Long story short: Armor worked, otherwise no one would have bothered wearing it. Archers worked, or no one had employed such units. Weak points are necessary to keep armor functional. Money can save your life.
Yeah and pretty much all reliable sources(people that have been in the battle) mentioning knights and kings being hurt by arrows say that they were wounded in the face, so the arrow found a slit or the visor was opened. And if you have 3000 archers shooting at your unit, i bet a few will hit weak spots, like joints and face. I think in agincourt the archer massacred the horses of the french knight, that's probably why they decided to push on foot after the first charges failed as war horses back then were incredibly expensive(pretty much as a supercar today).
Armor was not solid plate of steel. And if you launch enough arrows some bound to find weak points. And as video stated. You dont need to kill every one. Kill enough and charge is broken.
In my opinion, the best practical resolution of this debate is in Bernard Cornwell's Grail series of books, in which the main character is an English longbow archer during the Hundred Years War: 1 - High quality armour was basically arrow-proof except for the face. When fighting at close range, a trained and experienced archer can shoot a head-size target accurately, removing the need to pierce the thicker portions. Additionally, the concussion of a longbow arrow strike to the head would be significant even if the arrow didn't pierce the helmet. 2 - High quality armor was expensive and therefore rare. Thus. if you kill everyone wearing inferior armor at a distance, those wearing high quality armor would be at a significant numerical disadvantage. Additionally, those would be the individuals you would want to capture for ransom instead of killing. 3 - The stategic utility of the longbow rests primarily in its use in skirmishing. Pitched battles were rare in medieval times and war was mostly raiding, ambushes, and skirmishing. In those situations, high quality armor would almost never be encountered and the longbowmen would dominate nearly any encounter. 4 - The tactical utility of the longbow in pitched battles rests in killing horses. Arrow-proof armour for humans was rare. Arrow-proof armor for horses was practically non-existant. Additionally, a horse is a much larger target than a man. Massed cavalry charges met with massed arrow barrages equal a bloody mess of dead horses, trampled riders, unhorsed knights, and panicked wounded horses. all of which rob the charge of momentum and further facilitate picking off any survivors. Full credit to Bernard Cornwell, one of the greatest historical fiction authors of our time. He also wrote the Sharpe series set in the Napoleonic Wars and the Last Kingdom series set in the Viking invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. A true genius.
@@johannesmichaelalhaugthoma4215 Very good answer. It is the same situation with tanks - you do not need always to destroy them - if you damage their tracks and do not allow crew to repair it the tank would be useless, you can also kill or wound asisting infantry by mortars and fate of the tanks will be bad :) Thank you :)
Your question doesnt make sense. The bigger the caliber the more power, this doesnt work in the longbow because there is a clear limit on size and power. Antitank guns came in all sizes and kinds. Antitank guns were made specifically to pierce armor. Their shells were conposit and were specialized for it. Tanks also implemented new protections, but even today an antitank round big enough can pierce it, its not comparable
I think a really important moment in Tod's experiment was when the archer missed the breastplate by just a little and went right through the ring mail that hung down below and delivered what would have been an incapacitation. The lesson is that armor only protects what it covers. Another example from this video is the face wounds taken by the most well-armored nobles, nobles who probably had their visors up thinking they were out of effective range. It is hard to survey the battle and command your troops with your visor down. I'm no archer, but I could hit a fist-sized target with a slingshot at 30 yards more often that I would miss and I think someone who practiced archery regularly since they could draw a bow would be better than that. You don't have to go through armor to defeat it.
Yes also visors are for sure in their own structure weak point of armors even if put down. The horses also took a lot of arrow, if you look a lot at manuscript miniatures horses where not really well protected, maybe only the highest ranking lords had effective horse barding.
It’s definitly possible to be that accurate with a sling. Especially at that range. Plenty of video’s on youtube of it too. And thats a normal sling, not even a sling shot which if basicaly a hand held catapult even easier to aim and consitently fire with
@@HansWurst1569, you got it. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time with a surgical-tubing "wrist-rocket" style hand catapult, not a classic sling. I think it is very easy to use, but not as accurate as a bow. But as you've said, even the classic sling can be that accurate in skilled hands.
@@therightarmofthefreeworld4703 how would you know? a slingshot is pretty accurate with practice. if someone claimed they could do that with a sling I would be much more skeptical.
I’ve read through a lot of British history and one of the common themes throughout is the need to shoot more munitions faster than their opponents. Spray and pray has been a solid basis for winning battles for a long time. Fire enough projectiles and you will hit something important, fire enough aimed projectiles and you will guarantee hit something important and often.
Imagine what english archers would have done against french cavalry or close to infantry squares at waterloo🤔not much armour there and at probably around 4 times the fire rate of a musket. Just a thought
If the armor didn't work at the battle of Agincourt, the knights wouldn't reach the English lines. The bowmen showed to be effective because the knights reached the lines badly battered. Edit: The armor kept the knights alive to reach the English lines. The bowmen were effective because the knights reached the English lines badly battered.
In my opinion, the best practical resolution of this debate is in Bernard Cornwell's Grail series of books, in which the main character is an English longbow archer during the Hundred Years War: 1 - High quality armour was basically arrow-proof except for the face. When fighting at close range, a trained and experienced archer can shoot a head-size target accurately, removing the need to pierce the thicker portions. Additionally, the concussion of a longbow arrow strike to the head would be significant even if the arrow didn't pierce the helmet. 2 - High quality armor was expensive and therefore rare. Thus. if you kill everyone wearing inferior armor at a distance, those wearing high quality armor would be at a significant numerical disadvantage. Additionally, those would be the individuals you would want to capture for ransom instead of killing. 3 - The stategic utility of the longbow rests primarily in its use in skirmishing. Pitched battles were rare in medieval times and war was mostly raiding, ambushes, and skirmishing. In those situations, high quality armor would almost never be encountered and the longbowmen would dominate nearly any encounter. 4 - The tactical utility of the longbow in pitched battles rests in killing horses. Arrow-proof armour for humans was rare. Arrow-proof armor for horses was practically non-existant. Additionally, a horse is a much larger target than a man. Massed cavalry charges met with massed arrow barrages equal a bloody mess of dead horses, trampled riders, unhorsed knights, and panicked wounded horses. all of which rob the charge of momentum and further facilitate picking off any survivors. Full credit to Bernard Cornwell, one of the greatest historical fiction authors of our time. He also wrote the Sharpe series set in the Napoleonic Wars and the Last Kingdom series set in the Viking invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. A true genius.
Indeed. We have reports of French nobility literally falling back to reform and charge again, time after time. I think the sheer amount of exhaustion, the chaos of screaming and dying horses and people, the terrain, and just the adrenaline rush, leads to defeat...
Most accounts we hear about arrows piercing armor are from the days when chainmail and the coat of plates were top of the line protection. These specific accounts drop off dramatically after plate and Brigandine armors become more prevalent and eventually become the norm. Agincourt is a unique account because these accounts say that among the French army there were over 10,000 French knights, but as French aristocracy was very full of itself and handed out knighthoods to family friends and people who quite often paid them for it, that didn't count for much. These knights were probably no better equipped than the Men At Arms they fought alongside because they didn't get the same equipment of a Knight with prestigious title and ranking from one of the higher houses.
From every account of the Longbow I've read...its the side catching the arrows thats worried about them, you don't typically worry about a weapon that's not useful.
Not really. Even if it is just rocks, getting pelted by it, there is always a chance to get hurt. This is not fun and games so you do still worry about it. Modern soldiers don't let themselves get shot at just because their bulletproof vests should stop those shots. Still plenty of ways to get hurt or killed despite the fact of the chances of it having been diminished alot compared to a soldier without even a flak jacket. And yes it is useful. The issue of longbow mythology is the claim that it was more useful than what they would have faced against everyone. Against the English the French were worried about arrows, against the Germans about lances, against the Swiss unsportsmanlike maces and axes and the Italians crossbows.
Modern soldiers aren't allowed to attack the people throwing the rocks due to human rights and must endure it. In the past an armoured knight could quite happily ride over to them and hack them to pieces, even if they were likewise not meant to kill no one was going to grudge the right of a group of soldiers to beat the people who threw stones at them to bloody pulp, or to deliver a sound thrashing in the case of children. Longbows were scary because your breastplate was unlikely to be proofed like in later times and even if it did stand up to the task a single lucky shot could kill and would if the circumstances were against you, of course all threats were dangerous but longbows would have been especially frustrating as you had to endure them to be able to close in and make the contest a matter in which your own skill played a role, it was for similar reasons that crossbows were despised but they at least would give you some reprieve to act, stall for a minute to think and the longbowman would try and get you under the helmet and the weight of the thing most likely did not make you much more thankful for the ones which bounced off, also good luck getting to them with a horse when it is most likely not as well armoured as yourself, crossbows at least were weak to cavalry, a longbow might be under the right circumstances but if you misjudged then you now have one of the most expensive things you own dying on top of you or throwing you through the air.
@@vorynrosethorn903 Yeah none of that's really true or coherent. I think you need to seriously read anything you write like 3-4 times before you hit 'reply'. Regarding specifically the Knightly stuff though, a properly made breastplate would almost certainly be impossible to pierce with a longbow arrow, and this will hold true with most other components of the armor.
A modern rifle bullet generally will not penetrate military grade body armour except at very close range. Does this mean that assault rifles such as the Ak or M16 are ineffective weapons? Of course not. The same would have been true with longbows, even if they were not able to penetrate plate armour in most cases.
@@channelforcommentingstuff4960 lmfao look at late armors. There are barely any gaps and the gaps are covered by more free floating plates. And even then they wear nail armor in those gaps and gambeson under the mail too. Not even crossbows can penetrate plate armor let alone the mail and gambeson under it.
That depends entirely on the armor worn and even a blunt impact from a supersonic round can still cause death. Imagine a horse kicking you. It might not break skin, but the trauma can still be lethal.
And not everybody had the same type of bow (different draw weights, draw lengths, efficiency, etc) or the same type of arrow (mass, flight characteristics, etc) with the same type of arrowhead.
I would say that quality of metal was very bad conpared to todays and thats why arrow heads pierced and stuck in armor or horses or simply killed levys with poor or without armor. Also the thing is, how many arrows rained on them most likely won the day from start, number of killed was far less than number that routed..
I think that if arrows penetrated plates they would have just stopped using plate armour like they did after fire arms became powerful enough to shoot through it. However, if you watch Tod's video you see that at some point the archer shot a bit lower than intended and hit only the mail shirt underneath the breast plate, the arrow went right through it. Now if we imagine very large volleys of arrows it is very likely to be hit in the gaps between the plates. Furthermore, Matt Easton from the Schola Gladiatoria published a video explaining why sonetimes knights and men at arms choose not to wear a full set of plate armor, opting instead for just the cuirass and helmet.
Not to mention the fear of just getting hit through a slit in your helmet and feeling thuds from the heavy arrows hitting your armor. That alone must be morale breaking.
Also, some didn't wear the full plate armor because it was extremely expensive. However, some French knights killed at Agincourt were very rich nobles, sometimes princes, like the duke of Bar.
I imagine the noise of the arrows flying through the air, the damage to the horses, the arrows sticking out of the ground causing men to trip and the overall psychological effect would make it worse.
arrows do not need to pierce armour to be effective. Often people forget the horses the knights rode, they are mostly unarmoured. the ability to dismount expensive knights is already sufficient to justify the use of archers. And tod has done numerous tests on non-breastplate armour, all has the ability to be penetrated
@@HistoricalWeapons it depends on how well a horse is trained and how bad is a wound. Knights’ horses were best trained in the world. Barding prevented most bad wounds.
@@HistoricalWeapons we are talking about Agincourt, 1415, aren’t we? No use to argue about Crecy: armour in the 14th century was not good enough for full protection from arrows.
The moderate view that some troops has substandard or lacking armor seems quite plausible given the varied manufacturing capabilities at the time. Combining this with lucky shots seems like a good way to explain the amount of casualties needed for a rout, and the subsequent accounts of the chroniclers.
I dont think quality is the issue, more about type of armor. People who never face mass longbow volley think its ok to enter battle wearing chain mail. They learn their mistake and make better preparation and wear full plate then win. Also they carry culverin which blow longbow out of the field by miles.
@@eirikronaldfossheim Tod test is using steel quality matched to the period. Also in his test the arrow penetrate mail flawlesly. And Metatron another medieval channel have his own take on what really happen.
@@yulusleonard985 No, Tod did not use steel matching to the period. No more than around 12 % of the armour was of this quality. Read my article on his test. The number of mistakes they did in that test is staggering. How is Metatron relevant? www.quora.com/Was-the-test-with-bow-and-arrows-vs-plate-armour-on-the-RUclips-channel-Tods-workshop-accurate-Did-they-do-anything-wrong-Can-t-arrows-penetrate-plate-armour-at-all-Is-the-story-about-the-archers-at-Agincourt/answer/Eirik-Ronald-Fossheim?
There is imo an easy explanation why King David and King Philipp where wounded by arrows: The best armour is for nothing if you don´t use it. They either didn´t used a helmet with face protection or didn´t closed their visor. Another prominent example of such a behaviour by a leading figure that comes to my mind , is the Death of Conrad the Duke of Lorraine in the Battle of Lechfeld 955. According to the chroniclers it was a hot day and Conrad was struck by an magyar arrow in the throat when he took of his helmet to catch some breath. I´m pretty sure if someone would dig down into the sources they would find more examples. There is always the human factor that is hard to predict and is often forgotten.
I thought of that too, and perhaps they don't like to admit that they were caught off-guard within the range of the English longbows and avoided that fact being recorded
The human factor I think counts for more than we give it credit for. These battles were messy and took a while. People make mistakes when they are tired and stressed.
A short read through history will show you that even heavily armored, arrows can find places. You shoot enough and some will find a gap. Also if you look at sports today. Look at uniforms and equipment for all players around the globe. Even though there is a HUGE variance in quality. All of it is sports equipment and uniforms. Same would be the case for armor. Some smiths would do wonderful work, others....not so much.
Yes, but 'find' is not the right word. It is just probability that at some point a lucky hit will be scored. A slow march works out to about 3 feet per second. At 100 yards it takes a longbow arrow about a second to get out there with some variations in wind affecting arrow speed as well as the general accuracy (wind affecting the arrow's travel in a variable way meaning you hit some cm away from wher e you aim?). So you are firing a weapon incapable of precise accuracy out to that range at a target about 3 feet in front of the individual you want to hit guessing where he will be and when the arrow will get there - but of course you can hit an armored target in the visor or a vulnerable joint, right? Fact is that you have a lot of arrows firing at an enemy over time some lucky hits will be scored. Eventually you shoot at Bob but hit Joe in the eye because you are such a great shot.
In my humble opinion, it may be simpler than we think. In modern infantry doctrine, volume of fire is one of the most important aspects of combat, often as important as accuracy. Fill the air with a wall of red hot lead as accurately as possible and you'll definitely increase your casualty producing capabilities while allowing maneuvering on the enemy. I think it was the same back then. It was all about volume of fire, normally an arrow would have high difficulties in penetrating enemy armor but if you fill the sky with accurate suppressive fire you'll increase exponentially the probability of finding a gap or a weak spot in the enemy armor and I think that's what pretty much what happened
tod released a new video on arrows vs armor and what can we see? majority of arrows that hit the plate did nothing while the ones that hit the gaps would have wounded a man , and i agree with what you say , fire for example 50 arrows at a relatively dense group of men and some will find their targets eventualy
Modern day men, who do not train day in day out cannot even draw the war bows pulled up with the Mary Rose. Englishmen were bred to be archers. If you don't trust the sources, trust the body count. English army, weary, wanting to get home, riddled with disentry, annihilated the flower of France.
Several of these longbow versus armor tests remind me of Sherman tanks vs. Tiger tanks. The Sherman's cannon would not penetrate the front armor of the Tiger. But a Sherman could attack the sides, rear and the gap between the turret and the hull. A more accurate test of the English longbow would involve a full suit of armor, with padded under layers, on a full size dummy. How difficult is hit the gaps in the armor or hit the thinner sections of armor? How lethal are these hits? If the arrow shaft shatters, where do the splinters go and how dangerous are they?
Also the fact that the majority of German tanks were not Tigers, but Stugs and Panzer IVs who could be defeated by a Sherman from all sides. Not all men on a medieval battlefield were rich dukes who could afford the most modern and high quality armor. The majority of men had armor of lower quality or only armor protecting specific body parts. And those men could be killed by the longbowmen easily.
It's also worth noting that the archers at Agincourt were positioned on the flanks and would have been loosing their arrows enfilade, making it more likely to hit gaps and weak points.
Well yeah, but the problem is that you can't really aim a medieval bow at the weakspot in the armor. You might do that with a crosbow from close up if you're a good shot, but with a bow, even master archers could get no more precise than choosing between legs, torso or head. I am assuming most archers generally just aimed for the torso. If a mounted knight was coming at them, you'd aim for the horse, and if a dismounted knight was charging you, then you'd run away.
