The same can be said about heavy cavalry. Many of the tactics used in medieval and early modern warfare were used in large part to improve the chances of surviving a cavalry charge.
Agreed, but personally, I think an even stronger argument is the fact that they kept being brought into battle in large numbers over and over again over a period of centuries. Take Mats recent video on tewksberry, where he points to several instances of nobles bringing ten times as many archers as men at arms in their retinue. This not only takes place in the context of a time period where english longbowmen have been a prominent feature of European battlefields for over two centuries, but also in the context of an english civil war where both sides were intimately familiar with the longbow, and thus presumably very well positioned to counter it. If a certain weapon system is still massively popular in such a context, it's almost inconceivable that it's not useful.
Tbf that doesn't require them to be effective. That just requires the enemy to think they are effective. Look at the Soviet attempts to counter star wars, even though the Americans never actually accomplished any of the things in the proposal until after it collapsed.
- Robin, don’t go to Nottingham. It’s a trap. - What? I’m not going to Nottingham. - Thanks God. I thought you would go, when you hear about the archery contest. - What? An archery contest?
@@rauchgranate5648 yep! "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" by Mel brooks! it's Maid Marian to Robin, one of my favorite movies! OP Should watch it again, it's great!
The argument that they're useless because they won't penetrate the thickest parts of the best armour would also suggest swords, spears, etc were also useless.
"Knights in plate armor were useless because you can just shoot at the gaps or push him down." Also: "Archers are useless because they cannot shoot through the plate armor only 1-10% of enemy might possibly have." Logical fallacies ahoy! At least the argument that medieval castles are not designed to work against dragons generally also includes all the other flying creatures, invisible thieves climbing walls, intangible ghosts passing through them and so on; doesn't change the fact that mages and magical monsters are supposed to be a much rarer threat than regular troops, even if those can to be anything from rampaging goblins to a neighboring noble wanting to take over your lands.
@@AnalystPrime They are sorely lacking aerial counter battery defences. It seems an obvious design flaw. I don't understand why they haven't got rotating Gatling ballista mounts on their turrets.
@@dogmaticpyrrhonist543 Watsonian explanation might be that if dragons and other flying enemies are common enough to make it an issue you don't build castles but underground fortresses, as in dungeons... The Doylist explanation is simply that castles are cool, but automated ballistas are OP and don't fit the game.
The most straightforward rebuttal to these claims is that English longbows wouldn't have been used if they were useless. It reminds me of the absurd TH-cam video "Ways Medieval Armor Was More Dangerous Than Wearing Nothing." People must be reminded that some guy on Reddit isn't smarter than the millions who entrusted their lives to said technology, weapon, or tool.
I'm sure i read somewhere that it was only a few who had proper armour on the battlefield, most would have been farmers or peasants who couldn't afford it.. Given a choice, i'd take armour over nothing..
@@benjammin1212 Most people wore armor, it was just gambesons (cloth armor). It was dramatically more common and effective than it is made out to be today. A poor man conscripted would often have one made by his wife, as it isn't that hard to make. You don't see it in Hollywood movies because it looks kinda puffy and doesn't flatter the actors (because its armor, not fashion).
Correct take, and also the reserve was true: longbow were development and used only in some part of the world (japan and the british isles) because they werent as useful as pop history make them feel They were niche weapon that worked well for somewhat poorer and more isolated nations, but overall they were not fit for the late medieval warfare based around mobility the same way a crossbowmen or horse rider was
If you didn't only use 10% of your brain, you would realize that bows are useless. Large amounts of resources are always spent on useless things, right?
Nobody invested. They just existed. Plenty of Forester regions. Just as any other medieval culture - you use what your people are accustomed to in terms of way of life.
@@НиколайЛамберт Yeah, that's not how longbow armies work. You have to train for years to be a military archer with a longbow, and they weren't just conscripting randos. The crown literally mandated archery practice to cultivate a pool of trained archers. You also need a significant number of bowstaves both to supply the military and for training. England imported so many bowstaves, that the yew tree became endangered in Europe. But go off...
@@НиколайЛамберт they did not just exist, people in england and to some extend in France had to train with the longbow. You had to pay them in times of war and they were not paid poorly , cheaper than knights of course. You also have to produce and transport a lot of arrows. also you have now peasents who could be potentially dangerous if they rebell.
The same mentality is being applied to tanks in modern warfare. Sure, they might be vulnerable to anti-tank missiles, but the fact that you have to invest heavily into anti-tank missiles clearly shows that they are very effective.
Yeah, and just wait for every tank to have an active protection system (or AMS for battletech fans). If your anti-tank missile gets shot down by the tank, we are back to WWII setups where you have to use a Panzerfaust-30. (The number being the effective range, the highest was 100 and there were Panzerfaust-10s.) It's like "we now have machine guns, so infantry will be useless on the battlefield". War is always evolving.
Except an anti tank missile costs a fraction of a MBT, tanks are also being taken out by artillery, drones, airstrikes and mines all across Ukraine. Ukraine's largely gone back to WW1 because nothing beats a trench and some artillery
@NUSensei A longbowmen in close combat without prepared defenses is mince meat. A tank is everything an archer is not. It is armored, mobile, and can kill tanks and everything else that does not fly on the battlefield.
@@alistairjclark2433 A tank may be very expensive, but if the only thing that can breach an enemy line is a tank, you need t pay that. It's all about relative performance. If your trenched infantry is unable to attack, it's cost to attack are mathematically infinite.
yea it is like saying machine guns are useless because of tanks. Your tanks just like the Knights will need support and bows and machine guns works well on those.
Even tank crews feel disorientated when hearing small arms fire pining off the chassis of their tank. At the very least, a hail of arrows coming towards armored knights might have had a psychological effect on them, to the point where their charge would not be as effective if they are busy trying to shield their faces from incoming arrows.
Like the Tanks no army could outnumber their enemies infantry with just Knights. So there would always be a role for lighter infantry on both sides and also for archers to counter them.
Yes. The same goes for cavalry. A lot of horse archers doubled as melee lancer cavalry. A lot of heavily armed and armored "cataphract" like cavalry in ancient China (eg. Han, Jin, & Tang Dynasties), Middle East (Parthian & Sassanian Empires), Eastern Roman Empire, etc. also often had bows and could act as horse archers as well.
@@Intranetusa I think the whole point of the first cataphracts (the middle east ones where weg ot the name) were about shooting arrows at enemy formations without being in danger by getting shot back (bc of the armor) and be able to run away from that infantry. Of course they would also ride into softenend up formations etc. but the "we can't do anything against those!!" role was the primary.
@@IntranetusaWestern European heavy cavalry (knights/men-at-arms) were multipurpose as well. They were generally expected to be able to fight on foot, on horseback (for both light and heavy cavalry action), and some kept crossbows.
@Intranetusa also alot of medium and heavy cavalry also doubled as infantry, or were capable of raiding not typically associated with the heavy shock role.
I think battles are overemphasized. The vast majority of the time was spent either raiding or in sieges. A significant portion of English archers were listed as archers on horse. The expense of having the horse (despite fighting on foot) implies that they were used for raiding and scouting in a way that foot archers could not. In this context, they would not have been facing the cream of the French Nobility, but likely a hastily assembled local defense force that could be shot full of arrows.
I think your point holds even when applied to set battles. Not every fighter on the field is a noble or a retainer covered in head-to-toe plate. All those peasant spearmen, billmen, and whatnot can be mowed down by archers, allowing the armoured English to focus on armoured opponents.
@@johnladuke6475 There's a similar argument among Second World War interest groups regarding the anti-tank rifle (ATR). Tank armour was rapidly upgraded to the point where the ATR could not eliminate a tank, and a Tiger tank would simply roll over the ATR trenches.. The Soviets persisted with large numbers of this "useless" weapon in their infantry formations. For every Tiger Tank in Russia there were: 10 medium tanks, which could be disabled at short range (Tracks knocked off, radio and vision ports smashed). 3 light tanks which could be eliminated. 2 or 3 armoured halftracks whose armour was easily punctured at close ranges. More than 50 softskin vehicles for transport and logistics. 30 horse drawn guns or wagons. Except the Tiger (like those Elite Italian horsemen) the ATR provided a threat against everything else.
@@steveholmes11it also wasn’t just for raiding but meant they could outmanoeuvre the French forces allowing them to hold their position if they wanted or move off it also meant that dismounted French troops need to March long distances at high speed either not keeping up with the French horse or being absolutely shagged out when they did turn up
And even those nobles aren't always wearing their armour, in an ambush situation or a camp raid they won't be, or at least only pieces of it. Even in battles against heavily armed opponents there's also just the possiblity you get lucky. Considering the number of knights is in the few hundreds and infantry (archers) are in the thousands... getting like three guy to take a knee and maybe killing/maiming one is a good result. The Persians killed A LOT of Greeks with reed arrows that were barely considered a nuisance to an armoured hoplite, still you get taken out of commision if you've got one sticking out your arm or leg, if only temporary (another modern flaw in thinking, probably due to (war)games where wounded enemies are just as effective, getting a guy to not fight for even a few minutes can tip the battle)
It is an endless cycle of over correction. Medieval armor is too heavy to move in becomes Medieval armor weighs nothing and isn’t restrictive at all. The katana can cut through diamond to the katana is a worthless hunk of metal. English longbows were mowing down French knights like machine guns to English longbows actually just tickled them. On and on and on.
Discussions around spears and polearms are a particularly egregious annoyance to me. People learn that pole weapons were the primary battlefield weapons, and completely overcorrect by insisting pole weapons were perfect in every way and swords were useless ceremonial pieces made of unobtainium.
Matt: You forgot to mention what I call the 'hailstone effect' i.e. where the arrow storm would drive the French man-at-arms closer together causing confusion & restricting the amount of space they would eventually have to wield their weapons effectively.
Longbowmen fired at almost point blank aimed shots. They also shot the horses. That's why french knights started fighting dismounted. However once they close up they can't look at where they are going cause chances are out of a dozen aimed shots fired at one knight looking up is probably at the very least fragments or shards of wood will get through the visor and blind you. The best hope was to have foot knights drive the archers from their entrenchments so mounted cavalry can sweep in and mow them down. That is of course why the English knights also fought on foot to support the archers. Pretty good system as long as you can get the enemy to attack you. Which the French were very stupid in that kind of thing. It wouldn't have against other professional armies that fight a positional battle before the skirmish and melee. No professional army is going to charge a palisade of stakes no more than it would a wall of pikes. The French were good fighters with lots of equipment but no leadership.
@@Hornet_Legion Fighting dismounted had been going on since 1314 in 1327, for Edward III’s campaign against the Scots, the English cavalry were instructed to come prepared to fight on foot, but for the battle (which the Scots refused) . Preparing to fight on foot meant a long shield, leather boots instead of sabatons and a demi lance. It was known as the English system You seem to be speculating a lot in your summary. By the time of Agincourt horses were barded. For every battle won by the English there is another won by the French and it is interesting to note that the English archers were "badly handled" by the Scottish archers at Verneuil-sur-Avre. The bottom line is that English archers were not any better than Scots or French archers only the tactics differed. The massed archers of the English led to the loss of France because the French had by this time introduced the Compagnie d' ordonance's which cemented Frances place as the premier military power in Europeir the next 100 years.
Anyone who says that English (or Welsh) archers with longbows were almost useless is an idiot, pure and simple. 1. There's no such thing as completely arrow-proof armour. There's always a chance that a lucky shot will hit a gap between plates or hit one of the thinner plates at the correct angle to penetrate. The heavier & more advanced the armour, the less likely this becomes, but it's always a possibility. Mind you, an arrow that actually penetrates plate armour or goes through a gap between plates isn't likely to kill, but it will injure and reduce the fighting ability of the man hit. 2. Arrows that hit plate armour but don't penetrate will still hit with enough force to dent it and make the person feel the hit. If you just get hit once, it's not going to have much effect, but if you're being pelted by a hail of arrows, even if they don't penetrate it's going to ring your bell, slow you down, and make you bunch up together with the rest of the men-at-arms, which makes maneuvering and coordinating a charge much more difficult. Not only that, but it's demoralizing to be pummeled by arrows without being able to do anything about it. Why did the French (and others) have so much trouble keeping their men-at-arms from breaking formation to charge ahead too early? Well, there were lots of reasons, but getting frustrated and hot-headed because of impacts from arrows is one of those reasons. 3. Armour is always a trade-off between protection, mobility, and awareness/ability to communicate. If your men-at-arms are wearing armour protective enough to make them unlikely to be injured by longbow arrows, then they have to deal with reduced mobility (which isn't necessarily that big of a problem if you're on the back of a warhorse riding straight towards the enemy), and reduced awareness/ability to communicate due to the need to have your face fully enclosed to avoid getting shot in the face. Reduced awareness and ability to communicate makes coordinating any maneuvers significantly more difficult, restricting the tactics that the men-at-arms could effectively use. 4. Fully armoured men-at-arms aren't the only combatants on the battlefield. Less well armoured men (opposing archers/crossbowmen, billmen, etc.) are going to take significant casualties from volleys of arrows. 5. Horses were often unbarded or had relatively light barding that could potentially be penetrated by longbow arrows. You're not likely to actually kill a horse with arrows (not without a lot of arrows, anyway), but even a well trained warhorse is going to be more difficult to control if it's in pain from being hit with arrows, and could even stumble and/or throw its rider. 6. Archers weren't the only combatants on the field, they were used as part of a combined arms approach with heavily armoured men-at-arms, and whenever possible were deployed behind some form of fortification, such as ditches and wooden stakes to help reduce the momentum of a cavalry charge. Archers were frequently used to funnel enemy men-at-arms towards English men-at-arms while pummeling them with arrows from the front and sides, before the archers themselves would fight in melee once the enemy men-at-arms had engaged the English men-at-arms. English archers with longbows weren't some sort of magic "I win" button, slaughtering knights and men-at-arms left and right, but as long as they were used correctly, they were tactically highly effective compared to the cost of raising them, and caused major headaches for the French or whoever else they fought against.
I so love Todds video about the bow vs armor where they manage to land a hit in the helmet slit. It's an incredible lucky shot, but shows that wheatever else happened there is no 100% protection. And with 10 archers against one person who cannot even run full speed for weight, terrain and arrow hail, I would put my money on the 10 archers taking him out of the fight (through a hit in the ellbow or whereever) because that's the most likely result - in an open battelfield with just that number. Even if the archers cannot just run away to a new position. Armor is by far not as hindering as many people thing, but it still is and still is 30kg of additional weight with bad air circulation. You aren't going to run a marathon in it.
Yeah it's a numbers game, fire enough arrows at a knight and eventually a lucky shot will hit or the armor will fail somewhere. Maybe not enough to kill the knight, but a deep wound to the right body part will take them out of the fight even if it won't kill them.
@@randalthor741 yeah, and people under estimate the momentum transfer from a heavy warbow arrow. They don't have the energy from velocity of a modern hunting arrow, but the punch each delivers is significant anywhere but the middle of a domed breastplate.
People say that "plate armor counters longbows" as if you could easily outfit every soldier in your army with plate armor (and train them how to fight in it).
Various armies opposing the English did equip large numbers of their soldiers with plate armor, such as the French during the Hundred Years War & the Scottish at Flodden 1513. The English often won anyway.
@@Specter_1125 not really a rebuttal though. English losses rarely were the fault of the bowmen themselves; in most of the famous losses they either were hardly used at all (Bannockburn) or were poorly handled (Patay). In fact at Patay, the french caught them out in the open because the English commander wasn't happy with their defensive position and decided to change it. Bad call.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 No, the English did not often win. We just keep hearing about the same astounding miracle victories over and over. And they're amazing victories precisely because the English were rarely expected to win in pitched combat. Imagine 500 years in the future, no one is going to make a movie about the US curb stomping a little nation; but they will talk about the time a bunch of rice farmers pulled off an incredibly unexpected resistance.
Kevin Hicks (thehistorysquad) here on youtube has a couple an interesting little series called 'Medieval Logistics' and there are two videos on the huge industry of making and supplying arrows to the English Army. They wouldn't have wasted all that time and resources on keeping them running if they were ineffective.
In my own experiments on my channel, I have demonstrated that a moderately powerful bow 75-100lb (55-90j ke)is more than sufficient to penetrate NON plate armours. (gambeson, mail and gambeson with mail combo) The effectiveness is of course varied based on arrow heads used as well, but it really highlights that warbows were very dangerous What is also important is that even when facing an army with plate there are gaps in the armour that may be protected by the above non plate armour types When you have thousands of archers on a battlefield loosing hundreds of thousands of arrows down range, it is statistically inevitable that many arrows will find these gaps. Rough Math; Even if only 1% of arrows find a vulnerability out of 100,000 arrows that is still 1000 casualties. And we have to remember that not all forces were fully plated. Accounts of the battle of Flodden documented the English Archers decimating the Scottish highlander division that was only lightly armoured.
As mentioned previously on your channel, various period sources suggest that much historical textile armor & mail armor was more resistant to arrows than what you've tested. Soldiers heavily laden with thick fabric &/or mail defenses proved difficult to incapacitate with arrows on numerous occasions. However, it does seem that it was only plate armor that provided definitive protection (at least on the head & torso) from heavy yew warbows.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 I do agree with the variable of the linen. It is hard to determine the precise quality, thickness, and resilience, but I have tried to use more resilient linen in my tests. In my first gambeson test, I demonstrated that different densities of linen definitely matter. The mail sample in the last test was appropriate. It’s very period-accurate in its wire thickness (1.3-1.4mm) and inner diameter (6.5mm), based on a robust mail shirt that Phil has in his possession. It’s also crafted from modern homogeneous steel rather than bloomery steel, which likely makes it slightly higher quality, dimensions being equal. This is shown in the metal analysis provided by Phil (historic vs modern). Dimensions of mail and quality of steel in the construction of mail armor are the absolute metrics we should be looking at when determining quality. The sample used is period-accurate for a decent-quality piece of mail appropriate for torso protection. It was not a cheap Indian reproduction like most mail tests. To lend credibility to the above ensemble, we can look at the weight the armor would be. A mail shirt of the above sample would weigh 11.5 kg. A 5-layer foundational garment plus a 10-layer jack of 190g/m2 would weigh 3.2 kg. That is a total of 14.7 kg (32.2 lb) Without leg protection (10-15lbs?), neck/collar (8lbs?) or a helmet (5lbs?) Adding these pieces of armour would likely increase the weight beyond that of a typical full plate harness (45-55lbs according to MET Museum) I am not saying a soldier could not or would not do it, but this indicates that the sample used was very likely in the correct ballpark of appropriate quality for the purpose of the test. I will say, though, that if you forgo leg protection, which we know historically did occur, you could certainly increase the quality of the mail and linen to increase protection of the torso while sacrificing lower body protection. So I def could have used thicker mail as well in that context. While my tests are certainly not absolutely conclusive, I think they do provide more insight into the question of bows vs. armor without answering every question.
