Right? Typical American history documentaries. Ww2 documentaries make laugh cause they will talk about an aircraft or tank showing a different one entirely. Must be why the history channel doesn't show history anymore
Definately the sequencing of the naration is off in regards to the visuals. All the first knights on horseback scenes are of the French knights (while the narrator is yapping about the English forces); but later on it does get around to showing a couple of English knights riding in from the left to tangle with them. It's merely that the story being told isn't aligned chronologically with what is being shown visually.
Did you know that when people found the skeletons of the archers on the old battlefields their spines where misshaped from all the hard work of pulling that bow over and over again and doing that for a lot of years
Woah thats unique, never heard of that information! I even thought that being an archer/projectile unit is simply the best position to be not get hurt nor killed. I didn't know that it will hurt your body for doing that too much effort of a strength unlike being an infantry and cavalry that they even had to wear sometimes wear heavy armor and weapons while marching nor on the battlefield.
Years ago, I watched a documentary about the Battle of Agincourt. In it the claim was made that one of the most effective advantages the English long bowmen had wasn't so much how many of the enemy they killed on the battlefield, but more how many they killed through infections. Contrary to popular belief, the longbow men didn't draw arrows out of a quiver one at a time and fire them. They were in the habit of taking all of their arrows out and pushing the arrow head end into the ground near them. The arrow heads became contaminated with all sort of microbes in the soil. Added to that was the fact that a lot of the Englishmen were suffering from dysentery and, as they couldn't leave the field, they simple defecated where they stood. So, by the time the battle commenced, the English arrows had become biological weapons of war. I have read that the French casualties were estimated to have been around 6,000, but there is no real way of knowing how many more later died from tetanus, gangrene, gas gangrene, blood poisoning etc. Without modern antibiotics, even the slightest of wounds from one of those contaminated English arrows would have been a certain death sentence.
Killing Frenchmen a few days or weeks after the battle would be of no use to King Henry V. At the time no one knew anything about how infection was caught or spread. The English longbowmen put their arrows in the ground simply for ease of use, nothing more. If Frenchmen died from their wounds after the battle then good but the aim was to stop them on the day. Please don't make the mistake of applying modern knowledge to 600yr old battles and drawing tactics from that knowledge.
Killing from infection won't be such a big deal on a battlefield. Why would you care about killing someone slowly weeks down the line? No doubt many of those who will later die of infection are still fit to fight on the field. So I wouldn't say being able to inflict infection makes someone a great battlefield asset. No I'm pretty sure the effectiveness of archers was exactly what you'd expect it to be, bringing down a cavalry charge, for example
476 Anno Domini A lot in this video is inaccurate. They didn’t say or show the real tactics used during battle of Crecy, like how the battle was fought on a hill or the pits the English dug to further cripple French cavalry. The heraldy used by the French is completely wrong, the French are using the black eagle on a yellow field which is commonly associated with the Holy Roman Empire and not the golden fleur-de-lis on a blue field. The weapons and armor are completely wrong, the French are wearing late 15th century plate armor even though this battle happened in 1346. The French are using polearms on horseback and not lances. The English in the video aren’t even using longbows. So yeah there’s plenty of wrong with this depiction of the Battle of Crecy.
@@trillsamuel4367 The Holy Roman Heraldry is not out of place for the Battle of Crecy. John the Blind, King of Bohemia was an ally of the French King Philip IV and led a large contingent of his own knights at Crecy, where he was actually killed. In some scenes it distinctly shows the white Bohemian lion alongside the Holy Roman Imperial Eagle. Other Imperial princes fought for Philip as well, such as Rudolph the Valiant, Duke of Lorraine and Louis I, Count of Flanders. Its just strange that was see absolutely no French heraldry.
You need to explain a statement such as that. By the way, you needlessly employ the word 'literally' here.The term 'everything' can not be understood figuratively so you must be speaking literally.
@@ShidaiTaino Let's not forget the accuracy of the appearance of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia, Silesia, and Prussia in the battle of Crécy... The information is good, but the visuals clearly were not made for this video.
To be honest that’s a little unfair. There are very few people these days who are capable of pulling a war bow. It takes a lifetime of training to build up that kind of strength.
Because an ordinary guy simply can't draw a warbow. They could have used "re-enactment" bows, which look like the real thing but have a draw weight of around 30 pounds.
I can’t believe they didn’t mentioned the crazy range and precision of the longbow. That’s what was underestimated, yes the shots per minute was also crazy. But it’s the joining of those things that won them the battle. In the 13th century, accuracy at 300 yards is unheard of outside of siege equipment.
Indeed. 6,500 Longbowmen, as was at Crecy, at an average fire rate of up to 10 to 12 arrows every 60 seconds could rein down as much as 78,000 arrows per minute, every minute, scoring lethal wounds from 300 yards, astonishing. You can see why the age of horse armour started to really developed around and during the time of the Hundred Years War. Longbowmen were the machine gunners of their day, and aside from piercing and firepower, a Longbow arrow could also knock an impenetrable man in full plate silly, being also a very effective concussive weapon, especially before the joining of combat.
The people acting in these (tightly budgeted) documentaries are for the most part unpaid extras and proper briefing is rarely done before filming. - former VFX artist/supervisor
I love how most of us have been brought up believing the Smithsonian, but they still get information wrong. The fact that single, small-time, youtubers can develop more accurate content is astounding
Not really considering the dearth of information available to the truly interested. Then again considering how many mainstream channels have an agenda to push it’s no surprise they get things (intentionally) wrong to further their narrative.
One I picked up in this video is that the expert states that the archers didn't aim at individual targets and would just volley fire into the mass I have several books on the subject and they state the men were so practised and accurate that they would indeed pick individuals to shoot. And scarily accurate they were too @MrGriff305
Commenting as a longbow archer shooting a 35 & 50lbs bow, the later is considering reasonably heavy but very light in the 14th century. The longbows at Crecy and Agincourt were specialised war bows of a poundage developed specifically for war and specifically to defeat armour.
@me Me I again agree with you. And i think it is possible to draw a parallel with intermediate cartridge rifles here as well. 5.56 and others of its type are lighter than full size battle rifle cartridges and allow to carry more of them, to shoot more of them on the same distance creating dencer fire, because it seems in modern open field engagements it's often a mater of "shoot approximately in those bushes 700 yards away as much as you can to keep their heads down until you hit someone". So in a way intermediate cartridge rifles might have been also created as volley fire weapons - to create denser fire downrange.
@me Me So is the longbow. It can be very precise on short and middle ranges, and if the wind is good, even far out, but if needed it can also provide high density of fire downrange.
