned out standardized arrows for 70# bows, it can be readily seen that supplying such a quantity was accomplished.

Besides, these battles were only fought out in bursts of a few minutes duration at a time. It would take eight minutes of constant shooting to exhaust the bundle of 48 arrows (minimum) that each archer was equipped with: as we can see from Agincourt, the total duration of shooting was probably far less than this in the opening phase, to get the French to attack: then the amount of time the archers had to shoot into the cavalry was no more than a minute total before they arrived at the stakes: and the shooting into the first battle was no more than the c. three minutes it took the French to cover 250 yards. Shooting into the second battle, same thing. Only one resupply would have been required, and they certainly had the time for it. (At Poitiers, the French attacks came rolling in one after the other and it was a scramble just to order the English lines in time to meet each one.)

The rate of fire in our rules, btw, is only six round per minute in massed volley and twice that shooting at will.

Which gives a somewhat diffent perspective to your claim that the Lombards were "severly handled" by the longbowmen, that a disorder force of at best some 600 cavalry had trouble with an entire army as they returned in dribs and drabs to the field isn't surprisning , nor is indicative of how well the armored horsemen performed against longbowmen.

I allowed that Ditcham did not even mention the "baggage guard of (1,000) archers", that I read of in Oman and elsewhere. Thus causing me to suspect the accounts as being quite the collection of discrepencies.

Some battles that I have read about (e.g. Morlaix) are so differently described that you would wonder if you are even reading about the same event at all.

The fact that they did "smash through" the English archers in the intial stage of the battle is.

It is an indication that there was no prepared position, i.e. no stakes laid. No longbow line will ever stop a flat-out cavalry charge: the closing rate is too quick: there simply isn't enough time to cause enough casualties to distrupt the onward rushing mass. So if the Lombard horse ran through the longbowmen, it only means that their front was unprotected.

Archery alone never repulsed a French assault, it took close combat fought by the English men-at-arms, supported by the archers to do that.

Perhaps you missed a comment I earlier made on this: in our rules, the 70# bows inflict noticeable casualties (i.e. figures removed – but remember that only "25%" are actually mortally wounded), and the French first battle gets to hand strokes at Agincourt: if, however, we allow the 100# bows all across the line, the French will be dead and only the lucky (unlucky) few will ever reach the line.

Something is amiss in the conclusions of the modern experimentalists, if they say that only 100#ers and heavier longbows can have any wounding effect upon steel plate. Either that, or the quality of armor in a French battle was significantly lower all around than assumed. I know, the array requirements: but do they stipulate anything more than "full harness?" No mentioning of the required new steel, I warrant.

The disruptive effects of the arrow barrage on the French Vanguard would include the units becoming disordered and not beign able to mantain a cohesive fighting formation.

Nevertheless, the eyewitness description at Agincourt states that the front of the French first battle drove back the English men at arms a spear's length: hardly the effect one would expect from a disordered formation, but possible by a depleted one (i.e. one which had left significant casualties behind strewn on the ground from incoming arrows) still maintaining enough cohesion to make a final rush with mass into the waiting English).

From what I have read, the first suit of plate was built in 1435 ( maniz germany) as the battle took place in 1415 the main armour was the coat of plates ( a scale type) with lots of chain thrown in.

Is this correct?

the Moslems at Lepento 1540's had a bad day because all of the combine Spanish and Venication (sorry spell) army wore full plate. and thier bow's (70lb compound ) could not penitrate the plate.

in Japan armour makers could make armour that could either take an arrow hit (hard faced) or a musket hit (crushable) but really did not come up with a good set that work against both.

Hi

"Have you ever handled and examined actual medieval or renaissance armour? I have."

Err.. yes. I was also an studied archeology in my day. You cannot ever make the assumption on the TMP that anyone you are talking to doesn't have credentials. I also built copies of armor so that I COULD shoot at them.

I have never asserted that the peak of your armor was other than likely arrow proof. But the armor isn't uniform. Just like your modern steelplate/kevlar vest, I cannot penetrate it either. But I don't have to HIT you there to take you out of the fight.

Reminds me of the later "shot proof" breast and back. Where one could buy the armor with a litttle dimple in it where it was "proofed". A direct 28gm lead ball on the same point at 450fps isn't likely to penetrate either. But I doubt you would make the same "you can shoot at my armor" if I was holding an early matchlock pistol. Now, effect is arguably from momentum in the object allied with the integrety of the material. A cheap iron or steel bodkin point arrow is still 60 gms with better sectional density at 200fps versus a soft lead ball less than half the weight and just more than twice the velocity.