Both kings killed by arrows had wounds in the head so even if they had the best armor, it seems that the arrows pierced their visor or that their visor was not down. Even with the best armor, the visor would be weaker than the breastplate and an open helmet it’s an open helmet. A good argument for the efficacy of armor against longbows and crossbows is the fact that knights of the late Middle Ages stopped carrying shields. It would seem that shield were not as necessary if one had full plate armor. The statement that the French knights keep their heads down seems to support the idea that arrows killed through weak spots or gaps. If keeping your head down helped then it was to prevent arrows from hitting your open face or weak visor. The back of the helmet must’ve been sufficient to stop most arrows.
To be fair with shields, they still carried them since they stopped roughly 7-8 arrows before becoming useless and thats 7-8 arrows thats not denting your armor but most of the time they just had a shield as a back up or just for the vanguard.
@@jobdylan5782 There's a number of books on that subject that go better into detail of the types of shields, the matierals they were made of and how/why they were used, if I can find the book links on amazon I'll edit it in to this comment.
Helmets were generally the second most durable part of the armor, behind the breast plate. The visor would have been weaker, since it needs holes for eyes and breathes. Keeping their heads down was most likely to prevent an arrow from sneaking through one of those slits.
Yeah. I always wonder, even with the visor down. Scores of men firing several arrows a minute for a minute or two. Surely one or two would find an eye slit? Not through a heap of skill, but mostly through statistical chance. I reckon even though the little holes that feature on a lot of helmets were smaller than an arrow head, if the tip of a bodkin happened to catch one, it'd force its way through. And I'm sure there are other bits on the armour that would be similar if I knew more.
I remember seeing a documentary that studied the bones found at Argincourt. It showed that all the victims were hit by arrows at short range of about 10 feet. This showed the Frech knights were on foot and allowed to get very close to the English archers.
@@kerriwilson7732 The mud slowed down their steeds and forced the heavily armoured knights to trudge through the mud, causing their advance to slow to a crawl which allowed the longbowmen to make quick work of the trapped Frenchmen attempting to reach their lines. Though a few did break through they weren't supported by the full force of their knightly steeds.
I think we all enjoyed Tod's excellent tests and the key takeaway for me was: you have to shoot enough arrows. Only 1 in 10 or 20 was going to incapacitate. When you realize that each of the 7000 archers at Agincourt had about 80 arrows, that's maybe 560,000 arrows on the battle field. In theory, given enough time, each archer could take down 4-8 knights... of course just spitballing here but the strategy of the English seems to indicate they wanted as much time for the archers as possible.
I'd really love to see them test a longbow vs the "worst passable metal armor" of the time. Basically, try and approximate the lowest quality, crappiest armor that wouldn't have been outright rejected and see what a longbow does against that. I mean, we know for a fact they couldn't conduct chemical tests on the steel to get a perfect replication of material properties for each piece of armor, and we have a solid test of the "best case scenario" via Tod's tests. So what about a "worst case scenario" for plate?
I think it’s not tested because consensus is that longbow will win. If you think about it it has been tested and actually very extensively. For long time it was thought that longbows would beat any armour in their day and this was “proven” with hardened steel points against some scrap metal. Sometimes they even made machines which would hit the scrap metal with those points and you could repeat it the test as many times to prove the point. It is relatively new idea that maybe the armour really works and does it job.
It really doesn't matter in terms of the outcome here because soldiers who could only afford the cheapest armour weren't going to be covered from head to toe in it. Most likely they'd have a helmet, maybe a cuirass and a few auxiliary pieces of kit if they're lucky. That leaves plenty of space in between the armor for arrows to penetrate mail or gambeson.
A gambeson and maille hauberk with a helmet would have been considered fully armored for a common soldier, right up to the point that guns enter the scene. While this would surely offer some protection against arrows, it isn't anything like plate. Additionally, you don't need to pierce a soldier's chest to take him out of the fight. So, the "worst passable armor" isn't really a thing. The "most common form of armor" would be much more telling. As to the "chemical tests", that is a fundamental misunderstanding of metallurgy on your part. The process of manually forging steel into shape is a very reliable process. The heat treating was surely an area for potential failure. But the color of the metal is a reliable measure of temperature, and is still used today. Any armorer with a reputation of producing good wares would have turned out pretty high quality steel. The most likely form of "lower grade" would be excessively heavy, because the armorer wasn't skilled enough to thin the metal sufficiently without cracking it. So, ironically, "cheap" armor would have been difficult to wear, but may have actually yielded better penetration protection. More likely though, it would never have been sold that way, as that steel would have been more valuable being reforged into something of greater value. Remember, steel was incredibly valuable in this period, as there was no form of mass produced steel. Anything substandard would be more valuable being reworked than being sold at a lower price.
Christian Swensen said it best, but I'd also like to add that for what you're implying it works both ways. Individual arrows varied wildly in terms of quality.
@@ChristnThms I actually disagree in terms of whether "average" plate or "worst passable" would be a better test. I stick to plate because that seems to be the key question on everyone's mind, and we have better preserved steel pieces to look at than we do the linen based gambesons (not to say I wouldn't be interested in those tests either). But if we already have one test to show the "best case" scenario for steel plate, conducting a "middle ground" test would still not answer "what happens in a worst-case scenario where a chest piece was over/under hardened, over/under thick (probably under), etc." In theory, if you could show that even a "worst passable" armor piece could consistently stop/deflect arrows, you wouldn't even need to test the middle ground/average pieces. Hence, a "worst passable" test could be very interesting. In terms of misconceptions of metallurgy, I'm not sure that's fully the case either. While I'm certainly no expert, to my knowledge they had no truly reliable way of testing source material, meaning, while you could get consistent results within a range, you would always have an unknown for exact percentage of carbon in the steel, exact brittleness, malleability, etc. For example, we can say today 'take a piece of W 1040 steel, heat to X degrees, for Y time, fold with Z amount of flux, etc.' and get exact reproductions, but back then, you wouldn't have an exact way of knowing you were starting with W 1040 (just a good guess/estimate). So, I'd be curious what a metallurgist with expertise in the time period might say in terms of "oh yeah, they would test their steel in a b and c ways, but they would have no way of knowing if there was 0.217% anthracite in the coal in their forge which would contain enough of x trace element to do.... Blah blah blah and actually impact the steel in these ways...." Basically, try and drill down on the perfect storm of then-undetectable (even if rare) metallurgical error, deviance, industry/production standards etc. and say "this is the worst case scenario of an armor piece that may pass the most basic scrutiny, but is a catastrophy waiting to happen". Like I said, if you could test that, and it still held up to arrow fire... It would tell you quite a bit about the likely effectiveness of "better" armor.
The Longbow wounded the horses the French Knights rode, causing them to fall, get injured, and make it difficult to get up in the wet ground, making them easier prey to be captured or killed.
@@MauriceTarantulas No need got insults, but yes. French knights generally fought mounted, which I find odd because military innovations even preceding the Hundred Years' War demonstrated that mounted knights were no longer a decisive force on the battlefield (The French should have especially known this, given their experience with their defeat at Kortrijk by the Flemings.). They likely would have also heard of how effective the English Longbow was from the Scots. I strongly suspect there was more than just purely military factors which lead to the French stubbornly overutilizing mounted heavy knights: France was exceptionally wealthy compared to a lot of other realms in Europe at the time, and I suspect mounted knights were connected to that wealth.
@@robert8984 Yes and no. The main French attack was made on foot. However, it was preceded by a cavalry charge. That charge failed, and one can only assume that many of the horses involved in that charge were killed by arrows or lay dying in front of the English front line. I suspect these obstacles to the advance of the French men-at -arms had a significant influence on the developing battle.
@@Wasserkaktus The French had decisively beaten the English at the Battle of Pontvallain with heavy cavalry in 1370, reversing the English gains from Crecy and Poitiers, this was the last major land battle battle they had fought against the English before Agincourt. Also the French fought primarily on foot at Agincourt, the original plan being to only use the small cavalry forces on the flanks. The Battle of Verneuil was another disaster for the French, but it wasn't the cavalry charge that failed that day, it smashed through the English line, it was literally everything else. They again annihilated an English army at Patay using solely cavalry and beat the English at Formigny using more or less the same plan as they intended to use at Agincourt, with the help of a Breton (cavalry!) flanking charge of course. They ultimately won the Hundred Years War using heavy cavalry (and cannons). The blanket statement that heavy cavalry was obsolescent by the 14th century is sketchy at best, it just became riskier - tho the same can be said for any strategy that requires entrenchment, the Battle of Patay being an excellent example of that.
I view it this way. Volley fire means a lot of arrows to a lot of different places, if it hits a person in a less armoured place they are wounded, if it hits the horse in a less armoured place the horse is wounded. If either the person or the horse are to fall over then they may get trampled and disrupt the unit cohesiveness as the unit moves. This gives more time for another volley. 6000 archers with just two quivers of 24 arrows each would loose 144,000 arrows before a resupply from the boys in the baggage train. If 1% of these incapacitate combatants in any way that is 1,440 people. Or between 3-5% of what the French army alegedly was at some of all of the larger battles. Since they are likely resupplied another quiver of 24 that would be another 720 people before close quarters casualties. Remember the attacks were in waves so the close combatants were not fighting everyone all at once and the archers likely had weapons of their own other than the bow to inflict damage. Finally the advances towards the longbow line are usually under adverse conditions such as up hill, bad weather, poor preperation due to leadership engaging before forming up. Longbowmen did lose battles with the French and even the famous commander Talbot lost his life in an engagement where gunpowder proved decisive.
There was a massive difference in armour between Crecy and Agincourt, i.e. The 100 Years War. So longbow arrows would have had a much better chance at penetrating armour at Crecy than at Agincourt. Although even with 15th Century plate stopping arrows most of the time, as per Todd's test, with the amount of arrows in the air there'd be plenty finding weak points and gaps in armour at Agincourt.
Not every soldier wore plated armor lol you think the peasant fresh from the field could afford a war horse and a full set of plated armor? They’d be lucky to buy a decent spear and get some chain mail ripped from a dead soldier lol
Regarding witnesses: the best example would the the eternal debate about the horse gallop. The argument on whether horses had a leg always on the ground was settled only with the advent of photography. I doubt wars had the anal post-mortems we do today.
@@nETbKaH There was arguments, before photography, about exactly how horses trotted and ran and what their foot placement was, which was important for race horses as you can't train them to run better so you have to watch for which ones have good gaits.
super cool format love it. It alwas good to tlk about the basics like source critizism. There is a lot of good historical content on youtube but I havent seen a video about this specifically here even though it is of vital importance to understand history
If you have an interest in modern warfare, I can but recommend that you check out Military History Visualised (MHV) and Military History Not Visualised (MHnV) ruclips.net/channel/UCK09g6gYGMvU-0x1VCF1hgA ruclips.net/channel/UChImwmytehS5SmlqMkXwoEw Bernhard loves tearing secondary sources apart.
its the wrong question the question should be "how can a longbow pierce armour" or "in what circumstances" meaning what type of release arrow tips and angle of attack etc
They cant. If those guys from today shoot directly and from short distance with more modern bows and nothing happens there is no way the armour can be pierced. Specially if they shoot "in the sky" and the arrow more or less falls down. However, it may still be enough to knock a guy of the horse if he gets hit (or shoot the horse) or shoot men who didnt wear (good) armour.
That's the question people asked the whole time. And yet experiments indicate that an unhardened arrow head (we have no evidence for hardened arrow heads) can't penetrate a breast plate from an ideal angle (= 90°) from point blank distance.
@@Nickname-hier-einfuegen Which test are you referring to, as tods test doestn prove that and he never claimed it did. For that test, they fired at the front of the armour, so a flat hit would hit the thickest part of the armour, the thinner parts are angled from there, you need to shoot from the side to catch the thinner parts flat.
Circumstances don't help. The armor shot being mail not a breastplate sure as heck does. Ergo, the forced conclusion is that the prior assumption *that the entire French army was in plate* is *falsified*.
Except the long bow is described as desimating armor footmen too. No one disputes that shooting a charging horse out from under you is super bad for the rider.
Battle of Poitiers 1356 ... A contemporary English chronicle reports: "The French horsemen were so well protected by iron plates and leather saddlecloths that the arrows broke or ricocheted off into the air, from where they fell again on friends and enemies. Geoffrey the Baker wrote that the English archers under the Earl of Salisbury "made their arrows prevail over the [French] knights' armour",[12] but the bowmen on the other flank, under Warwick, were initially ineffective against the mounted French men-at-arms who enjoyed the double protection of steel plate armour and large leather shields.[13] Once Warwick's archers redeployed to a position where they could hit the unarmored sides and backs of the horses, however, they quickly routed the cavalry force opposing them. The archers were also unquestionably effective against common infantry, who did not have the wealth to afford plate armour.[14][15] English long archers were also used in Italy. Filippo Villani comments on the English longbow archers: "The experience has been that they are better at making and stealing night raids than claiming the field; they succeeded more through the cowardice of our people than their own bravery. English longbow archers were also used by Charles the Bold in the Burgundian Wars against the Swiss and were absolutely ineffective. The many captured French noblemen also speak against the lethality of the longbow in the 100 Years War.
I wasn't entirely certain what to expect when this video bumped across my screen, but I was pleasantly surprised. I think there's a few things that are key to note, some that you touched on and some that you haven't. First and foremost, I think it's useful to at least acknowledge the degree to which historiography surrounding the longbow has been irrevocably tainted by English nationalism; this is not intended as an indictment of the English or nationalism in general, of course, but rather more simply the longbow has become a key component of the English national myth. The feats performed by the longbowmen are therefore inflated out of proportion when we consider that at the end of the day, the self bow was hardly unknown outside England and Wales and didn't take on the same worldbeating significance beyond that setting. Secondly, and this arrives at points that you did touch on, the statement "arrows from a war bow cannot penetrate top-quality armor" doesn't actually invalidate the statement "the bow is a useful battlefield weapon." Ludwig von Eyb advises all cavalry to carry "six good-sized stones for throwing" - I dare say no one will expect these to have armor-penetrating capability. Henry of Monmouth before he became Henry V of England took an arrow through the cheek - no one can suggest he wasn't wearing top-of-the-line armor, he simply had his visor raised. There are various aspects ranging from suppressive fire, to the distracting effects of arrows, to the blinding effects of having to have your visor closed, that do not require the longbow to directly injure you at all. Besides this there is of course the reality as well of not everyone wearing the latest plate harness, not all harness being the same quality, arrows or splinters hitting into an unlucky uncovered spot - the list of factors goes on. At the end of the day the thing that makes the longbow debate so caustic is that people like absolutist statements with no nuance, and these positions aren't very useful in discussing the subject. We know that the English won several key battles during the various conflicts now called the Hundred Years War, despite ultimately losing it. In those victories, the longbow was called out as being a factor by period sources. The fact that we don't think the longbow can kill a man-at-arms armored cap-a-pied in steel plate is rather irrelevant to that fact and crucially both statements - "the English won" and "the longbow isn't a world-beating weapon" - can be true at once.
That's THE point about that casts doubt about the effectiveness of the longbow. Outside of England and Wales it's not used at all. Not to mention that the English in the HYW are im my eyes a prime example of how to not fight a war. Not mention that it took apparently years to Train one.
@@vassily-labroslabrakos2263 Can you explain how the English fought the 100 years war ineffectively? I'm honestly just curios. They didn't have the finances to pay for the quantity of knights, 27,000 could be raised in France in the early 1300s and only 5000 in England. England also had less access to foreign mercenaries. It had to resort to burning down the French countryside and lowering the French tax base, which worked. It battlefield tactics consistently worked and produced some incredible results. It defeated the French navy on multiple occasions and stopped an invasion of England from France as planned. Exploited internal divisions within the kingdom they were attacking. Its hard to see from my perspective how this is a 'prime example of how not to fight a war'.
@@kengamby2482 That's a huge reason why I'm sceptical of this answer, English knights must have been OP as fuck if the archers didn't actually help win.
Some people of lower rank and even some nobles must have had a century old armor they inherited from their ancestors or armor that was repaired so many times it lost all protective qualities.
@@the11382 acoup.blog/2019/07/04/collections-archery-distance-and-kiting/ a 1.5 mm steelplate with padding would require an arrow comming at a 90 degree to have at least 150 joul to penetrate. to actually hurt or kill, it would require even more. magier, nowak, tomasz and zochowski's "numerical analysis of englisch longbows" simulated a test for a 150 lb bow and a very heavy 96g arrow at pointblank (25 meters) it had 130 jule. that would be barely enough to penetrate 1mm of steelplate with padding at 90°
I remember seeing a test where the testers found that the arrows don't always *need* to penetrate the armor to create problems for the wearer. The guy *in* the armor started having breathing issues from the arrows bouncing off the armor. It was that while each impact was slight it had a cumulative effect when getting hit repeatedly
A point many(including tod) have brought up which I think is important is that arrows do not need to penetrate the breastplate to hurt the person in it. There were gaps in the armor that would have at most chainmail such as the armpit or the inside of elbow. Also they are many places in the armor that are not as strong as the breastplate (most places actually) the best example being the side of the visor we I do believe we have sources mentioning arrows penetrating. This means the same suit of armor even if it was high quality may have been arrow proof in some places while arrows were able to penetrate other regions of the armor. I believe tod means to test this in latter films.