One would argue how no scientific/histirucal channel from Smithsonian, Discovery, National Geographic or BBC never get such detail right although they always seem to have an "expert" on medieval weaponry XD
@Arna Cook that is not true. The length of the bow has NOTHING to do with the draw. Look at the yumi lol a battle yumi would be 7.5 ft and they used a completely different draw
The yumi was not symmetrical. It wasn't held in the middle, it was held lower down. It was also used on horseback as well as on foot. That said, there is no reason why a longbow can't be used at a slight diagonal angle and short horizontally, or even at a downward angle.
@Arna Cook if the bow was 6 feet long and a man was holding it in the middle then 3 feet would have been above his head leaving 3 feet below head height. So hed have a couple of feet of ground clearance!
“England claims the French throne”. I’ll be honest with you, my family back in those days were farmers, I’m sure they and many others didn’t give a flying @#$& about the French throne. Edward wanted the throne.
Actually that's wrong. It was the English nobels that talked him invading France. By this time going to war against Scotland was more traditional and Edward's mother was French and so she signed the Edinburgh-Northampton treaty which ended the wars with Scotland whom were allies with France and was dubbed the "great shame" of England. When Edward came to the throne he didnt care about France and wanted to reverse the damage and wanted invade and conquer Scotland instead. His nobles however were jealous of the richer kingdom of France and wanted to steal their wealth, which for 116 years they did. All over England there are castles, churches and estates you can visit today that were pimped out and upgraded with French gold.
Also i love how terrible the acting for the archer was. Like he just casually was able to draw his bow with it already pointed at his enemy. In reality it would take the entire body to draw back a 140lb war bow that would have started with him being in a hunched over position in order to utilize his back muscles to help draw the bow.
Why do the French have Prussian looking banners, I’m no expert but I wasn’t able to find any French coat of arms that looked anything like the one presented
The colors are all wrong but I think it's supposed to represent the heraldry of Jean Le Maingre who commanded the French vanguard during the battle. I'm guessing they didn't have much of a budget so they just grabbed the closest thing they could find from their props department.
Bingo Flamingo, You're right. The reenactment is totally wrong. These are kitted like Teutonic Knights, complete with their banner of the Imperial eagle.
@@StuSaville, It's been said on other channels; all these shows need to do is contact their local HEMA or reenactor groups. They already know their kit intimately, they are amateur historians, and are sticklers for historical accuracy. For the sake of bragging rights a lot of these folks would just accept a nominal fee for their time.
@@fuferito Imperial knights did fight at Crecy though - the Bohemian King, John the Blind lead a contigent of his own knights at Crecy as an ally of Philip VI and was killed in the battle. In some scenes you can distinctly see the white Bohemian lion on red beside the Imperial eagle. Other Imperial princes also fought for the French King like Rudolph the Valiant, Duke of Lorraine and Louis I, Count of Flanders.
@me Me Exactly. As far as we know, the longbowmen in a Plantagenet army did not pick out individual targets, they fired in volleys at massed targets. At Crecy, Poitiers - and Agincourt - they were not employed as precision weapons.
@@rhyfelwrDuw No. It was an overwhelmingly English army, with some Flemish and Welsh. It was the English who perfected the the mass use of the longbow.
@@deathcabforcutie3889 I believe it was a bit of both actually. The English had been using the longbow for some time same as the Welsh. However if I remember correctly the tatics the English used, particularly in these types of battles, where originally older Welsh tatics. The Welsh princes had used the longbow in the same manner against the English when the where defending their lands.
@@rhyfelwrDuw My family are Pollards of Wales and Cornwall. They cut the branches from tees and small branches grew the strait up at the top that made making excellent arrows. This was called Pollarding a tree and there were many thousands of such trees in England from which they made arrows Branches on the side grew out and up to make the Bows with a curve in them, The were bent backwards when drawn creating re curved bows. Hunting bows were more accurate because the notch where the arrow rested were almost centered as the arrow passed along the bow. Today we spine test arrows to see if the ability to bend is constant with all the archers arrows. You pick the arrows the suit your bow the branches to make bows and arrow and the children grew up making and using Bows and arrows According to my great Grandfather who claimed to be passing down family knowledge and History? I don't think the Welsh were the Best archers because the grew up making the weapons they did not have the strength or practice to be the greatest archers. Still some were Archers.
The late great English actor Robert Hardy was a recognised expert on medieval archery, he has written a book on the subject I believe. Some years ago he did an outstanding documentary on BBC 2 TV - not sure if available on DVD, but worth acquiring if it appears. Many of the "English" bowmen across the middle ages were Welsh.
I love how he mentioned that french army used crossbows and were outranged, the main reason of the victory. It's also good how me mentions that the longbows took so much years to train, the main reason why england had less men. Oh wait he didn't mention none.
Not only outranged but vastly outgunned too, The Genoese, being among some of the best Crossbowmen in Europe, could release between 3 to 4 bolts a minute at a maximum lethal range of 200 yards. At Crecy, there were 6,000 Genoese Crossbowmen, resulting in a fire rate of at most 24,000 bolts a minute in volley fire. In comparison, there were 6,500 British Longbowmen at Crecy, 4,500 English, 2,000 Welsh. The English and Welsh bowmen at the high end could release accurate and sustained volleys at a rate of 10 to 12 arrows every 60 seconds, lethal up to 300 yards. The 6,500 Longbowmen could release as many as 78,000 arrows per minute, every minute, a truly astonishing rate of fire. To put that into perspective, the British Longbowmen at Crecy had the potential to output per minute the same rate of fire as 43 German MG42 Machine Guns.
To be fair this is starter level history made for people with no knowledge, so to throw in archery terms might confuse them. Fired it a common modern English expression for discharging or losing a weapon of any kind, doesn't have to be a firearm.
@@augustopinochet4922 the term was, and still is, “SHOT” , THE WORD OF COMMAND WAS AND STILL IS “SHOOT.” No fire anywhere when shooting the arrow from the bow.
@@augustopinochet4922 You are totally correct and it was my mistake when I typed Shoot when I meant Loose. That from a person who has shot in the longbow for 40 years. 😳
There's a guy on another TH-cam channel that took part in tests against armour. He regularly shoots a 160 lb. long bow, but says he can make a few shots at a time with a 200 pounder.
What's wrong with this is the idea of loosing arrows into the sky wlly nilly. At Cressy, Poitiers and Azincourt, the English tactic was to advance to about 150 yards from the massed French mounted knights, then either dig ankle breakers (holes) or plant stakes, to about 30 yards out. As the English always occupied the hig ground in those battles, they waited until the French charged. At 100 yards the English loosed straight into the front rank of French knights. As they went down, taking the second rank and some of the third with them, the second English volley was loosed into the third and fourth ranks. All three battles were fought after very wet weather, so the field was muddy and sodden. After two or three volleys, the English archers pounced forward and knifed the helpless Frenchmen caught under their dead or dying horses. Then they returned to their ranks to await the next charge. As you can see, this video is hopelessly wrong.😊
In all battles there may be a myriad of seemingly insignificant factors that may not be as obvious as the most visible weapons on the battlefield or of the particular strategies employed by the antagonists but could be critical in shifting the tide of battle.