@@thefatefulforce8887 I think it's notable that we have accounts claiming that men-at-arms wore excessively heavy armor circa 1400 during the transitional period to the iconic full-plate-harness designs many of folks are familiar with today. That appears to have been one response to massed warbows: wear a breastplate over heavy mail & fabric. Even at Agincourt, some French men-at-arms wore substantial mail down to the knees in addition to plate armor: "[T]he said French were so loaded with armour that they could not support themselves or move forward [in the soft ground]. In the first place they were armed with long coats of steel, reaching to the knees or lower, and very heavy, over the leg harness, and besides plate armour also most of them had hooded helmets" (from Jean de Wavrin's account) There was also an English poem from around the same era that criticized the French overly burdening themselves with armor that's quoted in *The Great Warbow*, but sadly I don't have access to a copy right now. Higher-quality suits of plate offered nearly complete protection from arrows a reasonable weight, but these didn't become prevalent immediately.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 I hear you. :) No doubt there are records of mail being worn under full plate and I can only speculate as to the total weight a harness would be in those configurations (if it was not just voiders and mail sleeves). But that in itself tells you mail on its own is not up to snuff, if they are piling on that much armour to counter warbows to the point that they are so heavily encumbered that it starts to affect their ability to fight. What armour soldiers decide to wear has to ultimately be a compromise between protection and usability and they very likely made those choices as individuals. Some would have, others would not. There is no single answer for the time period, just a spectrum of what we know. I am not in the camp that says mail was no good. Even in my tests, we saw my Mail and Gambeson Sample resist the Warbodkins and M2 Tudor Bodkins at a 50% success/failure ratio against my 103lb bow (85-90j ke) at very close range. (However, the M2 that did penetrate was very very minor) What would no doubt be fatal injuries against Gambeson alone, the armour composite would have significantly improved the likelihood of survival of soldier wearing that level of armour, defeating every second arrow of those types. But by the same token half the arrows would have caused injuries. Caveat: The tests were being conducted at 10 yards, the 103lb bow is more accurately mimicking a 120-125lb at 50-60 meters in its energy delivery. But the test did also highlight, how incredibly vulnerable mail is to needle bodkins when my 75lb bow (55j ke) was able to penetrate with frightening ease. That is what my 90lb bow delivers at about 50-60 meters, and a 90lb bow is hardly the most powerful bow on a late medieval battlefield (English).
Tod's Workshop did a whole series on the longbow vs. armor. The only part of the armor it couldn't get through was the chest and the front of the helmet. Plate arms and legs could be penetrated along with any mail areas. Your heart may be safe, but you're not going to be fighting anyone with an arrow through your shoulder and knee.
I imagine that archers aren’t only important for fighting the men at arms and the ones that you typically think of as near fully armored or protected from arrows, but also perhaps levies, which may not be quite as protected. Also during the time cataclysmic decisive battles usually don’t happen as much as skirmishing does, and you only need to defeat maybe a few percent to cause a route, So even if the arrows aren’t bullet like deadly against armor, the culmination of factors probably means it’s worth having archers.
This is shown most clearly in the Second Scottish War of Independence, where the Scots were caught with their pants down and annihilated by archers. Archers were always kryptonite to Scottish infantry and even schiltrons, going back to ancient periods - same with the Irish, they were simply not in the habit of equipping armor consistently for their field troops like their Norman counterparts. "Hedgehogs" is a word you see a lot in battle descriptions when unarmored troops or very lightly armored troops go up against heavy missile volleys.
and like armor protects you from arrows for a time... but as your armor deflect arrows, it bends, dents, etc. and as it change shape it loses some of its ability to effortlessly redirect arrows... meaning it protects you less and less and on top of that, it may become more cumbersome... So if you're stuck under arrow fire for all day long, and the ennemy aint runnig out of arrow, you're armor only grows more and more likely to be pierced by an arrow...
The French were perfectly charging through English archers and men-at-arms and didn't need Italians to do it - and they did so at Valmomt in 1416, where they charged through the English lines despite there being stakes in front of the archers and the English men-at-arms kneeling with their lances extended to receive them. Of course, the English won that battle too, and not just because of their men-at-arms. I don't think the Gesta Henrici specifies, but I'm pretty sure that - like Agincourt and other battles of the HYW - the archers simply fought hand to hand when the French came too close. Their ability to fight at range and up close - coupled with their relatively cheapness and availability - made them incredibly versatile and valuable soldiers.
Not forgetting that by and large the english archers were utter bastards, muscular, relatively well paid (meaning decent light and flexible armour) armed with axe, big knife or small sword. And able to acquit themselves against men at arms. Archers weren't cheap, they cost more than foot soldiers.
@@jeffslade1892 People make too much of how muscular the archers were; Roger Ascham makes the point that a weak man who has trained with the bow can draw a more powerful bow than a strong man who hasn't, and I know of at least one pretty skinny guy in his sixties who drew over 100lbs. They were unarguably strong in specific muscle groups, but that doesn't necessarily translate to greater overall strength or advantage in fighting hand to hand. Additionally, there's the issue of our inability to discern archers in the general population. Given the known pool of archers, if the tell-tale skeletal features from the Mary Rose and Towton were universally linked to the ability to draw heavy weight bows, we should be able to see evidence of this in skeletons from the general population. We can't, and that suggests that it may have something to do with extent of practice (modern Olympic archers often have similar markers) or the age at which they started to draw heavy bows (one Towton archer showed an injury common in adolescent tennis and baseball players). Someone really needs to do some CT scans of modern warbow archers and try and figure this out.
@@Cahirable english archers trained from childhood and became strong with the bow, even to producing skeletal deformities. It was not a case of training a skinny man to use a bow vs an untrained strong man but vs trained strong men. I myself was unable to draw a bow properly to lock my back out of less than 75-lb. My friend who competes with longbow rarely uses a heavy bow now due to old injuries but in the past made some at 120-lb and 150-lb which I could easily draw and despite his greater training he could not draw the big one effectively (I seem to be built for drawing bows, and yes my left shoulder is damaged). I stooped practising archery when my club folded. There is no such thing as a war bow, it is a longbow, they come in various sizes; then and now, an archer probably has several like an angler collects fishing rods.
@@jeffslade1892 "There is no such thing as a war bow" - well, there is, if you refer to bows in general, not just in England. Not every culture used longbows. But I don't know what Cahirable was talking about when he mentioned "modern warbow archers", if he was talking in general, or if he was talking specifically about English longbow users.
@@jeffslade1892 Yes, I'm aware of the effect Bishop Latimer's sermon has had on our understanding on how English archers were trained, and I've read Dr Stirland's thesis, her later book on the men of the Mary Rose and also Blood Red Roses. I'm *very* familiar with the archaeology and the skeletal evidence. As such, when I say that the medieval skeletons of men from Norwich did not show the same signs of skeletal change as the Mary Rose skeletons, I'm summarising her work. When I say a skeleton from Towton identified as an archer had an old injury typical of professional adolescent athletes, I'm drawing on the archaeological evidence from there to. When I bring up the fact that modern Olympic archers show the same kinds of skeletal changes as the Mary Rose archers, I am again drawing on the scholarship (how do you think Stirland was confident in identifying the Mary Rose archers?). I am very clearly not saying the English archers were weak. I was explicit in saying this. What I said was that they were not abnormally strong or strong in ways that mattered outside of archery, but that they were specifically good at drawing heavy bows. This, as I pointed out, was not necessarily the province of young, broad shouldered men. Obviously these made up the majority, but the fact that modern men in their sixties can draw over a hundred pounds without having been raised to it through childhood suggests that Latimer's sermon may be as much moralising as reflecting reality. As I said, we now need to do some studies of modern warbow archers (note that I use "longbow" in reference to history and "warbow" in reference to modern sport) in order to see what changes have happened to them and how they compare with a few probable medieval and Tudor archers.
The battle of patay is probably the most crushing defeat the English suffered against French cavalry. An extremely outnumbered group of French knights defeated the English army composed largely of archers so decisively that the English were never able to properly recover their strength by the end of the Hundred Years’ War. Much of the fighting was done by the French vanguard consisting of a couple hundred knights (the whole host was 1500 knights and men at arms) where the English had 6000. The French suffered roughly a hundred casualties where the English had 4,000 including prisoners.
Thank you for reminding us of the very important operational aspect of warfare. Longbowmen, like any type of troop, is dependent on the ability of the army and army commanders to pick a time and place of battle where that type of troop can excel, and if the enemy can outmanoeuvre them to maximise the excellence of their own troops instead they will probably be defeated.
Well, from what I recall, this battle is perfect example that this English tactics combining archers and dismounted knights/men at arms worked wonderfully, but mostly if they had strong defensive position, well organised. Without it, archers couldn't really shoot long enough to do much.
In 1370 a French force under Bertrand du Guesclin crushed the English at first Pontvallian and then Vaas (on the same day). These actions destroyed the English reputation as invincible in open battle and saw the English position on the continent collapse (until revived by Henry V in 1415). I think the real moral of these battles is that leadership and morale are really what mattered, debates are weapons (longbows) and armor are missing the most decisive factor in determining the outcome of a battle.
@@statmonster Yeah, from what I recall, English were generally winning the melees too, even if outnumbered, like at Poitiers or Verneuil. It seems they were generally more coordinated and cohesive fighting force, and longbowmen strategy wouldn't be possible without those men at arms, which is often forgotten.
@@statmonster For sure! But like you say, morale can depend very much on previous reputation. Any army will be undefeated until it is defeated. If you can maximise the advantage of your troop types in early battles so a very bad matchup in your favour produces an overwhelming result, that will give you a favourable starting position in later battles, because the opposing soldiers on the ground will attribute the earlier overwhelming result to the inherent quality of the enemy troops rather than the advantageous situation they could exploit. Essentially, success can snowball into further success.
The Rock Paper Scissors some people look at historical and even modern warfare with can be exhausting sometimes. It’s just not as simple as x thing is legendary or useless
I’ve been planning on doing a long form video about how the English archers were successful against the French. Everyone is hyper focused on the arrows, but their ability to construct field fortifications like wattle fencing or trenches is overly ignored, and when it does come up, sadly it is only even the subject of the stakes, ignoring the context of the stakes being for wattle. Honestly with all the aspects someone should do a long format series breaking it all down. I just don’t have the time, or funding to put together something like the arrows vs armor series for every aspect.
That’s another thing on top for sure. I know Tobias mentioned it in passing, but the French knights at Agincourt who were also at Nicopolis were coming up against the English for the first time many only recently having be afforded ransom. The harnesses on the French showing up to Agincourt may not have been as top tier as one would expect, and the mail seems to contextually be configured differently, with harnesses reflecting more late 14th century kits. Just another thing to consider that’s outside of the English archers themselves.
The sucessses were few in number over the time scale and by 1450 had english bowmen under control. The Introduction of the "Compagne d'ordonance " by Charles VII changed warfare forever. The company was divided into lances with each lance consisting of a Knight or man at armes, a varlet (squire) and two archers the company would advance into the English fire with the squire carrying the shield next to the Knight whose armour was impervious with the two archers advancing behind much the same way todays infantry huddle behind a tank. They would step out from behind to shoot with the priorority being enemy archers. If you can dominate them it means that your man can fight with his visor open while the enemy have fight with closed visors. This tactic resulted in the French victory at Formingy leading to the expulsion of the English from France. Fixed fortifications are fine if you can convince the enemy to attack them, the French stopped being convinced that was a good idea years before. Afer the lifting of the Siege of Orlean the two armies faced off and when the English realised that the French were not going to attack they turned and left the field in spite of Falstaffs army being two days march away.
Of course, and eventually the abandonment of the lace system for the Italian method was also beneficial years later. But my intention with the discussion on field fortification is how ever present it is in the sources of the period but always ignored in general discussion. The ability to create artificial disruptions on the field can present challenges for infantry and put limitations on cavalry. Even a low fencing of stakes and wattle at knee height makes the ground more defensible, just by being an annoyance (though hip height does seem to be more commonly depicted). What is of course interesting is we have sources and depictions for both what you have suggested with the shield and the fencing. What is equally interesting is the construction of fencing seems to have fallen out of favor with archers, but been picked up by other forms of infantry and eventually artillery crews. But for the early 15th, there are some great illustrations, and I do believe such wattle fortifications resulted in victories for the English, until the French grew wise to it.
@@brothersliutgeryitzchakjea7889 Field fortification tend to be always ignored and then trenches in WW1 are a miracle like field fortifications were never in use before.
This is just classic over correction that we see all over history discussions. At first it was longbows could instantly kill any knight and it got corrected and now in some circles an obvious good tool of war is being called useless in an attempt to fix the narrative while ironically making the narrative just as untrue
There was probably a brief time in history where an English Bodkin arrow could instantly penetrate French armour before the French improved their metallurgy, but I get what you mean.
Not saying video games equate to real life battles at all, but my time with games like total war and mount and blade has shown me the army with the advantage at range has such a massive advantage. Without it you have a dilemma: Option one is essentially to try to cancel out the enemy archers with your own archers, then hunker down and wait for them to run out of arrows. They get to whittle down your army before they clash but you get to keep an advantageous position. Option two is also bad: You take the initiative and try to cancel out their archer advantage by winning the melee battle. The problem here is you'll be on the offensive while they are on the defensive and get to choose where the lines meet, they'll potentially be in an advantageous position.
"Archers are worthless" is the latest in brilliant internet military theory crafting...hopefully in a little bit we can added to same pile as "leather armor isn't real," "fire arrows don't work," and "military flails didn't exist."
Hide armor is real, but it wasn't made of leather as we know it. Instead, it was almost always made of rawhide or partially tanned rawhide (known as half tanned leather). Partially tanned rawhide has an outer tanned leather layer but an inner core of rawhide. Rawhide is tough and rigid like a hard plastic, and is significantly stronger than leather according to Edward Cheshire's tests of leather vs rawhide. Thus, rawhide and partially tanned rawhide are both cheaper and stronger than leather and would have made for much better armor. Other academics have suggested that boiled leather was not leather at all but boiled or wax/glue infused rawhide.
@@Intranetusa Buff coats are a thing, yes. As are cuir bouilli cuirasses (the word cuirass litterally coming from the word for leather). So is leather scale, leather lamellar and mixed leather and iron lamellar which was quite widely used in east Asia. The point is that morons tripping all over themselves to debunk D&D "studded leather" and Hollywood Vikings in biker fetish gear frequently forgot these things existed and were eagerly shouting that "leather armor wasn't real" at anybody who would listen.
@@BalbazaktheGreat The scale, lamellar, etc armors used in Eurasia are not made of leather but are actually rawhide/partially tanned rawhide. They have to cut the rawhide into small armor plates because it was too hard and inflexible to use as large pieces. Tanned leather is flexible enough to use as large pieces. Buff coats are one of the few examples where "armor" is actually pure tanned leather because it also served as clothing - so it needed to be soft and flexible. Pretty much everything else was rawhide or partially tanned rawhide. Studded leather was a misinterpretation of brigandine armor. On one hand, people are going around thinking hide armor doesn't exist because of D&D nonsense. On the other end, people are going around claiming leather armor is a common thing when in reality it was actually rawhide/partially tanned rawhide armor that doesn't resemble fully tanned leather.
@@BalbazaktheGreat Cuir bouilli was originally thought be boiled leather, but tests by people (including one from Tod's Workshop) showed boiled leather is terrible - it is weak and very brittle. Leather infused with resins/glue makes it tough & rigid, but that just turns it back into a rawhide like material - so it is better to just use rawhide/partially tanned rawhide in the first place. The more recent studies suggest that cuir bouilli is likely waxed/glued rawhide or partially tanned rawhide and not actually fully tanned leather. Rawhide and boiled/treated rawhide are both significantly stronger than leather and boiled leather. Boiled leather is actually the weakest material out of a test of a half dozen different materials according to Cheshire's tests.
Survivors of recent wars have talked about the stress of being shot at even if they never got hit, I imagine that still held true with bows v plate armor.
Even more, because in modern battles, if you are hit, that's mostly it. In arrow vs plate armor you might get hit 10 times without wounds - and you definitely hear that!! But you never know if the first arrow will woudn you or 10 do nothing. I think that is far worse.
Great video! Great evidence above and beyond the practical consideration of the composition of plate vs other armor types, etc etc. Video idea: I would love to hear your thoughts on how much effort infantry soldiers actually put into trying to hurt the guy in front of them when they engaged at melee range (assume we're talking shield-wielding infantry). When I look at casualty rates of ancient & medieval battles, they feel unrealistically low on the winning side given the hours of intensive melee combat. Or even on the losing side, pre-rout. But maybe I'm envisioning Hollywood stylized fighting, when in fact a huge amount of what the common foot soldier did once they made contact with the enemy was pushing/hitting/shoving/blocking etc with their shields. I imagine there was only so much to gain from landing a hit on the enemy (from a foot soldier's perspective) vs the downside of getting killed. Was there specific historical discussion on how to motivate the foot soldiers to be more offensively-minded once they engaged? Is there a different explanation? Would be great to learn more!
Archers did not just stand in the middle of a field. They had shields, dug ditches with fortifications, deployed caltrops. They had pikemen and lads armed with clubs, knives and devices to unhorse and keep a fallen knight fallen. Also, great battles were few, but skirmish in the marches, wood were constant in the period.
One of the things that made the mercenaries of John Hawkwood's White Company so sought after was the presence of English archers in their ranks. People thought they were worth paying for.
I really really appreciate the Faith No More shirt. Oh yeah and the topic you're discussing as well :) If archery was useless, then Henry V sure did piss away a lot of money. In defense of the French, some plans just don't work...
@@djinnxx7050 Its a band from the 90ies, which is the era that i mostly grew up in. They're a hugely influential band and are well respected for their musical style.
@@skyereave9454 the shirt doesn't have any specific meaning other than to promote the band and the logo is the Star of Lakshmi, which is their bands logo i believe.
I think the issue a lot of internet discourse about medieval archery runs into is that they focus on the level of equipment and individual fighting. But the major benefit archery gives is a tactical one. It means that the enemy is obligated to come to attack you, so you can choose an advantage position. Even if archers don't win at range, they create the conditions whereby you can win in melee.
As a Bowman by surname I thank you Matt for defending my (and my ancestors) honour. Of course we were useful and still are though not so much in the field anymore!
Unbarded horses, sure. But even then, horses can take a lot more punishment then people give them credit for. You need a lot of arrows or a really good shot drop one. Think of how a deer still keeps running for several seconds to minutes after getting hit in a vital organ. Now horses are roughly 10x-15x the size of a deer. Defensive fortifications are necessary for archers to have a chance of surviving a cavalry charge because they give them time to loose many more arrows. Without them, they were extremely vulnerable to charges.
@@Specter_1125 I think most horses throughout the era were not all that well armoured. I also don't think you need to kill the horse to make him decide he'd rather be somewhere else.
Of course, they weren't useless. The best content explaining the English tactics of the HYW is Schwerpunkt's: I strongly recommend it and suggest and coop with him.
yea, he sould do some shorter formats tho and use more visuals, hes just to mutch on the just good information side of yt to be interesting for most on yt i belive,
I agree. Having a few hundred arrows loose at your formation every few seconds. As you advance across a field would cause some trouble. It would slow or break charges. Shields and equipment would be made heavy from arrows. Horse and men would be wounded. And once you arrived at the archers they would fight in hand to hand combat.