So you are counting on lucky hits, or are you going to wait until the target is maybe 10 yards away to try accurate fire at a gap in armor? The armor did its job of protecting against most attacks. Get enough volleys of arrows and some will hit in vulnerable locations. 500 arrows fired against a force of mounted knights. Many bounce off armor. Some injure horses. Some cause injuries to the knights. But have one go through the visor of some knight who is famous for something and you get legends of how accurate some archer was. Longbows in the middle ages and muskets in the 18th century were battlefield effect weapons used in mass volleys against a tight formation of enemy troops. They generally didn't destroy those troops. The intent was to disrupt formations and weaken them before they make contact with your forces or, with enough archers, hold them back from coming any closer than 60 yards or so. If longbows were as devastating as some RUclips commenters would have us believe we wouldn't have had pike formation tactics being redeveloped in the late middle ages. Everyone would have adopted longbows. At Agincourt it wasn't a slaughter of knights by longbows. The longbows disrupted the advance of knights that were also held up by wooden stakes that prevented the archers from being ridden down by the French. The French forces were disrupted and bogged down in a crowded muddy field. Then English infantry surged forward and slaughter the French. It was a slaughter, but by spear and sword and axe and knife. Not saying that the longbowmen were not decisive on the battlefield. They effectively blunted a massed French cavalry charge that may otherwise have swept the English from the field. The effectiveness of the archers increased at closer range and they could not be ridden down by a cavalry charge with stakes in the way (and riding around the stakes would require slowly moving through a short range kill zone in front of them. They set up the French knights for what came later. And created a reluctance for the French to engage the English in open battle.
@@iansneddon2956 Agree with just about everything you said. Worth noting that at Agincourt the french plan was actually to ride around the stakes of the archers but the english got wind of this and positioned themselves in a location where the trees to either side would prevent this. At Agincourt I do think it is likely that the Longbow may have made the single greatest cause of casualties as knights where recorded as being hit 30-40 times with that many arrows a lucky shot is very likely, not to mention most people did not have top notch armor. However it is not a question that without the man at arms, stakes and terrain they would have never been the opportunity to do such devastating damage.
Great video. It seems to suggest that at least at Agincourt.. the function of the bows was to unhorse the knights who then had to cross a muddy field MUCH more slowly.. and this loss in time allowed some arrows to find weakspots in armor.. and as the knights got closer, mechanical advantage in arrow speed probably caused better penetration on weaker armors. And the important point is that the French were charging MASSED bows.. so chances of weakpoint strikes on targets goes up considerably. I'd often wondered about pure armor penetration, since armor penetration is function of delivered kinetic energy and armor angle at the point of impact. Bows, even longbows, just don't deliver a lot of kinetic energy in comparison to modern weapons. And if a kinetic projectile hits an armor piece that is at a higher angle, that improves armor performance greatly based the cross section thickness of the armor on the vector of the projectile (so roughly speaking, a projectile hitting 1" armor at a 45 degree angle improves the armor to make it act like it is 1.41" thick (length of hypotenuse of a 45/45/90 triangle with lengths of 1 for the two shorter sides). Also love how this video explains judging sources in history. I've been aware of this for decades since I study a lot of history, but for SO many people this stuff is new information.
this is something I'm skeptical about with modern testing. I'm not always convinced that the people drawing the longbows are drawing full size, full weight war bows with well over 100 lbs of draw weight. a big arrow loosed from a war bow would hit like a truck, and would at least wear down someone wearing quality armor
Yup it’s like being shot by a rifle round, the vest might stop it and you won’t bleed out right away but your ribs might be broken and you’re out of the fight.
Notably, a lot of accounts we have of arrows piercing armour come from the early to mid 14th century, whereas most tests are done against mid-15th century armour. Armour improved massively in that period, from the early partial-plate and coat of plate sets to the early full harness and finally the gothic harness as we know it. The chances are that arrows did pierce armour - but the earlier stuff that was weaker, not later stuff thats used in tests.
You make an important point here, we also need to talk about what exactly we mean when we say penetrate armor. Case in point here the 2 kings wounded at crecy where hit in the face. THe visor is one of the thinnest point of the armor, so are hands. Todd on the other hand tested the breastplate, the thickest point usually. I think that makes quite the difference. As for the historical sources, I am sure if someone gets hit between the plates and it penetrates the chain underneath they would still call that the armor being penetrated. In such a debate it is really important to make sure you make the definitions clear, or you can have a situation where both sides disagree, but both are right if you apply their own definitions to their argument, and what they actually disagree on is the definition.
I think it was here where they tested both :) and was as you said In 14th century the arrows could penetrate if distance was short enough (imagine the discipline tho) ruclips.net/video/QmaEiyZKd0U/видео.html But I am amazed how often this "engineering" aspect gets neglected I mean i'ts 69 years between agincourt and crecy that's a lot of time to change shit. When it comes to engineering I think we should also account for a fact that as not all balcksmiths were equall and not all of their products where the same. The quality was probably oscilating more than we are used to today (the quality standards in modern manufacturing are nothing short of a miracle tbh).
I love this video. Whenever we are dealing with dynamic situations, there can be much nuanceto a simple question. One example of nuance is the fact that we are told the french soldiers at Agincourt lowered their heads during the rain of arrows strongly suggests the probability of those arrows going through eye slits in the helmets, as the commentator suggested the arrows going into the week points of the armor.
I think that something of importance that needs to be taken into account is different types of armor, for example, it’s more likely for an arrow to pierce through armor like chainmail or brigandine then a solid breastplate.
Todd's tests included brigandines and mail, both provided some protection, especialy for broadhead arrows, but bodkins and the armour piercing designs made it through to some extent, perhaps not fatal, but enough to ruin your day.
This is why longbowmen at Agincourt penetrated the plates (see the link). Plate armour of this time was predominately made of steel of terrible quality, as is evident and documented by looking at surviving samples. Armour on the limbs were only from 1.2 to 1.7 mm. The side of helmets and the side of breastplates could be 1.5 mm. They killed them at Agincourt by shooting through the side of their helmets when they were bottled up in front of the English battles. The author of Gesta Henrici Quinti, an eye witness of the battle, specifically said they drove away from the archers"… from fear of the missiles which by their very force [lit. hostility] pierced [ruptured, broke asunder, burst through] the sides and visors [lit. covers] of their helmets ..." Note, he specifically said the sides of their helmets. He then goes on and tell us they shot into their flanks when they came to a stop in front of the English men-at-arms. In a situation like this the arrows will predominately hit them in the head by enfilading. The arrows are coming down at an 11 degree angel and all the arrows shot over those in the front will strike men in the head, predominately. We also have throats and armpits as vulnerable areas. Arms also. Some chroniclers can tell us that some of the French men-at-arms just stood there, not lifting their arms to defend themselves. You might wonder why. Arrows could also penetrate the side of their breastplates where the thickness was only 1.5 mm or there about. Most of the arrows would have glanced off, but not when they hit at 20 degrees or less. Other sources can tell us that most of the prisoners were wounded when they came to Calais. qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-103d1011937d5410ef64a028b635f09b
Modern scholars tend to reject the figures given by Herodotus and other ancient sources as unrealistic, resulting from miscalculations or exaggerations on the part of the victors.[65] Modern scholarly estimates are generally in the range 120,000-300,000.[66][b] These estimates usually come from studying the logistical capabilities of the Persians in that era, the sustainability of their respective bases of operations, and the overall manpower constraints affecting them. Whatever the real numbers were, however, it is clear that Xerxes was anxious to ensure a successful expedition by mustering an overwhelming numerical superiority by land and by sea.[67] The number of Persian troops present at Thermopylae is therefore as uncertain as the number for the total invasion force. For instance, it is unclear whether the whole Persian army marched as far as Thermopylae, or whether Xerxes left garrisons in Macedon and Thessaly
@Alex Novak which means 300 "citizens" and their numerous helot slaves and servants who would have served as auxiliaries. In total it is estimated that roughly 1000-1500 soldiers were there.
2:04 You left out the most critical piece of information: TYPE of armor. Full plate chest armor itself was rare enough, and it was even less common for a person to have full plate armor over most of their body. On a battlefield you'd have a select few wealthy noblemen wearing plate armor, while the majority of combatants would be in metal helmets (if they're lucky) along with gambeson or even only their normal clothes. While arrows wouldn't be very effective against people lucky enough to be in plate armor, barrages of arrows would cut down everyone else around them (and people didn't really want to kill the armored noblemen in battle anyways, they were worth a lot of money alive). While the penetrating power of the English longbow is perhaps exaggerated, it's effectiveness at distance compared to standard bows and fire rate compared to crossbows cannot be denied, and the real issue with people's misconceptions regarding English longbows lies in how people imagine military forces to be armored. Shields and helmets were common; plate armor was not.
Personally, I have always thought that a detailed study of the reasons for the effectiveness of the arrow barrage which opened the battle of Towton in 1461 long after Agincourt would answer a lot of questions about what well handled longbows could do against heavily armored enemies in bad weather and at extreme range, enemies who in that instance were not mounted on vulnerable horses.
As a late 15th century reenactor with full plate I've been shot at numerous times by archers, admittedly low poundage bows, shooting blunt arrows and (hopefully) without intent to kill me. Armour penetration is not going to be an issue. I've suffered numerous bruises from arrows hitting in places without armour, often from wierd deflections - inside of the knee etc. Arrows can defeat armour either by penetration or bypassing it. Even a fairly minor penetration (an inch or 2) would be enough to stop or slow an advance. Plus the effect of being forced to advance visor down, then suffering repeated hits, would have had a serious impact of morale and fitness.
Knight armor in 1300s was not the same level as armor in the 1500s. Noble armor became impenetrable to all but crossbows (and some armors could withstand even that), and bows couldn't get more powerful because human strength is the limiting factor. Obviously the longbow was incredible, but mostly because they were shooting unarmored, or lightly armored targets.
I know there are some old pieces of armor that have huge gaping holes in them shot by handheld firearms or cannon. Do we have any armor from that period that shows signs of penetration by arrowheads?
@@alexmag342 Yes we do. The Sacristy door at Tewkesbury Abby is lined with armour retrieved from the battlefield by the monks. Here we can see that arrows penetrated the metal plates.
@@eirikronaldfossheim And it shows that the metal is not up to the highest standard. Which is rather common throughout the period. In particular, knights cared more about how they looked and what honourable victory they could achieve than tactics and proper protection.
To be fair, a historian in a few hundred years could easily say “soldiers wouldn’t bother using firearms if the bullets didn’t penetrate enemies’ Kevlar/vests”. As we know, that’s not true, there’s simply a lot more to it than that.
Im using longbow, it was effective becouse it easly broke formations of the cavalary by simply killing/hurting horses. Additionaly it easly shot anyone that is not wearing full plate armor so its like %90 of the medieval armies.
@@michaelpettersson4919 Nukes may not be useful because they can and do destroy all assets in the impact area. So yeah, they're not immune to that categorization.
yes that's the obvious reason that all this experts have miss XD the fact that french knights tried to charge english at several battles say they were pretty confident about their "survivability" other than that armor still have weak points and random rain of arrows have still a chance hurt you and kinetic energy about the charge was a good point too. Most of french Knights at Agincourt reach the english positions but hey lost the speed of the charge due to the mess of horse falling and were in mud tired and under heavy fire probably with down visors, some were stuck between english and french reinforcements, it was a total mess. Many been killed in close combat and many ones executed aafter being capture. The mud slow down the charge and frenhc knights took many more arrows than they should have if ground was dry.
As an ex soldier, rarely do I see historians useing the tactics/deployment used to understand the effectiveness of the weapons, we might not understand how good the weapons were but they did. At Azincourt from what I have read they used the archers to narrow and bunch the French knights attack as the English had relatively few knights, it doesn't mention the French knights engaging the archers at all, rather the English archers enveloping the knights after they had expended their arrows. I also belive a great many suits of armour that the actualy French wore at Azincourt have been studied, none showed signs of having puncture damage so it would appear from all of this that the english bunching tactic was intended and worked. The same thing happened in later wars, the American civil war has a number of instances recorded, when troops are under fire, their instinct is to bunch.
It doesn’t matter if arrows could penetrate armor. There wasn’t that many armored knights on the battlefield to even matter. The vast majority were either lightly armored, or not armored at all. And it doesn’t matter how well armored you are, if you are fighting against say three or more bowman, or other skilled fighters, your goose is cooked. How far could you march in armor? You can’t have it on all the time. It’s very expensive. I imagine knights with armor are a lot like present day upper level officers. Upper level officers and knights are the most educated on the battlefield and wrote the history afterward. They also think that it’s all about them, but enlisted and NCOs do the heavy lifting, and killing. And, well, dying.
It really depends on what specific period of the medieval era we’re talking about. How both armor, arrows, etc were made can vary on where we are in history. I personally feel like people overestimate both armor and the English longbows of the time either way. Either way, there is statistics that a lot of people seem to overlook. For example, most soldiers on the battlefield could not afford a full set of plate, usually only mainly wearing at most a chestplate, etc. Not only that, but a majority of plate armor of the time was not tempered at all, being mainly composed of medium carbon, mild steel. Sure there was some hi carbon tempered armor of the time, but since it was an expensive and experimental process of the time only the wealthiest elite really got access to it. There’s also the matter of the English longbow itself, which for all intents and purposes was a very plain, basic bow design, which may be why it needed to be so big to have an impactful draw weight. In fact supposedly the mongol composite bow was on average stronger than an English longbow despite being half the size, but take that with a grain of salt since different sources disagree on the average draw weight of both the English longbow and the Mongolian composite, with one site I found claiming the Mongolian was twice as strong. Either way, assuming both are comparable it’s still not really looking good for the English longbow in terms of efficient design. Back to armor, people don’t seem to remember that armor in design isn’t made to outright stop a blow from an attack but deflect it, reducing the energy of impact significantly. At most armor was only a few milimeters thick, a well placed, direct impact from a basic spear could be enough to puncture it in most cases. even later medieval armored cavalry couldn’t really do much to defend against a formation of pikemen. I don’t see why a well placed arrow from a well built bow couldn’t penetrate 2 or so millimetres of mild steel. A bow is only as good as the archer though. It’s probably really hard to make a fair, modern test on this subject since a medieval longbowman was essentially raised into their profession at an early age, modern people who could match the average longbowman in skill, experience, and fitness at once are few and far between.
Todds test used medium carbon unhardened steel and it couldnt even pierce the armor. Im guessing low carbon steel unhardened would just get pierced but not enough to do any damage to the wearer .. Im curious what would happen to improperly hardened (Over hardened) piece of high carbon steel and not tempered , what sort of thing would happen , i bet the arrow would break together with the chunk of the armor that was not tempered and everything would dig into the wearer
The weakest 'straight' bow in medieval period required 80pounds to pull. On a english sunken ship which was found 'recently' were dozens of bows and many of them required about 160pounds to pull, ergo- results in penetrating anything may differ Thus every single one of the archer skeleton have deformation marks and cracks on the shoulder bones
The injuries to Philip and David were in the face. Very probable that their visors were up at the time, it's not easy to get an overview of the field with a visor down.
Great analysis this is exactly what many people don’t think about when they consider how people communicate events taking place. They don’t have to be accurate in the literal sense to be considered truthful. If some of the accounts are using literary devices. All the other problems and possibilities you mentioned just illustrate the work it takes to get at the meaning. One thing is certain the English deployed longbows, the French feared them and they were effective.
I do agree with the idea that plate armor was highly resistant to bows, but still had enough gaps in the armor to not be immune to arrow volleys. I also agree that the majority of an army would not have high-quality plate armor or shields, and so an arrow volley aimed at the army in general would still do damage--- even if arrows aimed at a unit of heavy knights would be less effective. It does have to be noted that heavy crossbows and proto-muskets are consistently described as having far superior armor penetration than a bow, enough to make an impact even on the late medieval and early renaissance battlefield--- when plate armor was at its peak in terms of both metal quality, design, and projectile deflection (like with sloped armor designs, most famously shown by the morion helmet).
For crossbow, the common “heavy” 1200ib steel crossbow provide as much jouls as high power longbows. Due to their show draw distance and inefficient power transfer of spring steel. But handguns, yeah, if they work and didn’t blow up and hit the target , as in early 15 cent armor ? High chance of going through , excluding some unlucky glance off etc
Historical sources say that the English longbowman used bows with a 100 pound draw or even 110 pound draws. Some of those who tested long bows used 80 or 85 pound draws because that was more 'realistic'. Big difference in penetrating power.
What I'm tired of is people thinking of the Longbows as guns, thus conceptualizing it as a super accurate rapid fire weapon while ignoring all of the demanding physical requirements.
Seems like it has less to do with the armor itself but to what degree the body was covered by it. I haven't seen evidence that arrows can penetrate armor itself but it doesn't have to in order to kill a knight. With enough volleys and enough arrows, the areas not covered by full armor would be hit. So sources saying they are shooting and killing armored knights and the people doing tests on full breast plate arent really disagreeing. For example, if Knights are truging through mud, their arms might be raised high above the mud line so they can move forward, exposing their more vulnerable sides/under arm rendering the rest of their plate useless if struck. They knew they even lifting their visor to look up was deadly, that would go for any part of the body not covered in the plate itself under constant volley.