Weather plays a big part. I think here and Agincourt the English were lucky that recent heavy rain made the field boggy. In the Battle of Bosworth, Henry Tudor's archer's arrows could reach Richard III's army with the wind behind them, whilst Richard III's archer's arrows fell well short.
I read somewhere that skeletons of English Archers dug up showed they were deformed because of Longbow practice since early childhood. So much force was needed to shoot them, the Archers needed a LOT of strength
Absolutely, Mr Richards. Here in England, Portsmouth, we have the Mary Rose which sank in the 1500’s but was recently raised in the 1980’s. Given what was onboard, it has taught us much about many things about life back then - including archery related information such as bows used! It is currently on show and I highly recommend a visit if you haven’t.
@@jarvis1508 I've visited the site, where you have a chance to" TRY" and pull back a bow from the Mary Rose. I was in my fifties, so a weak old wreck. I could hardly pull it, and this wasn't a war bow. Made me realise just how strong our bowmen must have been.
This is incorrect. The war bow was an accurate weapon. In the hands of archers who who trained daily over years. The archers were actually deformed because of the severe heavy training. These archers were serious ķillers with and without a bow. Azincourt is an example of that.
The bows in the video are far too short. A long bow is a big bow and takes huge strength and technique to draw it to its full extent. The archers are said to have had deformed backs and shoulders from years of practice.
Ugh. Where to begin? They didn't fire volleys in 45 degree angles like that. Not a single painting or drawing that was actually created during the 100 Years War portrays this tactic unless they were firing up at a castle wall. They fired straight ahead or were positioned on the flanks to enfilade (which was what happened at Agincourt). They drew the bow using as many of their back muscles as possible, not just the rear deltoid, because of the crazy draw weight, so they are often portrayed by contemporary sources as standing in a sort of weird leaning forward position; this activates the lats, rear delt, rhomboids, and traps.
England didn't claim the French throne. The English king did based on descent through his mother. French nobility refused to recognize matrininal descent in Edward's case. That led eventually to war.
Correct...this is admirably covered in Shakespeare’s “Henry V”, where the Archbishop of Canterbury informs Henry that the French claimed the Law Salic as reasons denying Henry France (since titles and inheritance cannot be passed to females since their was no male heir nor could she pass this own to any male child...”No woman shall succeed in Salic land”). However the Bishop explains that the law pertains to the lands in Germany, not France so Henry has his justification to enter France and wreck havoc (similar to his great-grandfather the Black Duke Edward lll).
Too bad the bowman they kept showing didn't know how to actually shoot a bow. You don't hold the string between your thumb and forefinger. It's three fingers on the string. No way you could pull a 140 pound pull bow back like that.
The English used Welsh longbow men! Apparently (so I heard somewhere), the rude "2 finger salute" came from the middle ages! The longbow men would stick their 2 fingers up at the French, taunting them because apparently if the French caught one, they would cut off the fingers they used to draw the bow! It was a gesture letting the frogs know that they still had their fingers to draw their bows! Don't know if it's true, but heard it years ago!
What about Patay, a few years later, when the swift French cavalry trampled the slow line of English Longbow to never come again ? You need a full life to make a longbowman, and one minute to stomp him.
Let's be honest. England has France pretty much trumped when it comes to battles. Sure, the French won some. Fair enough England went to lose this war. But we all know the biggest Victor in History don't we. 😘
@@GamelessOne And a barricade to stop the horse before the knight reach you. At Agincourt the longbowmen were entranched. At Patay too, but the French cavalry outflanked them, and archers don't manoeuvre as fast as horses.
Great quote often attributed to the Russian General prior to the Battle of Kursk when asked about the chances of many T34s vs fewer but far mightier Panzers.
Old tapestries from the period give a good example... They clearly show the Knights... And infantry... But if you look closely you'll see other figures... massive and hulking...with great body strength... These were the archers...
Don’t know if it’s true or not but the theory of the origin of a familiar curse is supposedly as follows: When an English longbow archer was captured, the French would cut off the third finger of their draw hand, rendering them unable to participate in combat. As a sign of defiance in battle, the archers would display their third fingers & exclaim “I can still pluck the yew” Taking the last three words, you can imagine what that morphed into Again, not sure it’s true but an interesting theory
@@mrnarason Yes. Most of the stated facts were simply wrong. Longbows were awfully precise on distances up to 200 m. And you never put your archers in the middle of the troops, but on the flanks.
some facts needing correction #1 bows should be made from YEW trimmed with red Oak #2 the correct length or height of the bow is the same height as the user. #3 the correct length of the arrow is measured from under the oxter (armpit) to the tip of the middle finger The arrow head is made and fixed by an arrow-smith and the flight is made and attached by a Fletcher #4 the rate of fire by an expert is about 20 per minute. However, you don't require a longbow or crossbow to shoot an arrow. A catapult with a bridge between the forks with a notch cut out of the center of the bridge will do just as well and surprisingly accurate because the arrow is not off center on one side of the bow
The bow itself is cheaper although the crossbow like the gun is much easier and quicker to train someone to use, an English / Welsh Longbow with even larger draw weight would take many years of training to use.
1:07 He said earlier that it took 140 pounds of force (Longbow draw weights vary drastically from bow to bow, it depended on what the individual soldier was capable of) to pull the sting back, but this is not the face of a man pulling back a string with 140 pounds of force.
There was compulsory training in the art of the longbow. Areas set aside for this were known as “Butts”. The name is still found in some English towns.
You'd think they'd use shots of soldiers actually using longbows. And are they seriously suggesting that the peasant longbowmen and footsoldiers all wore expensive full chain mail protection, new boots and matching uniforms?
Thats where the two fingered salute came from, the poms used to give it to them to show them they could still use the bow and hold the arrow to fire more arrows at them at a later time - the French used to cut those fingers off and let them go if they caught them.
It was English law that every man had to practice the longbow from an early age . The eagle heraldry was used with Carolingian noblemen not just the Romans!
Plenty of archers had mail. Some could only afford coif others might wear pieced mail shirt. Lots of armor pieces back then were picked up on a battlefield then bashed, smashed or sown into multi layered linen clothing. They way this video depicts medieval armor is completely wrong, this is very true!
My largest English Longbow is a 140 pounder but I think you'll find that at Crécy, Poiters and Agincourt (in the 100 years war) that this would be at the lower end of bow power!
English were more common on the battlefield because of the mandatory archery practise put in place in the mid 1200s. Most of the archers were English. Before 1250 then yes most people on British soil using longbows were welsh but after mid 1200s the use of them in England skyrockets
Without the rain turning the ground into mud, and also the stakes that protected the archers, the French knights could very well have mowed through the English formation
Half the job of winning a battle is choosing the battlefield. It wasn't luck. Also defensive positions are harder to attack with a broad frontal assault. The French chose to attack in error and arrogance.