@@NeuKroftathat's exactly what Matt was trying to talk people out of, saying that the archers weren't a credible threat even to the people in armour is exactly the lie he's talking about. I'd recommend Tod Cutler's arrow vs armour videos, real historians, armourers and archers showing just how much damage an arrow can do even to someone in plate armour, he found gaps and thinner plates all over the place even without aiming for them. As Matt says they wouldn't have invested so much money, time and resources into training and fielding them and their enemies wouldn't have gone so far afield to find someone capable of compensating for their disadvantages if they weren't effective.
Just FYI, your videos are not being recommended to me, from about three weeks ago. I had to search for your channel manually. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one!
So the longbow is getting the katana treatment. First having a mythical reputation, then the counter reaction to that leading people to say it's useless.
I love your content, always watch anything that comes up from you. Just wanted to give a (hopefully) constructive tip. That lav mic you have pics up a lot of plosives. Not sure if you're able to do anything about it but a lot of P's and S's get distorted. Great video though.
two questions: 1) do you know of any cost analysis of the *lifetime* costs for a noble to have 10 knights vs 80 archers? e.g. to fully feed, horse, arm, armor, & train a knight would it be an equivalent (or greater) cost to the training, arming, and feeding of 80 archers? 2) have you seen any videos that give a realistic re-enactment of a full english style longbow volley (or several volleys) - would be really interesting to see what the "rainfall" effect would actually look like
This would be a fun read. Big part of it though is that an archer was a leveed position (militia equivalent). So for most of that lifetime, an archer is actually paying a noble taxes as a normal peasant. They practiced their archery in England by national decree, so the farmers would go out once a week and “play the national sport” of archery, then when England needed an army, local nobles could levee from the farmers who have been trained by generation in archery skills, but would also be introduced to the basics of soldiering. We know several archery games they’d play, but also joining the levee was seen as well-paying job, so I’m sure the older generations would have taught the basics of soldiering as well. The volley is tricky, some modern scholars are really pushing against the rainfall you’ve described. It’s good for range, but you lose a lot of power. Also bows are harder to hold back (especially longbows). So modern theories is that they would have shot closer range, to minimize the arc and keep the power, and that archers would have loosed at will so they could keep the healthiest pace. So less ‘machine gun’, more high-powered semi-auto.
I thought you were about to point out that masses of Welsh merceneries were employed for their skills by English / Norman princes. Used to live in a town renowned for their valour at Crecy
When utilized properly, archers were a force multiplier. When unsupported by other troops, or hampered by bad terrain, etc., they faired badly. Like everything else military, they should be viewed as one component in a system, instead of the mythical death dealers popular history portrays.
@BalbazaktheGreat - Hide armor is real, but it wasn't made of leather as we know it. Instead, it was almost always made of rawhide or partially tanned rawhide (known as half tanned leather). Partially tanned rawhide has an outer tanned leather layer but an inner core of rawhide. Rawhide is tough and rigid like a hard plastic, and is significantly stronger than leather according to Edward Cheshire's tests of leather vs rawhide. Thus, rawhide and partially tanned rawhide are both cheaper and stronger than leather and would have made for much better armor. Other academics have suggested that boiled leather was not leather at all but boiled or wax/glue infused rawhide.
Let us not forget that the 1.5mm bloomery steel plate Tod tested ended up being *pierced by 13cm! That is over 5 inches!* However, the steel plate was also carburized and would have been better than its comparable medieval low-carbon bloomery steel. Bloomery steel have 0.1-0.2 % carbon with lots of slag inclusions. If we go through all those 59 pieces of armour Alan Williams have analyzed from mid 14th to early 15th century, only 1 has been case-carburized, and that is only on the surface. Therefore the plate was slightly better than what it should have been and the penetration should have been slightly deeper than 13 cm. Cross-lamination have no effect on bloomery steel, contrary to what Tod said. Tod does not give any information on the grade of modern mild steel they decided to used for the suite of armour. He only said and wrote mild steel. Modern mild steel come in different grades and even the lowest grade is better than what the original helmet was made of, while the best quality is a much better. The bascinet they reproduced, Wallace Collection A 69, is made of a 0.2% low-carbon bloomery steel for the helmet and a 0.1% low-carbon bloomery steel for the visor. The quality is worse than the lowest grade of modern mild steel, AISI 1005. To put that into perspective, in a Double Edge Notch Tension test, the worst modern mild steel, AISI 1005, have a fracture toughness of 220 kJ/m2. Medieval bloomery steel, in comparison, have a fracture toughness of 180-210 kJ/m2, depending on carbon content from 0.1-0.3%. The helmet is probably in the mid range and the visor in the lower range. Modern mild steel with the same carbon content as the helmet (0.2% carbon) can potentially have a fracture toughness of more than 283 kJ/m2. That is caused by alloying elements and almost no slag inclusions. If this steel is worked cold, as was stated in one of the films, this might increase to around 300 kJ/m2, as long as it is not worked too much. This is a typical increase for cold rolled mild steel. In layman terms it would take 53.8% to 66.6% more kinetic energy to get through this modern mild steel helmet in comparison to the medieval bloomery steel helmet. That's a huge difference. For example, if we say, for the sake of argument, that it takes 74 Joules to penetrate a 1.5mm plate made of bloomery steel with a fracture toughness of 180 kJ/m2, the increase for modern mild steel of the same thickness, with a fracture toughness of 300 kJ/m2, would be 123 Joules. That is a problem if the arrow strike with 115 Joules. However, against bloomery steel the arrow would have 41 Joules left after penetration, enough to kill or seriously wound the person inside the helmet. As a side note, top quality wrought iron with only 1.8-1.84% slag have a comparable fracture toughness of 229-228 kJ/m2 when it is cross-laminated, as have been demonstrated in tests by Alan Williams. This is comparable to AISI 1010 mild steel with 0.1% carbon. Tod penetrated this top quality wrought iron and presumably this quality of mild steel by 10.5cm. However, wrought iron of this quality didn't exist in the medieval period. It's not representative at all. The slag inclusion percent in medieval wrought iron is a lot more than 1.8%. It's usually 2.5% at best. Most of it is in the 3% range. If wrought iron plates were not properly cross-laminated the quality would have been abysmal. The best medieval cross-laminated wrought iron would still have been worse than the best medieval low-carbon bloomery steel with 0.3 carbon. Tod's test gave the impression that it was the opposite. It's not the case. To Tod's surprise, the wrought iron plates without cross-lamination were penetrated by 14cm, almost the same as the carburized bloomery steel plate at 13cm. The reason for the discrepancy is the quality of the modern post-industrial revolution wrought iron. If we use Occam's razor, it is not, as Tod theorized, because of some local large slag inclusions in the bloomery steel. The fracture toughness for wrought iron with 1.84% slag and without cross-lamination, is 189.33 kJ/m2, exactly. If it is 2% slag it is 184 kJ/m2. Therefore the estimated (calculated) fracture toughness of the carburized bloomery steel Tod tested, would have been slightly higher than this at around 192-197 kJ/m2 or there about since the arrow penetrated by 13 cm. Without carburization the fracture toughness would probably have been around 181 kJ/m2, perfect quality as an analog for the visor of the helmet. Why isn't the difference greater? The advantage steel get from carbon gradually declines when the slag inclusion percentage increases. With 2.3% slag there is no advantage if the steel is annealed. The graphs I have made on slag vs. carbon have 9 different reference points, as well as all 4 reference points provided by Alan Williams, which happen to be correct in relation to the other results. Tod did not demonstrate that the suite of armour was comparable to medieval bloomery steel. They are completely different materials, and the results from the tests demonstrated this difference. The nuances are important, especially when they build on each other in sequence. Almost 2/3 of surviving armour from mid 14th to early 15th century is made of bloomery steel quality or worse, wrought iron, or a combination of both.
@@JosefGustovc Which means that the grade of mild steel in the comparable test was not the same as the grade you made the armour of. This is also evident by the fact that the arrows didn't penetrate the 1.5mm thick edge of the visor more than partially when shot with the crossbow by Tod, while the comparable plate was penetrated by 10.5cm. That difference is too greate if they were made of the same steel grade. It is impossible for wrought iron to have a higher fracture toughness when it is cross-laminated, than it has in the direction of rolling/forging. It can be the same, but not higher. The test demonstrated this. It can also not be higher than 228-229 kJ/m2, because this is the best wrought iron quality there is. The two other plains (width and thickness) have a fracture toughness of 170 KJ/m2. That on its own proves that the mild steel plate Tod used in the comparable test was made of AISI 1010 with 0.1% carbon. Tod wrote that the plate was from 0.1% to 0.2% carbon. No steel has that toleranse. In other words, he didn't know the grade either. When that is said, it is for certain AISI 1010. You can tell me what exact grade the armour was made of, if you know? You didn't the last time I asked. You did say it was a 0.2% carbon steel on FB when someone asked, so if you know as much, you should also know the exact grade. Out of curiosity, how did you all of a sudden figure it out? The grade is one of the most important variables in the test.
I’m not saying the archers were useless, but their role is often overstated compared to the remarkable efforts of the English knights and their commanders. The chevauchée strategy forced the French to fight in disadvantageous positions, such as advancing up hills or through muddy fields. The strong front line of English dismounted knights was crucial for their massive victories. While the archers enhanced their efficiency, it's uncertain if they could have been replaced, but the commanders and knights were absolutely irreplaceable. Additionally, it's important to remember that the English eventually lost the overall conflict.
When you're fighting in someone else's country for a long time, you usually lose in the end. You can have better this, that and the other thing, but bottom line it's their turf and the people want you gone.
@@purplelibraryguy8729 Except the territory we now know as France wasn't France then. For much of the war the English were in their own turf or close to it and they had allies in the region too. The French managed to win the war because, overall, they were better at war than their opposition. At the start the war, the British had better armies, strategies/tactics, commanders and soldiers, but the French managed, after several disastrous defeats, to turn the tide and win the war very decisively.
This is a MASSIVE topic. But the French quickly adopted field artillery when the English didn't. The English were in political and economic turmoil at the time the French were unifying. Henry V was promised the throne after his conquest, but he died young. His son Henry VI was a child and later mentally incapacitated. England was in the beginnings of a civil war at home. But overall the war saw vast wealth flow from France to England and almost no wealth from England to France. Economically, England bled France dry for over a century and France got nothing from England.
@@purplelibraryguy8729 In fact, the English were utterly despoiling the countryside via chevauchee (basically raiding and burning the countryside), bubonic plague was ongoing, eventually boiled up into the Jacquerie, a massive indigenous French uprising against the knightly class. So in fact the French country itself was suffering massively during the Hundred Years War. My own ancestor was from a town that was captured by the English army, interestingly the genealogy only starts a few decades after the battle itself. Paris itself refused to be recaptured by the French and resisted strongly, holding out until very late in the war. There was a massive civil war in Brittany, which the English faction won. They also wiped out the "flower of French nobility" multiple times, captured and ransomed the French king. They never would have won the war if not for Joan's campaign and the subsequently excellent commanders like La Hire which committed a series of devastating battles against the English, including "Agincourt in reverse" at the Battle of Patay where French cavalry annihilated the English archers who were caught in the open. The problem for English longbowmen is that, unlike French soldiery, they were not replaceable. They were enormously costly in terms of time and training. Very few people today can draw a warbow of the draw weights found at The Mary Rose excavation site. The English enforced disciplined training for longbowmen because otherwise it would be impossible to field such an army. English archers were elite soldiers. Making a longbow is very cheap and easy, making an archer is not. Hence, the defeat at Patay and the Loire Campaign overall was vastly more impactful to the English than were all of the calamities inflicted on the French during earlier phases of the conflict.
Here's the thing: that type of warfare, of making your own formation immobile and forcing the enemy to close, only works if you can match their ability to fight with missile weapons. If the English hadn't had the archers, the French could have just let their Genoese mercenaries take shots at the English, forcing them to take casualties until the crossbowmen ran out of bolts or abandon their advantageous position. The archers forced the French to close in because the English would win a missile duel every time.
One point to add is that not everyone fighting the English would be wearing full plate from head to toe. If the English had a 5:1 up to 10:1 ratio of peasant archers to men at arms, we can assume similar for other countries. The French (or whoever) peasants aren't carrying longbows, but they'd have spears, bills, etc instead. So then you're looking at a large body of lightly armoured people with mainly melee weapons... a big squishy target for archers.
Read Bernard Cornwell’s Agincourt. It’s a novel, but offers a pretty good insight into archers, their tactics and the tactics used to counter them. Armor had gaps, sure you could tank a bunch of arrows as a man at arms but it would slow you down and it wouldn’t be pleasant, plus if one of those little buggers ( the arrows) finds lodgment even if it doesn’t kill you, it’s still gong to hurt and you’re probably going to be out of the fight.
@@scholagladiatoria Will do! It’s cool that you have an entire playlist, didn’t know you had it categorized so well! Definitely know how I’m spending tonight! Also thanks for commenting it’s an honor!
I do wonder about Bernard Cornwell and longbows. Reading his Grail series and the impression you get from it is that longbows can stop a charge from infantry or cavalry basically dead until they run out of arrows. Men at arms seem near useless there unless they're on the English side and mail is useless against arrows. I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
@@nath9091 "I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle." That's the nub of it. A lot of people debating on the internet can't seem to handle nuance. I love Cornwell's books, on the whole well researched but he does lean into the mythos for dramatic effect. He also makes mistakes or deliberately changes aspects of history for storytelling.
@@nath9091 To be completely honest, I’ve never read the Grail Books. The only medieval book I’ve read of his is Agincourt, and that one seems to be a bit more grounded in reality. Probably because by it’s very nature, it’s confined to telling the events of the Campaign of Harfleur and Agincourt.
Don't miss the fundamental issue that archers were very, very, very accurate, as in when Prince Henry lifted his visor at Shrewsbury, and someone instantly shot him in the face, a moving , tiny target in the midst of utter chaos. Yet they still hit him. Look at medieval paintings of battles, which appears childish and crude to our eyes, yes? But that doesn't mean the information in them is inaccurate, and they show horses especially, and men's weakly armoured areas full of arrows. Horses go mad when shit with an arrow. A storm of them would crush any cavalry charge instantly. Horse armour was rare and insanely expensive. Just because an arrow won't go through top quality plate armour, is a bit like saying an assault rifle is useless because it won't penetrate top grade military body armour...
Plate armour. The Tower of London has barrels and barrels and barrels of mediaeval arrow heads. Robert Hardy (Longbow) got Woolwich Arsenal (laboratory) to test them on various armour plates. Some of those heads weigh up to 6 ounces from 1 or 2 ounces (on 1/2-in shafts), hardened and tempered with points like a cold chisel. It does need a heavy bow to shoot them and they do not go twang, they go thud. They penetrated, a lot of the time, Woolwich were so impressed they used some of the findings to help develop anti-tank penetrator rounds. Even if no penetration it would have like being struck by a sack of hammers. This is not anecdotal, for a time I worked with one of the chaps who had done the testing, and read the Woolwich report. Not all the heads would be that heavy but they were no lightweight hunting arrow. It may also be noted that the archers' targets were not the knights but their horses (hence the italians barding their horses). Shot with an arrow, horses panic and can bring down half a dozen more.
Sorry, but this is a complete myth. The Royal Armouries, with whom I work sometimes, does not have medieval English arrowheads. In fact we only have a small number of medieval English arrowheads surviving and most were found archaeologically, for example at Towton. Robert Hardy did examine original arrowheads, but they were not tested against armour. You are misremembering.
This is fascinating. Considering that no arrowheads have yet (publicly) been associated with the Tower of London, no actual medieval heads have (publicly) ever been tested against armour, the number of English medieval arrowheads in existence that have been metallurgically confirmed to have been hardened or attempted to be hardened number less than about 10 and the fact that Robert Hardy had no real authority when it came to testing actual medieval archery equipment but relied solely on the information provided to him by true experts (in the case of the metallurgy and efficiency of medieval arrowheads namely David Starley and Hector Cole) your comment is astonishing and absolutely ground breaking. If what you say is true, decades upon decades of research, PhD theses and publications on the medieval arrowhead are completely wrong, so for the sake of everybody such as myself who have dedicated their careers to understanding and replicating medieval arrowheads could you let us know where to find the paper that discusses the testing of actual medieval arrowheads against various plates, and the paper that discloses the metallurgy of said heads? So far I know only of the official Royal Armouries publications that show quite clearly that no medieval arrowhead has ever been shot into anything whatsoever, and that the majority of heads were of unhardened iron, so the paper you mention will blow everything the Royal Armouries has ever done on arrowheads out of the water. Looking forward to reading it! Cheers.
@@scholagladiatoria Is there any truth to the claim that getting hit by arrows was like getting "struck by a sack of hammers"? Even if fast, arrows are pretty light and I can't imagine them transferring enough energy through blunt force to actually hurt someone through armor without piercing it. Looking at Tod's tests, the most that the arrows do is make minor dents and break, and most of the time they deflect
@@scholagladiatoria I have read the entire Woolwich report. I no longer have access and it may not be in the public domain, MoD are like that. My understanding was that the arrowheads were sent from the Tower to Woolwich. Now whether the heads originated in the Tower or in the Woolwich Arsenal, they certainly had masses of them and did metallurgical tests as well as shooting them at steel plates.
@@atom8248 The energy is E= ½mv². Whilst a longbow would not be able to shoot a heavy projectile fast, you can work out that a 4-oz head on a half inch shaft is going to hurt more, by several magnitudes, than a little pile on a quarter inch shaft. Shooting such a large "wooden whistler" at a field target knocked the trestle over. I have never met Todd but have seen his shooting test videos and may have known some of the people present. His heads skated off. a key point from Woolwich was that the tempered "cold chisel" points did not skate off, allowing the point to stick like a centre punch and the softer iron/steel behind the tip to deform. This property was noted and aided development of the HEAT shell. I do have to query "soft iron" as a humble blacksmith would have easily hardened and tempered the points and knew perfectly well the angle to put on a cold chisel; they made their own tools.
This reminds me of RTS games, where you sometimes have some very powerful tools (like the tactical nuke for Terrans in SC2) that more often than not don't do any significant damage, because players play around them. But the fact that they're there and your oppontent is forced to play around them is what provides the actual value. I remember reading about some battle (does anybaody know the source btw?) where knights mentioned that they had to close their visors out of fear of getting shot in the face, while the other side could fight with open visors, thus having better vision and breathing.
I think a close equivalent to English longbowmen in European military history was the Roman legionary. They were both medium-armoured long-service professional infantry equipped with both ranged and melee weapons. This made for an incredibly versatile and agile combatant useful in all types of warfare, from open battles to raids to sieges. The Roman legions also made good use of elite cavalry forces to support their main body of foot troops and the medieval English did with this their mounted knights and sergeants who could also fight on foot as heavy infantry if needed. I think much of the success of the English longbowmen stems more from their military professionalism than longbows being some sort of wonder weapon. If they were caught at a disadvantage they could be defeated like any other force. French success in the latter part of the Hundred Years War I think owed more to determination and persistence than any revolution in weapons or tactics. Once France's national resources were actually united to fight the English their much greater extent simply allowed them to overwhelm them with forces that in terms of quality were actually closely equivalent in many ways. Even if the French did not outnumber the English in actual engagements if you could just keep relentlessly going at your enemy you are going to wear them out and grind them back.