English Longbow-men were used in Portugal, at the battle of Aljubarrota. They helped Portuguese against the Spanish army, and their heavy-armored cavalry. Arrows shot from longbows with bodkin heads, against armored targets that are charging in horse can seriously make a dent. If hitting the helmets, they can dismount a knight. If the arrows hit the horse, it's a fall inside the fray and bloody mud. Any dagger can slay a knight in there. Portuguese also used careful advantage of terrain and obstacles against cavalry. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aljubarrota#Portuguese_dispositions
@@michaelpettersson4919 yeah it was the inferior quality called "mail". There is basically no evidence that all the French at Agincourt were uniformly in steel plate. That's the falsified assumption here.
@@jasoncawley7512 I was thinking of inferior quality plate that also existed but yes, plenty of warriors where still using mail at the time, whatever the quality was good or not. A good quality mail may be weak against projectiles but still a good choice for melee combat for someone unable to afford plate armor. In practice many probably used a mixed armor with plate pieces added when when they could afford (or loot) them. The real loosers however would those with nothing but a gambeson for protection.
Let's be honest we fall way too often for the binary absolutist falacy :"Why use longbows if plate armour couldn't be penetrated?" and "Why use plate if it can be pierced by longbows?" Simple, a Ferrari is faster than a Lamborghini sure, but you (like most average schmucks) drive a Volkswagen and get overtaken by both. High quality full plate was amazing but you had about 10% of your troops equipted with it. Everyone else wore partial plate with mail, helmet and cuirass with or without mail or just a helmet and a mail shirt. Therefore the large majority of troops were very much at risk of being wounded if not killed by longbowmen.
If a medieval source says that the arrows pierced men and armor, we have to consider that in the literary style of the time, it wouldn't be different from a statement like saying that one side smote the other. We understand that when it is said that someone or some group smote, that they did not literally hold them down and bludgeon them with a mace. But since we have moved away from literary language and toward literal language, we might miss that the same style of expression was used constantly until modern times. And if they did mean that armor was penetrated, whose armor, what kind and where? Clearly Marshal Boucicault could not have reached the English line while leading the French attack at Agincourt if a longbow could make short work of a knight's armor at the time. It's also a mistake to look at Agincourt as a typical example of the employment of missiles on a medieval battlefield. The positioning of the English troops and the muddy conditions significantly prolonged the period of time that the English had to shoot before contact, and created a converging field of barrage. The French knights wore less leg armor than the English knights since their equipment was economized to increase their effectiveness on horseback. That meant that with so many missiles flying from different directions, it's not implausible that many of the wounds that were suffered by attacking French knights would have been to weak points in their armor only covered by mail. As lethal as a bow is to an unarmored body, the advantage of aiming at weak points is described as far back as Homer, which would indicate the effectiveness of the comparatively primitive armors of antiquity. From a tactical standpoint, even if one wore no armor at all, an arrow can still be defeated by a wooden board. That means that under normal conditions, the role of a archery on foot in a field battle could have normally lasted no more than a question of the seconds it took for on side to close the gap and engage hand to hand. The majority of examples of armies facing off in a duel of firepower at the start of the battle appear to be from civil wars in England itself. Either this was because their commanders had supreme confidence in their longbows or because it was better to sacrifice many more lightly armored archers than fewer men at arms attacking under barrage. The effect of archery was that an attack could lose its momentum, cohesion and aggression before making contact, because even if casualties were relatively light, the troops would not be fresh after the unpleasant experience of a high intensity arrow barrage, having expending extra energy holding up their shields and trying to avoid unpleasant if non lethal arrow strikes to their armor.
As an avid archer myself, you would not target an enemy' directly to the front, as with modern armor you atack from the side where the armor is weaker. Archers were usually placed on the flanks to target the attacking troops on the opposite side of the field so to be at the greatest angle possible to the enemy's armor.
I think in case of cuirass and other plate armor the difference between front and side is much smaller than in modern tank armor. After watching several of Tod's videos, I'm convinced bows could not have penetrated plate armor from any angle, not even close. It would make a small dent and that's it. The key must have been to hit unarmored spots and joints, which even the best armor had due to mobility needs.
@@pultsari9036 Yes you are right, however those week less protected points are more plentiful on the sides of both man and horse, especially the horse. As in hunting with the bow, it is much easier to hit the broad side of the prey than the front. Also if a knight were to skimp on his armor due to cost it would most likely be on the mounts flank. Armor was also contured to deflect blows from the front, not so much from the side. In warfare any advantage however slight can save the day.
Imagine 5000 archers loosing arrows with AP points at a rate of fire of maybe....say, 20/minute. That's 100,000 arrows per minute. Henry supposedly had about 5-6000 archers at Agincourt, right? Now, the French charge immediately got bogged down in the slippery ground and became squeezed together, or so the reports go. A heavy horse charge would have travelled at a speed of possibly 22mph - probably no faster. These were not horse bred for speed or endurance like the Arabians. On bad ground, and with other horses crowding in, they would have been down to maybe 10mph or less. At maybe 275 yards, the English would have begun volley fire at high angles, thus explaining why the knights put their faces down: to present the pointed crown of their helmets and shed the energy of the steeply angled arrows. An arrow to the visor could have jammed it or maybe penetrated enough to hit the face. Any open area would be in jeopardy, and a wound is still a casualty, with that man being likely out of the fight. 100,000 arrows per minute. 20 per archer, with probably at least 100 available to each man - I don't know, but logic would say so. So, to me, the issue isn't whether an arrow can penetrate the armor of a medieval knight, but rather, how could 100,000 or maybe 500,000 arrows NOT penetrate ENOUGH areas of un-protected rider or armed squire to devastate the charge. Now, what about the horses? War horse were bred and trained to do what no other horse will do under the horrific conditions of battle, but, they still will not commit suicide. It took the cruelest form of training and spurs to get a horse to press through a line of shouting screaming hacking slashing stabbing men. Horses simply will not allow themselves to be skewered by long sharp things, They know what those mean. A horse has only ONE option for survival, and that's flight. Imagine those arrows, falling among men on horses, some only partially armored, all crowded and slowed, unable to get away and flee. All being struck by arrows, many would have been struck several times if the arrow count theory holds. The panic and terror must have been epic, as the horses bolted, bucked in agony, and attempted to jump over other horses to get away. If anyone wants to see what a horse do when a herd is trapped, go watch some videos of a mustang round up as they are corralled and forced into crowded conditions with no place to go. They'll often go straight up. So, my theory is that whether or not arrows can penetrate every time and make a clean kill is irrelevant. The shock and confusion was enough. The battlefield conditions did the rest at Agincourt.
I've always thought the main benefit of the longbow versus armour was the sheer blunt force of the impact. Imagine a hail of 3000 arrows descending upon you as you ride towards their line. I can't imagine the force of the impact. It may not go through the armour in most cases but it could leave you in a very bad way. It's no surprise to me that at agincourt the English infantry were able to beat their French counterparts after they'd had to suffer the barrage of longbow fire in the mud
No, the blunt force of impact from an arrow to a man in solid armor is absolutely nothing. Also, there were only 1000 French on horseback, 11000 were on foot.
During the making of The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1937, extras and bit players wore a protection made of Bolsa wood over metal plates were actually shot by a professional archer. It doesn't say what that was like for them, but I think it's telling that they got $150 per arrow hit. For the late 30s that's a hell of a lot of money. Probably about $2000 in today's money.
@@juanbelmonte8920 I'm an archer myself. My bow is enough to mortally wound a bear let alone a man. Why would a bow with an extra 100lb in draw weight not leave a man badly bruised or at the very least knock the wind out of him? And that's when stationary... Imagine charging on horseback into a hail of these things. There's a reason why it worked on the battlefield
"Historians with more moderate views on this issue" As apposed to the historians with a more "radical" view on the issue, like the English having full auto explosive ordnance longbows or the French becoming impervious and any and all damage and also immune to disease and bad hair days with their armor on. I would much like to pick the brain of a "radical historian", as their version of history sounds quite interesting. kek
the thing about historical recreations we need to remember is why we are doing them. We know WHAT happened - both English and French sources explicitly state that English longbow archers killed French armoured knights (sinon, je pense qu'il est probable que j'écrirais dans une autre langue). The purpose of recreations is not to determine whether what already happened was possible or not, it is to determine HOW it happened.
Just that the archers killed the knights doesn't automatically mean the arrows pierced the plate armor. They may have, but given the sheer volume of arrows raining down on the French and the fact that armor gaps did exist, it's not hard to believe a lot of casualties may have come from arrows going through the visor, into the shoulder, groin (especially horrible to think about), etc.
Were longbows effective? Yes they were however this effectiveness has little to no relation to the discussion on their ability to penetrate 15th century armour.
@@chroma6947 if it would break your ribs you are out of the game for about 6 weeks which is long enough to make you ineffective as a soldier for the length of time you need to get back on your feet and get your strength back I speak from experience it is very nasty and if you are really unfortunate you will puncture a lung and that in a time without adequate pain relief could kill you by drowning yourself on your own snot
No mention of the experiments where a small amount of clay (as found in pouches amongst the possessions of archers from the time) is applied to the head of the arrow and found to prevent the arrow from glancing off the armour as readily?
Colin Mill I knew about this also, they also looked for some shit into which to stand their arrows prior to firing them , a good dollop of shit had a similar slightly lesser effect than the clay had , but the archers knew if the arrow hit flesh ? the it would infect the ounces opponent , early chemical,warfare .it is rather funny that folk make films about subjects and miss out important facts, such as most of these bowmen were actually Welsh ! they trained from childhood .
@@pauls3204 Yes, my daughter was into the English longbow and collected all manner of information from other traditionalists. The distortions of the skeletons of the archers suggests they were pulling significantly heavier bows than most if not all modern archers. I'm always mindful that in looking at old technologies we overlook the possibility that vital aspects were passed down from generation to generation but lost before literacy was common amongst those who possessed the knowledge. There is a similar question about the English scythe that in recent times has been seen as vastly inferior to the Austrian scythe. However, I believe the sharpening technique for the English scythe historically uses only a course stone that left the scythe with a fine saw-tooth edge and not the knife-like edge of the Austrian scythe. Sharpening the English scythe as if it was an Austrian one seems to be part of the issue. Personally, I can't believe that a country used to importing bow staves would resist importing scythes if they conferred significant advantage in such a fundamental task as harvesting! Sadly, we may never know the truth. Much of what I gleaned about the English scythe came from an old man, now deceased, who learned as a child from a scythes-man who was at that time in late old age. Such verbal histories are few.
Great video. In terms of the efficacy of bows, I think one thing that's seriously underestimated is the wood of the shaft - upon which will depend its flexibility and so also its shock absorption. An arrow that flexes on impact will have far far less efficient sectional density compared to a more rigid one. And to test this, one really needs to know precisely the wood employed, harvesting techniques, and growing conditions of contemporary arrow makers - and we can probably only approach an approximation. To my mind, there's likely as big a difference between the timber being used by modern arrow makers and that of their mediaeval peers, as there is between that used by makers of modern furniture, windows, etc. and their historical counterparts. Put simply, modern timber is generally fast-grown, fast-matured, and soft. There would also of course be as wide a variation in quality of arrows used at Crécy etc. as there was in quality of armour. Shoot enough arrows, and you probably get the desired effect where the best arrows meet with the worst armour.
But there is no really extraordinary claim here, both positions are believable. We are not in some conspiracy theory or scientifical theory which destroy almost all our knowledge on the subject.
The first evidence is the shaft of the arrow that does not withstand the impact with an armor. You can also use a Mongolian bow twice as good as an English one, the result is the same.
@@ciprianganea759 A mongolian bow is not twice as good as a longbow or even better, the lbs is usually comparable its is just smaller so more adapted to shot from a horse, and its short size comes with a disavantage, it made it more sensible when you shoot and so less precise, and also less adapted to shoot heavy arrows (arrows with better penetration power), if you want to pierce a protection you should definitively take a longbow.
@@niels8143 Just some facts, you decide: archeryhistorian.com/mongolian-bow-vs-english-longbow-advantages-and-drawbacks/ . Good to know that modern tests have shown that recurve bows are more effective, as well as those made of composite materials. The bows in Eastern Europe and Asia have been recurved for at least 2000 years and have been made of composite materials for 1000 years. When the English returned from the Crusades, they also came with recurve bows. Do you really think that the English nobles with experience in fighting were so stupid as to leave their good bows and buy some more inefficient bows at prices 5-10 times higher? (Eastern bows were recurve made of animal horn, wood, sturgeon glue and sometimes silk, the long English bow was made of wood from the Iberian Peninsula and rope).
@@ciprianganea759 I don't see in what you source contradict what i said. It said it itself " The English bowmen of the Hundred Year’s War fought with France, showered the French nights with heavy, armor piercing arrows. The Mongol’s arrows were intended to be used on more lightly armored adversaries." The mongol bow has usually a better range (the only thing i didn't say) and is smaller, and so more suited to shot mounted on target poorly protected when the longbow can shoot heavier arrows with good penetration power and has more precision and so is more suited for foot archers against heavily protected target. What of kind of senseless demonstration your anecdote is supposed to be ? First, the arc turquois (i don't know how you call that in english) wasn't the same bow than the mongol one, the composite and curved bow are not all the same. Secondely yeah english nobles returned from the crusade with recurve bows, and so ? Did these bows became the usual standard bow in England ? No. Do you think the english were so stupid to not use a better bow once they put their hands on it ? The longbow was more adapted to their style of warfare and so it became the stantard bow in england, as much as the composite bow was more adapted to the mongol's style of warfare ,adn so it became their standard bow.
mate on that video on tods workshop he says that he is not using a full heavy draw longbow that has a full 10 stone draw. thus it was the second bow down from that one. he could'nt draw it.
This has always been one of my favorite discussions, mostly because the passion involved. I figure the truth is a bit like with Kevlar armor and other bullet resistant armor. Can a bullet go through Kevlar?, depends on a lot of things like distance to target, location of shot, caliber of the firearm, and so on.
I agree. On one side we have those who have armour at heart. They ignore the written accounts explicitly saying that arrows penetrated, orchestrate tests against armour made of modern steel and claim that arrows can't penetrate. On the other hand we have those who care about the scientific method, how evidence is corroborated and the truth.
I don't get the confusion Yeah the armor stops one arrow, but if you sent 100 arrows at someone, it only takes 2-3 of them getting through to disable or kill
I think the answer is both. The armor must have worked, or as in the time of muskery they would have stopped wearing it. Long bows must have worked or they would have stopped using them.
My theory is similar to the moderate view but more conservative, I think the tods workshop example is the best case with high quality armor of the time as mentioned in tods video the armor was medium carbon steel, not mild steel if I remember correctly. but I think at least a sizeable amount of man at arms Armor was of lower cheaper quality, I have seen tests of reproduction cuirass armor that has been pierced, yet the penetration was only 1-3cm at most thus the underlayers of mail and padding would stop the arrow. But it could potentially penetrate deep enough to cause shallow wounds at the thinner areas of Armor like the arms and legs and likely bruises and I think this would debilitate and demoralise the man at arms and greatly reduce his fighting ability when reaching the English knights, thus resulting in them deciding to retreat. I don't think the arrows would have torn through them like in movies but I also don't think they'd be completely ineffective either.
I love that there is some nuance here rather than the usual blank assertions that armour will defeat longbows and that's it. The fact of the matter was that the longbow was effective in the field where good armour was present and the mystery lies in how it was effective. Most modern tests are straight shots to the breastplate (thickest armour), but in the reality of battle an entire suit would be tested. The sheer number of arrows output by thousands of longbowmen would saturate the target- my guess is that most attacking knights would take several arrow hits at least. With such a rate of hits it's a dice roll whether you get hit through the visor, on the arm or some other weak point. Not even going into the disorientation and impact energy of hits taken on the armour.
Long story short: Armor worked, otherwise no one would have bothered wearing it. Archers worked, or no one had employed such units. Weak points are necessary to keep armor functional. Money can save your life.
Even shorter,most soldiers didn't have armor.
Yeah and pretty much all reliable sources(people that have been in the battle) mentioning knights and kings being hurt by arrows say that they were wounded in the face, so the arrow found a slit or the visor was opened. And if you have 3000 archers shooting at your unit, i bet a few will hit weak spots, like joints and face. I think in agincourt the archer massacred the horses of the french knight, that's probably why they decided to push on foot after the first charges failed as war horses back then were incredibly expensive(pretty much as a supercar today).
@@feelthepony this is wrong. Every soldier had some kind of armor on a medieval battlefield.
Armor was not solid plate of steel. And if you launch enough arrows some bound to find weak points. And as video stated. You dont need to kill every one. Kill enough and charge is broken.
@@hector-nu6gl we re talking heavy armor not leather armor
Today we can discuss in same manner: 'Does every anti-tank gun pierce every tank"?
In my opinion, the best practical resolution of this debate is in Bernard Cornwell's Grail series of books, in which the main character is an English longbow archer during the Hundred Years War:
1 - High quality armour was basically arrow-proof except for the face. When fighting at close range, a trained and experienced archer can shoot a head-size target accurately, removing the need to pierce the thicker portions. Additionally, the concussion of a longbow arrow strike to the head would be significant even if the arrow didn't pierce the helmet.
2 - High quality armor was expensive and therefore rare. Thus. if you kill everyone wearing inferior armor at a distance, those wearing high quality armor would be at a significant numerical disadvantage. Additionally, those would be the individuals you would want to capture for ransom instead of killing.