Hiyuke La Vie Pretty sure you’re referring to Agincourt here. Not Crecy. And to take advantage of the terrain and use it to your advantage is a credible achievement.
.....the English bowmen were also formed in a crescent shape so the closer the knights got to the front line the more chance they would be hit from the sides as well as the front - absolutely horrifying for them.
I wouldn't even fire on the skirms, my burly armored longbowmen and men at arms are more than a match for lightly armored skirmishers. You dont pull a 140lb bow and not be able to take someone's head off with a mallet. That being said, the French were noobs.
This is also where "flipping the bird" came from. Without your middle finger you can't draw the bow. The French, certain of a victory said they would cut off the middle finger of every English bowman after the battle. But thats not what happened. So therefore after the English achieved victory, they all raised their middle fingers at the French. To show they coyld still shoot their arrows or flip the bird.
Wrong. Flipping the bird is American, not English. English archers poked two fingers at the french - their forefinger and middle finger, because they were the two used to draw the bow.😊
Mail armour doesn't hang loosly on ones body, that would be as good as wearing no armour at all. It needs to fit tight on the wearer's body in order to protect him, btw archers tense their longbows with three fingers, the way the actor was holding the string is ridiculous. Also, why do french knights look like crusaders?? By that time plate armour was at its peak, with the whole of the body being covered by steel plates, even english archers had some level of plate armour. Chainmail was obsolete by the XIV century.
It's zinc galvanized chainmail made in India. An an incompetent history/archaeological consultant at the set. However, no archer would have worn expensive and heavyweight armoury which would interfere with the bowstring (sleeves hanging down).
Narrator: the forces of England's
Edward the third
"Shows the coat of arms of the holy roman empire"
American history lessons in a nutshell
I think that's just stock footage they had...
david edbrooke-coffin what is it then
Right? Typical American history documentaries. Ww2 documentaries make laugh cause they will talk about an aircraft or tank showing a different one entirely. Must be why the history channel doesn't show history anymore
Definately the sequencing of the naration is off in regards to the visuals. All the first knights on horseback scenes are of the French knights (while the narrator is yapping about the English forces); but later on it does get around to showing a couple of English knights riding in from the left to tangle with them. It's merely that the story being told isn't aligned chronologically with what is being shown visually.
Did you know that when people found the skeletons of the archers on the old battlefields their spines where misshaped from all the hard work of pulling that bow over and over again and doing that for a lot of years
Woah thats unique, never heard of that information! I even thought that being an archer/projectile unit is simply the best position to be not get hurt nor killed. I didn't know that it will hurt your body for doing that too much effort of a strength unlike being an infantry and cavalry that they even had to wear sometimes wear heavy armor and weapons while marching nor on the battlefield.
Im a warbow Archer and I have deformed shoulders
Historical Archery from archery? Or u were born with it?
@@bodz9408 from pulling 170 lbs
@@HistoricalWeapons quasimodo
Then will we fight in the shade
I mean..... technecly the rain was a type of shade
The 300
"Then you shall die in the shade"
we will fight in the shade
The shade of your white flag
Years ago, I watched a documentary about the Battle of Agincourt. In it the claim was made that one of the most effective advantages the English long bowmen had wasn't so much how many of the enemy they killed on the battlefield, but more how many they killed through infections.
Contrary to popular belief, the longbow men didn't draw arrows out of a quiver one at a time and fire them. They were in the habit of taking all of their arrows out and pushing the arrow head end into the ground near them. The arrow heads became contaminated with all sort of microbes in the soil. Added to that was the fact that a lot of the Englishmen were suffering from dysentery and, as they couldn't leave the field, they simple defecated where they stood. So, by the time the battle commenced, the English arrows had become biological weapons of war.
I have read that the French casualties were estimated to have been around 6,000, but there is no real way of knowing how many more later died from tetanus, gangrene, gas gangrene, blood poisoning etc. Without modern antibiotics, even the slightest of wounds from one of those contaminated English arrows would have been a certain death sentence.
Must be a gruesome death...
I can only imagine thousands of dudes shitting where they stand. Lololololol oh the smell...
I really appreciated reading this, thank you for your info!
Killing Frenchmen a few days or weeks after the battle would be of no use to King Henry V. At the time no one knew anything about how infection was caught or spread. The English longbowmen put their arrows in the ground simply for ease of use, nothing more. If Frenchmen died from their wounds after the battle then good but the aim was to stop them on the day. Please don't make the mistake of applying modern knowledge to 600yr old battles and drawing tactics from that knowledge.
Killing from infection won't be such a big deal on a battlefield. Why would you care about killing someone slowly weeks down the line? No doubt many of those who will later die of infection are still fit to fight on the field. So I wouldn't say being able to inflict infection makes someone a great battlefield asset. No I'm pretty sure the effectiveness of archers was exactly what you'd expect it to be, bringing down a cavalry charge, for example
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@@h7283 congrats President Biden. You trumped # 45 !!!!! Woohoo
@@HistoricalWeapons yours is worse 😂
@@tommot94 how come
I think literally everything in this video is at least partially inaccurate if not just completely wrong.
Martin Coates so they didn’t use long bows?
476 Anno Domini A lot in this video is inaccurate. They didn’t say or show the real tactics used during battle of Crecy, like how the battle was fought on a hill or the pits the English dug to further cripple French cavalry. The heraldy used by the French is completely wrong, the French are using the black eagle on a yellow field which is commonly associated with the Holy Roman Empire and not the golden fleur-de-lis on a blue field. The weapons and armor are completely wrong, the French are wearing late 15th century plate armor even though this battle happened in 1346. The French are using polearms on horseback and not lances. The English in the video aren’t even using longbows. So yeah there’s plenty of wrong with this depiction of the Battle of Crecy.
@@trillsamuel4367 The Holy Roman Heraldry is not out of place for the Battle of Crecy. John the Blind, King of Bohemia was an ally of the French King Philip IV and led a large contingent of his own knights at Crecy, where he was actually killed. In some scenes it distinctly shows the white Bohemian lion alongside the Holy Roman Imperial Eagle.
Other Imperial princes fought for Philip as well, such as Rudolph the Valiant, Duke of Lorraine and Louis I, Count of Flanders. Its just strange that was see absolutely no French heraldry.
You need to explain a statement such as that. By the way, you needlessly employ the word 'literally' here.The term 'everything' can not be understood figuratively so you must be speaking literally.
I know right. He said 30,000 French warriors. I'm not an English major, but isn't that like a double negative?
You know it’s going to be good when you can spot 6 different historical inaccuracies in the thumbnail alone.
What do you expect from the Smithsonian? An organisation that destroys archaeological artifacts for no reason.