Henry, Earl of Derby, the future King Henry IV of England took part with his small army (and presumably also with his archers) in Lithuanian Civil War of 1389-1392 on the side of Lithuanian Duke Vytautas. He participated in sieges of Vilnius castles. Archaeologist identified some arrowheads excavated in the area of these sieges as being arrowheads of English longbow arrows.
The ratio argument is not the best. Infantry pretty much always outnumbered the knights, since they were cheaper. Even a longbowman is much cheaper (both in wages and especially in equipment) than a knight. A better argument would be why bring 10 'useless' longbowmen, when you could more easily bring 10 billmen or something?
Bullshit. A longbowmen requires extensive training and conditioning. I could be effective enough with a bill without a minute of training. Stick the pointy bit forward and hold ground. With a longbow, you or I are utterly useless. What made the English bowmen so effective is that they could draw heavy and powerful bows repeatedly over the course of long engagements. England only had these men because they mandated, by law, all adult males across a wide range of ages to practice archery every week. Those longbowmen are not easily made and not easily replaced under any conditions. One generation of lapsed training and such a pool of infantry is gone. There was a quote from a Byzantine commander in one of John Keegan's books that I read, for every 10 archers you give me, 1 of them will be any good. For every 100 archers you give me, 10 of them will be any good. And so forth. Substantially more so for a yew longbow with a 130 pound draw weight which was uncommon in that period. Also, contemporary field armies were much happier to employ billmen, or pikemen, or spearmen, or whatever. They had no time to train competent archers. Consequently, their archers were usually ineffective. This is also why the steppe nomads were so monstrously effective. They lived by horsemanship and hunting. They were natural soldiers. Farmers taken from the field without training do not make good archers.
@@tedhodge4830 While it's probably true that bills & the like require less training than bows, as Humphrey Barwick claimed, it's not at all the case that anyone could do it effectively. Armored billmen, like other heavy infantry, benefited immensely from strength, endurance, & prowess. As one account from Flodden 1513 says, some single armored Scottish pikers took blows from multiple bills at once without dropping. Yet the English won the day, because their billmen had the tenacity to continue walloping until they got the job done.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 It's much easier to find strong and hardier men when the average man does physical labor as his day job. What is unique about a bow is that it requires very particular and unusual muscle groups, and a war bow requires them to be enormously strong. It simply is not a combination of compressing and pulling force that is common to a normal person, or a normal soldier. There are plenty of very powerful, strong, and muscular men these days, yet very, very few have the specialized training to draw a warbow effectively. It's because the conventional weight training or physical day to day labor does not train for drawing a bow. It is to the point where they can identify archers by their skeletal structure in archaeology due to their overdeveloped right scapula and compressed left forearm. Side note, but regarding flodden, the pike has distinct advantages and disadvantages due to its length. If you're within range of the bill to land repeated blows, the pike has failed at its primary role. There were many factors at Flodden, chiefly terrain, which is the primary downfall of the pike. They had exactly that situation at the Battle of Pydna between the Romans and the Macedonians, where the Roman commanders despaired due to what looked like a military catastrophe when the Roman soldiers were unable to penetrate the Macedonian pike squares, but when terrain broke up their formations, they were able to close and achieve decisive advantage with their short swords. The bill was also a particularly nasty weapon in close range, with powerful chopping and hooking. The Scots also were not used to continental pike square warfare, which the Spanish introduced. The pike square was always dependent on the effective drilling of troops and is quite unique in that regard. This is why the Macedonians, and then the Swiss, and then the Spanish tercios were extremely renowned for their use of the pike. Professional, well-drilled troops are important for making pike blocks work. Pikes are another weapon that you can't just give to infantry and expect them to be successful in the push. They have to maintain good drilling and move in formation or the tremendous length advantage is compromised.
Archers were extremely important in English/Welsh forces of the late middle ages. You only have to look at the ratio of archers to men-at-arms in English medieval armies and the destruction they were capable of wreaking against lightly-armoured soldiers to see this. There were, in some campaigns, a ratio of 10 archers to 1 man-at-arms. The Peasants' Revolt in 1381 came close to succeeding because the peasants were militarily stronger than the forces of the crown and the peasants naively trusted Richard II, only treachery stopped them. Not every soldier on a medieval battlefield was a knight in heavy plate armour, few were. Archers were relatively cheap to field and devastatingly effective. They were "those who worked" who took the place of "those who fought".
Arrows can go through plate. Not through breast or backplates. They CAN go through the thinner areas, especially with platecutter arrows, and bodkins if they are hardened. Arrows don't need to kill someone. They just need to reduce efficiency. Arrow to the thigh, arrow that goes 4mm in to the upper arm, arrow that goes through barding into a horse, arrow that gets deflected but breaks and a splinter goes into the face of a lesser-armored levy nearby. Arrows cause wounds and disruption and morale loss. They cause very few fatalities. They are also very good for taking, or holding, ground. But people who do not study war tend to think war is about killing your enemies. No, it is about defeating them usually financially or shattering their morale, or reducing the efficiency of the enemy armed forces to such a degree they can't stand against you. Arrows do all of those things, ESPECIALLY in a world where a small cut can legitimately kill you over the next week or two from infection
Arrows can occasionally go through plate, but bodkins are terrible against plate. There are much better heads like Type 16. See Tod's Workshop channel arrows Vs armour and my archery playlist for more detail 🙂
@@scholagladiatoria I've seen it. Bodkins are terrible at penetrating thick plate, but they slide off the rounding of a breastplate, or a spaulder, or something similar and can follow along the armor to get into gaps. It is why the vee on chest plates became so normal; a shot to the upper chest would slide upward to the mail gorget. Tod even showed this very thing with one of the hardened bodkins in the video you mentioned; it dented the plate a bit, but that was on very thick breast plate almost center hit, and then slid right up and would have gone into a throat if not for the vee. With enough force left over to absolutely shatter the shaft when it hit the vee. Bodkins aren't going to go into chests or backs, but they WILL go through the mail in the gaps, AND they will (if hardened) go through thinner parts of plate like near the edges, or lower-quality plate like you might find on a kettlehelm rim, or early plate. There are multiple accounts of then going straight through the sides of helmets at Agincourt (at very close range). Bodkins are next to useless getting through rounded plate of any quality though unless very thin, that much is true, even if hardened.
Would be good to see Matt stop focusing on cases were English won, but describe al those numerous cases when French won. And at the end of the day, French won the 100 years war, regardless of all those English archers
I don’t want to necessarily speak on behalf of Matt, but Matt definitely is a man of context and believes in “happy mediums” namely that plate armor was an effective counter and could keep you mostly safe from arrows, AND archers were effective units which changed the course of several key English battles in the 100 years war.
Longbows is an incredibly ancient weapon , that existed alongside plenty types of armor, and plate armor evolved in area and time when it wasn't used all that much - mainly in Southern Germany and Northern Italy. So I really doubt it had much, if any impact on development of plate armor.
There's a big cost factor involved in fitting out cavalry to the standards of thr lombards. That's an extra cost that not all people of sufficient rank can bear. When war is a profitable activity, whether through ransoms or seized land, the profit can only be enjoyed if one survives. The longbowmen in part may have helped price out many people from fitting out in a manner whoch would inspire the confidence needed to charge home, and also raising the financial impact of capture/ransom.
" the profit can only be enjoyed if one survives". Unless you're the military industrial complex, in which case you keep making money hand over fist as long as you can keep suckering the opposing sides into fighting.
@@dashcammer4322 doesn't really apply to this sort of warfare, as the items in question (horses, non-munitions armour etc) are bespoke. Military-industrial complex needs the industrial revolution to have happened.
Even 20th century machine guns didn't directly kill that many people. The main purpose of rapid fire is to destabilize the enemy so that the infantry can finish the job. Same thing with artillery -- it doesn't matter how much of a barrage you can drop on someone if you don't have the infantry to finish the job. So if you're looking at pure kill count, ranged fighters generally don't do the most damage. But they make it possible for the infantry to accomplish that mission.
Gunfire is very, very different, particularly machine gun fire... For one thing, gunfire has a supersonic *crack* as it disrupts the air via a sonic boom. Additionally, the rate of fire, accuracy, and range of such weapons are utterly incomparable to archery....such a thing as a doctrine of "suppression" was not a concept in this period as far as I'm aware, and furthermore is a quite modern concept. Hence why even going into World War I machine gun nests, the French doctrine was still "attack" and assault, even into explosive artillery and machine gun nests. There was for many, many years even after the advent of musketry, a strong debate on the line versus the column and the bayonet charge versus the effectiveness of volley fire. Even still, infantry held on to pike blocks and halberdiers for many, many decades, and the primary revolution that made muskets alone a mainstay of infantry warfare was in fact the bayonet, and it still operated in tandem with the cavalry. The theory of the day well into the Napoleonic period was the primacy of the bayonet charge, the effect of which was the total disruption of infantry. This is also key to the success of the highland charge, the counter to which was defense in depth with reserve infantry, and alternative bayonet tactics (namely, to strike to the unguarded left of the charging formation, to bypass the targe of the highlander). Artillery was also not important in that period because of "barrages," as the long range shot was solid lead balls. The primary advantage of artillery was canister shot, which was disruptive to infantry because it was a gigantic smoothbore shotgun that tore holes in an advancing column. Canister shot alone is devastating even with muzzle loaders. In fact, so was "chain shot," so called because it used random chains or other random bits of metal lodged down the bore in lieu of proper lead balls. Explosive shells didn't come until rather late in the game despite what Hollywood films depict.
I would think there are a few thousand fully armoured French knights from the battles of Crecy, and Agincourt who MIGHT just hold a slightly differing view on the efficacy of the Long Bow. But then, who are you going to believe, History or "Some guy on the internet who read a book once"
10 min Brigade: Reporting, sir! Let the Matt run loose we yet another dive into lives and war practices of our Medieval Ancestors! Thank you Matt! +][+
I've found that at a distance of several hundred years my keyboard provides perfect protection from all manner of Medieval weapons including bows, pole arms and swords and daggers as well as clubs and shafts.
Well considering the frequency that English Longbowmen were recruited(English Kings in the Hundred Years War, and their widespread service as mercenaries), I’d say that English Longbowmen must have been effective. If we can’t prove that, it’s our failure to understand the past, not the Past’s fault for doing it wrong.
I must admit, since watching Tod's demonstrations I have reflected on why there was such an emphasis on recruiting archers for expeditions to France. Two thoughts come to mind. The archers woild have been a body of pretty fit men who might do damage with their primary weapon but could then be relied on to get stuck in with anything that came to hand once the lines closed. And secondly, Henry V in particular might have seen a particular value in archery when facing unfavourable odds - How many disabling wounds, like his own, might they inflict on the French leadership. On a good day...
I replied to your comment on AoG's post. As soon as this video popped up, I knew why. 😂 Are you familiar with Ironlily? He draws fantastic armor on his 'historically fictional waifus.'
I also believe it's important to point out that it was the longbowman that was highly effective, not simply just the longbow as a weapon. The English "mass adoption" of the longbow in the years around 1300 also comes with changes in recruitment, training, methods of use, and also I believe changes the "doctrine" for how English armies fought. One might even argue that it changed the hierarchical structure of how English society was organized. I think in many ways it is similar to the roman legionairs. While the weapons themselves are certainly good. The big effects come when you put all of it (training, doctrine, etc.) together as a complete system.
Studying the sources for the Breton war of succession, I can confirm the english archers were regarded as highly effective, and get quite a lot of attention. When English arrive as a relief force for the Montfort, archers are very often mentioned in engagements and quite regularly the decisive factor for those.
The English were not Brits in this period, that term was still being used by the English when describing those from Wales, just as often as the term Welsh. Self usage of the term Welsh wouldn't become common place in Wales until late 1800s.
I recently got a 16 gauge thick Mild steel kettle helmet for fun, then realised that it was about the extent of a common soldiers head armour for a lot of medieval history, between hardening being very expensive, and metal being much less pure until recent history... I wouldn't exactly trust it against a solid longbow strike, but it would still help glance a bit... still hurt though "DING!!"
Training and morale I think is the most overlooked aspect of the Emglish Longbowman, and the lesson that that training had on English warfare. The fact that the longbow demanded so much training, discipline, study and practice made the English archers superior troops, which I feel counts more strongly than the effectiveness of the weapon. As we know morale and discipline often outweigh technology. I would say that this lesson and this training in fact led to / inspired the emphasis on discipline and training that made the thin line of English muskets in the Napoleonic wars so effective and beyond.
Now for a hunter archer the bow is a means of survival. You need to hit what you point at. However there are also archers who use the bow as a terror weapon. Get the maximum amount of arrows in the air and in the right direction and range. Send a good amount of a tree down on to an enemy. This was also the use of rocket artillery since the 1800's, Early use was fire for effect and terrorise the ones on the receiving end. And still is dispite advanced target systems.
One thing that blew my mind was that the crown had implement (and enforce) rotation of forested areas for yew extraction, to avoid shortage of bow material. Also and there was a tax to be paid in “staves of yew” right?
I vaguely recall hearing at some point about France experimenting with heavy infantry with large (maybe almost pavise size) shields to counter the English longbows, but I haven't been able to find anything specific, and obviously whatever experiment was performed never became part of standard French doctrine. By the 16th century I certainly know a lot of French writers complaining about the weakness of French infantry and the sad necessity to hire foreign mercenary infantry to support the gendarmerie. Oh, and we mustn't forget about the English billmen! Especially as we move to the Wars of the Roses...
There was a time when French forces included lots of archers & crossbowers. The French archers supposedly rivaled the English, but their growing power constituted a threat to French society. You can see in various battles how the French poorly deployed (or didn't deploy) their archers & crossbowers.
good video and I agree with you. however i know you didn't want to point out that not all knights were wearing plate armor but pointing that out is important in my opinion. because when Longbows were first used vast majority of the knights were not wearing plate armor. and even latter not all of them did. and as you pointed out there is a reason why they put so much effort into the armor to protect against the archers. and plate armor had spaces that weren't protected from the archers and while hitting some of those places with a single arrow would be difficult if the number of archers shot their arrows then some of them will hit the intended targets. also not every plate armor could protect from the longbow. only thickest armor with highest quality could protect from them. when people measure how well armor protected from the arrow they usually use plates at very least of 2 mm or more and best quality armor and this is always on thicker level of highest quality armor. but that much thickness would be only reserved on most vulnerable parts. and if you happen to hit someone in the groin or under the armpit they are removed from the battle field even if they might survive and knights can finish them off. also I don't know how much armor was around the liver of the knight but I don't think that even entire torso alone could be protected with 2 mm of armor because even though it would not be as heavy as if entire armor was 2mm it would still be pretty heavy so even if protection around the liver would be lets say 1-1.5 mm instead of 2 the armor that would be good enough to protect from longbow at this thickness would have to be truly top of the top quality and very expensive and only few could afford it.
I think the shapnel thing is being underestimated. If we look at the arrows-vs-armor videos, a lot of the arrows that failed to penetrate shattered into tiny sharp flying bits which could be liable to spray into gaps such as visors. They did not necessarily need to be immediately incapacitating to be effective tools in battle.
I don't know if it is true but, I read a book about the medieval knightly heater shields and an analysis of the surviving shields like that of the black prince. The author observed that English shields were all a bit bigger than their continent counterparts. The theory was that because of the prevalence of archers in England, it paid off to have a slightly bigger shield.
Often wondered what would have happened if there were regiments of longbow men at Waterloo supporting the musketry. Hailstorm of arrows descending on soft, closely packed infantry and cavalry.
There were mounted archers in Russian service in the Napoleonic era, & Baron Marbot thought they were the least dangerous troops in the world despite being injured by one of their arrows.
We don't have much videos about arches, I think. Specially types of different of them and how they differ geographically. Basically every continent had archers.
Hahahaha….they were the most dangerous light infantry in history ….these barrel chested , physically strong men who after expending there arrows ( the heaviest arrows in medieval history @3 1/2 ounz) threw down there bows and picked up war hammers , maces and daggers …….while their targets were battling the English centre ( heavy infantry) these men closed from the flanks and while the knights they faced were clumbersome armour and restricted vision these longbowmen had agility and strength…..
I had never heard of the Battle of Verneuil, the "Second Angincourt", that was quite a read. One of the bloodiest battles of the 100 years war. Inspired images of the Battle of the Bastards in ASOIF.
I think the best argument for the efficacy of English archers is the developments of tactics and equipment to counter them.
The same can be said about heavy cavalry. Many of the tactics used in medieval and early modern warfare were used in large part to improve the chances of surviving a cavalry charge.
And then came counter-counter and cat and mouse game never ends.
Agreed, but personally, I think an even stronger argument is the fact that they kept being brought into battle in large numbers over and over again over a period of centuries.
Take Mats recent video on tewksberry, where he points to several instances of nobles bringing ten times as many archers as men at arms in their retinue.
This not only takes place in the context of a time period where english longbowmen have been a prominent feature of European battlefields for over two centuries, but also in the context of an english civil war where both sides were intimately familiar with the longbow, and thus presumably very well positioned to counter it.
If a certain weapon system is still massively popular in such a context, it's almost inconceivable that it's not useful.
@@chehalem Even more than that, how other countries tried to copy them. He mentioned Burgundy, but there were also attempts by the French.
Tbf that doesn't require them to be effective. That just requires the enemy to think they are effective. Look at the Soviet attempts to counter star wars, even though the Americans never actually accomplished any of the things in the proposal until after it collapsed.
- Robin, don’t go to Nottingham. It’s a trap.
- What? I’m not going to Nottingham.
- Thanks God. I thought you would go, when you hear about the archery contest.
- What? An archery contest?
Be honest, is that from Men in Tights.
It’s from some movie i watched many years ago. I don’t remember it’s name.
@@rauchgranate5648 it sounds like it! The infamous patriot arrow.
@@rauchgranate5648 yep! "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" by Mel brooks! it's Maid Marian to Robin, one of my favorite movies! OP Should watch it again, it's great!
@@rauchgranate5648It makes me happy that somebody else knows about Men in Tights bc I’m apparently old now 🤷🏻♂️
The argument that they're useless because they won't penetrate the thickest parts of the best armour would also suggest swords, spears, etc were also useless.
"Knights in plate armor were useless because you can just shoot at the gaps or push him down." Also: "Archers are useless because they cannot shoot through the plate armor only 1-10% of enemy might possibly have." Logical fallacies ahoy! At least the argument that medieval castles are not designed to work against dragons generally also includes all the other flying creatures, invisible thieves climbing walls, intangible ghosts passing through them and so on; doesn't change the fact that mages and magical monsters are supposed to be a much rarer threat than regular troops, even if those can to be anything from rampaging goblins to a neighboring noble wanting to take over your lands.
We should just talk it out man...
@@AnalystPrime They are sorely lacking aerial counter battery defences. It seems an obvious design flaw. I don't understand why they haven't got rotating Gatling ballista mounts on their turrets.
@@nokta7373 Talking is always useful, yes. :P
@@dogmaticpyrrhonist543 Watsonian explanation might be that if dragons and other flying enemies are common enough to make it an issue you don't build castles but underground fortresses, as in dungeons...