3 - The stategic utility of the longbow rests primarily in its use in skirmishing. Pitched battles were rare in medieval times and war was mostly raiding, ambushes, and skirmishing. In those situations, high quality armor would almost never be encountered and the longbowmen would dominate nearly any encounter.
4 - The tactical utility of the longbow in pitched battles rests in killing horses. Arrow-proof armour for humans was rare. Arrow-proof armor for horses was practically non-existant. Additionally, a horse is a much larger target than a man. Massed cavalry charges met with massed arrow barrages equal a bloody mess of dead horses, trampled riders, unhorsed knights, and panicked wounded horses. all of which rob the charge of momentum and further facilitate picking off any survivors.
Full credit to Bernard Cornwell, one of the greatest historical fiction authors of our time. He also wrote the Sharpe series set in the Napoleonic Wars and the Last Kingdom series set in the Viking invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. A true genius.
@@johannesmichaelalhaugthoma4215 Very good answer. It is the same situation with tanks - you do not need always to destroy them - if you damage their tracks and do not allow crew to repair it the tank would be useless, you can also kill or wound asisting infantry by mortars and fate of the tanks will be bad :) Thank you :)
Your question doesnt make sense.
The bigger the caliber the more power, this doesnt work in the longbow because there is a clear limit on size and power.
Antitank guns came in all sizes and kinds.
Antitank guns were made specifically to pierce armor. Their shells were conposit and were specialized for it.
Tanks also implemented new protections, but even today an antitank round big enough can pierce it, its not comparable
@@johannesmichaelalhaugthoma4215
>Arrow-proof armor for horses was practically non-existant.
Cataphracts?
@@mrlovemaker5715 "Practically?"
I think a really important moment in Tod's experiment was when the archer missed the breastplate by just a little and went right through the ring mail that hung down below and delivered what would have been an incapacitation. The lesson is that armor only protects what it covers. Another example from this video is the face wounds taken by the most well-armored nobles, nobles who probably had their visors up thinking they were out of effective range. It is hard to survey the battle and command your troops with your visor down. I'm no archer, but I could hit a fist-sized target with a slingshot at 30 yards more often that I would miss and I think someone who practiced archery regularly since they could draw a bow would be better than that. You don't have to go through armor to defeat it.
Yes also visors are for sure in their own structure weak point of armors even if put down. The horses also took a lot of arrow, if you look a lot at manuscript miniatures horses where not really well protected, maybe only the highest ranking lords had effective horse barding.
You’re not that accurate with a slingshot.
It’s definitly possible to be that accurate with a sling. Especially at that range. Plenty of video’s on youtube of it too. And thats a normal sling, not even a sling shot which if basicaly a hand held catapult even easier to aim and consitently fire with
@@HansWurst1569, you got it. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time with a surgical-tubing "wrist-rocket" style hand catapult, not a classic sling. I think it is very easy to use, but not as accurate as a bow. But as you've said, even the classic sling can be that accurate in skilled hands.
@@therightarmofthefreeworld4703 how would you know? a slingshot is pretty accurate with practice. if someone claimed they could do that with a sling I would be much more skeptical.
I’ve read through a lot of British history and one of the common themes throughout is the need to shoot more munitions faster than their opponents.
Spray and pray has been a solid basis for winning battles for a long time. Fire enough projectiles and you will hit something important, fire enough aimed projectiles and you will guarantee hit something important and often.
"Never enuff dakka", a traditional English proverb.
Throw enough shit at a wall and some of it will stick
@@IAmTheStig32 based
A single arrow could go through the face,that part is impossible to armor,even today no one aims for the chest,they aim for the face.
The more I learn about English medieval tactics the more I think of them as a horde faction lol
My guess is, they stopped being effective around the time they stopped being used. Call me mad, but that's my guess.
That's probably a pretty good guess.
You right, you right...
Nope, it was the gun that made them obsolete
@@eddiel7635 I think you completely missed the point
Imagine what english archers would have done against french cavalry or close to infantry squares at waterloo🤔not much armour there and at probably around 4 times the fire rate of a musket.
Just a thought
I’ll never quarrel over the longbow cause quarrels are for crossbows
I'm feeling rather cross about that statement.
But will you quiver?
I think I'd probably bolt.
Yew really make a good point.
I'd like to ass you a few questions
duuude... it's quite satisfying seeing this channel grow.
Indeed, he is growing quite rapidly now. Well deserved!
Close to 100k
Neat, I didn't even notice but he's close to 100k
One of the better history channels.
Yes
If the armor didn't work at the battle of Agincourt, the knights wouldn't reach the English lines. The bowmen showed to be effective because the knights reached the lines badly battered.
Edit: The armor kept the knights alive to reach the English lines. The bowmen were effective because the knights reached the English lines badly battered.
Might want to read your statement again...
In my opinion, the best practical resolution of this debate is in Bernard Cornwell's Grail series of books, in which the main character is an English longbow archer during the Hundred Years War:
1 - High quality armour was basically arrow-proof except for the face. When fighting at close range, a trained and experienced archer can shoot a head-size target accurately, removing the need to pierce the thicker portions. Additionally, the concussion of a longbow arrow strike to the head would be significant even if the arrow didn't pierce the helmet.
2 - High quality armor was expensive and therefore rare. Thus. if you kill everyone wearing inferior armor at a distance, those wearing high quality armor would be at a significant numerical disadvantage. Additionally, those would be the individuals you would want to capture for ransom instead of killing.
3 - The stategic utility of the longbow rests primarily in its use in skirmishing. Pitched battles were rare in medieval times and war was mostly raiding, ambushes, and skirmishing. In those situations, high quality armor would almost never be encountered and the longbowmen would dominate nearly any encounter.
4 - The tactical utility of the longbow in pitched battles rests in killing horses. Arrow-proof armour for humans was rare. Arrow-proof armor for horses was practically non-existant. Additionally, a horse is a much larger target than a man. Massed cavalry charges met with massed arrow barrages equal a bloody mess of dead horses, trampled riders, unhorsed knights, and panicked wounded horses. all of which rob the charge of momentum and further facilitate picking off any survivors.
Full credit to Bernard Cornwell, one of the greatest historical fiction authors of our time. He also wrote the Sharpe series set in the Napoleonic Wars and the Last Kingdom series set in the Viking invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. A true genius.
Indeed.
We have reports of French nobility literally falling back to reform and charge again, time after time.
I think the sheer amount of exhaustion, the chaos of screaming and dying horses and people, the terrain, and just the adrenaline rush, leads to defeat...
Well said
@@johannesmichaelalhaugthoma4215 Yep, Cornwell does a great job in my opinion. Loved the Archer's Tale series.
Most accounts we hear about arrows piercing armor are from the days when chainmail and the coat of plates were top of the line protection. These specific accounts drop off dramatically after plate and Brigandine armors become more prevalent and eventually become the norm. Agincourt is a unique account because these accounts say that among the French army there were over 10,000 French knights, but as French aristocracy was very full of itself and handed out knighthoods to family friends and people who quite often paid them for it, that didn't count for much. These knights were probably no better equipped than the Men At Arms they fought alongside because they didn't get the same equipment of a Knight with prestigious title and ranking from one of the higher houses.
From every account of the Longbow I've read...its the side catching the arrows thats worried about them, you don't typically worry about a weapon that's not useful.
Not really. Even if it is just rocks, getting pelted by it, there is always a chance to get hurt. This is not fun and games so you do still worry about it. Modern soldiers don't let themselves get shot at just because their bulletproof vests should stop those shots. Still plenty of ways to get hurt or killed despite the fact of the chances of it having been diminished alot compared to a soldier without even a flak jacket.
And yes it is useful. The issue of longbow mythology is the claim that it was more useful than what they would have faced against everyone. Against the English the French were worried about arrows, against the Germans about lances, against the Swiss unsportsmanlike maces and axes and the Italians crossbows.
Modern soldiers aren't allowed to attack the people throwing the rocks due to human rights and must endure it.
In the past an armoured knight could quite happily ride over to them and hack them to pieces, even if they were likewise not meant to kill no one was going to grudge the right of a group of soldiers to beat the people who threw stones at them to bloody pulp, or to deliver a sound thrashing in the case of children.
Longbows were scary because your breastplate was unlikely to be proofed like in later times and even if it did stand up to the task a single lucky shot could kill and would if the circumstances were against you, of course all threats were dangerous but longbows would have been especially frustrating as you had to endure them to be able to close in and make the contest a matter in which your own skill played a role, it was for similar reasons that crossbows were despised but they at least would give you some reprieve to act, stall for a minute to think and the longbowman would try and get you under the helmet and the weight of the thing most likely did not make you much more thankful for the ones which bounced off, also good luck getting to them with a horse when it is most likely not as well armoured as yourself, crossbows at least were weak to cavalry, a longbow might be under the right circumstances but if you misjudged then you now have one of the most expensive things you own dying on top of you or throwing you through the air.
@@vorynrosethorn903 Yeah none of that's really true or coherent. I think you need to seriously read anything you write like 3-4 times before you hit 'reply'.
Regarding specifically the Knightly stuff though, a properly made breastplate would almost certainly be impossible to pierce with a longbow arrow, and this will hold true with most other components of the armor.
A modern rifle bullet generally will not penetrate military grade body armour except at very close range. Does this mean that assault rifles such as the Ak or M16 are ineffective weapons? Of course not. The same would have been true with longbows, even if they were not able to penetrate plate armour in most cases.
Modern Soldiers aren't covered head to toe in armor though.
@@channelforcommentingstuff4960 I don't know why you are arguing with me when I agree with you.
@@channelforcommentingstuff4960 lmfao look at late armors. There are barely any gaps and the gaps are covered by more free floating plates. And even then they wear nail armor in those gaps and gambeson under the mail too. Not even crossbows can penetrate plate armor let alone the mail and gambeson under it.
That depends entirely on the armor worn and even a blunt impact from a supersonic round can still cause death. Imagine a horse kicking you. It might not break skin, but the trauma can still be lethal.
@@shiroamakusa8075 yeah I heard that if the bullet doesn't pierce the armor it will still break your bones
my theory is that at that time period not everyone wore the same armor.
And not everybody had the same type of bow (different draw weights, draw lengths, efficiency, etc) or the same type of arrow (mass, flight characteristics, etc) with the same type of arrowhead.
I would say that quality of metal was very bad conpared to todays and thats why arrow heads pierced and stuck in armor or horses or simply killed levys with poor or without armor.
Also the thing is, how many arrows rained on them most likely won the day from start, number of killed was far less than number that routed..
Heck, for that matter, not everyone wore armor. I would bet in a large army MOST people did not have substantial armor.
This isnt even a theory its a fact
Dosen't help this argument at all.
I think that if arrows penetrated plates they would have just stopped using plate armour like they did after fire arms became powerful enough to shoot through it. However, if you watch Tod's video you see that at some point the archer shot a bit lower than intended and hit only the mail shirt underneath the breast plate, the arrow went right through it. Now if we imagine very large volleys of arrows it is very likely to be hit in the gaps between the plates. Furthermore, Matt Easton from the Schola Gladiatoria published a video explaining why sonetimes knights and men at arms choose not to wear a full set of plate armor, opting instead for just the cuirass and helmet.
just what I was going to mention. good post
Not to mention the fear of just getting hit through a slit in your helmet and feeling thuds from the heavy arrows hitting your armor.
That alone must be morale breaking.
@Zane Blaire Uhm why?
@Zane Blaire I mean hes right
Also, some didn't wear the full plate armor because it was extremely expensive. However, some French knights killed at Agincourt were very rich nobles, sometimes princes, like the duke of Bar.
This is so incredibly objective. What a well done video. Good job sir, very well done.
I imagine the noise of the arrows flying through the air, the damage to the horses, the arrows sticking out of the ground causing men to trip and the overall psychological effect would make it worse.
Long bow arrows are capable of shooting through helmets.Bodkin arrows are armor piercing.
arrows do not need to pierce armour to be effective. Often people forget the horses the knights rode, they are mostly unarmoured. the ability to dismount expensive knights is already sufficient to justify the use of archers. And tod has done numerous tests on non-breastplate armour, all has the ability to be penetrated
All knights’s and even men at arms’s horses were barded. Besides it is not easy to kill a horse with an arrow.
@@levsharus5899 ask any hunter. And horse does not need to be killed. Just injured to be ineffective on the battlefield
@@levsharus5899 regarding the barded armour It depends on the time period and geographical location
@@HistoricalWeapons it depends on how well a horse is trained and how bad is a wound. Knights’ horses were best trained in the world. Barding prevented most bad wounds.
@@HistoricalWeapons we are talking about Agincourt, 1415, aren’t we? No use to argue about Crecy: armour in the 14th century was not good enough for full protection from arrows.
The moderate view that some troops has substandard or lacking armor seems quite plausible given the varied manufacturing capabilities at the time. Combining this with lucky shots seems like a good way to explain the amount of casualties needed for a rout, and the subsequent accounts of the chroniclers.
I dont think quality is the issue, more about type of armor. People who never face mass longbow volley think its ok to enter battle wearing chain mail. They learn their mistake and make better preparation and wear full plate then win. Also they carry culverin which blow longbow out of the field by miles.
@@yulusleonard985 The quality of the steel was the main reason.
@@eirikronaldfossheim Tod test is using steel quality matched to the period. Also in his test the arrow penetrate mail flawlesly. And Metatron another medieval channel have his own take on what really happen.
@@yulusleonard985 The minuscule qualities, unknowable things like small
@@yulusleonard985
No, Tod did not use steel matching to the period. No more than around 12 % of the armour was of this quality. Read my article on his test. The number of mistakes they did in that test is staggering. How is Metatron relevant?
www.quora.com/Was-the-test-with-bow-and-arrows-vs-plate-armour-on-the-RUclips-channel-Tods-workshop-accurate-Did-they-do-anything-wrong-Can-t-arrows-penetrate-plate-armour-at-all-Is-the-story-about-the-archers-at-Agincourt/answer/Eirik-Ronald-Fossheim?
There is imo an easy explanation why King David and King Philipp where wounded by arrows: The best armour is for nothing if you don´t use it. They either didn´t used a helmet with face protection or didn´t closed their visor. Another prominent example of such a behaviour by a leading figure that comes to my mind , is the Death of Conrad the Duke of Lorraine in the Battle of Lechfeld 955.
According to the chroniclers it was a hot day and Conrad was struck by an magyar arrow in the throat when he took of his helmet to catch some breath. I´m pretty sure if someone would dig down into the sources they would find more examples. There is always the human factor that is hard to predict and is often forgotten.
I thought of that too, and perhaps they don't like to admit that they were caught off-guard within the range of the English longbows and avoided that fact being recorded
The human factor I think counts for more than we give it credit for. These battles were messy and took a while. People make mistakes when they are tired and stressed.
Don't forget perhaps the most famous: Harold Godwinson.
Rule No 1 of many a jobsite... NEVER remove your PPE
King James the 1st of Aragon took a crossbow bolt straight to the brow of his helmet. It penetrated enough to cut him, but that’s about it.
A short read through history will show you that even heavily armored, arrows can find places. You shoot enough and some will find a gap. Also if you look at sports today. Look at uniforms and equipment for all players around the globe. Even though there is a HUGE variance in quality. All of it is sports equipment and uniforms. Same would be the case for armor. Some smiths would do wonderful work, others....not so much.
Yes, but 'find' is not the right word. It is just probability that at some point a lucky hit will be scored.
A slow march works out to about 3 feet per second. At 100 yards it takes a longbow arrow about a second to get out there with some variations in wind affecting arrow speed as well as the general accuracy (wind affecting the arrow's travel in a variable way meaning you hit some cm away from wher e you aim?). So you are firing a weapon incapable of precise accuracy out to that range at a target about 3 feet in front of the individual you want to hit guessing where he will be and when the arrow will get there - but of course you can hit an armored target in the visor or a vulnerable joint, right?
Fact is that you have a lot of arrows firing at an enemy over time some lucky hits will be scored. Eventually you shoot at Bob but hit Joe in the eye because you are such a great shot.
In my humble opinion, it may be simpler than we think. In modern infantry doctrine, volume of fire is one of the most important aspects of combat, often as important as accuracy. Fill the air with a wall of red hot lead as accurately as possible and you'll definitely increase your casualty producing capabilities while allowing maneuvering on the enemy. I think it was the same back then. It was all about volume of fire, normally an arrow would have high difficulties in penetrating enemy armor but if you fill the sky with accurate suppressive fire you'll increase exponentially the probability of finding a gap or a weak spot in the enemy armor and I think that's what pretty much what happened
tod released a new video on arrows vs armor and what can we see? majority of arrows that hit the plate did nothing while the ones that hit the gaps would have wounded a man , and i agree with what you say , fire for example 50 arrows at a relatively dense group of men and some will find their targets eventualy
"Everybody QUARRELS over the efficacy of the English long bow..."
No they don't.
Everybody ARROWS of the efficacy of the French crossbow..?
"Everybody FIRES at the efficacy of bows and crossbows." Haha.
You are going to LOOSE the argument. I dont have to tell you Fire is for fire arms.
Modern day men, who do not train day in day out cannot even draw the war bows pulled up with the Mary Rose. Englishmen were bred to be archers.
If you don't trust the sources, trust the body count. English army, weary, wanting to get home, riddled with disentry, annihilated the flower of France.
