Agincourt- French too tired?

I know!

 

Watch the documentary Agincourts dark secrets on youtube. I hope that helps

 

Popular misconception - the English bowman used two types of arrow. The famous one being the bodkin which would definitely kill a horse. However they preferred a broadhead which was a modified hunting arrow with wider barbs than normal. These were specifically for disabling horses. The horse has a very high blood pressure and one of these arrows hitting a horse would cause it to collapse though loss of blood but not die - hopefully tipping out the knight and wounding or incapacitating him. Wounded horses were more of a problem for the attacker than dead ones and with luck could be collected later, patched up and add a nice sum to the booty.

It was normal for the archer to place 6 arrows in front of him and shoot at a rate of 6 seconds resulting in an arrow storm around 5000 arrows hitting an area of 80 square metres in less than 30 seconds. The commander would then assess the damage before repeating the process. I have tried firing a replica english bow. At a 120 pounds pull strength (modern competition bow is only 30 pounds draw strength!), I can personally tell you it is almost impossible for the weak modern civilian, such as me, to get the bowstring to the half way mark and almost impossible to stretch it to ear. Aiming is very difficult but used in a disciplined fire storm on mass as the English (and Welsh) did it was incredibly successful.

The bowman was horribly vulnerable to the mounted knight. There was an instance at Maoun in 1352 where a handful of French knights burst out of concealment in a wood and completely routed a force of 1000 archers without losing a single knight.

It was essential that the English dismounted knight protect them.

It was normal for the Genoese Crossbow men to break up the enemy formation at the outset of the battle but we know that at Crecy, so hasty and chaotic was the French attack that the crossbow men were deployed without their pavee which was back with the wagoned baggage train. The pavee was a large square shield which was placed in front of the man and designed to protect him while he reloaded. The English arrow storm completely wrecked them. There was already bad blood since the French thought (incorrectly) that the Genoese had led them down in defending and losing Caen. Hence ride the cowards down.

For the French to succeed they needed to pierce the protective screen of dismounted English knights (and rarely mentioned Hoblars - english spearmen mounted for mobility but dispensing with their cheap ponies on the day of the battle). The French came very close at Crecy and Agincourt to achieving this, despite their poor tactics, otherwise it could have been a very different outcome.

 

I know the answer to this by the way...just posing a 360....

Did the British not have knights?

Did none of our guys wear any armour?

Where the British not knackered at all in their movements around France before the battle?

Did the British have BBC Met men with them?

Did any one from either side recce the battle site beforehand?

Do the French protest too much at times over Agincourt?

 

It seems the old statement "never fight an enemy on ground of his choosing" applies here, also even if the English arrows failed to penetrate the French knights armour wouldn't the impact of a couple of arrows hitting them possibly knock them off their horses then they would be stuck in the mud to be trampled?

 

Don't think the impact of a couple of arrows would do that, scrounger, unless it was at point-blank range. No expert though.

 

I really have no idea, and they are not going to use me to find out !! From what I've seen on TV documentaries arrows were fired in volleys and the unfortunate knights in the front rows would I think be hit several times and it would be tough staying on your mount while both you and your horse were being pelted by a rain of arrows. and if a few of the knights in the front were knocked off or their horse injured or killed the result would be kaos with the ranks following running into the disabled ones, something like the engine quitting in your car when you are in the outside lane of a freeway in rush hour traffic

 

Blimey scrounger...you live in some tough area....

 

Fair point about the arrows, I suppose. I honestly don't know whether a few simultaneous ones would unseat a knight, but it could happen.

 

As I mentioned earlier, the horse was extremely vulnerable to the arrow storm but the objective would be to disable it rather than kill it and hence the use of the large flat barbed arrow head in preference to the bodkin. The charge would more likely be brought to a standstill through destruction\incapacitation of the mounts rather than the knights. War horses were very expensive and would be a significant prize even if patched up.

At Crecy, one of the few problem moments for the English was when a conroi of French Knights decided to dismount and attack on foot. Increasingly the French adopted this tactic, in view of the losses incurred in a cavalry charge.