French use lily flower as their coat of arms and banners, the nation which used the black eagle was Holy Roman Empire.
lol this segment is about the longbow yet all the actors are using regular bows...
Rob F not everyone can pull 63kg
@@ShidaiTaino Let's not forget the accuracy of the appearance of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia, Silesia, and Prussia in the battle of Crécy... The information is good, but the visuals clearly were not made for this video.
To be honest that’s a little unfair. There are very few people these days who are capable of pulling a war bow. It takes a lifetime of training to build up
that kind of strength.
Rob F haha I wait read this before seeing the bows, it cracked me up when I saw them haha
Because an ordinary guy simply can't draw a warbow. They could have used "re-enactment" bows, which look like the real thing but have a draw weight of around 30 pounds.
I can’t believe they didn’t mentioned the crazy range and precision of the longbow. That’s what was underestimated, yes the shots per minute was also crazy. But it’s the joining of those things that won them the battle. In the 13th century, accuracy at 300 yards is unheard of outside of siege equipment.
Indeed. 6,500 Longbowmen, as was at Crecy, at an average fire rate of up to 10 to 12 arrows every 60 seconds could rein down as much as 78,000 arrows per minute, every minute, scoring lethal wounds from 300 yards, astonishing. You can see why the age of horse armour started to really developed around and during the time of the Hundred Years War. Longbowmen were the machine gunners of their day, and aside from piercing and firepower, a Longbow arrow could also knock an impenetrable man in full plate silly, being also a very effective concussive weapon, especially before the joining of combat.
The archer's bowstring grip is laughably wrong.
Unfortunately it is easier to get things laughably wrong than painfully right.
The people acting in these (tightly budgeted) documentaries are for the most part unpaid extras and proper briefing is rarely done before filming.
- former VFX artist/supervisor
@Jon Jones That bow is a prop not a real longbow.
@@Wulfdoom .........
These were mostly Manau bows which are cheap toys but not serious bows.
I love how most of us have been brought up believing the Smithsonian, but they still get information wrong. The fact that single, small-time, youtubers can develop more accurate content is astounding
Not really considering the dearth of information available to the truly interested.
Then again considering how many mainstream channels have an agenda to push it’s no surprise they get things (intentionally) wrong to further their narrative.
@@dontparticipate240 I think it's not really about an agenda, more about just making it look as good as possible for views
@@gnomsrepnay It's really about being lazy from a scholarly perspective rather than accurate.
Can I get some links?
One I picked up in this video is that the expert states that the archers didn't aim at individual targets and would just volley fire into the mass
I have several books on the subject and they state the men were so practised and accurate that they would indeed pick individuals to shoot. And scarily accurate they were too @MrGriff305
Commenting as a longbow archer shooting a 35 & 50lbs bow, the later is considering reasonably heavy but very light in the 14th century. The longbows at Crecy and Agincourt were specialised war bows of a poundage developed specifically for war and specifically to defeat armour.
Historian: "The longbow is not a precision instrument"
Lars Andersen: *Laughs in split arrows*
@me Me I agree with you about that point, good point!
@me Me I again agree with you. And i think it is possible to draw a parallel with intermediate cartridge rifles here as well. 5.56 and others of its type are lighter than full size battle rifle cartridges and allow to carry more of them, to shoot more of them on the same distance creating dencer fire, because it seems in modern open field engagements it's often a mater of "shoot approximately in those bushes 700 yards away as much as you can to keep their heads down until you hit someone". So in a way intermediate cartridge rifles might have been also created as volley fire weapons - to create denser fire downrange.
@me Me So is the longbow. It can be very precise on short and middle ranges, and if the wind is good, even far out, but if needed it can also provide high density of fire downrange.
His trick shots aren't viable with a real bow
was boutta say the same thing.. minus the actual skill to use one haha
Narrator: His *French* antagonist
*Proceeds to shows the COA of The Holy Roman Empire*
Who would win?
A wooden stick with strings
vs
Several thousand heavily armoured knights on warhorses charging at you full speed
Spaghetti
@@chrisreid5745 epic
Every boy in England trained with the bow at a very young age in the time.
Obviously the stick and string won.
I dont get it...the lower class englishmen whom the French overlooked won. It was about class
It is not true that the arrows rained down, the were shot horizontally. Read, Mike Loads “The English Longbow”.
One would argue how no scientific/histirucal channel from Smithsonian, Discovery, National Geographic or BBC never get such detail right although they always seem to have an "expert" on medieval weaponry XD
It has been described as the arrows looking like a snowstorm because a snowstorm blows horizontally so does rain on occasion so it can be right
@Arna Cook that is not true. The length of the bow has NOTHING to do with the draw. Look at the yumi lol a battle yumi would be 7.5 ft and they used a completely different draw
The yumi was not symmetrical. It wasn't held in the middle, it was held lower down. It was also used on horseback as well as on foot. That said, there is no reason why a longbow can't be used at a slight diagonal angle and short horizontally, or even at a downward angle.
@Arna Cook if the bow was 6 feet long and a man was holding it in the middle then 3 feet would have been above his head leaving 3 feet below head height.
So hed have a couple of feet of ground clearance!
The French made a serious tactical error when they decided not to bring the M2 Browning that day.
and how abour a MG42 ? .......lol 😂😀
about....sorry
would have made killing those Genoese crossbowmen a whole lot easier.
🤣🤣🤣
typical error when referring to archery, arrows are shot or more correctly 'loosed', firing was for FIREarms which invovled gunpowder
Nock......draw.....loose was the call to keep the archers in unison.
“England claims the French throne”. I’ll be honest with you, my family back in those days were farmers, I’m sure they and many others didn’t give a flying @#$& about the French throne. Edward wanted the throne.
L'etat c'est moi. Edward III was England.
Actually that's wrong. It was the English nobels that talked him invading France. By this time going to war against Scotland was more traditional and Edward's mother was French and so she signed the Edinburgh-Northampton treaty which ended the wars with Scotland whom were allies with France and was dubbed the "great shame" of England. When Edward came to the throne he didnt care about France and wanted to reverse the damage and wanted invade and conquer Scotland instead. His nobles however were jealous of the richer kingdom of France and wanted to steal their wealth, which for 116 years they did. All over England there are castles, churches and estates you can visit today that were pimped out and upgraded with French gold.
They only fought for the wages and loot and were in favor of taking france as it meant less taxes for everyone.
He was half french though. His claim was right.
Also i love how terrible the acting for the archer was. Like he just casually was able to draw his bow with it already pointed at his enemy. In reality it would take the entire body to draw back a 140lb war bow that would have started with him being in a hunched over position in order to utilize his back muscles to help draw the bow.