Several of these longbow versus armor tests remind me of Sherman tanks vs. Tiger tanks. The Sherman's cannon would not penetrate the front armor of the Tiger. But a Sherman could attack the sides, rear and the gap between the turret and the hull.
A more accurate test of the English longbow would involve a full suit of armor, with padded under layers, on a full size dummy. How difficult is hit the gaps in the armor or hit the thinner sections of armor? How lethal are these hits? If the arrow shaft shatters, where do the splinters go and how dangerous are they?
The first Arrow in Tod's test grazed the bottom of the breastplate to penetrate the layers beneath, in just such a fashion.
Also the fact that the majority of German tanks were not Tigers, but Stugs and Panzer IVs who could be defeated by a Sherman from all sides. Not all men on a medieval battlefield were rich dukes who could afford the most modern and high quality armor. The majority of men had armor of lower quality or only armor protecting specific body parts. And those men could be killed by the longbowmen easily.
At Crecy the new English 17 pounder bow was very effective
It's also worth noting that the archers at Agincourt were positioned on the flanks and would have been loosing their arrows enfilade, making it more likely to hit gaps and weak points.
Well yeah, but the problem is that you can't really aim a medieval bow at the weakspot in the armor.
You might do that with a crosbow from close up if you're a good shot, but with a bow, even master archers could get no more precise than choosing between legs, torso or head.
I am assuming most archers generally just aimed for the torso. If a mounted knight was coming at them, you'd aim for the horse, and if a dismounted knight was charging you, then you'd run away.
Both kings killed by arrows had wounds in the head so even if they had the best armor, it seems that the arrows pierced their visor or that their visor was not down. Even with the best armor, the visor would be weaker than the breastplate and an open helmet it’s an open helmet.
A good argument for the efficacy of armor against longbows and crossbows is the fact that knights of the late Middle Ages stopped carrying shields. It would seem that shield were not as necessary if one had full plate armor. The statement that the French knights keep their heads down seems to support the idea that arrows killed through weak spots or gaps. If keeping your head down helped then it was to prevent arrows from hitting your open face or weak visor. The back of the helmet must’ve been sufficient to stop most arrows.
To be fair with shields, they still carried them since they stopped roughly 7-8 arrows before becoming useless and thats 7-8 arrows thats not denting your armor but most of the time they just had a shield as a back up or just for the vanguard.
@@Jonathan-fb1kj i... don't think that's correct
@@jobdylan5782 There's a number of books on that subject that go better into detail of the types of shields, the matierals they were made of and how/why they were used, if I can find the book links on amazon I'll edit it in to this comment.
Helmets were generally the second most durable part of the armor, behind the breast plate. The visor would have been weaker, since it needs holes for eyes and breathes. Keeping their heads down was most likely to prevent an arrow from sneaking through one of those slits.
Yeah. I always wonder, even with the visor down. Scores of men firing several arrows a minute for a minute or two. Surely one or two would find an eye slit? Not through a heap of skill, but mostly through statistical chance. I reckon even though the little holes that feature on a lot of helmets were smaller than an arrow head, if the tip of a bodkin happened to catch one, it'd force its way through. And I'm sure there are other bits on the armour that would be similar if I knew more.
I remember seeing a documentary that studied the bones found at Argincourt. It showed that all the victims were hit by arrows at short range of about 10 feet.
This showed the Frech knights were on foot and allowed to get very close to the English archers.
Perhaps the French knights were on foot because their horses were shot by arrows?
@@kerriwilson7732 No.
Mud was reason.
@@quaddis7956 Exactly!
@@kerriwilson7732 The mud slowed down their steeds and forced the heavily armoured knights to trudge through the mud, causing their advance to slow to a crawl which allowed the longbowmen to make quick work of the trapped Frenchmen attempting to reach their lines. Though a few did break through they weren't supported by the full force of their knightly steeds.
I think we all enjoyed Tod's excellent tests and the key takeaway for me was: you have to shoot enough arrows. Only 1 in 10 or 20 was going to incapacitate. When you realize that each of the 7000 archers at Agincourt had about 80 arrows, that's maybe 560,000 arrows on the battle field. In theory, given enough time, each archer could take down 4-8 knights... of course just spitballing here but the strategy of the English seems to indicate they wanted as much time for the archers as possible.
WHAT !? 100,000 subs already, last time I looked you were at 70k. Hey CONGRATZ man you deserve it for these quality videos.
130k now
@@nothingtoseeheremovealong598 146k now
@@NathanDudani 147k now
I'd really love to see them test a longbow vs the "worst passable metal armor" of the time. Basically, try and approximate the lowest quality, crappiest armor that wouldn't have been outright rejected and see what a longbow does against that.
I mean, we know for a fact they couldn't conduct chemical tests on the steel to get a perfect replication of material properties for each piece of armor, and we have a solid test of the "best case scenario" via Tod's tests. So what about a "worst case scenario" for plate?
I think it’s not tested because consensus is that longbow will win. If you think about it it has been tested and actually very extensively. For long time it was thought that longbows would beat any armour in their day and this was “proven” with hardened steel points against some scrap metal. Sometimes they even made machines which would hit the scrap metal with those points and you could repeat it the test as many times to prove the point.
It is relatively new idea that maybe the armour really works and does it job.
It really doesn't matter in terms of the outcome here because soldiers who could only afford the cheapest armour weren't going to be covered from head to toe in it. Most likely they'd have a helmet, maybe a cuirass and a few auxiliary pieces of kit if they're lucky. That leaves plenty of space in between the armor for arrows to penetrate mail or gambeson.
A gambeson and maille hauberk with a helmet would have been considered fully armored for a common soldier, right up to the point that guns enter the scene. While this would surely offer some protection against arrows, it isn't anything like plate. Additionally, you don't need to pierce a soldier's chest to take him out of the fight.
So, the "worst passable armor" isn't really a thing. The "most common form of armor" would be much more telling.
As to the "chemical tests", that is a fundamental misunderstanding of metallurgy on your part. The process of manually forging steel into shape is a very reliable process. The heat treating was surely an area for potential failure. But the color of the metal is a reliable measure of temperature, and is still used today. Any armorer with a reputation of producing good wares would have turned out pretty high quality steel. The most likely form of "lower grade" would be excessively heavy, because the armorer wasn't skilled enough to thin the metal sufficiently without cracking it. So, ironically, "cheap" armor would have been difficult to wear, but may have actually yielded better penetration protection. More likely though, it would never have been sold that way, as that steel would have been more valuable being reforged into something of greater value. Remember, steel was incredibly valuable in this period, as there was no form of mass produced steel. Anything substandard would be more valuable being reworked than being sold at a lower price.
Christian Swensen said it best, but I'd also like to add that for what you're implying it works both ways. Individual arrows varied wildly in terms of quality.
@@ChristnThms I actually disagree in terms of whether "average" plate or "worst passable" would be a better test.
I stick to plate because that seems to be the key question on everyone's mind, and we have better preserved steel pieces to look at than we do the linen based gambesons (not to say I wouldn't be interested in those tests either).
But if we already have one test to show the "best case" scenario for steel plate, conducting a "middle ground" test would still not answer "what happens in a worst-case scenario where a chest piece was over/under hardened, over/under thick (probably under), etc."
In theory, if you could show that even a "worst passable" armor piece could consistently stop/deflect arrows, you wouldn't even need to test the middle ground/average pieces.
Hence, a "worst passable" test could be very interesting.
In terms of misconceptions of metallurgy, I'm not sure that's fully the case either. While I'm certainly no expert, to my knowledge they had no truly reliable way of testing source material, meaning, while you could get consistent results within a range, you would always have an unknown for exact percentage of carbon in the steel, exact brittleness, malleability, etc. For example, we can say today 'take a piece of W 1040 steel, heat to X degrees, for Y time, fold with Z amount of flux, etc.' and get exact reproductions, but back then, you wouldn't have an exact way of knowing you were starting with W 1040 (just a good guess/estimate).
So, I'd be curious what a metallurgist with expertise in the time period might say in terms of "oh yeah, they would test their steel in a b and c ways, but they would have no way of knowing if there was 0.217% anthracite in the coal in their forge which would contain enough of x trace element to do.... Blah blah blah and actually impact the steel in these ways...."
Basically, try and drill down on the perfect storm of then-undetectable (even if rare) metallurgical error, deviance, industry/production standards etc. and say "this is the worst case scenario of an armor piece that may pass the most basic scrutiny, but is a catastrophy waiting to happen".
Like I said, if you could test that, and it still held up to arrow fire... It would tell you quite a bit about the likely effectiveness of "better" armor.
The Longbow wounded the horses the French Knights rode, causing them to fall, get injured, and make it difficult to get up in the wet ground, making them easier prey to be captured or killed.
Well, the knights at Agincourt fought on foot ...
@@robert8984 The English yes but the French were mounted. Dolt.
@@MauriceTarantulas No need got insults, but yes. French knights generally fought mounted, which I find odd because military innovations even preceding the Hundred Years' War demonstrated that mounted knights were no longer a decisive force on the battlefield (The French should have especially known this, given their experience with their defeat at Kortrijk by the Flemings.). They likely would have also heard of how effective the English Longbow was from the Scots.
I strongly suspect there was more than just purely military factors which lead to the French stubbornly overutilizing mounted heavy knights: France was exceptionally wealthy compared to a lot of other realms in Europe at the time, and I suspect mounted knights were connected to that wealth.
@@robert8984 Yes and no. The main French attack was made on foot. However, it was preceded by a cavalry charge. That charge failed, and one can only assume that many of the horses involved in that charge were killed by arrows or lay dying in front of the English front line. I suspect these obstacles to the advance of the French men-at -arms had a significant influence on the developing battle.
@@Wasserkaktus The French had decisively beaten the English at the Battle of Pontvallain with heavy cavalry in 1370, reversing the English gains from Crecy and Poitiers, this was the last major land battle battle they had fought against the English before Agincourt.
Also the French fought primarily on foot at Agincourt, the original plan being to only use the small cavalry forces on the flanks. The Battle of Verneuil was another disaster for the French, but it wasn't the cavalry charge that failed that day, it smashed through the English line, it was literally everything else.
They again annihilated an English army at Patay using solely cavalry and beat the English at Formigny using more or less the same plan as they intended to use at Agincourt, with the help of a Breton (cavalry!) flanking charge of course.
They ultimately won the Hundred Years War using heavy cavalry (and cannons). The blanket statement that heavy cavalry was obsolescent by the 14th century is sketchy at best, it just became riskier - tho the same can be said for any strategy that requires entrenchment, the Battle of Patay being an excellent example of that.
I view it this way.
Volley fire means a lot of arrows to a lot of different places, if it hits a person in a less armoured place they are wounded, if it hits the horse in a less armoured place the horse is wounded. If either the person or the horse are to fall over then they may get trampled and disrupt the unit cohesiveness as the unit moves. This gives more time for another volley.
6000 archers with just two quivers of 24 arrows each would loose 144,000 arrows before a resupply from the boys in the baggage train. If 1% of these incapacitate combatants in any way that is 1,440 people. Or between 3-5% of what the French army alegedly was at some of all of the larger battles.
Since they are likely resupplied another quiver of 24 that would be another 720 people before close quarters casualties.
Remember the attacks were in waves so the close combatants were not fighting everyone all at once and the archers likely had weapons of their own other than the bow to inflict damage.
Finally the advances towards the longbow line are usually under adverse conditions such as up hill, bad weather, poor preperation due to leadership engaging before forming up.
Longbowmen did lose battles with the French and even the famous commander Talbot lost his life in an engagement where gunpowder proved decisive.
There was a massive difference in armour between Crecy and Agincourt, i.e. The 100 Years War. So longbow arrows would have had a much better chance at penetrating armour at Crecy than at Agincourt. Although even with 15th Century plate stopping arrows most of the time, as per Todd's test, with the amount of arrows in the air there'd be plenty finding weak points and gaps in armour at Agincourt.
Not every soldier wore plated armor lol you think the peasant fresh from the field could afford a war horse and a full set of plated armor? They’d be lucky to buy a decent spear and get some chain mail ripped from a dead soldier lol
@@oVoxxyHe’s talking about the armour itself, not the people who wore it.
Regarding witnesses: the best example would the the eternal debate about the horse gallop. The argument on whether horses had a leg always on the ground was settled only with the advent of photography. I doubt wars had the anal post-mortems we do today.
Bro, too valid of a point.
A lens worth looking through, when dissecting history.
Can you please clarify, I don't get what you mean
@@nETbKaH search up eadweard muybridge and his supposed bet with a dude
@@nETbKaH There was arguments, before photography, about exactly how horses trotted and ran and what their foot placement was, which was important for race horses as you can't train them to run better so you have to watch for which ones have good gaits.
super cool format love it.
It alwas good to tlk about the basics like source critizism. There is a lot of good historical content on youtube but I havent seen a video about this specifically here even though it is of vital importance to understand history
Bernard from Military History Visualized is another good one for that.
If you have an interest in modern warfare, I can but recommend that you check out Military History Visualised (MHV) and Military History Not Visualised (MHnV) ruclips.net/channel/UCK09g6gYGMvU-0x1VCF1hgA ruclips.net/channel/UChImwmytehS5SmlqMkXwoEw Bernhard loves tearing secondary sources apart.
its the wrong question
the question should be "how can a longbow pierce armour" or "in what circumstances" meaning what type of release arrow tips and angle of attack etc
They cant. If those guys from today shoot directly and from short distance with more modern bows and nothing happens there is no way the armour can be pierced. Specially if they shoot "in the sky" and the arrow more or less falls down. However, it may still be enough to knock a guy of the horse if he gets hit (or shoot the horse) or shoot men who didnt wear (good) armour.
That's the question people asked the whole time. And yet experiments indicate that an unhardened arrow head (we have no evidence for hardened arrow heads) can't penetrate a breast plate from an ideal angle (= 90°) from point blank distance.
The longbow does not do anything... Its the arrow that hits.
@@Nickname-hier-einfuegen Which test are you referring to, as tods test doestn prove that and he never claimed it did.
For that test, they fired at the front of the armour, so a flat hit would hit the thickest part of the armour, the thinner parts are angled from there, you need to shoot from the side to catch the thinner parts flat.
Circumstances don't help. The armor shot being mail not a breastplate sure as heck does. Ergo, the forced conclusion is that the prior assumption *that the entire French army was in plate* is *falsified*.
The main effect was to hurt horses, disorganize cavalry and dismount horsemen. Falling down full armored from the horse was worse than a stab.
Like a car crash. !
Except the long bow is described as desimating armor footmen too. No one disputes that shooting a charging horse out from under you is super bad for the rider.
Nice point
People keep twisting the question in defence of the long bow.
In fear that their English weapon would no longer be legendary.
Battle of Poitiers 1356 ... A contemporary English chronicle reports: "The French horsemen were so well protected by iron plates and leather saddlecloths that the arrows broke or ricocheted off into the air, from where they fell again on friends and enemies.
Geoffrey the Baker wrote that the English archers under the Earl of Salisbury "made their arrows prevail over the [French] knights' armour",[12] but the bowmen on the other flank, under Warwick, were initially ineffective against the mounted French men-at-arms who enjoyed the double protection of steel plate armour and large leather shields.[13] Once Warwick's archers redeployed to a position where they could hit the unarmored sides and backs of the horses, however, they quickly routed the cavalry force opposing them. The archers were also unquestionably effective against common infantry, who did not have the wealth to afford plate armour.[14][15]
English long archers were also used in Italy. Filippo Villani comments on the English longbow archers: "The experience has been that they are better at making and stealing night raids than claiming the field; they succeeded more through the cowardice of our people than their own bravery.
English longbow archers were also used by Charles the Bold in the Burgundian Wars against the Swiss and were absolutely ineffective.
The many captured French noblemen also speak against the lethality of the longbow in the 100 Years War.
@Umbrella Corp. Agent I mean theres plenty of evidence to show that the longbow was effective. Battle of Agincourt comes to mind...
I wasn't entirely certain what to expect when this video bumped across my screen, but I was pleasantly surprised.
I think there's a few things that are key to note, some that you touched on and some that you haven't. First and foremost, I think it's useful to at least acknowledge the degree to which historiography surrounding the longbow has been irrevocably tainted by English nationalism; this is not intended as an indictment of the English or nationalism in general, of course, but rather more simply the longbow has become a key component of the English national myth. The feats performed by the longbowmen are therefore inflated out of proportion when we consider that at the end of the day, the self bow was hardly unknown outside England and Wales and didn't take on the same worldbeating significance beyond that setting.
Secondly, and this arrives at points that you did touch on, the statement "arrows from a war bow cannot penetrate top-quality armor" doesn't actually invalidate the statement "the bow is a useful battlefield weapon." Ludwig von Eyb advises all cavalry to carry "six good-sized stones for throwing" - I dare say no one will expect these to have armor-penetrating capability. Henry of Monmouth before he became Henry V of England took an arrow through the cheek - no one can suggest he wasn't wearing top-of-the-line armor, he simply had his visor raised. There are various aspects ranging from suppressive fire, to the distracting effects of arrows, to the blinding effects of having to have your visor closed, that do not require the longbow to directly injure you at all. Besides this there is of course the reality as well of not everyone wearing the latest plate harness, not all harness being the same quality, arrows or splinters hitting into an unlucky uncovered spot - the list of factors goes on.