It was reputed that a very expert archer could fire an arrow at 60deg and then one flat so that both would be arriving at the same time - thus if the knight held his shield high or low one or the other would strike him. There would be few experts such as these since most archers were tough farm hands - so everything depended on a disciplined mass firing of arrows and that the english, having learnt the trick from the welsh, were masters.

It was until the Crimea that the British Army had a killing weapon with the rate of fire and killing power as the English Bow.

PS I think the Leeds Armoury test is rubbish - am going to visit them and see if I can find out more. I suspect that it was done for publicity since the museum is under pressure from falling visitor numbers

 

Great...ww2 forums representative attends Leeds Armoury....Oi...I want a word with you.....

If you want any help...I'm off on hols after lambing....good luck though....

 

I read that if someone was a longbowman in that time they were compelled to practise and they had to teach their sons how to use thew longbow. such was the importance of the bow at that time .

 

It was actually the law in Mediaeval England, Scrounger.

 

There were several laws passed from the time of Edward I (Hammer of the Scots), 1300 requiring owning and practicing of the Longbow right the way through to Henry V (the victor at Agincourt), 1450.

The famous one\s are with regard to the banning of the playing of football (I think in London, penalty six days imprisonment or a substantial fine) and specifically stated that the time should be used for archery for the defence of the realm.

BTW - just found the force of the arrow (and these were heavy - twice the weight of the modern competition arrow) - which in layman's terms was equivalent to being hit by a sledgehammer. It would knock a knight to his knees and in most cases off his horse even if it did not penetrate the plate armour.

 

Thanks for that, Scipio.

 

That seems a bit excessive to me. This site BOW ARROW LENGTH mentions a reproduction arrow weighing in 3+ ounces. This site At what speed does an arrow leaves an average longbow? - Yahoo! Answers suggest arrow speeds of around 200 fps. This yields an energy of ~158 joules at point blank range(if I didn't miscalcuate anything). If you figure a 10kg sledge it would be moving at ~4 m/sec to deliver that much energy not a particularly fast blow and certainly less than the force of a lance blow delivered at a charge. Then there's the chance and a good one the the arrow glances.

This page http://www.currentmiddleages.org/artsci/docs/Champ_Bane_Archery-Testing.pdf came up with about half the energy above but calcuated for a 75lb bow at point blank or 110lb bow at 250 yards. The tests are interesting but I didn't see how thick the armor was (he mentions the thickness of the wire for the mail).

 

Hi Lwd

Very interesting article.

Never good at physics but here goes - I agree with your work done - let us say 100 joules.

If I am 100kgs weight then this would displace me 1 metre and I would fall over.

Just weighed my sledgehammer and it comes in at 4 Kgs. If my swing is 1 metre then to do 100joules work, I need to achieve an acceleration of 25m p sec squared and so my terminal velocity is 25 metres p sec - isn't it?

Seems a very reasonable speed to me.

 

Actually if the 100 joules is transfered totally to your body in an inelastic collision the equation would be:
100 joules = .5* 100kg * v*v so it would accelerate you to a velocity 1.4 m/s. However the arrow would be unlikely to transfer all the energy and the collision wouldn't be a completely inelastic one. Another way to look at it is momentum is conserved. So an arrow that weighs in at 1.5 ounces (lets call it 40 grams) and has 100 joules of energy is moving at ~70 m/sec. It will have a momentum of 2.8 kg m/sec that means the momentum trasfer would have you moving at ~.03 m/sec. I often forget that it's momentum and not energy that is conserved.

If the sledge hammer head has 100 joules then it should be moving at ~7m/s. KE = .5*m*v*v That's still a pretty respectable velocity. Your sledge is on the light side for two handed sledges that I've seen however. They tend to run from 6lbs up to 24 lbs with most in the 12-20lb range around here. But again momentum is the thing to look at when it's a matter of being knocked over or knocked off a horse. The armor and body can absorb/transform a fair amount of energy. A classic example is that it hurts a lot more to get hit a long range by a paintball that has not quite enough energy to break than it does to get hit at closer range by one that breaks (the energy goes into rupturing the ball and splatering the contents in the latter case). If we look again at the momentum of the arrow 2.8 kg m/sec then if the sledge has an equal momentum it will be moving at less than .5 m/sec which isn't very fast.

 

One suspects so.