The Doylist explanation is simply that castles are cool, but automated ballistas are OP and don't fit the game.
The most straightforward rebuttal to these claims is that English longbows wouldn't have been used if they were useless. It reminds me of the absurd TH-cam video "Ways Medieval Armor Was More Dangerous Than Wearing Nothing." People must be reminded that some guy on Reddit isn't smarter than the millions who entrusted their lives to said technology, weapon, or tool.
I'm sure i read somewhere that it was only a few who had proper armour on the battlefield, most would have been farmers or peasants who couldn't afford it.. Given a choice, i'd take armour over nothing..
@@benjammin1212 There's a reason good armor was absurdly expensive. It was like modern handmade 5000-dollar suits, only made of steel.
@@benjammin1212 Most people wore armor, it was just gambesons (cloth armor). It was dramatically more common and effective than it is made out to be today. A poor man conscripted would often have one made by his wife, as it isn't that hard to make. You don't see it in Hollywood movies because it looks kinda puffy and doesn't flatter the actors (because its armor, not fashion).
Correct take, and also the reserve was true: longbow were development and used only in some part of the world (japan and the british isles) because they werent as useful as pop history make them feel
They were niche weapon that worked well for somewhat poorer and more isolated nations, but overall they were not fit for the late medieval warfare based around mobility the same way a crossbowmen or horse rider was
If you didn't only use 10% of your brain, you would realize that bows are useless.
Large amounts of resources are always spent on useless things, right?
No one would invest in them if they were, just like armor. There, the end.🐸
Heh. That's exactly what I came here to post. =^[.]^=
Cheaper, though. Much, much cheaper. And cost of maintainence and replacement is a concern for any military.
Nobody invested. They just existed. Plenty of Forester regions. Just as any other medieval culture - you use what your people are accustomed to in terms of way of life.
@@НиколайЛамберт Yeah, that's not how longbow armies work. You have to train for years to be a military archer with a longbow, and they weren't just conscripting randos. The crown literally mandated archery practice to cultivate a pool of trained archers. You also need a significant number of bowstaves both to supply the military and for training. England imported so many bowstaves, that the yew tree became endangered in Europe. But go off...
@@НиколайЛамберт they did not just exist, people in england and to some extend in France had to train with the longbow. You had to pay them in times of war and they were not paid poorly , cheaper than knights of course.
You also have to produce and transport a lot of arrows.
also you have now peasents who could be potentially dangerous if they rebell.
The same mentality is being applied to tanks in modern warfare. Sure, they might be vulnerable to anti-tank missiles, but the fact that you have to invest heavily into anti-tank missiles clearly shows that they are very effective.
Yeah, and just wait for every tank to have an active protection system (or AMS for battletech fans). If your anti-tank missile gets shot down by the tank, we are back to WWII setups where you have to use a Panzerfaust-30. (The number being the effective range, the highest was 100 and there were Panzerfaust-10s.)
It's like "we now have machine guns, so infantry will be useless on the battlefield". War is always evolving.
Except an anti tank missile costs a fraction of a MBT, tanks are also being taken out by artillery, drones, airstrikes and mines all across Ukraine. Ukraine's largely gone back to WW1 because nothing beats a trench and some artillery
Investing heavily into anti-tank missiles is a fraction of the cost of investing lightly into tanks.
@NUSensei A longbowmen in close combat without prepared defenses is mince meat. A tank is everything an archer is not. It is armored, mobile, and can kill tanks and everything else that does not fly on the battlefield.
@@alistairjclark2433 A tank may be very expensive, but if the only thing that can breach an enemy line is a tank, you need t pay that.
It's all about relative performance. If your trenched infantry is unable to attack, it's cost to attack are mathematically infinite.
yea it is like saying machine guns are useless because of tanks.
Your tanks just like the Knights will need support and bows and machine guns works well on those.
"learning Maths class is useless because we have calculator and AI."
😂
Even tank crews feel disorientated when hearing small arms fire pining off the chassis of their tank. At the very least, a hail of arrows coming towards armored knights might have had a psychological effect on them, to the point where their charge would not be as effective if they are busy trying to shield their faces from incoming arrows.
@@barbiqueareagenerally though, the cavalry charge is going to have a larger psychological effect on the archers than the other way around.
@@Specter_1125 calvary is a pain in everyone's S until WW1
Like the Tanks no army could outnumber their enemies infantry with just Knights.
So there would always be a role for lighter infantry on both sides and also for archers to counter them.
Archers were multipurpose units. They could dig trenches, make fortifications, carry equiptment, double as improvised melee units.
Yes. The same goes for cavalry. A lot of horse archers doubled as melee lancer cavalry. A lot of heavily armed and armored "cataphract" like cavalry in ancient China (eg. Han, Jin, & Tang Dynasties), Middle East (Parthian & Sassanian Empires), Eastern Roman Empire, etc. also often had bows and could act as horse archers as well.
@@Intranetusa I think the whole point of the first cataphracts (the middle east ones where weg ot the name) were about shooting arrows at enemy formations without being in danger by getting shot back (bc of the armor) and be able to run away from that infantry.
Of course they would also ride into softenend up formations etc. but the "we can't do anything against those!!" role was the primary.
@@IntranetusaWestern European heavy cavalry (knights/men-at-arms) were multipurpose as well. They were generally expected to be able to fight on foot, on horseback (for both light and heavy cavalry action), and some kept crossbows.
@Intranetusa also alot of medium and heavy cavalry also doubled as infantry, or were capable of raiding not typically associated with the heavy shock role.
Yeah people base their knowledge on video games
But those video games are balanced for fun
I think battles are overemphasized. The vast majority of the time was spent either raiding or in sieges. A significant portion of English archers were listed as archers on horse. The expense of having the horse (despite fighting on foot) implies that they were used for raiding and scouting in a way that foot archers could not. In this context, they would not have been facing the cream of the French Nobility, but likely a hastily assembled local defense force that could be shot full of arrows.
I think your point holds even when applied to set battles. Not every fighter on the field is a noble or a retainer covered in head-to-toe plate. All those peasant spearmen, billmen, and whatnot can be mowed down by archers, allowing the armoured English to focus on armoured opponents.
Bear in mind these aren't typically warhorses, but "trotters".
The archers travel fast, dismount, cause mayhem / loot etc, ride home.
@@johnladuke6475 There's a similar argument among Second World War interest groups regarding the anti-tank rifle (ATR).
Tank armour was rapidly upgraded to the point where the ATR could not eliminate a tank, and a Tiger tank would simply roll over the ATR trenches..
The Soviets persisted with large numbers of this "useless" weapon in their infantry formations.
For every Tiger Tank in Russia there were:
10 medium tanks, which could be disabled at short range (Tracks knocked off, radio and vision ports smashed).
3 light tanks which could be eliminated.
2 or 3 armoured halftracks whose armour was easily punctured at close ranges.
More than 50 softskin vehicles for transport and logistics.
30 horse drawn guns or wagons.
Except the Tiger (like those Elite Italian horsemen) the ATR provided a threat against everything else.
@@steveholmes11it also wasn’t just for raiding but meant they could outmanoeuvre the French forces allowing them to hold their position if they wanted or move off it also meant that dismounted French troops need to March long distances at high speed either not keeping up with the French horse or being absolutely shagged out when they did turn up
And even those nobles aren't always wearing their armour, in an ambush situation or a camp raid they won't be, or at least only pieces of it.
Even in battles against heavily armed opponents there's also just the possiblity you get lucky. Considering the number of knights is in the few hundreds and infantry (archers) are in the thousands... getting like three guy to take a knee and maybe killing/maiming one is a good result.
The Persians killed A LOT of Greeks with reed arrows that were barely considered a nuisance to an armoured hoplite, still you get taken out of commision if you've got one sticking out your arm or leg, if only temporary (another modern flaw in thinking, probably due to (war)games where wounded enemies are just as effective, getting a guy to not fight for even a few minutes can tip the battle)
It is an endless cycle of over correction. Medieval armor is too heavy to move in becomes Medieval armor weighs nothing and isn’t restrictive at all. The katana can cut through diamond to the katana is a worthless hunk of metal. English longbows were mowing down French knights like machine guns to English longbows actually just tickled them. On and on and on.
Discussions around spears and polearms are a particularly egregious annoyance to me.
People learn that pole weapons were the primary battlefield weapons, and completely overcorrect by insisting pole weapons were perfect in every way and swords were useless ceremonial pieces made of unobtainium.
Perhaps the “enlightened” crowd is more reactionary than they’d like to admit
Matt: You forgot to mention what I call the 'hailstone effect' i.e. where the arrow storm would drive the French man-at-arms closer together causing confusion & restricting the amount of space they would eventually have to wield their weapons effectively.
This is too early for people thinking "archer is useless" 😂
Things have moved on a bit now, it is generally considered the arrowstorm was myth.
Longbowmen fired at almost point blank aimed shots. They also shot the horses. That's why french knights started fighting dismounted.
However once they close up they can't look at where they are going cause chances are out of a dozen aimed shots fired at one knight looking up is probably at the very least fragments or shards of wood will get through the visor and blind you.
The best hope was to have foot knights drive the archers from their entrenchments so mounted cavalry can sweep in and mow them down.
That is of course why the English knights also fought on foot to support the archers.
Pretty good system as long as you can get the enemy to attack you. Which the French were very stupid in that kind of thing.
It wouldn't have against other professional armies that fight a positional battle before the skirmish and melee.
No professional army is going to charge a palisade of stakes no more than it would a wall of pikes.
The French were good fighters with lots of equipment but no leadership.
@@Hornet_Legion Fighting dismounted had been going on since 1314 in 1327, for Edward III’s campaign against the Scots, the English cavalry were instructed to come prepared to fight on foot, but for the battle (which the Scots refused) . Preparing to fight on foot meant a long shield, leather boots instead of sabatons and a demi lance. It was known as the English system
You seem to be speculating a lot in your summary. By the time of Agincourt horses were barded.
For every battle won by the English there is another won by the French and it is interesting to note that the English archers were "badly handled" by the Scottish archers at Verneuil-sur-Avre. The bottom line is that English archers were not any better than Scots or French archers only the tactics differed. The massed archers of the English led to the loss of France because the French had by this time introduced the Compagnie d' ordonance's which cemented Frances place as the premier military power in Europeir the next 100 years.
Anyone who says that English (or Welsh) archers with longbows were almost useless is an idiot, pure and simple.
1. There's no such thing as completely arrow-proof armour. There's always a chance that a lucky shot will hit a gap between plates or hit one of the thinner plates at the correct angle to penetrate. The heavier & more advanced the armour, the less likely this becomes, but it's always a possibility. Mind you, an arrow that actually penetrates plate armour or goes through a gap between plates isn't likely to kill, but it will injure and reduce the fighting ability of the man hit.
2. Arrows that hit plate armour but don't penetrate will still hit with enough force to dent it and make the person feel the hit. If you just get hit once, it's not going to have much effect, but if you're being pelted by a hail of arrows, even if they don't penetrate it's going to ring your bell, slow you down, and make you bunch up together with the rest of the men-at-arms, which makes maneuvering and coordinating a charge much more difficult. Not only that, but it's demoralizing to be pummeled by arrows without being able to do anything about it. Why did the French (and others) have so much trouble keeping their men-at-arms from breaking formation to charge ahead too early? Well, there were lots of reasons, but getting frustrated and hot-headed because of impacts from arrows is one of those reasons.
3. Armour is always a trade-off between protection, mobility, and awareness/ability to communicate. If your men-at-arms are wearing armour protective enough to make them unlikely to be injured by longbow arrows, then they have to deal with reduced mobility (which isn't necessarily that big of a problem if you're on the back of a warhorse riding straight towards the enemy), and reduced awareness/ability to communicate due to the need to have your face fully enclosed to avoid getting shot in the face. Reduced awareness and ability to communicate makes coordinating any maneuvers significantly more difficult, restricting the tactics that the men-at-arms could effectively use.
4. Fully armoured men-at-arms aren't the only combatants on the battlefield. Less well armoured men (opposing archers/crossbowmen, billmen, etc.) are going to take significant casualties from volleys of arrows.
5. Horses were often unbarded or had relatively light barding that could potentially be penetrated by longbow arrows. You're not likely to actually kill a horse with arrows (not without a lot of arrows, anyway), but even a well trained warhorse is going to be more difficult to control if it's in pain from being hit with arrows, and could even stumble and/or throw its rider.
6. Archers weren't the only combatants on the field, they were used as part of a combined arms approach with heavily armoured men-at-arms, and whenever possible were deployed behind some form of fortification, such as ditches and wooden stakes to help reduce the momentum of a cavalry charge. Archers were frequently used to funnel enemy men-at-arms towards English men-at-arms while pummeling them with arrows from the front and sides, before the archers themselves would fight in melee once the enemy men-at-arms had engaged the English men-at-arms.
English archers with longbows weren't some sort of magic "I win" button, slaughtering knights and men-at-arms left and right, but as long as they were used correctly, they were tactically highly effective compared to the cost of raising them, and caused major headaches for the French or whoever else they fought against.
...a 'flamin' idjit....
I so love Todds video about the bow vs armor where they manage to land a hit in the helmet slit. It's an incredible lucky shot, but shows that wheatever else happened there is no 100% protection.
And with 10 archers against one person who cannot even run full speed for weight, terrain and arrow hail, I would put my money on the 10 archers taking him out of the fight (through a hit in the ellbow or whereever) because that's the most likely result - in an open battelfield with just that number. Even if the archers cannot just run away to a new position.
Armor is by far not as hindering as many people thing, but it still is and still is 30kg of additional weight with bad air circulation. You aren't going to run a marathon in it.
Yeah it's a numbers game, fire enough arrows at a knight and eventually a lucky shot will hit or the armor will fail somewhere. Maybe not enough to kill the knight, but a deep wound to the right body part will take them out of the fight even if it won't kill them.
@@randalthor741 yeah, and people under estimate the momentum transfer from a heavy warbow arrow. They don't have the energy from velocity of a modern hunting arrow, but the punch each delivers is significant anywhere but the middle of a domed breastplate.
Excellent summary, in my opinion.
People say that "plate armor counters longbows" as if you could easily outfit every soldier in your army with plate armor (and train them how to fight in it).
Various armies opposing the English did equip large numbers of their soldiers with plate armor, such as the French during the Hundred Years War & the Scottish at Flodden 1513. The English often won anyway.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427they often lost too.
@@Specter_1125 not really a rebuttal though. English losses rarely were the fault of the bowmen themselves; in most of the famous losses they either were hardly used at all (Bannockburn) or were poorly handled (Patay). In fact at Patay, the french caught them out in the open because the English commander wasn't happy with their defensive position and decided to change it. Bad call.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 No, the English did not often win. We just keep hearing about the same astounding miracle victories over and over. And they're amazing victories precisely because the English were rarely expected to win in pitched combat.
Imagine 500 years in the future, no one is going to make a movie about the US curb stomping a little nation; but they will talk about the time a bunch of rice farmers pulled off an incredibly unexpected resistance.
Not everybody was a rich nobleman who could afford two or more sets of plate armor.
Kevin Hicks (thehistorysquad) here on youtube has a couple an interesting little series called 'Medieval Logistics' and there are two videos on the huge industry of making and supplying arrows to the English Army.
They wouldn't have wasted all that time and resources on keeping them running if they were ineffective.
Exactly. Archers were used for hundreds of years. They were effective.
In my own experiments on my channel, I have demonstrated that a moderately powerful bow 75-100lb (55-90j ke)is more than sufficient to penetrate NON plate armours.
(gambeson, mail and gambeson with mail combo)
The effectiveness is of course varied based on arrow heads used as well, but it really highlights that warbows were very dangerous
What is also important is that even when facing an army with plate there are gaps in the armour that may be protected by the above non plate armour types
When you have thousands of archers on a battlefield loosing hundreds of thousands of arrows down range, it is statistically inevitable that many arrows will find these gaps.
Rough Math;
Even if only 1% of arrows find a vulnerability out of 100,000 arrows that is still 1000 casualties.
And we have to remember that not all forces were fully plated.
Accounts of the battle of Flodden documented the English Archers decimating the Scottish highlander division that was only lightly armoured.
As mentioned previously on your channel, various period sources suggest that much historical textile armor & mail armor was more resistant to arrows than what you've tested. Soldiers heavily laden with thick fabric &/or mail defenses proved difficult to incapacitate with arrows on numerous occasions. However, it does seem that it was only plate armor that provided definitive protection (at least on the head & torso) from heavy yew warbows.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 I do agree with the variable of the linen. It is hard to determine the precise quality, thickness, and resilience, but I have tried to use more resilient linen in my tests.
In my first gambeson test, I demonstrated that different densities of linen definitely matter.
The mail sample in the last test was appropriate. It’s very period-accurate in its wire thickness (1.3-1.4mm) and inner diameter (6.5mm), based on a robust mail shirt that Phil has in his possession. It’s also crafted from modern homogeneous steel rather than bloomery steel, which likely makes it slightly higher quality, dimensions being equal.
This is shown in the metal analysis provided by Phil (historic vs modern). Dimensions of mail and quality of steel in the construction of mail armor are the absolute metrics we should be looking at when determining quality.
The sample used is period-accurate for a decent-quality piece of mail appropriate for torso protection. It was not a cheap Indian reproduction like most mail tests.
To lend credibility to the above ensemble, we can look at the weight the armor would be.
A mail shirt of the above sample would weigh 11.5 kg.
A 5-layer foundational garment plus a 10-layer jack of 190g/m2 would weigh 3.2 kg.
That is a total of 14.7 kg (32.2 lb)
Without leg protection (10-15lbs?), neck/collar (8lbs?) or a helmet (5lbs?)
Adding these pieces of armour would likely increase the weight beyond that of a typical full plate harness (45-55lbs according to MET Museum)
I am not saying a soldier could not or would not do it, but this indicates that the sample used was very likely in the correct ballpark of appropriate quality for the purpose of the test.
I will say, though, that if you forgo leg protection, which we know historically did occur, you could certainly increase the quality of the mail and linen to increase protection of the torso while sacrificing lower body protection.
So I def could have used thicker mail as well in that context.
While my tests are certainly not absolutely conclusive, I think they do provide more insight into the question of bows vs. armor without answering every question.
@@thefatefulforce8887 I think it's notable that we have accounts claiming that men-at-arms wore excessively heavy armor circa 1400 during the transitional period to the iconic full-plate-harness designs many of folks are familiar with today. That appears to have been one response to massed warbows: wear a breastplate over heavy mail & fabric. Even at Agincourt, some French men-at-arms wore substantial mail down to the knees in addition to plate armor:
"[T]he said French were so loaded with armour that they could not support themselves or move forward [in the soft ground]. In the first place they were armed with long coats of steel, reaching to the knees or lower, and very heavy, over the leg harness, and besides plate armour also most of them had hooded helmets" (from Jean de Wavrin's account)
There was also an English poem from around the same era that criticized the French overly burdening themselves with armor that's quoted in *The Great Warbow*, but sadly I don't have access to a copy right now. Higher-quality suits of plate offered nearly complete protection from arrows a reasonable weight, but these didn't become prevalent immediately.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 I hear you. :)
No doubt there are records of mail being worn under full plate and I can only speculate as to the total weight a harness would be in those configurations (if it was not just voiders and mail sleeves).