It’s wrong from start to finish
140lbs was probably body weight of most archers
Why do the French have Prussian looking banners, I’m no expert but I wasn’t able to find any French coat of arms that looked anything like the one presented
The colors are all wrong but I think it's supposed to represent the heraldry of Jean Le Maingre who commanded the French vanguard during the battle. I'm guessing they didn't have much of a budget so they just grabbed the closest thing they could find from their props department.
Bingo Flamingo,
You're right. The reenactment is totally wrong.
These are kitted like Teutonic Knights, complete with their banner of the Imperial eagle.
@@StuSaville,
It's been said on other channels; all these shows need to do is contact their local HEMA or reenactor groups. They already know their kit intimately, they are amateur historians, and are sticklers for historical accuracy.
For the sake of bragging rights a lot of these folks would just accept a nominal fee for their time.
Bingo Flamingo why do the archers have chain mail lol no body knows
@@fuferito Imperial knights did fight at Crecy though - the Bohemian King, John the Blind lead a contigent of his own knights at Crecy as an ally of Philip VI and was killed in the battle. In some scenes you can distinctly see the white Bohemian lion on red beside the Imperial eagle. Other Imperial princes also fought for the French King like Rudolph the Valiant, Duke of Lorraine and Louis I, Count of Flanders.
Yeah, Everybody wants to speak Frénch until the English V I B E arrows with their longbow.
“Not a precision weapon”. The Medieval English long bow.
It was the most precision weapon they had.
Generally it was the Welsh who used them
@me Me Exactly. As far as we know, the longbowmen in a Plantagenet army did not pick out individual targets, they fired in volleys at massed targets. At Crecy, Poitiers - and Agincourt - they were not employed as precision weapons.
@@rhyfelwrDuw No. It was an overwhelmingly English army, with some Flemish and Welsh. It was the English who perfected the the mass use of the longbow.
@@deathcabforcutie3889 I believe it was a bit of both actually. The English had been using the longbow for some time same as the Welsh. However if I remember correctly the tatics the English used, particularly in these types of battles, where originally older Welsh tatics. The Welsh princes had used the longbow in the same manner against the English when the where defending their lands.
@@rhyfelwrDuw
My family are Pollards of Wales and Cornwall. They cut the branches from tees and small branches grew the strait up at the top that made making excellent arrows.
This was called Pollarding a tree and there were many thousands of such trees in England
from which they made arrows Branches on the side grew out and up to make the Bows with a curve in them, The were bent backwards when drawn creating re curved bows. Hunting bows were more accurate because the notch where the arrow rested were almost centered as the arrow passed along the bow. Today we spine test arrows to see if the ability to bend is constant with all the archers arrows. You pick the arrows the suit your bow the branches to make bows and arrow and the children grew up making and using Bows and arrows According to my great Grandfather who claimed to be passing down family knowledge and History? I don't think the Welsh were the Best archers because the grew up making the weapons they did not have the strength or practice to be the greatest archers. Still some were Archers.
The late great English actor Robert Hardy was a recognised expert on medieval archery, he has written a book on the subject I believe. Some years ago he did an outstanding documentary on BBC 2 TV - not sure if available on DVD, but worth acquiring if it appears.
Many of the "English" bowmen across the middle ages were Welsh.
Robert Hardy wrote several books on subject. His last was "The Great Warbow". Well worth a read if can get a copy.
It was actually law for the English to practice the longbow every Sunday after Church
Jones the archer, Dai the bow, Evans the quill, Taffy the quiver etc.
Many of the archers were, in fact, Welsh...
Absolutely. The longbow was a Welsh weapon
I said exactly the same thing!!
One day, they’ll show archers actually shooting in front of them rather than in the sky.
I love how he mentioned that french army used crossbows and were outranged, the main reason of the victory. It's also good how me mentions that the longbows took so much years to train, the main reason why england had less men. Oh wait he didn't mention none.
Not only outranged but vastly outgunned too, The Genoese, being among some of the best Crossbowmen in Europe, could release between 3 to 4 bolts a minute at a maximum lethal range of 200 yards. At Crecy, there were 6,000 Genoese Crossbowmen, resulting in a fire rate of at most 24,000 bolts a minute in volley fire. In comparison, there were 6,500 British Longbowmen at Crecy, 4,500 English, 2,000 Welsh. The English and Welsh bowmen at the high end could release accurate and sustained volleys at a rate of 10 to 12 arrows every 60 seconds, lethal up to 300 yards. The 6,500 Longbowmen could release as many as 78,000 arrows per minute, every minute, a truly astonishing rate of fire. To put that into perspective, the British Longbowmen at Crecy had the potential to output per minute the same rate of fire as 43 German MG42 Machine Guns.
Don't you just love it when the so called experts said the arrows were fired.
To be fair this is starter level history made for people with no knowledge, so to throw in archery terms might confuse them. Fired it a common modern English expression for discharging or losing a weapon of any kind, doesn't have to be a firearm.
@@augustopinochet4922 the term was, and still is, “SHOT” , THE WORD OF COMMAND WAS AND STILL IS “SHOOT.” No fire anywhere when shooting the arrow from the bow.
@@Napierlad1 the term was generally "loose", not shoot. Shoot and give fire were commands that came with the advent of the bombard and handgonne.
@@augustopinochet4922 You are totally correct and it was my mistake when I typed Shoot when I meant Loose. That from a person who has shot in the longbow for 40 years. 😳
Wow they managed to get everything just slightly wrong
... and a few things completely wrong.
The agressor at war is always the guy who won the first battle .
Napoléon was typically the perfect example , agressivity always won !
“Requires up to 140lbs of force” obviously uses a very low weight bow. Unless these guys have superhuman grip on those arrows
War bows are at least 140lb
Their skeleton arms are enlarged due to the training of long bows. It's insane
They trained their whole life, they had had insane strength.
The archers used their whole body to flex the bow.
There's a guy on another TH-cam channel that took part in tests against armour. He regularly shoots a 160 lb. long bow, but says he can make a few shots at a time with a 200 pounder.
This is what happens when an american channel gets involved into european history
I wish we had better documentaries
What's wrong with this is the idea of loosing arrows into the sky wlly nilly. At Cressy, Poitiers and Azincourt, the English tactic was to advance to about 150 yards from the massed French mounted knights, then either dig ankle breakers (holes) or plant stakes, to about 30 yards out. As the English always occupied the hig ground in those battles, they waited until the French charged. At 100 yards the English loosed straight into the front rank of French knights. As they went down, taking the second rank and some of the third with them, the second English volley was loosed into the third and fourth ranks. All three battles were fought after very wet weather, so the field was muddy and sodden. After two or three volleys, the English archers pounced forward and knifed the helpless Frenchmen caught under their dead or dying horses. Then they returned to their ranks to await the next charge. As you can see, this video is hopelessly wrong.😊
In all battles there may be a myriad of seemingly insignificant factors that may not be as obvious as the most visible weapons on the battlefield or of the particular strategies employed by the antagonists but could be critical in shifting the tide of battle.