In point of fact, crossbows were also shooting "bolts". a bit of armor cannot tell if the incoming was lauched from a crossbow or a bow. Yet, most bolts are lighter, no better made and no faster than an arrow from a longbow.

You have a metal incoming objects and similar levels of momentum, and either all would do or none of them. If the arrow is made obsolete by the armor…….then the same armor should not have been discarded because of early guns or crossbow!

If the arrow didn't do the job, then the King of England would not have had an army made up of 75% archers.

Rocky

[From what I have read, the first suit of plate was built in 1435 ( maniz germany) as the battle took place in 1415 the main armour was the coat of plates ( a scale type) with lots of chain thrown in.]

It was a gradual development dating to perhaps the mid 1300's. Increasingly, plate improved and became more commonplace. Chain began to disappear.

As far as the first appearance of a full suit of plate armor, sources vary. Italy is also a very likely place for that to have happened.

The full harness in 1415 was still a layered affair: mail shirt and "pants" under pieces of plate buckled on. There was, of course, between the mail and the body some padded clothing. As has been said above, the latest steel pieces were replacing iron plate.

The ultimate full harness of steel plate that most people associate with the "knight in shining armor", dates to the late 15th century in any kind of numbers on the battlefield.

"Maximillian" plate offers a perfect example (but the Italian was also equally fully developed). This kind of armor was sufficient by itself, had padding built integrally inside each piece where deemed necessary, and also had mail reinforces attached at the joints. The mail shirt had vanished altogether. Its total weight was much less than the full harness of 1415, at 40 to 50# for the whole shot, including helmet, gauntlets and sabatons/sollerets. Heavier suits of armor were for the joust and foot combat of tournaments.

By 1415 Mail chausses were no longer worn with the leg harness, the chausses had gone out of use starting in the mid-14th C as a full plate harness for the legs became fully developed.

One should also not forget the habit of wearing a set of padded armour over the armour, padded "jupons de wambeson" were common among the lesser men-at-arms and increased the protection level of those unable to afford fully developed harness. Though they were going out of style as the new steel harness became available. The padded jupons have one great drawback which is that they retain a lot of heat.

The Perry brothers very well researched "Agincourt to Orleans" range show the variations present in the armour of the time quite well
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Rocky,
I was asking you in order to establish your credentials, nothing more, much easier to discuss the stuff with anyone who has handled actual preserved pieces than someone who has not. I was also establishing my credentials on the subject since I've handled a 100 or so pieces at armouries in the UK and Sweden and at the Landeszeughaus in Graz.

I do know that you have made armour since we have discussed pentration before. I'm still wondering about the details of the armour such as material used, how is was forged and shaped, it' style and how it was hardend. All to help me understand your testing and put it in context with my own research.

With regards to the velocity of the lead ball you mention that velocity is far lower than those recorded by the experts at Graz when testing actual 16th, 17th and 18th Century firearms. Those velocities ranged between 385 and 533 meters per second or 1263 to 1749 fps (feet per second?) if I convert the velocity correctly. The average velocity was 454 meters per second. I agree that the iron/steel bodkin is a better pentrator material wise but the firearms have far suprior velocities, on average 7 times that of the bow. And the impact energy is on entirely diffrent levels. According to the testing quoted by Hardy & Strickland in the Great Warbow a 150 pound bow shooting a 95.9 gm arrow generated an inital KE of 134J (at 53 m/s)while a durign the Graz testing a pistol firing a 9.54 gm shot generated 907J when impacting at 436 m/s at a range of 8.5 meters.

Actualy the armor which made the arrow obsolete was in turn rendered obsolete by early firearms and replaced with new forms of armour which were adapted to countering the threat of the musket and pistol. The breastplate worn by a Polish knight in 1410 at Tannenberg is quite diffrent form the one worn by a hussar at Klushino 200 years later. The material used is diffrent as is the thickness.

Very few of the period writers describing Azincourt were present at the battle and can claim to have been eyewitnesses. Of the 27 known written sources only 4 were written by men actually at the battle and 3 of those were put down on paper 30-40 years after the events. Another 5 sources mostly likely had direct access to eyewitnesses and their stories but that is impossible to verify to 100%.
And even when an author was present during the battle such as was the case the chaplain who wrote the Gesta Henrici Quinti the account may be unreliable in some parts. In the Gesta's case the authors objective of extolling Henry has led him to manipulate his description of the battle and it's events, notably the size of the French and English armies and the circumstances of the massacre of prisoners to achive that goal.