At the end of the day the thing that makes the longbow debate so caustic is that people like absolutist statements with no nuance, and these positions aren't very useful in discussing the subject. We know that the English won several key battles during the various conflicts now called the Hundred Years War, despite ultimately losing it. In those victories, the longbow was called out as being a factor by period sources. The fact that we don't think the longbow can kill a man-at-arms armored cap-a-pied in steel plate is rather irrelevant to that fact and crucially both statements - "the English won" and "the longbow isn't a world-beating weapon" - can be true at once.
That's THE point about that casts doubt about the effectiveness of the longbow. Outside of England and Wales it's not used at all. Not to mention that the English in the HYW are im my eyes a prime example of how to not fight a war. Not mention that it took apparently years to Train one.
@@vassily-labroslabrakos2263 Can you explain how the English fought the 100 years war ineffectively? I'm honestly just curios. They didn't have the finances to pay for the quantity of knights, 27,000 could be raised in France in the early 1300s and only 5000 in England. England also had less access to foreign mercenaries. It had to resort to burning down the French countryside and lowering the French tax base, which worked. It battlefield tactics consistently worked and produced some incredible results. It defeated the French navy on multiple occasions and stopped an invasion of England from France as planned. Exploited internal divisions within the kingdom they were attacking. Its hard to see from my perspective how this is a 'prime example of how not to fight a war'.
If the longbow didn't win the battles of Poitier, Crecy and Agincourt, then the English must have had some incredible knights!
@@kengamby2482 In that battles arrows killed the horses, not pierced the knight armors.
@@kengamby2482 That's a huge reason why I'm sceptical of this answer, English knights must have been OP as fuck if the archers didn't actually help win.
Some people of lower rank and even some nobles must have had a century old armor they inherited from their ancestors or armor that was repaired so many times it lost all protective qualities.
if your armor lost protective qualities you'd get new armor
@@einarr7301 if you had the money for it
@@einarr7301 not everyone is rich back then
Inherited armor may also have been modified to fit a new wearer who is taller/shorter or leaner/fatter/more muscled than the previous wearer
@@einarr7301 not in those days, many would find it dishonorable to not wear the same suit of armor that there fathers wore
This one stands out by itself over other works on how historiography works. Excellent job!
*Longbows fanatics: We can penetrate armors .... with good conditions !
*Cannon at battle of Castillon: That's cute.
What happened at the battle of Castillon?
Rather than seeing if an arrow could, why not test to see what it takes for an arrow to pierce armor?
@@the11382 acoup.blog/2019/07/04/collections-archery-distance-and-kiting/
a 1.5 mm steelplate with padding would require an arrow comming at a 90 degree to have at least 150 joul to penetrate. to actually hurt or kill, it would require even more.
magier, nowak, tomasz and zochowski's "numerical analysis of englisch longbows" simulated a test for a 150 lb bow and a very heavy 96g arrow at pointblank (25 meters) it had 130 jule.
that would be barely enough to penetrate 1mm of steelplate with padding at 90°
I remember seeing a test where the testers found that the arrows don't always *need* to penetrate the armor to create problems for the wearer. The guy *in* the armor started having breathing issues from the arrows bouncing off the armor. It was that while each impact was slight it had a cumulative effect when getting hit repeatedly
A point many(including tod) have brought up which I think is important is that arrows do not need to penetrate the breastplate to hurt the person in it. There were gaps in the armor that would have at most chainmail such as the armpit or the inside of elbow. Also they are many places in the armor that are not as strong as the breastplate (most places actually) the best example being the side of the visor we I do believe we have sources mentioning arrows penetrating.
This means the same suit of armor even if it was high quality may have been arrow proof in some places while arrows were able to penetrate other regions of the armor. I believe tod means to test this in latter films.
So you are counting on lucky hits, or are you going to wait until the target is maybe 10 yards away to try accurate fire at a gap in armor?
The armor did its job of protecting against most attacks. Get enough volleys of arrows and some will hit in vulnerable locations. 500 arrows fired against a force of mounted knights. Many bounce off armor. Some injure horses. Some cause injuries to the knights. But have one go through the visor of some knight who is famous for something and you get legends of how accurate some archer was.
Longbows in the middle ages and muskets in the 18th century were battlefield effect weapons used in mass volleys against a tight formation of enemy troops. They generally didn't destroy those troops. The intent was to disrupt formations and weaken them before they make contact with your forces or, with enough archers, hold them back from coming any closer than 60 yards or so.
If longbows were as devastating as some RUclips commenters would have us believe we wouldn't have had pike formation tactics being redeveloped in the late middle ages. Everyone would have adopted longbows. At Agincourt it wasn't a slaughter of knights by longbows. The longbows disrupted the advance of knights that were also held up by wooden stakes that prevented the archers from being ridden down by the French. The French forces were disrupted and bogged down in a crowded muddy field. Then English infantry surged forward and slaughter the French. It was a slaughter, but by spear and sword and axe and knife.
Not saying that the longbowmen were not decisive on the battlefield. They effectively blunted a massed French cavalry charge that may otherwise have swept the English from the field. The effectiveness of the archers increased at closer range and they could not be ridden down by a cavalry charge with stakes in the way (and riding around the stakes would require slowly moving through a short range kill zone in front of them. They set up the French knights for what came later. And created a reluctance for the French to engage the English in open battle.
@@iansneddon2956 Agree with just about everything you said. Worth noting that at Agincourt the french plan was actually to ride around the stakes of the archers but the english got wind of this and positioned themselves in a location where the trees to either side would prevent this.
At Agincourt I do think it is likely that the Longbow may have made the single greatest cause of casualties as knights where recorded as being hit 30-40 times with that many arrows a lucky shot is very likely, not to mention most people did not have top notch armor. However it is not a question that without the man at arms, stakes and terrain they would have never been the opportunity to do such devastating damage.
Congratulations on 100k. Your animations have only been getting better and better.
Great video.
It seems to suggest that at least at Agincourt.. the function of the bows was to unhorse the knights who then had to cross a muddy field MUCH more slowly.. and this loss in time allowed some arrows to find weakspots in armor.. and as the knights got closer, mechanical advantage in arrow speed probably caused better penetration on weaker armors. And the important point is that the French were charging MASSED bows.. so chances of weakpoint strikes on targets goes up considerably.
I'd often wondered about pure armor penetration, since armor penetration is function of delivered kinetic energy and armor angle at the point of impact. Bows, even longbows, just don't deliver a lot of kinetic energy in comparison to modern weapons. And if a kinetic projectile hits an armor piece that is at a higher angle, that improves armor performance greatly based the cross section thickness of the armor on the vector of the projectile (so roughly speaking, a projectile hitting 1" armor at a 45 degree angle improves the armor to make it act like it is 1.41" thick (length of hypotenuse of a 45/45/90 triangle with lengths of 1 for the two shorter sides).
Also love how this video explains judging sources in history. I've been aware of this for decades since I study a lot of history, but for SO many people this stuff is new information.
Bell Notification gang
production quality this high deserves >1M subs
Nearly 10% of the way there.
Even if the armour wasn't pierced it must still have had tremendous force on the body and they must have been hit dozens of times.
this is something I'm skeptical about with modern testing. I'm not always convinced that the people drawing the longbows are drawing full size, full weight war bows with well over 100 lbs of draw weight. a big arrow loosed from a war bow would hit like a truck, and would at least wear down someone wearing quality armor
Yup it’s like being shot by a rifle round, the vest might stop it and you won’t bleed out right away but your ribs might be broken and you’re out of the fight.
@@RaveN_EDMBallistic plates have come a long way.
Notably, a lot of accounts we have of arrows piercing armour come from the early to mid 14th century, whereas most tests are done against mid-15th century armour. Armour improved massively in that period, from the early partial-plate and coat of plate sets to the early full harness and finally the gothic harness as we know it. The chances are that arrows did pierce armour - but the earlier stuff that was weaker, not later stuff thats used in tests.
You make an important point here, we also need to talk about what exactly we mean when we say penetrate armor. Case in point here the 2 kings wounded at crecy where hit in the face. THe visor is one of the thinnest point of the armor, so are hands. Todd on the other hand tested the breastplate, the thickest point usually. I think that makes quite the difference. As for the historical sources, I am sure if someone gets hit between the plates and it penetrates the chain underneath they would still call that the armor being penetrated. In such a debate it is really important to make sure you make the definitions clear, or you can have a situation where both sides disagree, but both are right if you apply their own definitions to their argument, and what they actually disagree on is the definition.
I think it was here where they tested both :) and was as you said In 14th century the arrows could penetrate if distance was short enough (imagine the discipline tho)
ruclips.net/video/QmaEiyZKd0U/видео.html
But I am amazed how often this "engineering" aspect gets neglected I mean i'ts 69 years between agincourt and crecy that's a lot of time to change shit. When it comes to engineering I think we should also account for a fact that as not all balcksmiths were equall and not all of their products where the same. The quality was probably oscilating more than we are used to today (the quality standards in modern manufacturing are nothing short of a miracle tbh).
I love this video.
Whenever we are dealing with dynamic situations, there can be much nuanceto a simple question.
One example of nuance is the fact that we are told the french soldiers at Agincourt lowered their heads during the rain of arrows strongly suggests the probability of those arrows going through eye slits in the helmets, as the commentator suggested the arrows going into the week points of the armor.
I think that something of importance that needs to be taken into account is different types of armor, for example, it’s more likely for an arrow to pierce through armor like chainmail or brigandine then a solid breastplate.
Todd's tests included brigandines and mail, both provided some protection, especialy for broadhead arrows, but bodkins and the armour piercing designs made it through to some extent, perhaps not fatal, but enough to ruin your day.
This is why longbowmen at Agincourt penetrated the plates (see the link). Plate armour of this time was predominately made of steel of terrible quality, as is evident and documented by looking at surviving samples. Armour on the limbs were only from 1.2 to 1.7 mm. The side of helmets and the side of breastplates could be 1.5 mm.
They killed them at Agincourt by shooting through the side of their helmets when they were bottled up in front of the English battles. The author of Gesta Henrici Quinti, an eye witness of the battle, specifically said they drove away from the archers"… from fear of the missiles which by their very force [lit. hostility] pierced [ruptured, broke asunder, burst through] the sides and visors [lit. covers] of their helmets ..." Note, he specifically said the sides of their helmets. He then goes on and tell us they shot into their flanks when they came to a stop in front of the English men-at-arms. In a situation like this the arrows will predominately hit them in the head by enfilading. The arrows are coming down at an 11 degree angel and all the arrows shot over those in the front will strike men in the head, predominately. We also have throats and armpits as vulnerable areas. Arms also. Some chroniclers can tell us that some of the French men-at-arms just stood there, not lifting their arms to defend themselves. You might wonder why. Arrows could also penetrate the side of their breastplates where the thickness was only 1.5 mm or there about. Most of the arrows would have glanced off, but not when they hit at 20 degrees or less. Other sources can tell us that most of the prisoners were wounded when they came to Calais.
qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-103d1011937d5410ef64a028b635f09b
Very good job. Clear and understandable summary of the topic.
Also 100k subscribers incomming. Will there be any special video once you hit it?
I'd say maybe. The subscriber count suddenly went up so fast over the last couple of days that I'm not sure we'll be able to make a video in time :P
If you believe the sources, then there were 2 million Persians at Thermopylae
Oof
Modern scholars tend to reject the figures given by Herodotus and other ancient sources as unrealistic, resulting from miscalculations or exaggerations on the part of the victors.[65] Modern scholarly estimates are generally in the range 120,000-300,000.[66][b] These estimates usually come from studying the logistical capabilities of the Persians in that era, the sustainability of their respective bases of operations, and the overall manpower constraints affecting them. Whatever the real numbers were, however, it is clear that Xerxes was anxious to ensure a successful expedition by mustering an overwhelming numerical superiority by land and by sea.[67] The number of Persian troops present at Thermopylae is therefore as uncertain as the number for the total invasion force. For instance, it is unclear whether the whole Persian army marched as far as Thermopylae, or whether Xerxes left garrisons in Macedon and Thessaly
This literally used to be the estimate at wikipedia... It was fixed some time back but it took embarrassingly long.
@Alex Novak which means 300 "citizens" and their numerous helot slaves and servants who would have served as auxiliaries. In total it is estimated that roughly 1000-1500 soldiers were there.
2:04 You left out the most critical piece of information: TYPE of armor. Full plate chest armor itself was rare enough, and it was even less common for a person to have full plate armor over most of their body. On a battlefield you'd have a select few wealthy noblemen wearing plate armor, while the majority of combatants would be in metal helmets (if they're lucky) along with gambeson or even only their normal clothes. While arrows wouldn't be very effective against people lucky enough to be in plate armor, barrages of arrows would cut down everyone else around them (and people didn't really want to kill the armored noblemen in battle anyways, they were worth a lot of money alive). While the penetrating power of the English longbow is perhaps exaggerated, it's effectiveness at distance compared to standard bows and fire rate compared to crossbows cannot be denied, and the real issue with people's misconceptions regarding English longbows lies in how people imagine military forces to be armored. Shields and helmets were common; plate armor was not.
Recently found your channel, love the content especially when you cover historical battles/sieges.
Personally, I have always thought that a detailed study of the reasons for the effectiveness of the arrow barrage which opened the battle of Towton in 1461 long after Agincourt would answer a lot of questions about what well handled longbows could do against heavily armored enemies in bad weather and at extreme range, enemies who in that instance were not mounted on vulnerable horses.
Getting close to 100 000 subscribers. It’s well deserved. This is a great channel.
the long bow's bodkin point evolved to defeat chain armor not plate, it worked fairly well against chain and leather
As a late 15th century reenactor with full plate I've been shot at numerous times by archers, admittedly low poundage bows, shooting blunt arrows and (hopefully) without intent to kill me. Armour penetration is not going to be an issue. I've suffered numerous bruises from arrows hitting in places without armour, often from wierd deflections - inside of the knee etc.
Arrows can defeat armour either by penetration or bypassing it. Even a fairly minor penetration (an inch or 2) would be enough to stop or slow an advance. Plus the effect of being forced to advance visor down, then suffering repeated hits, would have had a serious impact of morale and fitness.
Knight armor in 1300s was not the same level as armor in the 1500s. Noble armor became impenetrable to all but crossbows (and some armors could withstand even that), and bows couldn't get more powerful because human strength is the limiting factor. Obviously the longbow was incredible, but mostly because they were shooting unarmored, or lightly armored targets.
I know there are some old pieces of armor that have huge gaping holes in them shot by handheld firearms or cannon. Do we have any armor from that period that shows signs of penetration by arrowheads?
no.
Yes
@@eirikronaldfossheim no we dont
@@alexmag342 Yes we do. The Sacristy door at Tewkesbury Abby is lined with armour retrieved from the battlefield by the monks. Here we can see that arrows penetrated the metal plates.
@@eirikronaldfossheim And it shows that the metal is not up to the highest standard. Which is rather common throughout the period. In particular, knights cared more about how they looked and what honourable victory they could achieve than tactics and proper protection.
If the longbow was ineffective against French armor, then Henry V would not have had 80% of his army composed of longbowmen.
Exactly, and if longbows weren't effective how did the English army (including Welsh archers) win theses battles?
Simply because - as the video notes - "effective" doesn't necessarily imply lethality.
@@VelmiVelkiZrut Exactly - mine was a rhetorical question.
To be fair, a historian in a few hundred years could easily say “soldiers wouldn’t bother using firearms if the bullets didn’t penetrate enemies’ Kevlar/vests”. As we know, that’s not true, there’s simply a lot more to it than that.
I think some inferring would suggest that most french soldiers are unarmored or lightly armored men at arms or french metallurgy at the time sucks
Im using longbow, it was effective becouse it easly broke formations of the cavalary by simply killing/hurting horses. Additionaly it easly shot anyone that is not wearing full plate armor so its like %90 of the medieval armies.
Just like today then, no weapon is meant to be useful against everything. (Short of nukes maybe).
@@michaelpettersson4919
Nukes may not be useful because they can and do destroy all assets in the impact area. So yeah, they're not immune to that categorization.
yes that's the obvious reason that all this experts have miss XD the fact that french knights tried to charge english at several battles say they were pretty confident about their "survivability" other than that armor still have weak points and random rain of arrows have still a chance hurt you and kinetic energy about the charge was a good point too. Most of french Knights at Agincourt reach the english positions but hey lost the speed of the charge due to the mess of horse falling and were in mud tired and under heavy fire probably with down visors, some were stuck between english and french reinforcements, it was a total mess. Many been killed in close combat and many ones executed aafter being capture. The mud slow down the charge and frenhc knights took many more arrows than they should have if ground was dry.
As an ex soldier, rarely do I see historians useing the tactics/deployment used to understand the effectiveness of the weapons, we might not understand how good the weapons were but they did. At Azincourt from what I have read they used the archers to narrow and bunch the French knights attack as the English had relatively few knights, it doesn't mention the French knights engaging the archers at all, rather the English archers enveloping the knights after they had expended their arrows. I also belive a great many suits of armour that the actualy French wore at Azincourt have been studied, none showed signs of having puncture damage so it would appear from all of this that the english bunching tactic was intended and worked. The same thing happened in later wars, the American civil war has a number of instances recorded, when troops are under fire, their instinct is to bunch.