Weather plays a big part. I think here and Agincourt the English were lucky that recent heavy rain made the field boggy. In the Battle of Bosworth, Henry Tudor's archer's arrows could reach Richard III's army with the wind behind them, whilst Richard III's archer's arrows fell well short.
Seriously thumb draw with 10lb bow? Come on
this is why i love playing as Briton,in age of empires
I read somewhere that skeletons of English Archers dug up showed they were deformed because of Longbow practice since early childhood. So much force was needed to shoot them, the Archers needed a LOT of strength
Absolutely, Mr Richards. Here in England, Portsmouth, we have the Mary Rose which sank in the 1500’s but was recently raised in the 1980’s. Given what was onboard, it has taught us much about many things about life back then - including archery related information such as bows used!
It is currently on show and I highly recommend a visit if you haven’t.
@@jarvis1508 I've visited the site, where you have a chance to" TRY" and pull back a bow from the Mary Rose. I was in my fifties, so a weak old wreck. I could hardly pull it, and this wasn't a war bow. Made me realise just how strong our bowmen must have been.
This is incorrect. The war bow was an accurate weapon. In the hands of archers who who trained daily over years. The archers were actually deformed because of the severe heavy training. These archers were serious ķillers with and without a bow. Azincourt is an example of that.
If you wanted fire rate, you sacrificed accuracy. Especially at range.
@@AverageAlien ....it was rate of fire at the early stages of the engagement and accuracy at the latter.
It’s wrong from start to finish about everything. Amazing
Are we still doing the exposed throat mail coif in 2020? Seriously
I love these videos
The bows in the video are far too short. A long bow is a big bow and takes huge strength and technique to draw it to its full extent. The archers are said to have had deformed backs and shoulders from years of practice.
Just to correct the expert you do not fire arrows, there is no gunpowder involved as in firearms an arrow is loosed, released, shot never fired.
The bowmen of crecy is the first historical novel that I read and still 40 odd years later is one of my favorites.
Ugh. Where to begin? They didn't fire volleys in 45 degree angles like that. Not a single painting or drawing that was actually created during the 100 Years War portrays this tactic unless they were firing up at a castle wall. They fired straight ahead or were positioned on the flanks to enfilade (which was what happened at Agincourt). They drew the bow using as many of their back muscles as possible, not just the rear deltoid, because of the crazy draw weight, so they are often portrayed by contemporary sources as standing in a sort of weird leaning forward position; this activates the lats, rear delt, rhomboids, and traps.
England didn't claim the French throne. The English king did based on descent through his mother. French nobility refused to recognize matrininal descent in Edward's case. That led eventually to war.
Correct...this is admirably covered in Shakespeare’s “Henry V”, where the Archbishop of Canterbury informs Henry that the French claimed the Law Salic as reasons denying Henry France (since titles and inheritance cannot be passed to females since their was no male heir nor could she pass this own to any male child...”No woman shall succeed in Salic land”). However the Bishop explains that the law pertains to the lands in Germany, not France so Henry has his justification to enter France and wreck havoc (similar to his great-grandfather the Black Duke Edward lll).
Did that so called expert actually say ‘fire volleys of arrows’ at 01.46?
Too bad the bowman they kept showing didn't know how to actually shoot a bow. You don't hold the string between your thumb and forefinger. It's three fingers on the string. No way you could pull a 140 pound pull bow back like that.
this guy?? 1:56
@@NameCallingIsWeak Yep, he's the one! Thanks for the response.
Every French knights gangsta til England Archers start using Multishot enchanted bows
And every english archers gangsta til the french use multiple tnt cannons hundred years later
That’s the French knights who annihilated definitely this sales archers ( who were welsh not English)
The English used Welsh longbow men! Apparently (so I heard somewhere), the rude "2 finger salute" came from the middle ages! The longbow men would stick their 2 fingers up at the French, taunting them because apparently if the French caught one, they would cut off the fingers they used to draw the bow! It was a gesture letting the frogs know that they still had their fingers to draw their bows! Don't know if it's true, but heard it years ago!
Not true unfortunately, the V sign only came into use much later in history.
The longbow was the end of man against man in bladed combat. It was a horror weapon.
Can’t wait for a Netflix movie about this battle
Probably with exploding arrows.
What about Patay, a few years later, when the swift French cavalry trampled the slow line of English Longbow to never come again ? You need a full life to make a longbowman, and one minute to stomp him.
You only needed a few arrows to disable a horse...
Let's be honest. England has France pretty much trumped when it comes to battles. Sure, the French won some. Fair enough England went to lose this war.
But we all know the biggest Victor in History don't we. 😘
@@GamelessOne And a barricade to stop the horse before the knight reach you. At Agincourt the longbowmen were entranched. At Patay too, but the French cavalry outflanked them, and archers don't manoeuvre as fast as horses.
@@sshep86 Patay ? Castillon la Bataille ? Chesapeake and Yorktown ? Stalingrad ?
@@gengis737 I don't get your point. You just listed battle places, most from other nations?
Quantity has a quality all on its own 😌😌
Great quote often attributed to the Russian General prior to the Battle of Kursk when asked about the chances of many T34s vs fewer but far mightier Panzers.
Old tapestries from the period give a good example...
They clearly show the Knights...
And infantry...
But if you look closely you'll see other figures... massive and hulking...with great body strength...
These were the archers...
Don’t know if it’s true or not but the theory of the origin of a familiar curse is supposedly as follows:
When an English longbow archer was captured, the French would cut off the third finger of their draw hand, rendering them unable to participate in combat.
As a sign of defiance in battle, the archers would display their third fingers & exclaim “I can still pluck the yew”
Taking the last three words, you can imagine what that morphed into
Again, not sure it’s true but an interesting theory
It's almost certainly a myth. The commonly used British 'V' sign didn't originate until much later in history.
This is way oversimplified, if you want the truth do some research
Can you do better in less than 3 mins
@@mrnarason Yes. Most of the stated facts were simply wrong.
Longbows were awfully precise on distances up to 200 m.
And you never put your archers in the middle of the troops, but on the flanks.
some facts needing correction #1 bows should be made from YEW trimmed with red Oak #2 the correct length or height of the bow is the same height as the user. #3 the correct length of the arrow is measured from under the oxter (armpit) to the tip of the middle finger
The arrow head is made and fixed by an arrow-smith and the flight is made and attached by a Fletcher #4 the rate of fire by an expert is about 20 per minute. However, you don't require a longbow or crossbow to shoot an arrow. A catapult with a bridge between the forks with a notch cut out of the center of the bridge will do just as well and surprisingly accurate because the arrow is not off center on one side of the bow
1:05 I didn't know there were black people in the english army
Lol
I dont think slavery even existed at that time yet 🤔🤔🤔
@@incredababy5010 not in the west much yet.