Anne Curry's ealier work "The Battle of Agincourt. Sources and Interpretations" link is of enourmous value to any student of Azincourt as it presents (almost) all of the known narrative sources in translation as well as a number of other sources. It's a great tool well worth the money.

Reagrding the French casulties at Azincourt the sources doesn't allow for a clear estimate of those, Curry lists every recorded casulty figure in one of her Appendixes and they range from 1500 to 100.000(!) Her conclusion is that French losses were severe but that neither French nor English knew exactly how many died at Azincourt nor can we establish such a number today with any certainty.The same applies to the English losses, since Henry ordered that all retinues were to be paid at their pre-battle strenght for the remainder of the campaign which makes the English losses just about impossible to determine by study of the indentures and other such documents.
My guess/estimate after reading the various accounts and studying the latest research on armour penetration is that 4000-6000 French were killed and that 10-15% died as a result of wounds inflicted by archery. (Not counting men wounded by arrows and mercy killed later.) That said the % off men killed by archery could be 5-10% higher given the gaps in our knowledge off how arrows shot from 150 pound bows and iron&steel armour interacted.

The description of how the English were driven back the lenght of a spear is only present in a single source IIRC and others describe how the English men-at-arms used their lances to push over the French men-at-arms before they could get to grips with their shorter 5 foot lances. The English right led by the Duke of York bore the brunt of the French assault and was the place of the heaviest fighting with York and 90 of his retinue being killed. Such losses would support the Gesta's description of a grueling fight between the two sides rather than the rapid defeat described in Le Fevre, Monstrelet and Waurin. Since the French divided into 3 groups before assaulting the English line these sources describe events which happend on particular part of the battlefield they were viewing but did not apply to areas outside their view. (Waurin and Le Fevre are other eyewitness accounts, though Waurin relied on Le Fevre for information and Monstrelet appears to have relied heavily on both when writing. It's hard to tell how much is corroboration of evidence and how much is simply copying the text of another.) According to the Gesta it took two or three hours to defeat the French Vanguard. Just what happend with the French Main Battle is unclear, soem accoutns have it breaking and withdrawign before the English even came to grips with it, others have it fighting on for a short period before being defeated.

The rows/heaps of dead described so vividly by some sources such as the Gesta are always connected with the melee, not the archery. Two of the four eyewitnesses described the French as being wounded and hurt by the archery, not killed though of course a bad wound would be a "kill" in game terms as much as a fatal wound resulting in immediate death. A third, the Gesta gives the vivid picture of the sides and visors being pierced by the arrows at short range.
I'm having some doubts about just how much of a obstacle the alledged heaps were. One can read about them blocking the French Main from coming to grips with the English but strangely they don't seem to be problem for the English as they moved to engage the French Main. Another case of the archers superior mobility in action?

The muddy ground and the special nature of the soil at Azincourt when turned into mud played at least as great a part as the archery (IMO even greater) in making the close comabt so one-sided. The English would probably have won this one battle even if the archers had been crossbowmen or even without archery at all. The fact that the mud caused the French men-at-arms arrived exhausted at the English line and the advantage light infantry possesed over heavy on this particular battlefield was very close to decisive, perhaps even fully decisive in it's own right. Archery just turned very bad into even worse. Of course the English would have had lost more heavily without any archery but I don't think that the French could have won even then. Could the English have won without the mud? Perhaps, given that Henry commanded the largest group of archers ever to fight in a battle in France but the outcome would have been much more in doubt and English losses much higher.

I've tried to recreate the effect of the mud by adding the appropriate weight to my feet while wearing one of my harnesses. A 300 yard march became a real trial and even though I was probably more fit than the average French men-at-arms I was suffering from both exhaustion and overheating by the time I arrived at the "English line". Close combat with the man-at-arms waiting for me was hard and I was at a profound disadvantage. Fighting his 3 archers was just about bloody impossible as their advantage in mobility was huge. The one advantage I had was that any solid hit on an archer would result in (serious) injury most of the time due to the limited or no armour worn by the archers I was fighting with. At best I "killed" one archer before the others brought me down.
Now this imperfect recreation lacked several things such as the problems the suction of the mud would have created and the problem of slippery footing. And we employed ARMA padded Contact-Sparring weapons instead of real or blunt steel weaponry becuase they allow the full range of historical attacks and defences to be used safely. But even with these restrictions and imperfections it was quite clear that crossing and then fighting on such difficult ground would have put the French at a decisive disadvantage in the melee.