Though I haven't seen enough of this research to really understand what they're saying (The Grauniad article being a tad simplistic, and Leeds Armouries hardly being thickies in this area), I'd be rather suspicious of anyone really saying armour in that period was a genuine liability. - If you've ever worn full plate, it feels fantastic, personal mobility is about 100% despite the weight disadvantage, most of the chaps wearing it at the time were as fit as F, and completely comfortable with the stuff. On battlefields over a wide period I would much rather be the man in plate, and one assumes would hold quite the advantage in most situations because of that. (I believe after one of those Hundred Year war punch-ups, Crecy maybe, the captured nobility were relieved of their helmets as a priority over their swords, and I found that quite telling).

On the bodkin thing - by coincidence, I (again) attended the firing of contemporary Bodkins into a piece of Armour plate from a 120LB Longbow this weekend (though admittedly from point blank range), and we're in the process of formulating a more 'realistic' test (one problem being 'define Bodkin'...) - One of the hardest things our blacksmith is struggling with is the exact composition of the armour - ironically it might well be that the bloom Iron of the period made armour more akin to mild steel and we've been shooting at roughly the right stuff for years, but he hasn't quite worked it out yet. He will.

Personally, I suspect plate made one near invulnerable to many of the dangers of the period (including the 'first phase' use of Warbows) but there were still plenty of other horrors in store for the fully armed chap, and the likes of those wearing Almein style suits still had plenty of bits poking out, particularly at a time when even a minor wound was exceptionally dangerous.

As an aside - Brilliant site for a rough check for possible Agincourt campaign ancestors:
The Soldier in Later Medieval England

And what do you really want? A full Plate helmet, or a wound like this:


(Towton)

Or this:

(Visby)



And by the way - no, it is exceptionally unlikely that an arrow strike, even of a full waisted war arrow on plate would knock you from your horse - though just one in a softer bit might well sting a tad, (and it has been said that several tons of Arrows were in flight at times during Agincourt - dim memory caveat, this may be very wrong), and one in the horse may well hack it off just a touch (understatement, but even then the horses were well trained).

To clarify the arrow strike thing - would I happily let someone shoot at a plated area of me? (as long as penetration was somehow guaranteed not to occur!)
Yes I would - and would be astonished if the force knocked me over or off a horse - after seeing many arrow-strikes on assorted materials I say it just wouldn't unless you were already very unbalanced (particularly given that part of armour's point is to spread a strikes' force to prevent concussion wounds). I obviously haven't carried out this stupid experiment, but have been whacked very hard with a Longsword during errrm 'testing', and even that (greatly more than the weight of a bow-strike - hard enough to crease Armour and Helmet anyway) wouldn't knock me over or off by pure physics - by a painful strike in an unprotected, or lightly protected place, or by a very unfortunate angle of attack - quite possibly - but not a solitary arrow. (Seems to be a frictionless inertia-less gravity-less world in the maths above, at least as far as the armed man is concerned.)
Talk to me about Pollaxes and Bills and yes, we might be talking a solid knockdown, maybe even certain larger crossbows at short range, but Bodkins (and Swords) were very much about the cut, not some artillery-like strike

The Longbow was a truly remarkable thing, but there were reasons the Gun became dominant, forcing much armour to be put aside as an irrelevance until comparatively recently with material improvements.

~A

 

Well yes, Armour was still effective after Crecy but it had to get better. Thus we see complete suit of plate and (as that experiment shows so vividly) chain mail was completely useless and virtually disappears from the battlefield.

When you look at Crusade armour and that of the late 15th Century it is remarkably different, everywhere there is plate and plate at an angle to deflect the arrow.

Thinking about it (and ignoring some wild claims that I have read) and considering the momentum, then it does seem to have required a lucky single shot to knock a knight down but an arrow storm might be different.

Returning to lwd's contribution, I have seen weights of arrows of 100 grams quoted which would make the momentum rather similar to being struck with my "light" sledgehammer - but as is pointed out this
would not be powerful enough to knock a knight over.

I looked up a Colt 45, which had (approx) a bullet of 16.5gms and speed of 960ft/sec - this is an almost identical momentum to the longbow arrow of 100 gm and 200ft/sec.

When the Colt 45 bullet struck the man, he was often observed to rock but rarely fall down (unless killed of course).