But that in itself tells you mail on its own is not up to snuff, if they are piling on that much armour to counter warbows to the point that they are so heavily encumbered that it starts to affect their ability to fight.
What armour soldiers decide to wear has to ultimately be a compromise between protection and usability and they very likely made those choices as individuals. Some would have, others would not. There is no single answer for the time period, just a spectrum of what we know.
I am not in the camp that says mail was no good.
Even in my tests, we saw my Mail and Gambeson Sample resist the Warbodkins and M2 Tudor Bodkins at a 50% success/failure ratio against my 103lb bow (85-90j ke) at very close range. (However, the M2 that did penetrate was very very minor)
What would no doubt be fatal injuries against Gambeson alone, the armour composite would have significantly improved the likelihood of survival of soldier wearing that level of armour, defeating every second arrow of those types. But by the same token half the arrows would have caused injuries.
Caveat:
The tests were being conducted at 10 yards, the 103lb bow is more accurately mimicking a 120-125lb at 50-60 meters in its energy delivery.
But the test did also highlight, how incredibly vulnerable mail is to needle bodkins when my 75lb bow (55j ke) was able to penetrate with frightening ease.
That is what my 90lb bow delivers at about 50-60 meters, and a 90lb bow is hardly the most powerful bow on a late medieval battlefield (English).
Tod's Workshop did a whole series on the longbow vs. armor. The only part of the armor it couldn't get through was the chest and the front of the helmet. Plate arms and legs could be penetrated along with any mail areas. Your heart may be safe, but you're not going to be fighting anyone with an arrow through your shoulder and knee.
I imagine that archers aren’t only important for fighting the men at arms and the ones that you typically think of as near fully armored or protected from arrows, but also perhaps levies, which may not be quite as protected. Also during the time cataclysmic decisive battles usually don’t happen as much as skirmishing does, and you only need to defeat maybe a few percent to cause a route, So even if the arrows aren’t bullet like deadly against armor, the culmination of factors probably means it’s worth having archers.
This is shown most clearly in the Second Scottish War of Independence, where the Scots were caught with their pants down and annihilated by archers. Archers were always kryptonite to Scottish infantry and even schiltrons, going back to ancient periods - same with the Irish, they were simply not in the habit of equipping armor consistently for their field troops like their Norman counterparts. "Hedgehogs" is a word you see a lot in battle descriptions when unarmored troops or very lightly armored troops go up against heavy missile volleys.
There wasnt anymore much levies used because they would just die instantly in the end :D
and like armor protects you from arrows for a time... but as your armor deflect arrows, it bends, dents, etc. and as it change shape it loses some of its ability to effortlessly redirect arrows... meaning it protects you less and less and on top of that, it may become more cumbersome... So if you're stuck under arrow fire for all day long, and the ennemy aint runnig out of arrow, you're armor only grows more and more likely to be pierced by an arrow...
The French were perfectly charging through English archers and men-at-arms and didn't need Italians to do it - and they did so at Valmomt in 1416, where they charged through the English lines despite there being stakes in front of the archers and the English men-at-arms kneeling with their lances extended to receive them.
Of course, the English won that battle too, and not just because of their men-at-arms. I don't think the Gesta Henrici specifies, but I'm pretty sure that - like Agincourt and other battles of the HYW - the archers simply fought hand to hand when the French came too close. Their ability to fight at range and up close - coupled with their relatively cheapness and availability - made them incredibly versatile and valuable soldiers.
Not forgetting that by and large the english archers were utter bastards, muscular, relatively well paid (meaning decent light and flexible armour) armed with axe, big knife or small sword. And able to acquit themselves against men at arms. Archers weren't cheap, they cost more than foot soldiers.
@@jeffslade1892 People make too much of how muscular the archers were; Roger Ascham makes the point that a weak man who has trained with the bow can draw a more powerful bow than a strong man who hasn't, and I know of at least one pretty skinny guy in his sixties who drew over 100lbs. They were unarguably strong in specific muscle groups, but that doesn't necessarily translate to greater overall strength or advantage in fighting hand to hand. Additionally, there's the issue of our inability to discern archers in the general population. Given the known pool of archers, if the tell-tale skeletal features from the Mary Rose and Towton were universally linked to the ability to draw heavy weight bows, we should be able to see evidence of this in skeletons from the general population. We can't, and that suggests that it may have something to do with extent of practice (modern Olympic archers often have similar markers) or the age at which they started to draw heavy bows (one Towton archer showed an injury common in adolescent tennis and baseball players). Someone really needs to do some CT scans of modern warbow archers and try and figure this out.
@@Cahirable english archers trained from childhood and became strong with the bow, even to producing skeletal deformities. It was not a case of training a skinny man to use a bow vs an untrained strong man but vs trained strong men. I myself was unable to draw a bow properly to lock my back out of less than 75-lb. My friend who competes with longbow rarely uses a heavy bow now due to old injuries but in the past made some at 120-lb and 150-lb which I could easily draw and despite his greater training he could not draw the big one effectively (I seem to be built for drawing bows, and yes my left shoulder is damaged). I stooped practising archery when my club folded. There is no such thing as a war bow, it is a longbow, they come in various sizes; then and now, an archer probably has several like an angler collects fishing rods.
@@jeffslade1892 "There is no such thing as a war bow" - well, there is, if you refer to bows in general, not just in England.
Not every culture used longbows.
But I don't know what Cahirable was talking about when he mentioned "modern warbow archers", if he was talking in general, or if he was talking specifically about English longbow users.
@@jeffslade1892 Yes, I'm aware of the effect Bishop Latimer's sermon has had on our understanding on how English archers were trained, and I've read Dr Stirland's thesis, her later book on the men of the Mary Rose and also Blood Red Roses. I'm *very* familiar with the archaeology and the skeletal evidence. As such, when I say that the medieval skeletons of men from Norwich did not show the same signs of skeletal change as the Mary Rose skeletons, I'm summarising her work. When I say a skeleton from Towton identified as an archer had an old injury typical of professional adolescent athletes, I'm drawing on the archaeological evidence from there to. When I bring up the fact that modern Olympic archers show the same kinds of skeletal changes as the Mary Rose archers, I am again drawing on the scholarship (how do you think Stirland was confident in identifying the Mary Rose archers?).
I am very clearly not saying the English archers were weak. I was explicit in saying this. What I said was that they were not abnormally strong or strong in ways that mattered outside of archery, but that they were specifically good at drawing heavy bows. This, as I pointed out, was not necessarily the province of young, broad shouldered men. Obviously these made up the majority, but the fact that modern men in their sixties can draw over a hundred pounds without having been raised to it through childhood suggests that Latimer's sermon may be as much moralising as reflecting reality.
As I said, we now need to do some studies of modern warbow archers (note that I use "longbow" in reference to history and "warbow" in reference to modern sport) in order to see what changes have happened to them and how they compare with a few probable medieval and Tudor archers.
The battle of patay is probably the most crushing defeat the English suffered against French cavalry. An extremely outnumbered group of French knights defeated the English army composed largely of archers so decisively that the English were never able to properly recover their strength by the end of the Hundred Years’ War. Much of the fighting was done by the French vanguard consisting of a couple hundred knights (the whole host was 1500 knights and men at arms) where the English had 6000. The French suffered roughly a hundred casualties where the English had 4,000 including prisoners.
Thank you for reminding us of the very important operational aspect of warfare. Longbowmen, like any type of troop, is dependent on the ability of the army and army commanders to pick a time and place of battle where that type of troop can excel, and if the enemy can outmanoeuvre them to maximise the excellence of their own troops instead they will probably be defeated.
Well, from what I recall, this battle is perfect example that this English tactics combining archers and dismounted knights/men at arms worked wonderfully, but mostly if they had strong defensive position, well organised.
Without it, archers couldn't really shoot long enough to do much.
In 1370 a French force under Bertrand du Guesclin crushed the English at first Pontvallian and then Vaas (on the same day). These actions destroyed the English reputation as invincible in open battle and saw the English position on the continent collapse (until revived by Henry V in 1415). I think the real moral of these battles is that leadership and morale are really what mattered, debates are weapons (longbows) and armor are missing the most decisive factor in determining the outcome of a battle.
@@statmonster
Yeah, from what I recall, English were generally winning the melees too, even if outnumbered, like at Poitiers or Verneuil.
It seems they were generally more coordinated and cohesive fighting force, and longbowmen strategy wouldn't be possible without those men at arms, which is often forgotten.
@@statmonster For sure! But like you say, morale can depend very much on previous reputation. Any army will be undefeated until it is defeated. If you can maximise the advantage of your troop types in early battles so a very bad matchup in your favour produces an overwhelming result, that will give you a favourable starting position in later battles, because the opposing soldiers on the ground will attribute the earlier overwhelming result to the inherent quality of the enemy troops rather than the advantageous situation they could exploit.
Essentially, success can snowball into further success.
The Rock Paper Scissors some people look at historical and even modern warfare with can be exhausting sometimes. It’s just not as simple as x thing is legendary or useless
I’ve been planning on doing a long form video about how the English archers were successful against the French.
Everyone is hyper focused on the arrows, but their ability to construct field fortifications like wattle fencing or trenches is overly ignored, and when it does come up, sadly it is only even the subject of the stakes, ignoring the context of the stakes being for wattle. Honestly with all the aspects someone should do a long format series breaking it all down. I just don’t have the time, or funding to put together something like the arrows vs armor series for every aspect.
I agree, and the Turks did the same at Nicopolis, where (amusingly) Boucicault was also taken prisoner...
That’s another thing on top for sure. I know Tobias mentioned it in passing, but the French knights at Agincourt who were also at Nicopolis were coming up against the English for the first time many only recently having be afforded ransom. The harnesses on the French showing up to Agincourt may not have been as top tier as one would expect, and the mail seems to contextually be configured differently, with harnesses reflecting more late 14th century kits. Just another thing to consider that’s outside of the English archers themselves.
The sucessses were few in number over the time scale and by 1450 had english bowmen under control. The Introduction of the "Compagne d'ordonance " by Charles VII changed warfare forever. The company was divided into lances with each lance consisting of a Knight or man at armes, a varlet (squire) and two archers the company would advance into the English fire with the squire carrying the shield next to the Knight whose armour was impervious with the two archers advancing behind much the same way todays infantry huddle behind a tank. They would step out from behind to shoot with the priorority being enemy archers. If you can dominate them it means that your man can fight with his visor open while the enemy have fight with closed visors. This tactic resulted in the French victory at Formingy leading to the expulsion of the English from France. Fixed fortifications are fine if you can convince the enemy to attack them, the French stopped being convinced that was a good idea years before.
Afer the lifting of the Siege of Orlean the two armies faced off and when the English realised that the French were not going to attack they turned and left the field in spite of Falstaffs army being two days march away.
Of course, and eventually the abandonment of the lace system for the Italian method was also beneficial years later. But my intention with the discussion on field fortification is how ever present it is in the sources of the period but always ignored in general discussion. The ability to create artificial disruptions on the field can present challenges for infantry and put limitations on cavalry. Even a low fencing of stakes and wattle at knee height makes the ground more defensible, just by being an annoyance (though hip height does seem to be more commonly depicted). What is of course interesting is we have sources and depictions for both what you have suggested with the shield and the fencing. What is equally interesting is the construction of fencing seems to have fallen out of favor with archers, but been picked up by other forms of infantry and eventually artillery crews. But for the early 15th, there are some great illustrations, and I do believe such wattle fortifications resulted in victories for the English, until the French grew wise to it.
@@brothersliutgeryitzchakjea7889 Field fortification tend to be always ignored and then trenches in WW1 are a miracle like field fortifications were never in use before.
This is just classic over correction that we see all over history discussions.
At first it was longbows could instantly kill any knight and it got corrected and now in some circles an obvious good tool of war is being called useless in an attempt to fix the narrative while ironically making the narrative just as untrue
There was probably a brief time in history where an English Bodkin arrow could instantly penetrate French armour before the French improved their metallurgy, but I get what you mean.
Not saying video games equate to real life battles at all, but my time with games like total war and mount and blade has shown me the army with the advantage at range has such a massive advantage. Without it you have a dilemma: Option one is essentially to try to cancel out the enemy archers with your own archers, then hunker down and wait for them to run out of arrows. They get to whittle down your army before they clash but you get to keep an advantageous position. Option two is also bad: You take the initiative and try to cancel out their archer advantage by winning the melee battle. The problem here is you'll be on the offensive while they are on the defensive and get to choose where the lines meet, they'll potentially be in an advantageous position.
It was English and Cymraen(Welsh) archers used the Cymraen Longbow. Edward I took the weapon from Cymru to England .
"Archers are worthless" is the latest in brilliant internet military theory crafting...hopefully in a little bit we can added to same pile as "leather armor isn't real," "fire arrows don't work," and "military flails didn't exist."
Well, if birds were real, then I might listen to you. But since we have clearly established they aren't, and that the earth is flat...
Hide armor is real, but it wasn't made of leather as we know it. Instead, it was almost always made of rawhide or partially tanned rawhide (known as half tanned leather). Partially tanned rawhide has an outer tanned leather layer but an inner core of rawhide. Rawhide is tough and rigid like a hard plastic, and is significantly stronger than leather according to Edward Cheshire's tests of leather vs rawhide. Thus, rawhide and partially tanned rawhide are both cheaper and stronger than leather and would have made for much better armor. Other academics have suggested that boiled leather was not leather at all but boiled or wax/glue infused rawhide.
@@Intranetusa Buff coats are a thing, yes. As are cuir bouilli cuirasses (the word cuirass litterally coming from the word for leather). So is leather scale, leather lamellar and mixed leather and iron lamellar which was quite widely used in east Asia. The point is that morons tripping all over themselves to debunk D&D "studded leather" and Hollywood Vikings in biker fetish gear frequently forgot these things existed and were eagerly shouting that "leather armor wasn't real" at anybody who would listen.
@@BalbazaktheGreat The scale, lamellar, etc armors used in Eurasia are not made of leather but are actually rawhide/partially tanned rawhide. They have to cut the rawhide into small armor plates because it was too hard and inflexible to use as large pieces. Tanned leather is flexible enough to use as large pieces. Buff coats are one of the few examples where "armor" is actually pure tanned leather because it also served as clothing - so it needed to be soft and flexible. Pretty much everything else was rawhide or partially tanned rawhide. Studded leather was a misinterpretation of brigandine armor. On one hand, people are going around thinking hide armor doesn't exist because of D&D nonsense. On the other end, people are going around claiming leather armor is a common thing when in reality it was actually rawhide/partially tanned rawhide armor that doesn't resemble fully tanned leather.
@@BalbazaktheGreat Cuir bouilli was originally thought be boiled leather, but tests by people (including one from Tod's Workshop) showed boiled leather is terrible - it is weak and very brittle. Leather infused with resins/glue makes it tough & rigid, but that just turns it back into a rawhide like material - so it is better to just use rawhide/partially tanned rawhide in the first place. The more recent studies suggest that cuir bouilli is likely waxed/glued rawhide or partially tanned rawhide and not actually fully tanned leather. Rawhide and boiled/treated rawhide are both significantly stronger than leather and boiled leather. Boiled leather is actually the weakest material out of a test of a half dozen different materials according to Cheshire's tests.
Survivors of recent wars have talked about the stress of being shot at even if they never got hit, I imagine that still held true with bows v plate armor.
Even more, because in modern battles, if you are hit, that's mostly it. In arrow vs plate armor you might get hit 10 times without wounds - and you definitely hear that!! But you never know if the first arrow will woudn you or 10 do nothing. I think that is far worse.
@@steemlenn8797 and they covered the arrow heads in literal shlt so a scratch could kill you (slowly and painfully)...
Great video! Great evidence above and beyond the practical consideration of the composition of plate vs other armor types, etc etc.
Video idea: I would love to hear your thoughts on how much effort infantry soldiers actually put into trying to hurt the guy in front of them when they engaged at melee range (assume we're talking shield-wielding infantry). When I look at casualty rates of ancient & medieval battles, they feel unrealistically low on the winning side given the hours of intensive melee combat. Or even on the losing side, pre-rout. But maybe I'm envisioning Hollywood stylized fighting, when in fact a huge amount of what the common foot soldier did once they made contact with the enemy was pushing/hitting/shoving/blocking etc with their shields. I imagine there was only so much to gain from landing a hit on the enemy (from a foot soldier's perspective) vs the downside of getting killed. Was there specific historical discussion on how to motivate the foot soldiers to be more offensively-minded once they engaged? Is there a different explanation?
Would be great to learn more!
Archers did not just stand in the middle of a field. They had shields, dug ditches with fortifications, deployed caltrops. They had pikemen and lads armed with clubs, knives and devices to unhorse and keep a fallen knight fallen. Also, great battles were few, but skirmish in the marches, wood were constant in the period.
There were times where they were forced to stand in the middle of a field. Usually didn’t end well for them.
One of the things that made the mercenaries of John Hawkwood's White Company so sought after was the presence of English archers in their ranks. People thought they were worth paying for.
Nice longbow! Who made it?
Did not expect to be reminded of Faith No More for the first time in like 20 years on a video about longbows today
I really really appreciate the Faith No More shirt. Oh yeah and the topic you're discussing as well :) If archery was useless, then Henry V sure did piss away a lot of money. In defense of the French, some plans just don't work...
What is the shirts meaning.
It's a band. Google is your friend. @skyereave9454
@@skyereave9454 It would be wrong to ask you why, because I know what goes inside is only half of what comes out, isn't that what it's about?
@@djinnxx7050 Its a band from the 90ies, which is the era that i mostly grew up in. They're a hugely influential band and are well respected for their musical style.
@@skyereave9454 the shirt doesn't have any specific meaning other than to promote the band and the logo is the Star of Lakshmi, which is their bands logo i believe.
I think the issue a lot of internet discourse about medieval archery runs into is that they focus on the level of equipment and individual fighting. But the major benefit archery gives is a tactical one. It means that the enemy is obligated to come to attack you, so you can choose an advantage position.
Even if archers don't win at range, they create the conditions whereby you can win in melee.
Exactly. The problem is that people think that archers were some extremely deadly battle winning unit as a lone force which just isn't the reality
As a Bowman by surname I thank you Matt for defending my (and my ancestors) honour. Of course we were useful and still are though not so much in the field anymore!
Arrows might not go through plate armour, but they do go through horses.
Horses had thick armour.
Unbarded horses, sure. But even then, horses can take a lot more punishment then people give them credit for. You need a lot of arrows or a really good shot drop one. Think of how a deer still keeps running for several seconds to minutes after getting hit in a vital organ. Now horses are roughly 10x-15x the size of a deer. Defensive fortifications are necessary for archers to have a chance of surviving a cavalry charge because they give them time to loose many more arrows. Without them, they were extremely vulnerable to charges.
@@womble321most horse barding was actually relatively thin, but even then, it was more then enough to protect the horse from most threats.
@@Specter_1125 I think most horses throughout the era were not all that well armoured. I also don't think you need to kill the horse to make him decide he'd rather be somewhere else.
@@womble321 Some horse had thick armour at some point in the 300 to 400 years that archers were a thing.