With regards to the arrow supply the eyewitness account of the Gesta actually mentions the archers running out of arrows.

More to follow.

Nice figures, but the cuiress front and back was that common?

One reason that the french arrived tired is the fact that they could not pause. Many accounts of battles state that one side as it closes stops and rest a bit. it is unwise to arrive at the fight winded. The arrows fire and the crowd behind you forces you to close.

Your unit approaches the beaten zone (you know where this is due to arrows that litter the ground.

you look down to look up is to get an arrow in the eye, you close up mass is protection (weapons in the air will defect arrows) you move forward. if you stand the unit behind will push you or the arrows will get you so close. As you get close to the enemy line the fire is now from eye level and hit rate climbs you get hit from the side. you can not close for the stakes so you move to the men at arms you can get at them.

Any hit will take out a fighter, hand, eye arm leg. people do not want to bleed to death, friends will carry you off.

Arrow do not kill as clean (bad word) as a gun, only if you pierce the body ( or head) do they bleed quick.

richard the lion heart took days to die from the crossbow bolt that buired in his shoulder.

Genhis Khan took an arrow to the throat, his friend and Furture (it is good to save the khan life) leader of the golden hoard jump off his horse and used his teeth to clamp the wound until a medic could come up and sew the wound.

and everyone forgets that the crossbowmen on one of the French flanks won thier fight and was flanking the English.

Hi

Crap, wrote a long technical description of this and a response, and when I said submit, TMP did a burp and wouldn't load it.

Sigh.

A sign that everyone has stopped caring? I think rather than repost/rewrite the thing, I will just say: sorry this has gone on and on. Perhaps we should stop boring people.

Rocky

Very few of the period writers describing Azincourt were present at the battle and can claim to have been eyewitnesses.

Cap'n, fascinting post. Especially the bit about you recreating the conditions of the French man at arms in full harness. That sort of stuff resonates with me.

Anne Curry's ealier work "The Battle of Agincourt. Sources and Interpretations"….

I just "one click" ordered it from Amazon dot com for $55.98. Of her three works on the battle of Agincourt, this one seems the best buy, because it contains the translations. I like to read the original sources myself then make up my own mind what they mean (taken all together). I doubt that this later medieval warfare will grab my asthetic interests like the earlier (Normans, et al) stuff does; but it should always be good to become more well-read, and to keep up on the latest scholarship.

The muddy ground and the special nature of the soil at Azincourt when turned into mud played at least as great a part as the archery (IMO even greater) in making the close comabt so one-sided.

I can appreciate your convictions on this point, but I think you are mistaken – "guilty" of taking a point too far, imho. In your recreation of the conditions facing the French man at arms, you did not mention anything to do with getting pelted for c. 200 yards by incoming arrows at full impact: a 1.5 oz arrow outside of 100 yards, and "sheaf" arrows of over 2 oz within close range. Of course, it is impossible to reflect the actual impact energy without a bodkin point!

I think a mass of thousands of crossbowmen would have achieved much the same effect, actually. When stationary in prepared positions, crossbowmen can maintain a respectable rate of fire. The initial vollies can be devastating. The front ranks can kneel and even lay prone, where target visibility allows. Back rankers can be loading and passing weapons to the front ranks, etc.

To claim that the English army would have won without the missile is a huge stretch. I think the muddy ground is over-rated. The French got there and offered a stiff fight, indicating that the muddy ground was a hinderance only, not decisive.

With regards to the arrow supply the eyewitness account of the Gesta actually mentions the archers running out of arrows.

I am sure that parts of the English line ran out of arrows. But this does not mean that they were out of supply, only temporarily until more arrows could be brought up.

LORDGHEE:
and everyone forgets that the crossbowmen on one of the French flanks won thier fight and was flanking the English.

Which battle are you referring to? Agincourt?? I have never read even an oblique source stating that any of the French marksmen got involved in that battle at all.

HIm Mr Goldenbollocks looks like I got my battles confused sorry, just checked Longbow by robert Hardy and Dulbreck, will keep looking, will keep looking memory seving poorly as this was from a crossbow mercenary account in a work on crossbows, my guess is that the French where able to with drawl through the woods because of this. but it really looks like I got my battle mixed. hmm maybe in firepower. . . . . will look some more sorry.

Lord Ghee.

LORDGHEE, you have my fullest understanding and sympathy. Think nothing of it. I don't have a memory of any "French" (or other) crossbow unit ever getting on the flank of an English HYW army, much less "winning". But I could certainly be remiss, both in my memory and knowledge. If and when you find anything, please chime in here at once….