@@Yamaazaka oh
It's blackwashing history...
A friend, a former NFL defensive lineman, has his compound bow set at 90 pounds. And I thought he was strong.
Compound is cheating too
Where are the longbows on the footage ? I don't see any
I'm guessing the advantage of the long bow over cross bow is that it offers greater rate of fire, more distance and cheaper to produce.
The bow itself is cheaper although the crossbow like the gun is much easier and quicker to train someone to use, an English / Welsh Longbow with even larger draw weight would take many years of training to use.
Everybody Gangster until they come across an English 🏴longbow. 😂
English longbow bows before the French Crossbow.
The French knight to be lucky once , the English need to be lucky every time
When your horse is injured he changes sides and works for the enemy.
1:07 He said earlier that it took 140 pounds of force (Longbow draw weights vary drastically from bow to bow, it depended on what the individual soldier was capable of) to pull the sting back, but this is not the face of a man pulling back a string with 140 pounds of force.
It was never said that reenactors were using those bows, its mostly for helping the viewers visualize the scene
There was compulsory training in the art of the longbow. Areas set aside for this were known as “Butts”. The name is still found in some English towns.
Wow, with the complete lack of facts I thought I was watching the History Channel
You'd think they'd use shots of soldiers actually using longbows. And are they seriously suggesting that the peasant longbowmen and footsoldiers all wore expensive full chain mail protection, new boots and matching uniforms?
Thats where the two fingered salute came from, the poms used to give it to them to show them they could still use the bow and hold the arrow to fire more arrows at them at a later time - the French used to cut those fingers off and let them go if they caught them.
Very interesting !
It was English law that every man had to practice the longbow from an early age . The eagle heraldry was used with Carolingian noblemen not just the Romans!
Germans you mean. The Holy Roman Empire was in modern day Germany. That's the Crest everyone is talking about.
They received very well. It is better to give than to receive.
Nice video
After years of training it can be very accurate.
Re: the thumbnail. Longbowmen wouldn’t have had chainmail. They were commoners.
Plenty of archers had mail. Some could only afford coif others might wear pieced mail shirt. Lots of armor pieces back then were picked up on a battlefield then bashed, smashed or sown into multi layered linen clothing. They way this video depicts medieval armor is completely wrong, this is very true!
0:12 the way he holds the arrow XD
My largest English Longbow is a 140 pounder but I think you'll find that at Crécy, Poiters and Agincourt (in the 100 years war) that this would be at the lower end of bow power!
Good shot Robin...
Okay, could have been a bit longer, still great video
u aint telling me they had a whole army of guys who could pull 140 lb long bows while dying from dysentery...
The longbow was used about 3 thousand years back by kings like valvil ori and chera king's. Unfortunate that the western world is unaware of this.
In the thumbnail, the archer was holding the arrow between his thumb and forefinger. It's wrong. You hold it between the forefinger and middle finger.
For maximum draw strength you hold it 'Apache' style-- 3 fingers under. I shoot an Oneida Falcon which has a purposely longer riser on the bottom.
The guy in the title picture is no archer. He's drawing the arrow gripped between his thumb and forefinger.
"English longbowmen...." Many of them were Welsh.
English were more common on the battlefield because of the mandatory archery practise put in place in the mid 1200s. Most of the archers were English. Before 1250 then yes most people on British soil using longbows were welsh but after mid 1200s the use of them in England skyrockets
Without the rain turning the ground into mud, and also the stakes that protected the archers, the French knights could very well have mowed through the English formation
Half the job of winning a battle is choosing the battlefield. It wasn't luck. Also defensive positions are harder to attack with a broad frontal assault. The French chose to attack in error and arrogance.
Hiyuke La Vie Pretty sure you’re referring to Agincourt here. Not Crecy.
And to take advantage of the terrain and use it to your advantage is a credible achievement.
.....the English bowmen were also formed in a crescent shape so the closer the knights got to the front line the more chance they would be hit from the sides as well as the front - absolutely horrifying for them.
It's inspiring in a way, watching a mighty warrior shoot a kid's bow the kiddie way😋
Imagine living and fighting in medieval times 😐
Edit: thanks Howard!
*Medieval*
Well that certainly could have been a 1-hour video and still been interesting now I got to go do my own research
Chain mail on bowmen? Thats a rich lord indeed.
It wasnt called the longbow back in those days , it's was known as the War bow or English Bow
Actually, it was WELSH √
@@michaeljamesmacaulay1689 You can call it the Welsh bow then. 👍
Btw it wasn’t just the English it was the welsh that helped
Shouldn't those archers be wearing more gambeson and less mail?
During the war of the roses, the English longbowmen turned those bows on each other.
Boy was that bloody, what was it the battle of Towton hill or something like that? That's in depth British history not taught to Americans.
@@jamessaibot5681 yeah I believe it was.
Cringe thumbnail.....That’s not how a warbow is drawn.
That's why you send some battle rams first with some skirms to sponge the arrows before the cav... clearly the french player was a noob...
I wouldn't even fire on the skirms, my burly armored longbowmen and men at arms are more than a match for lightly armored skirmishers. You dont pull a 140lb bow and not be able to take someone's head off with a mallet. That being said, the French were noobs.
1:56 lol, he's drawing it like a toy bow (which it probably is)
Yeah, barely drawing it back !!
*Laughs in Patay*
1:03 Overestimate their chances you say? 🤔🤔
Reminds me of Tarkin. "I think you overestimate their chances." 😂😂
This is also where "flipping the bird" came from. Without your middle finger you can't draw the bow. The French, certain of a victory said they would cut off the middle finger of every English bowman after the battle. But thats not what happened. So therefore after the English achieved victory, they all raised their middle fingers at the French. To show they coyld still shoot their arrows or flip the bird.
Wrong. Flipping the bird is American, not English. English archers poked two fingers at the french - their forefinger and middle finger, because they were the two used to draw the bow.😊
Mail armour doesn't hang loosly on ones body, that would be as good as wearing no armour at all. It needs to fit tight on the wearer's body in order to protect him, btw archers tense their longbows with three fingers, the way the actor was holding the string is ridiculous. Also, why do french knights look like crusaders?? By that time plate armour was at its peak, with the whole of the body being covered by steel plates, even english archers had some level of plate armour. Chainmail was obsolete by the XIV century.
And their mail looks like it's made from cheap aluminium. And it's also not riveted.
@HousingDinosaur It's the cheap imitation stuff you can buy from India. Probably meant for amateur theatre.
@Heyward Shepherd There is much misinformation.
It's zinc galvanized chainmail made in India. An an incompetent history/archaeological consultant at the set.
However, no archer would have worn expensive and heavyweight armoury which would interfere with the bowstring (sleeves hanging down).
The archers depicted are not using longbows and their grip is absolutely wrong! Worst!!!!