Of course, they weren't useless. The best content explaining the English tactics of the HYW is Schwerpunkt's: I strongly recommend it and suggest and coop with him.
yea, he sould do some shorter formats tho and use more visuals, hes just to mutch on the just good information side of yt to be interesting for most on yt i belive,
5:21 wait, then what am I gonna do with all these Italian knights I just ordered!?!
Maybe its less about killing but about disrupting formations and spreading concern and fear among the ranks of the enemy
Yes exactly. But people somehow think archers were extremely deadly when they just werent
I agree.
Having a few hundred arrows loose at your formation every few seconds. As you advance across a field would cause some trouble.
It would slow or break charges. Shields and equipment would be made heavy from arrows. Horse and men would be wounded.
And once you arrived at the archers they would fight in hand to hand combat.
@@NeuKroftathat's exactly what Matt was trying to talk people out of, saying that the archers weren't a credible threat even to the people in armour is exactly the lie he's talking about.
I'd recommend Tod Cutler's arrow vs armour videos, real historians, armourers and archers showing just how much damage an arrow can do even to someone in plate armour, he found gaps and thinner plates all over the place even without aiming for them.
As Matt says they wouldn't have invested so much money, time and resources into training and fielding them and their enemies wouldn't have gone so far afield to find someone capable of compensating for their disadvantages if they weren't effective.
Just FYI, your videos are not being recommended to me, from about three weeks ago. I had to search for your channel manually. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one!
So the longbow is getting the katana treatment. First having a mythical reputation, then the counter reaction to that leading people to say it's useless.
I love your content, always watch anything that comes up from you. Just wanted to give a (hopefully) constructive tip. That lav mic you have pics up a lot of plosives. Not sure if you're able to do anything about it but a lot of P's and S's get distorted.
Great video though.
two questions: 1) do you know of any cost analysis of the *lifetime* costs for a noble to have 10 knights vs 80 archers? e.g. to fully feed, horse, arm, armor, & train a knight would it be an equivalent (or greater) cost to the training, arming, and feeding of 80 archers?
2) have you seen any videos that give a realistic re-enactment of a full english style longbow volley (or several volleys) - would be really interesting to see what the "rainfall" effect would actually look like
This would be a fun read.
Big part of it though is that an archer was a leveed position (militia equivalent). So for most of that lifetime, an archer is actually paying a noble taxes as a normal peasant. They practiced their archery in England by national decree, so the farmers would go out once a week and “play the national sport” of archery, then when England needed an army, local nobles could levee from the farmers who have been trained by generation in archery skills, but would also be introduced to the basics of soldiering. We know several archery games they’d play, but also joining the levee was seen as well-paying job, so I’m sure the older generations would have taught the basics of soldiering as well.
The volley is tricky, some modern scholars are really pushing against the rainfall you’ve described. It’s good for range, but you lose a lot of power. Also bows are harder to hold back (especially longbows). So modern theories is that they would have shot closer range, to minimize the arc and keep the power, and that archers would have loosed at will so they could keep the healthiest pace. So less ‘machine gun’, more high-powered semi-auto.
@@thomphan9518 amazing response! thank you very very much!
Aayyy Gambargin mentioned 💪🏽
I thought you were about to point out that masses of Welsh merceneries were employed for their skills by English / Norman princes. Used to live in a town renowned for their valour at Crecy
Why would he do that? Welsh contribution is always put on the back burner.
It wasn't just about their penetration on armor, it was also about penetration of morale. Never underestimate the power of damaging morale.
When utilized properly, archers were a force multiplier. When unsupported by other troops, or hampered by bad terrain, etc., they faired badly. Like everything else military, they should be viewed as one component in a system, instead of the mythical death dealers popular history portrays.
@BalbazaktheGreat - Hide armor is real, but it wasn't made of leather as we know it. Instead, it was almost always made of rawhide or partially tanned rawhide (known as half tanned leather). Partially tanned rawhide has an outer tanned leather layer but an inner core of rawhide. Rawhide is tough and rigid like a hard plastic, and is significantly stronger than leather according to Edward Cheshire's tests of leather vs rawhide. Thus, rawhide and partially tanned rawhide are both cheaper and stronger than leather and would have made for much better armor. Other academics have suggested that boiled leather was not leather at all but boiled or wax/glue infused rawhide.
Let us not forget that the 1.5mm bloomery steel plate Tod tested ended up being *pierced by 13cm! That is over 5 inches!* However, the steel plate was also carburized and would have been better than its comparable medieval low-carbon bloomery steel. Bloomery steel have 0.1-0.2 % carbon with lots of slag inclusions. If we go through all those 59 pieces of armour Alan Williams have analyzed from mid 14th to early 15th century, only 1 has been case-carburized, and that is only on the surface. Therefore the plate was slightly better than what it should have been and the penetration should have been slightly deeper than 13 cm. Cross-lamination have no effect on bloomery steel, contrary to what Tod said.
Tod does not give any information on the grade of modern mild steel they decided to used for the suite of armour. He only said and wrote mild steel. Modern mild steel come in different grades and even the lowest grade is better than what the original helmet was made of, while the best quality is a much better.
The bascinet they reproduced, Wallace Collection A 69, is made of a 0.2% low-carbon bloomery steel for the helmet and a 0.1% low-carbon bloomery steel for the visor. The quality is worse than the lowest grade of modern mild steel, AISI 1005.
To put that into perspective, in a Double Edge Notch Tension test, the worst modern mild steel, AISI 1005, have a fracture toughness of 220 kJ/m2. Medieval bloomery steel, in comparison, have a fracture toughness of 180-210 kJ/m2, depending on carbon content from 0.1-0.3%. The helmet is probably in the mid range and the visor in the lower range. Modern mild steel with the same carbon content as the helmet (0.2% carbon) can potentially have a fracture toughness of more than 283 kJ/m2. That is caused by alloying elements and almost no slag inclusions. If this steel is worked cold, as was stated in one of the films, this might increase to around 300 kJ/m2, as long as it is not worked too much. This is a typical increase for cold rolled mild steel.
In layman terms it would take 53.8% to 66.6% more kinetic energy to get through this modern mild steel helmet in comparison to the medieval bloomery steel helmet. That's a huge difference. For example, if we say, for the sake of argument, that it takes 74 Joules to penetrate a 1.5mm plate made of bloomery steel with a fracture toughness of 180 kJ/m2, the increase for modern mild steel of the same thickness, with a fracture toughness of 300 kJ/m2, would be 123 Joules. That is a problem if the arrow strike with 115 Joules. However, against bloomery steel the arrow would have 41 Joules left after penetration, enough to kill or seriously wound the person inside the helmet.
As a side note, top quality wrought iron with only 1.8-1.84% slag have a comparable fracture toughness of 229-228 kJ/m2 when it is cross-laminated, as have been demonstrated in tests by Alan Williams. This is comparable to AISI 1010 mild steel with 0.1% carbon. Tod penetrated this top quality wrought iron and presumably this quality of mild steel by 10.5cm. However, wrought iron of this quality didn't exist in the medieval period. It's not representative at all. The slag inclusion percent in medieval wrought iron is a lot more than 1.8%. It's usually 2.5% at best. Most of it is in the 3% range. If wrought iron plates were not properly cross-laminated the quality would have been abysmal. The best medieval cross-laminated wrought iron would still have been worse than the best medieval low-carbon bloomery steel with 0.3 carbon. Tod's test gave the impression that it was the opposite. It's not the case.
To Tod's surprise, the wrought iron plates without cross-lamination were penetrated by 14cm, almost the same as the carburized bloomery steel plate at 13cm. The reason for the discrepancy is the quality of the modern post-industrial revolution wrought iron. If we use Occam's razor, it is not, as Tod theorized, because of some local large slag inclusions in the bloomery steel. The fracture toughness for wrought iron with 1.84% slag and without cross-lamination, is 189.33 kJ/m2, exactly. If it is 2% slag it is 184 kJ/m2. Therefore the estimated (calculated) fracture toughness of the carburized bloomery steel Tod tested, would have been slightly higher than this at around 192-197 kJ/m2 or there about since the arrow penetrated by 13 cm. Without carburization the fracture toughness would probably have been around 181 kJ/m2, perfect quality as an analog for the visor of the helmet. Why isn't the difference greater? The advantage steel get from carbon gradually declines when the slag inclusion percentage increases. With 2.3% slag there is no advantage if the steel is annealed. The graphs I have made on slag vs. carbon have 9 different reference points, as well as all 4 reference points provided by Alan Williams, which happen to be correct in relation to the other results.
Tod did not demonstrate that the suite of armour was comparable to medieval bloomery steel. They are completely different materials, and the results from the tests demonstrated this difference. The nuances are important, especially when they build on each other in sequence.
Almost 2/3 of surviving armour from mid 14th to early 15th century is made of bloomery steel quality or worse, wrought iron, or a combination of both.
You did se that the cross laminated iron and the mild steel plates got penetrated by the same amount in the test, right?
@@JosefGustovc Which means that the grade of mild steel in the comparable test was not the same as the grade you made the armour of. This is also evident by the fact that the arrows didn't penetrate the 1.5mm thick edge of the visor more than partially when shot with the crossbow by Tod, while the comparable plate was penetrated by 10.5cm. That difference is too greate if they were made of the same steel grade.
It is impossible for wrought iron to have a higher fracture toughness when it is cross-laminated, than it has in the direction of rolling/forging. It can be the same, but not higher. The test demonstrated this. It can also not be higher than 228-229 kJ/m2, because this is the best wrought iron quality there is. The two other plains (width and thickness) have a fracture toughness of 170 KJ/m2. That on its own proves that the mild steel plate Tod used in the comparable test was made of AISI 1010 with 0.1% carbon. Tod wrote that the plate was from 0.1% to 0.2% carbon. No steel has that toleranse. In other words, he didn't know the grade either. When that is said, it is for certain AISI 1010.
You can tell me what exact grade the armour was made of, if you know? You didn't the last time I asked. You did say it was a 0.2% carbon steel on FB when someone asked, so if you know as much, you should also know the exact grade. Out of curiosity, how did you all of a sudden figure it out? The grade is one of the most important variables in the test.
@@eirikronaldfossheim It's mild steel that you can buy in Sweden, It's DC 01 Am.
@@eirikronaldfossheim Sweet. You do the tests then. Let us know how it turn out!
Thanks for interesting video. And killer shirt sir. Salute from California
I’m not saying the archers were useless, but their role is often overstated compared to the remarkable efforts of the English knights and their commanders. The chevauchée strategy forced the French to fight in disadvantageous positions, such as advancing up hills or through muddy fields. The strong front line of English dismounted knights was crucial for their massive victories. While the archers enhanced their efficiency, it's uncertain if they could have been replaced, but the commanders and knights were absolutely irreplaceable. Additionally, it's important to remember that the English eventually lost the overall conflict.
When you're fighting in someone else's country for a long time, you usually lose in the end. You can have better this, that and the other thing, but bottom line it's their turf and the people want you gone.
@@purplelibraryguy8729 Except the territory we now know as France wasn't France then. For much of the war the English were in their own turf or close to it and they had allies in the region too. The French managed to win the war because, overall, they were better at war than their opposition. At the start the war, the British had better armies, strategies/tactics, commanders and soldiers, but the French managed, after several disastrous defeats, to turn the tide and win the war very decisively.
This is a MASSIVE topic. But the French quickly adopted field artillery when the English didn't. The English were in political and economic turmoil at the time the French were unifying. Henry V was promised the throne after his conquest, but he died young. His son Henry VI was a child and later mentally incapacitated. England was in the beginnings of a civil war at home. But overall the war saw vast wealth flow from France to England and almost no wealth from England to France. Economically, England bled France dry for over a century and France got nothing from England.
@@purplelibraryguy8729 In fact, the English were utterly despoiling the countryside via chevauchee (basically raiding and burning the countryside), bubonic plague was ongoing, eventually boiled up into the Jacquerie, a massive indigenous French uprising against the knightly class. So in fact the French country itself was suffering massively during the Hundred Years War. My own ancestor was from a town that was captured by the English army, interestingly the genealogy only starts a few decades after the battle itself. Paris itself refused to be recaptured by the French and resisted strongly, holding out until very late in the war. There was a massive civil war in Brittany, which the English faction won. They also wiped out the "flower of French nobility" multiple times, captured and ransomed the French king. They never would have won the war if not for Joan's campaign and the subsequently excellent commanders like La Hire which committed a series of devastating battles against the English, including "Agincourt in reverse" at the Battle of Patay where French cavalry annihilated the English archers who were caught in the open.
The problem for English longbowmen is that, unlike French soldiery, they were not replaceable. They were enormously costly in terms of time and training. Very few people today can draw a warbow of the draw weights found at The Mary Rose excavation site. The English enforced disciplined training for longbowmen because otherwise it would be impossible to field such an army. English archers were elite soldiers. Making a longbow is very cheap and easy, making an archer is not. Hence, the defeat at Patay and the Loire Campaign overall was vastly more impactful to the English than were all of the calamities inflicted on the French during earlier phases of the conflict.
Here's the thing: that type of warfare, of making your own formation immobile and forcing the enemy to close, only works if you can match their ability to fight with missile weapons. If the English hadn't had the archers, the French could have just let their Genoese mercenaries take shots at the English, forcing them to take casualties until the crossbowmen ran out of bolts or abandon their advantageous position. The archers forced the French to close in because the English would win a missile duel every time.
One point to add is that not everyone fighting the English would be wearing full plate from head to toe. If the English had a 5:1 up to 10:1 ratio of peasant archers to men at arms, we can assume similar for other countries. The French (or whoever) peasants aren't carrying longbows, but they'd have spears, bills, etc instead. So then you're looking at a large body of lightly armoured people with mainly melee weapons... a big squishy target for archers.
Read Bernard Cornwell’s Agincourt. It’s a novel, but offers a pretty good insight into archers, their tactics and the tactics used to counter them. Armor had gaps, sure you could tank a bunch of arrows as a man at arms but it would slow you down and it wouldn’t be pleasant, plus if one of those little buggers ( the arrows) finds lodgment even if it doesn’t kill you, it’s still gong to hurt and you’re probably going to be out of the fight.
Please check out my channel and archery playlist for a lot more historical detail than a Bernard Cornwell book 😁
@@scholagladiatoria Will do! It’s cool that you have an entire playlist, didn’t know you had it categorized so well! Definitely know how I’m spending tonight! Also thanks for commenting it’s an honor!
I do wonder about Bernard Cornwell and longbows. Reading his Grail series and the impression you get from it is that longbows can stop a charge from infantry or cavalry basically dead until they run out of arrows. Men at arms seem near useless there unless they're on the English side and mail is useless against arrows. I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
@@nath9091 "I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle." That's the nub of it. A lot of people debating on the internet can't seem to handle nuance. I love Cornwell's books, on the whole well researched but he does lean into the mythos for dramatic effect. He also makes mistakes or deliberately changes aspects of history for storytelling.
@@nath9091 To be completely honest, I’ve never read the Grail Books. The only medieval book I’ve read of his is Agincourt, and that one seems to be a bit more grounded in reality. Probably because by it’s very nature, it’s confined to telling the events of the Campaign of Harfleur and Agincourt.
Don't miss the fundamental issue that archers were very, very, very accurate, as in when Prince Henry lifted his visor at Shrewsbury, and someone instantly shot him in the face, a moving , tiny target in the midst of utter chaos. Yet they still hit him.
Look at medieval paintings of battles, which appears childish and crude to our eyes, yes? But that doesn't mean the information in them is inaccurate, and they show horses especially, and men's weakly armoured areas full of arrows. Horses go mad when shit with an arrow. A storm of them would crush any cavalry charge instantly. Horse armour was rare and insanely expensive. Just because an arrow won't go through top quality plate armour, is a bit like saying an assault rifle is useless because it won't penetrate top grade military body armour...
Plate armour. The Tower of London has barrels and barrels and barrels of mediaeval arrow heads. Robert Hardy (Longbow) got Woolwich Arsenal (laboratory) to test them on various armour plates. Some of those heads weigh up to 6 ounces from 1 or 2 ounces (on 1/2-in shafts), hardened and tempered with points like a cold chisel. It does need a heavy bow to shoot them and they do not go twang, they go thud. They penetrated, a lot of the time, Woolwich were so impressed they used some of the findings to help develop anti-tank penetrator rounds. Even if no penetration it would have like being struck by a sack of hammers. This is not anecdotal, for a time I worked with one of the chaps who had done the testing, and read the Woolwich report. Not all the heads would be that heavy but they were no lightweight hunting arrow.
It may also be noted that the archers' targets were not the knights but their horses (hence the italians barding their horses). Shot with an arrow, horses panic and can bring down half a dozen more.
Sorry, but this is a complete myth. The Royal Armouries, with whom I work sometimes, does not have medieval English arrowheads. In fact we only have a small number of medieval English arrowheads surviving and most were found archaeologically, for example at Towton. Robert Hardy did examine original arrowheads, but they were not tested against armour. You are misremembering.
This is fascinating. Considering that no arrowheads have yet (publicly) been associated with the Tower of London, no actual medieval heads have (publicly) ever been tested against armour, the number of English medieval arrowheads in existence that have been metallurgically confirmed to have been hardened or attempted to be hardened number less than about 10 and the fact that Robert Hardy had no real authority when it came to testing actual medieval archery equipment but relied solely on the information provided to him by true experts (in the case of the metallurgy and efficiency of medieval arrowheads namely David Starley and Hector Cole) your comment is astonishing and absolutely ground breaking.
If what you say is true, decades upon decades of research, PhD theses and publications on the medieval arrowhead are completely wrong, so for the sake of everybody such as myself who have dedicated their careers to understanding and replicating medieval arrowheads could you let us know where to find the paper that discusses the testing of actual medieval arrowheads against various plates, and the paper that discloses the metallurgy of said heads?
So far I know only of the official Royal Armouries publications that show quite clearly that no medieval arrowhead has ever been shot into anything whatsoever, and that the majority of heads were of unhardened iron, so the paper you mention will blow everything the Royal Armouries has ever done on arrowheads out of the water.
Looking forward to reading it! Cheers.
@@scholagladiatoria Is there any truth to the claim that getting hit by arrows was like getting "struck by a sack of hammers"? Even if fast, arrows are pretty light and I can't imagine them transferring enough energy through blunt force to actually hurt someone through armor without piercing it.
Looking at Tod's tests, the most that the arrows do is make minor dents and break, and most of the time they deflect
@@scholagladiatoria I have read the entire Woolwich report. I no longer have access and it may not be in the public domain, MoD are like that. My understanding was that the arrowheads were sent from the Tower to Woolwich. Now whether the heads originated in the Tower or in the Woolwich Arsenal, they certainly had masses of them and did metallurgical tests as well as shooting them at steel plates.
@@atom8248 The energy is E= ½mv². Whilst a longbow would not be able to shoot a heavy projectile fast, you can work out that a 4-oz head on a half inch shaft is going to hurt more, by several magnitudes, than a little pile on a quarter inch shaft. Shooting such a large "wooden whistler" at a field target knocked the trestle over. I have never met Todd but have seen his shooting test videos and may have known some of the people present. His heads skated off. a key point from Woolwich was that the tempered "cold chisel" points did not skate off, allowing the point to stick like a centre punch and the softer iron/steel behind the tip to deform. This property was noted and aided development of the HEAT shell. I do have to query "soft iron" as a humble blacksmith would have easily hardened and tempered the points and knew perfectly well the angle to put on a cold chisel; they made their own tools.