Ok so far I have found an article (timeline) on Gunpowder for the hero site a few years back, I did not note it as I wrote it from memorery. I have a description of Agincourt in which I list a unit of 300 Crossbow men on the flank ect who kept thier shields and beat the ect. now I just need to find where I read that. looking maybe an article in a mag. or on crossbows.

Lord Ghee

Captain Gars stated a while back:

"Like any good scientist and historians she evaluated the evindence at hand, added the new evidence she had discovered through painstaking work and drew new conclusions based on hard facts."

This brings up an interesting dilemma. While historians certainly use scientific principles in their work, the study of history is NOT a science. That's not a slight on history as a worthwhile topic of study, but don't pretend it is particle physics.

"Your version of how history shoudl be written is apparently that any new information which challenges existing versions of events should be discarded out of hand since it obviously can't be accurate. And God forbidd than one questions a supposedly great name…"

I don't think that HG or Rocky suggested anything like that above. If you want to adhere to scientific methodology and you come out with a "New interpretation" then you had better duck as the slings and arrows will fly. Everyone will attack you as they should. It is in this arena of ideas that a solid interpretation or re-interpretation will survive and prosper.

Just because someone has printed a book does not mean that the interpretations within will hold up to critical scrutiny. If you really want to know how Prof. Curry's new interpretations are holding up to the challenges by her peers, then you will have to look at the peer-reviewed scholarly historical journals. That is where the real debates are and that is where her ideas will flourish or die.

Rocky states:

"That Curry is a revisionist is implied by her use of "NEW"."

Unfortunately, the word "revisionist" has some nasty connotations and can be construed as an insult. Certainly all good history (and for that matter science) revises some part of our collective knowledge. That is, after all, what it is all about.

a somewhat pedantic Ralph

[This brings up an interesting dilemma. While historians certainly use scientific principles in their work, the study of history is NOT a science.]

It most certainly is science. Definition of science:

n.
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.

Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.

Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.

An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.

Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.

It may not be a so-called "hard science", but it most certainly fits the definiton of "science."

John

Well, John I beg to differ. Be careful you are not confusing History and Archeology. The distinctions between them are the same as the differences between Geography and Geology. Also, if you can show me any institution of higher learning where the History Dept. falls under the Faculty of Science, I'll reconsider my position.

Here is the problem when you crack open a dictionary and begin an etymological arguement:

"Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study"

"Methodological activity, discipline, or study"

"An activity that appears to require study and method."

"Knowledge, especially that gained through experience"

John, I am currently trying to learn to play the Shakuhachi. I am fulfilling the requirements of all four quotes above, but I am not doing science. Also, your example of "I've got packing a suitcase down to a science." shows the hyperbole of some words in commen use today by the lay public. That is, BTW, why specific Scientific Lexicons exist, to remove colloquialisms and other peculiarities of conversational word usage.

I don't want to get in a war of definitions. If this interests you may I suggest looking at the work of Karl Popper the pre-eminant philosopher and historian of science and the scientific method.

Ralph

[John, I am currently trying to learn to play the Shakuhachi. I am fulfilling the requirements of all four quotes above, but I am not doing science. ]

Exactly. Trying to learn to play a game is not science. Science is the pursuit of knowledge. A gmae does not satisfy that criterion.

Ah well, now that you've invoked the name of a philosopher, all discussion about whether science includes history must cease.

Warning! Highjacked Thread! ("And another [thread] bites the dust.")

On the original subject:

Cap'n Gars, Rocky's approach from the earliest development of our rules, was to take the mathematical approach and interpret the original sources more accurately by proving how the bows and arrows work against the same materials used in armor construction. Arrow impact angle, missile weight, range to target, etc., were all factored in. His seminal sources (especially Klopstag, Pope, et al) were seriously tested in our own tests and held up as accurate in the main.

From this rather in-depth study was born the simplistic looking missile results tables in Art of War. The ranges to effectively damage a target have provided us with historical results in many different battles. Agincourt was the first of many subsequent playtests which have turned out historically. Not just the historical side winning, but winning the way they did.

If your picture of the battle of Agincourt is played out as a wargame, I think that rather dramatic fatigue rules will have to take the place (totally) of bow fire effectiveness. This is probably okay with you. But we see the missile element as having played an actual part in killing and maiming the French men at arms. Not simply adding to their fatigue level.

John, a shakuhachi is a Japanese end blown bamboo flute.

Sorry for the hijacking

Ralph