This reminds me of RTS games, where you sometimes have some very powerful tools (like the tactical nuke for Terrans in SC2) that more often than not don't do any significant damage, because players play around them. But the fact that they're there and your oppontent is forced to play around them is what provides the actual value.
I remember reading about some battle (does anybaody know the source btw?) where knights mentioned that they had to close their visors out of fear of getting shot in the face, while the other side could fight with open visors, thus having better vision and breathing.
I think a close equivalent to English longbowmen in European military history was the Roman legionary. They were both medium-armoured long-service professional infantry equipped with both ranged and melee weapons. This made for an incredibly versatile and agile combatant useful in all types of warfare, from open battles to raids to sieges. The Roman legions also made good use of elite cavalry forces to support their main body of foot troops and the medieval English did with this their mounted knights and sergeants who could also fight on foot as heavy infantry if needed.
I think much of the success of the English longbowmen stems more from their military professionalism than longbows being some sort of wonder weapon. If they were caught at a disadvantage they could be defeated like any other force. French success in the latter part of the Hundred Years War I think owed more to determination and persistence than any revolution in weapons or tactics. Once France's national resources were actually united to fight the English their much greater extent simply allowed them to overwhelm them with forces that in terms of quality were actually closely equivalent in many ways. Even if the French did not outnumber the English in actual engagements if you could just keep relentlessly going at your enemy you are going to wear them out and grind them back.
Henry, Earl of Derby, the future King Henry IV of England took part with his small army (and presumably also with his archers) in Lithuanian Civil War of 1389-1392 on the side of Lithuanian Duke Vytautas. He participated in sieges of Vilnius castles. Archaeologist identified some arrowheads excavated in the area of these sieges as being arrowheads of English longbow arrows.
The ratio argument is not the best. Infantry pretty much always outnumbered the knights, since they were cheaper. Even a longbowman is much cheaper (both in wages and especially in equipment) than a knight. A better argument would be why bring 10 'useless' longbowmen, when you could more easily bring 10 billmen or something?
Bullshit. A longbowmen requires extensive training and conditioning. I could be effective enough with a bill without a minute of training. Stick the pointy bit forward and hold ground. With a longbow, you or I are utterly useless. What made the English bowmen so effective is that they could draw heavy and powerful bows repeatedly over the course of long engagements. England only had these men because they mandated, by law, all adult males across a wide range of ages to practice archery every week. Those longbowmen are not easily made and not easily replaced under any conditions. One generation of lapsed training and such a pool of infantry is gone. There was a quote from a Byzantine commander in one of John Keegan's books that I read, for every 10 archers you give me, 1 of them will be any good. For every 100 archers you give me, 10 of them will be any good. And so forth. Substantially more so for a yew longbow with a 130 pound draw weight which was uncommon in that period. Also, contemporary field armies were much happier to employ billmen, or pikemen, or spearmen, or whatever. They had no time to train competent archers. Consequently, their archers were usually ineffective.
This is also why the steppe nomads were so monstrously effective. They lived by horsemanship and hunting. They were natural soldiers. Farmers taken from the field without training do not make good archers.
@@tedhodge4830 While it's probably true that bills & the like require less training than bows, as Humphrey Barwick claimed, it's not at all the case that anyone could do it effectively. Armored billmen, like other heavy infantry, benefited immensely from strength, endurance, & prowess. As one account from Flodden 1513 says, some single armored Scottish pikers took blows from multiple bills at once without dropping. Yet the English won the day, because their billmen had the tenacity to continue walloping until they got the job done.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 It's much easier to find strong and hardier men when the average man does physical labor as his day job. What is unique about a bow is that it requires very particular and unusual muscle groups, and a war bow requires them to be enormously strong. It simply is not a combination of compressing and pulling force that is common to a normal person, or a normal soldier. There are plenty of very powerful, strong, and muscular men these days, yet very, very few have the specialized training to draw a warbow effectively. It's because the conventional weight training or physical day to day labor does not train for drawing a bow. It is to the point where they can identify archers by their skeletal structure in archaeology due to their overdeveloped right scapula and compressed left forearm.
Side note, but regarding flodden, the pike has distinct advantages and disadvantages due to its length. If you're within range of the bill to land repeated blows, the pike has failed at its primary role. There were many factors at Flodden, chiefly terrain, which is the primary downfall of the pike. They had exactly that situation at the Battle of Pydna between the Romans and the Macedonians, where the Roman commanders despaired due to what looked like a military catastrophe when the Roman soldiers were unable to penetrate the Macedonian pike squares, but when terrain broke up their formations, they were able to close and achieve decisive advantage with their short swords. The bill was also a particularly nasty weapon in close range, with powerful chopping and hooking. The Scots also were not used to continental pike square warfare, which the Spanish introduced. The pike square was always dependent on the effective drilling of troops and is quite unique in that regard. This is why the Macedonians, and then the Swiss, and then the Spanish tercios were extremely renowned for their use of the pike. Professional, well-drilled troops are important for making pike blocks work. Pikes are another weapon that you can't just give to infantry and expect them to be successful in the push. They have to maintain good drilling and move in formation or the tremendous length advantage is compromised.
Archers were extremely important in English/Welsh forces of the late middle ages. You only have to look at the ratio of archers to men-at-arms in English medieval armies and the destruction they were capable of wreaking against lightly-armoured soldiers to see this. There were, in some campaigns, a ratio of 10 archers to 1 man-at-arms. The Peasants' Revolt in 1381 came close to succeeding because the peasants were militarily stronger than the forces of the crown and the peasants naively trusted Richard II, only treachery stopped them. Not every soldier on a medieval battlefield was a knight in heavy plate armour, few were. Archers were relatively cheap to field and devastatingly effective. They were "those who worked" who took the place of "those who fought".
Arrows can go through plate. Not through breast or backplates. They CAN go through the thinner areas, especially with platecutter arrows, and bodkins if they are hardened.
Arrows don't need to kill someone. They just need to reduce efficiency. Arrow to the thigh, arrow that goes 4mm in to the upper arm, arrow that goes through barding into a horse, arrow that gets deflected but breaks and a splinter goes into the face of a lesser-armored levy nearby. Arrows cause wounds and disruption and morale loss. They cause very few fatalities. They are also very good for taking, or holding, ground.
But people who do not study war tend to think war is about killing your enemies. No, it is about defeating them usually financially or shattering their morale, or reducing the efficiency of the enemy armed forces to such a degree they can't stand against you. Arrows do all of those things, ESPECIALLY in a world where a small cut can legitimately kill you over the next week or two from infection
Arrows can occasionally go through plate, but bodkins are terrible against plate. There are much better heads like Type 16. See Tod's Workshop channel arrows Vs armour and my archery playlist for more detail 🙂
@@scholagladiatoria I've seen it. Bodkins are terrible at penetrating thick plate, but they slide off the rounding of a breastplate, or a spaulder, or something similar and can follow along the armor to get into gaps.
It is why the vee on chest plates became so normal; a shot to the upper chest would slide upward to the mail gorget.
Tod even showed this very thing with one of the hardened bodkins in the video you mentioned; it dented the plate a bit, but that was on very thick breast plate almost center hit, and then slid right up and would have gone into a throat if not for the vee. With enough force left over to absolutely shatter the shaft when it hit the vee.
Bodkins aren't going to go into chests or backs, but they WILL go through the mail in the gaps, AND they will (if hardened) go through thinner parts of plate like near the edges, or lower-quality plate like you might find on a kettlehelm rim, or early plate. There are multiple accounts of then going straight through the sides of helmets at Agincourt (at very close range).
Bodkins are next to useless getting through rounded plate of any quality though unless very thin, that much is true, even if hardened.
Good discussion. Thank you.
Would be good to see Matt stop focusing on cases were English won, but describe al those numerous cases when French won. And at the end of the day, French won the 100 years war, regardless of all those English archers
I don’t want to necessarily speak on behalf of Matt, but Matt definitely is a man of context and believes in “happy mediums” namely that plate armor was an effective counter and could keep you mostly safe from arrows, AND archers were effective units which changed the course of several key English battles in the 100 years war.
Love the t-shirt! 👍
The existence of the longbow made plate armor necessary.
They already had plate armory in the 1500 ´s
Longbows is an incredibly ancient weapon , that existed alongside plenty types of armor, and plate armor evolved in area and time when it wasn't used all that much - mainly in Southern Germany and Northern Italy.
So I really doubt it had much, if any impact on development of plate armor.
There's a big cost factor involved in fitting out cavalry to the standards of thr lombards.
That's an extra cost that not all people of sufficient rank can bear.
When war is a profitable activity, whether through ransoms or seized land, the profit can only be enjoyed if one survives.
The longbowmen in part may have helped price out many people from fitting out in a manner whoch would inspire the confidence needed to charge home, and also raising the financial impact of capture/ransom.
" the profit can only be enjoyed if one survives". Unless you're the military industrial complex, in which case you keep making money hand over fist as long as you can keep suckering the opposing sides into fighting.
@@dashcammer4322 doesn't really apply to this sort of warfare, as the items in question (horses, non-munitions armour etc) are bespoke.
Military-industrial complex needs the industrial revolution to have happened.
Even 20th century machine guns didn't directly kill that many people. The main purpose of rapid fire is to destabilize the enemy so that the infantry can finish the job. Same thing with artillery -- it doesn't matter how much of a barrage you can drop on someone if you don't have the infantry to finish the job.
So if you're looking at pure kill count, ranged fighters generally don't do the most damage. But they make it possible for the infantry to accomplish that mission.
Gunfire is very, very different, particularly machine gun fire...
For one thing, gunfire has a supersonic *crack* as it disrupts the air via a sonic boom. Additionally, the rate of fire, accuracy, and range of such weapons are utterly incomparable to archery....such a thing as a doctrine of "suppression" was not a concept in this period as far as I'm aware, and furthermore is a quite modern concept. Hence why even going into World War I machine gun nests, the French doctrine was still "attack" and assault, even into explosive artillery and machine gun nests. There was for many, many years even after the advent of musketry, a strong debate on the line versus the column and the bayonet charge versus the effectiveness of volley fire. Even still, infantry held on to pike blocks and halberdiers for many, many decades, and the primary revolution that made muskets alone a mainstay of infantry warfare was in fact the bayonet, and it still operated in tandem with the cavalry. The theory of the day well into the Napoleonic period was the primacy of the bayonet charge, the effect of which was the total disruption of infantry. This is also key to the success of the highland charge, the counter to which was defense in depth with reserve infantry, and alternative bayonet tactics (namely, to strike to the unguarded left of the charging formation, to bypass the targe of the highlander).
Artillery was also not important in that period because of "barrages," as the long range shot was solid lead balls. The primary advantage of artillery was canister shot, which was disruptive to infantry because it was a gigantic smoothbore shotgun that tore holes in an advancing column. Canister shot alone is devastating even with muzzle loaders. In fact, so was "chain shot," so called because it used random chains or other random bits of metal lodged down the bore in lieu of proper lead balls. Explosive shells didn't come until rather late in the game despite what Hollywood films depict.
@@kenwarren9450 Artillery begs to differ.
I would think there are a few thousand fully armoured French knights from the battles of Crecy, and Agincourt who MIGHT just hold a slightly differing view on the efficacy of the Long Bow.
But then, who are you going to believe, History or "Some guy on the internet who read a book once"
10 min Brigade: Reporting, sir!
Let the Matt run loose we yet another dive into lives and war practices of our Medieval Ancestors!
Thank you Matt!
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The guns and handguns outsmarted the longbow.
Longer range, less learning time, more noise. Perfect!
I've found that at a distance of several hundred years my keyboard provides perfect protection from all manner of Medieval weapons including bows, pole arms and swords and daggers as well as clubs and shafts.
Great Band btw! Lol like the longbow bit too
Thanks for material. Short video about longbow. :)
Well considering the frequency that English Longbowmen were recruited(English Kings in the Hundred Years War, and their widespread service as mercenaries), I’d say that English Longbowmen must have been effective. If we can’t prove that, it’s our failure to understand the past, not the Past’s fault for doing it wrong.
Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
I must admit, since watching Tod's demonstrations I have reflected on why there was such an emphasis on recruiting archers for expeditions to France. Two thoughts come to mind. The archers woild have been a body of pretty fit men who might do damage with their primary weapon but could then be relied on to get stuck in with anything that came to hand once the lines closed. And secondly, Henry V in particular might have seen a particular value in archery when facing unfavourable odds - How many disabling wounds, like his own, might they inflict on the French leadership. On a good day...
I replied to your comment on AoG's post. As soon as this video popped up, I knew why. 😂
Are you familiar with Ironlily? He draws fantastic armor on his 'historically fictional waifus.'
I also believe it's important to point out that it was the longbowman that was highly effective, not simply just the longbow as a weapon.
The English "mass adoption" of the longbow in the years around 1300 also comes with changes in recruitment, training, methods of use, and also I believe changes the "doctrine" for how English armies fought. One might even argue that it changed the hierarchical structure of how English society was organized.
I think in many ways it is similar to the roman legionairs. While the weapons themselves are certainly good. The big effects come when you put all of it (training, doctrine, etc.) together as a complete system.
Studying the sources for the Breton war of succession, I can confirm the english archers were regarded as highly effective, and get quite a lot of attention. When English arrive as a relief force for the Montfort, archers are very often mentioned in engagements and quite regularly the decisive factor for those.
Also Archer's were experts on close quarter hand to hand combat in particular against armoured knight's which became a disadvantage for them.
the meteo was also a great help to the brits during the battle of againcourt
The English were not Brits in this period, that term was still being used by the English when describing those from Wales, just as often as the term Welsh. Self usage of the term Welsh wouldn't become common place in Wales until late 1800s.
I recently got a 16 gauge thick Mild steel kettle helmet for fun, then realised that it was about the extent of a common soldiers head armour for a lot of medieval history, between hardening being very expensive, and metal being much less pure until recent history... I wouldn't exactly trust it against a solid longbow strike, but it would still help glance a bit... still hurt though "DING!!"
I once wore that t-shirt in a convent and got some very strange looks 🙂🙂
Training and morale I think is the most overlooked aspect of the Emglish Longbowman, and the lesson that that training had on English warfare. The fact that the longbow demanded so much training, discipline, study and practice made the English archers superior troops, which I feel counts more strongly than the effectiveness of the weapon. As we know morale and discipline often outweigh technology. I would say that this lesson and this training in fact led to / inspired the emphasis on discipline and training that made the thin line of English muskets in the Napoleonic wars so effective and beyond.
Now for a hunter archer the bow is a means of survival. You need to hit what you point at. However there are also archers who use the bow as a terror weapon. Get the maximum amount of arrows in the air and in the right direction and range. Send a good amount of a tree down on to an enemy. This was also the use of rocket artillery since the 1800's, Early use was fire for effect and terrorise the ones on the receiving end. And still is dispite advanced target systems.
One thing that blew my mind was that the crown had implement (and enforce) rotation of forested areas for yew extraction, to avoid shortage of bow material. Also and there was a tax to be paid in “staves of yew” right?
I vaguely recall hearing at some point about France experimenting with heavy infantry with large (maybe almost pavise size) shields to counter the English longbows, but I haven't been able to find anything specific, and obviously whatever experiment was performed never became part of standard French doctrine. By the 16th century I certainly know a lot of French writers complaining about the weakness of French infantry and the sad necessity to hire foreign mercenary infantry to support the gendarmerie.
Oh, and we mustn't forget about the English billmen! Especially as we move to the Wars of the Roses...
There was a time when French forces included lots of archers & crossbowers. The French archers supposedly rivaled the English, but their growing power constituted a threat to French society. You can see in various battles how the French poorly deployed (or didn't deploy) their archers & crossbowers.
Were the effective against infantry?
good video and I agree with you. however i know you didn't want to point out that not all knights were wearing plate armor but pointing that out is important in my opinion. because when Longbows were first used vast majority of the knights were not wearing plate armor. and even latter not all of them did. and as you pointed out there is a reason why they put so much effort into the armor to protect against the archers. and plate armor had spaces that weren't protected from the archers and while hitting some of those places with a single arrow would be difficult if the number of archers shot their arrows then some of them will hit the intended targets. also not every plate armor could protect from the longbow. only thickest armor with highest quality could protect from them. when people measure how well armor protected from the arrow they usually use plates at very least of 2 mm or more and best quality armor and this is always on thicker level of highest quality armor. but that much thickness would be only reserved on most vulnerable parts. and if you happen to hit someone in the groin or under the armpit they are removed from the battle field even if they might survive and knights can finish them off. also I don't know how much armor was around the liver of the knight but I don't think that even entire torso alone could be protected with 2 mm of armor because even though it would not be as heavy as if entire armor was 2mm it would still be pretty heavy so even if protection around the liver would be lets say 1-1.5 mm instead of 2 the armor that would be good enough to protect from longbow at this thickness would have to be truly top of the top quality and very expensive and only few could afford it.
Love the T-shirt.
Love the t shirt mate
I think the shapnel thing is being underestimated. If we look at the arrows-vs-armor videos, a lot of the arrows that failed to penetrate shattered into tiny sharp flying bits which could be liable to spray into gaps such as visors. They did not necessarily need to be immediately incapacitating to be effective tools in battle.
I don't know if it is true but, I read a book about the medieval knightly heater shields and an analysis of the surviving shields like that of the black prince.
The author observed that English shields were all a bit bigger than their continent counterparts. The theory was that because of the prevalence of archers in England, it paid off to have a slightly bigger shield.
I have fate no more in Matt after this video...
Often wondered what would have happened if there were regiments of longbow men at Waterloo supporting the musketry. Hailstorm of arrows descending on soft, closely packed infantry and cavalry.
There were mounted archers in Russian service in the Napoleonic era, & Baron Marbot thought they were the least dangerous troops in the world despite being injured by one of their arrows.
in case he'll read this: hey matt, can you please do a vid on bows in the age of gunpowder? were bows used alongside matchlocks and beyond?
6:40 Tho, it did work in the middle phase of the conflict.
I hope Kevin Hicks @ The history squad also covers this. He is an archer, himself 🏹
We don't have much videos about arches, I think. Specially types of different of them and how they differ geographically. Basically every continent had archers.
Hahahaha….they were the most dangerous light infantry in history ….these barrel chested , physically strong men who after expending there arrows ( the heaviest arrows in medieval history @3 1/2 ounz) threw down there bows and picked up war hammers , maces and daggers …….while their targets were battling the English centre ( heavy infantry) these men closed from the flanks and while the knights they faced were clumbersome armour and restricted vision these longbowmen had agility and strength…..
I had never heard of the Battle of Verneuil, the "Second Angincourt", that was quite a read. One of the bloodiest battles of the 100 years war. Inspired images of the Battle of the Bastards in ASOIF.
In Mongol armies, the ratio of light cavalry (unarmored archers) to heavy cavalry (knight-like) was even higher, and they were quite succesful.