It doesn’t matter if arrows could penetrate armor. There wasn’t that many armored knights on the battlefield to even matter. The vast majority were either lightly armored, or not armored at all. And it doesn’t matter how well armored you are, if you are fighting against say three or more bowman, or other skilled fighters, your goose is cooked.
How far could you march in armor? You can’t have it on all the time. It’s very expensive. I imagine knights with armor are a lot like present day upper level officers. Upper level officers and knights are the most educated on the battlefield and wrote the history afterward. They also think that it’s all about them, but enlisted and NCOs do the heavy lifting, and killing. And, well, dying.
Can we at least all agree that the longbow uses arrows?
Nope we believe long bows shot harpoons
@@lordcommissar7813 No, they used swords as arrows!
You are all wrong, they shot children from the long bows
The longbow shot longs, which is why they called it that.
It really depends on what specific period of the medieval era we’re talking about. How both armor, arrows, etc were made can vary on where we are in history. I personally feel like people overestimate both armor and the English longbows of the time either way.
Either way, there is statistics that a lot of people seem to overlook. For example, most soldiers on the battlefield could not afford a full set of plate, usually only mainly wearing at most a chestplate, etc. Not only that, but a majority of plate armor of the time was not tempered at all, being mainly composed of medium carbon, mild steel. Sure there was some hi carbon tempered armor of the time, but since it was an expensive and experimental process of the time only the wealthiest elite really got access to it.
There’s also the matter of the English longbow itself, which for all intents and purposes was a very plain, basic bow design, which may be why it needed to be so big to have an impactful draw weight. In fact supposedly the mongol composite bow was on average stronger than an English longbow despite being half the size, but take that with a grain of salt since different sources disagree on the average draw weight of both the English longbow and the Mongolian composite, with one site I found claiming the Mongolian was twice as strong. Either way, assuming both are comparable it’s still not really looking good for the English longbow in terms of efficient design.
Back to armor, people don’t seem to remember that armor in design isn’t made to outright stop a blow from an attack but deflect it, reducing the energy of impact significantly. At most armor was only a few milimeters thick, a well placed, direct impact from a basic spear could be enough to puncture it in most cases. even later medieval armored cavalry couldn’t really do much to defend against a formation of pikemen. I don’t see why a well placed arrow from a well built bow couldn’t penetrate 2 or so millimetres of mild steel.
A bow is only as good as the archer though. It’s probably really hard to make a fair, modern test on this subject since a medieval longbowman was essentially raised into their profession at an early age, modern people who could match the average longbowman in skill, experience, and fitness at once are few and far between.
can you link me to your sources for the fact that all armourpieces were only 2-3mm in thickness?
Todds test used medium carbon unhardened steel and it couldnt even pierce the armor.
Im guessing low carbon steel unhardened would just get pierced but not enough to do any damage to the wearer ..
Im curious what would happen to improperly hardened (Over hardened) piece of high carbon steel and not tempered , what sort of thing would happen , i bet the arrow would break together with the chunk of the armor that was not tempered and everything would dig into the wearer
The weakest 'straight' bow in medieval period required 80pounds to pull. On a english sunken ship which was found 'recently' were dozens of bows and many of them required about 160pounds to pull, ergo- results in penetrating anything may differ
Thus every single one of the archer skeleton have deformation marks and cracks on the shoulder bones
The mary rose
The injuries to Philip and David were in the face. Very probable that their visors were up at the time, it's not easy to get an overview of the field with a visor down.
Great analysis this is exactly what many people don’t think about when they consider how people communicate events taking place. They don’t have to be accurate in the literal sense to be considered truthful. If some of the accounts are using literary devices.
All the other problems and possibilities you mentioned just illustrate the work it takes to get at the meaning. One thing is certain the English deployed longbows, the French feared them and they were effective.
I do agree with the idea that plate armor was highly resistant to bows, but still had enough gaps in the armor to not be immune to arrow volleys. I also agree that the majority of an army would not have high-quality plate armor or shields, and so an arrow volley aimed at the army in general would still do damage--- even if arrows aimed at a unit of heavy knights would be less effective.
It does have to be noted that heavy crossbows and proto-muskets are consistently described as having far superior armor penetration than a bow, enough to make an impact even on the late medieval and early renaissance battlefield--- when plate armor was at its peak in terms of both metal quality, design, and projectile deflection (like with sloped armor designs, most famously shown by the morion helmet).
For crossbow, the common “heavy” 1200ib steel crossbow provide as much jouls as high power longbows. Due to their show draw distance and inefficient power transfer of spring steel. But handguns, yeah, if they work and didn’t blow up and hit the target , as in early 15 cent armor ? High chance of going through , excluding some unlucky glance off etc
Historical sources say that the English longbowman used bows with a 100 pound draw or even 110 pound draws. Some of those who tested long bows used 80 or 85 pound draws because that was more 'realistic'. Big difference in penetrating power.
In todd's test they used a 160 pound bow
What I'm tired of is people thinking of the Longbows as guns, thus conceptualizing it as a super accurate rapid fire weapon while ignoring all of the demanding physical requirements.
First video I've seen from this channel, but I really enjoyed the presentation of the arguments for both sides. It was very informative and balanced
Seems like it has less to do with the armor itself but to what degree the body was covered by it. I haven't seen evidence that arrows can penetrate armor itself but it doesn't have to in order to kill a knight. With enough volleys and enough arrows, the areas not covered by full armor would be hit. So sources saying they are shooting and killing armored knights and the people doing tests on full breast plate arent really disagreeing. For example, if Knights are truging through mud, their arms might be raised high above the mud line so they can move forward, exposing their more vulnerable sides/under arm rendering the rest of their plate useless if struck. They knew they even lifting their visor to look up was deadly, that would go for any part of the body not covered in the plate itself under constant volley.
English Longbow-men were used in Portugal, at the battle of Aljubarrota. They helped Portuguese against the Spanish army, and their heavy-armored cavalry.
Arrows shot from longbows with bodkin heads, against armored targets that are charging in horse can seriously make a dent. If hitting the helmets, they can dismount a knight. If the arrows hit the horse, it's a fall inside the fray and bloody mud. Any dagger can slay a knight in there.
Portuguese also used careful advantage of terrain and obstacles against cavalry.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aljubarrota#Portuguese_dispositions
Bodkin arrows where dedigned to defeat mail. For plate to be penetrated I would assume that the armor was of an inferior quality.
@@michaelpettersson4919 yeah it was the inferior quality called "mail". There is basically no evidence that all the French at Agincourt were uniformly in steel plate. That's the falsified assumption here.
@@jasoncawley7512 I was thinking of inferior quality plate that also existed but yes, plenty of warriors where still using mail at the time, whatever the quality was good or not. A good quality mail may be weak against projectiles but still a good choice for melee combat for someone unable to afford plate armor. In practice many probably used a mixed armor with plate pieces added when when they could afford (or loot) them. The real loosers however would those with nothing but a gambeson for protection.
Nice comment
Let's be honest we fall way too often for the binary absolutist falacy :"Why use longbows if plate armour couldn't be penetrated?" and "Why use plate if it can be pierced by longbows?"
Simple, a Ferrari is faster than a Lamborghini sure, but you (like most average schmucks) drive a Volkswagen and get overtaken by both.
High quality full plate was amazing but you had about 10% of your troops equipted with it. Everyone else wore partial plate with mail, helmet and cuirass with or without mail or just a helmet and a mail shirt. Therefore the large majority of troops were very much at risk of being wounded if not killed by longbowmen.
Using the beheading of "Monsieur Veto" as an example for the "veto power" (of the source) amused me a little bit.
If a medieval source says that the arrows pierced men and armor, we have to consider that in the literary style of the time, it wouldn't be different from a statement like saying that one side smote the other. We understand that when it is said that someone or some group smote, that they did not literally hold them down and bludgeon them with a mace. But since we have moved away from literary language and toward literal language, we might miss that the same style of expression was used constantly until modern times. And if they did mean that armor was penetrated, whose armor, what kind and where? Clearly Marshal Boucicault could not have reached the English line while leading the French attack at Agincourt if a longbow could make short work of a knight's armor at the time.
It's also a mistake to look at Agincourt as a typical example of the employment of missiles on a medieval battlefield. The positioning of the English troops and the muddy conditions significantly prolonged the period of time that the English had to shoot before contact, and created a converging field of barrage. The French knights wore less leg armor than the English knights since their equipment was economized to increase their effectiveness on horseback. That meant that with so many missiles flying from different directions, it's not implausible that many of the wounds that were suffered by attacking French knights would have been to weak points in their armor only covered by mail. As lethal as a bow is to an unarmored body, the advantage of aiming at weak points is described as far back as Homer, which would indicate the effectiveness of the comparatively primitive armors of antiquity.
From a tactical standpoint, even if one wore no armor at all, an arrow can still be defeated by a wooden board. That means that under normal conditions, the role of a archery on foot in a field battle could have normally lasted no more than a question of the seconds it took for on side to close the gap and engage hand to hand. The majority of examples of armies facing off in a duel of firepower at the start of the battle appear to be from civil wars in England itself. Either this was because their commanders had supreme confidence in their longbows or because it was better to sacrifice many more lightly armored archers than fewer men at arms attacking under barrage. The effect of archery was that an attack could lose its momentum, cohesion and aggression before making contact, because even if casualties were relatively light, the troops would not be fresh after the unpleasant experience of a high intensity arrow barrage, having expending extra energy holding up their shields and trying to avoid unpleasant if non lethal arrow strikes to their armor.
As an avid archer myself, you would not target an enemy' directly to the front, as with modern armor you atack from the side where the armor is weaker. Archers were usually placed on the flanks to target the attacking troops on the opposite side of the field so to be at the greatest angle possible to the enemy's armor.
I think in case of cuirass and other plate armor the difference between front and side is much smaller than in modern tank armor. After watching several of Tod's videos, I'm convinced bows could not have penetrated plate armor from any angle, not even close. It would make a small dent and that's it. The key must have been to hit unarmored spots and joints, which even the best armor had due to mobility needs.
@@pultsari9036 Yes you are right, however those week less protected points are more plentiful on the sides of both man and horse, especially the horse. As in hunting with the bow, it is much easier to hit the broad side of the prey than the front. Also if a knight were to skimp on his armor due to cost it would most likely be on the mounts flank. Armor was also contured to deflect blows from the front, not so much from the side. In warfare any advantage however slight can save the day.
Imagine 5000 archers loosing arrows with AP points at a rate of fire of maybe....say, 20/minute. That's 100,000 arrows per minute. Henry supposedly had about 5-6000 archers at Agincourt, right?
Now, the French charge immediately got bogged down in the slippery ground and became squeezed together, or so the reports go. A heavy horse charge would have travelled at a speed of possibly 22mph - probably no faster. These were not horse bred for speed or endurance like the Arabians. On bad ground, and with other horses crowding in, they would have been down to maybe 10mph or less.
At maybe 275 yards, the English would have begun volley fire at high angles, thus explaining why the knights put their faces down: to present the pointed crown of their helmets and shed the energy of the steeply angled arrows. An arrow to the visor could have jammed it or maybe penetrated enough to hit the face. Any open area would be in jeopardy, and a wound is still a casualty, with that man being likely out of the fight.
100,000 arrows per minute. 20 per archer, with probably at least 100 available to each man - I don't know, but logic would say so.
So, to me, the issue isn't whether an arrow can penetrate the armor of a medieval knight, but rather, how could 100,000 or maybe 500,000 arrows NOT penetrate ENOUGH areas of un-protected rider or armed squire to devastate the charge.
Now, what about the horses? War horse were bred and trained to do what no other horse will do under the horrific conditions of battle, but, they still will not commit suicide. It took the cruelest form of training and spurs to get a horse to press through a line of shouting screaming hacking slashing stabbing men. Horses simply will not allow themselves to be skewered by long sharp things, They know what those mean. A horse has only ONE option for survival, and that's flight.
Imagine those arrows, falling among men on horses, some only partially armored, all crowded and slowed, unable to get away and flee. All being struck by arrows, many would have been struck several times if the arrow count theory holds. The panic and terror must have been epic, as the horses bolted, bucked in agony, and attempted to jump over other horses to get away. If anyone wants to see what a horse do when a herd is trapped, go watch some videos of a mustang round up as they are corralled and forced into crowded conditions with no place to go. They'll often go straight up.
So, my theory is that whether or not arrows can penetrate every time and make a clean kill is irrelevant. The shock and confusion was enough. The battlefield conditions did the rest at Agincourt.
I've always thought the main benefit of the longbow versus armour was the sheer blunt force of the impact. Imagine a hail of 3000 arrows descending upon you as you ride towards their line. I can't imagine the force of the impact. It may not go through the armour in most cases but it could leave you in a very bad way. It's no surprise to me that at agincourt the English infantry were able to beat their French counterparts after they'd had to suffer the barrage of longbow fire in the mud
No, the blunt force of impact from an arrow to a man in solid armor is absolutely nothing. Also, there were only 1000 French on horseback, 11000 were on foot.
@@jasoncawley7512 Let him dream.
During the making of The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1937, extras and bit players wore a protection made of Bolsa wood over metal plates were actually shot by a professional archer. It doesn't say what that was like for them, but I think it's telling that they got $150 per arrow hit. For the late 30s that's a hell of a lot of money. Probably about $2000 in today's money.
@@juanbelmonte8920 I'm an archer myself. My bow is enough to mortally wound a bear let alone a man. Why would a bow with an extra 100lb in draw weight not leave a man badly bruised or at the very least knock the wind out of him? And that's when stationary... Imagine charging on horseback into a hail of these things. There's a reason why it worked on the battlefield
@@Joker-yw9hl It worked, because it killed the horses. Man the knights didnt wear shield for something, they neednt.
"Historians with more moderate views on this issue"
As apposed to the historians with a more "radical" view on the issue, like the English having full auto explosive ordnance longbows or the French becoming impervious and any and all damage and also immune to disease and bad hair days with their armor on. I would much like to pick the brain of a "radical historian", as their version of history sounds quite interesting. kek
interestingly i have this idea (however wrong ) that woke historians are trying to diminish any English success because they hate us
This is some quality research !
the thing about historical recreations we need to remember is why we are doing them.
We know WHAT happened - both English and French sources explicitly state that English longbow archers killed French armoured knights (sinon, je pense qu'il est probable que j'écrirais dans une autre langue).
The purpose of recreations is not to determine whether what already happened was possible or not, it is to determine HOW it happened.
Just that the archers killed the knights doesn't automatically mean the arrows pierced the plate armor. They may have, but given the sheer volume of arrows raining down on the French and the fact that armor gaps did exist, it's not hard to believe a lot of casualties may have come from arrows going through the visor, into the shoulder, groin (especially horrible to think about), etc.
@@andrewberry7117 yes, how it happened
This is the best summary on the debate so far.
Were longbows effective? Yes they were however this effectiveness has little to no relation to the discussion on their ability to penetrate 15th century armour.
Do you want to volunteer to be shot with a 150lb warbow while wearing some steel plate? No? Theres your answer. It still breaks your ribs
@@chroma6947 if it would break your ribs you are out of the game for about 6 weeks which is long enough to make you ineffective as a soldier for the length of time you need to get back on your feet and get your strength back I speak from experience it is very nasty and if you are really unfortunate you will puncture a lung and that in a time without adequate pain relief could kill you by drowning yourself on your own snot
everyone know they have pierce attack of 6 and after spending 850 food and gold they have 7 pierce attack of 7
Yeah and they were fighting against knights, not paladins.
it's that 12 range in imperial age that really does it.
Eleven
shit
No mention of the experiments where a small amount of clay (as found in pouches amongst the possessions of archers from the time) is applied to the head of the arrow and found to prevent the arrow from glancing off the armour as readily?
Colin Mill I knew about this also, they also looked for some shit into which to stand their arrows prior to firing them , a good dollop of shit had a similar slightly lesser effect than the clay had , but the archers knew if the arrow hit flesh ? the it would infect the ounces opponent , early chemical,warfare .it is rather funny that folk make films about subjects and miss out important facts, such as most of these bowmen were actually Welsh ! they trained from childhood .
@@pauls3204 Yes, my daughter was into the English longbow and collected all manner of information from other traditionalists. The distortions of the skeletons of the archers suggests they were pulling significantly heavier bows than most if not all modern archers. I'm always mindful that in looking at old technologies we overlook the possibility that vital aspects were passed down from generation to generation but lost before literacy was common amongst those who possessed the knowledge. There is a similar question about the English scythe that in recent times has been seen as vastly inferior to the Austrian scythe. However, I believe the sharpening technique for the English scythe historically uses only a course stone that left the scythe with a fine saw-tooth edge and not the knife-like edge of the Austrian scythe. Sharpening the English scythe as if it was an Austrian one seems to be part of the issue. Personally, I can't believe that a country used to importing bow staves would resist importing scythes if they conferred significant advantage in such a fundamental task as harvesting! Sadly, we may never know the truth. Much of what I gleaned about the English scythe came from an old man, now deceased, who learned as a child from a scythes-man who was at that time in late old age. Such verbal histories are few.
😂
I love both your’s and Todds’ channel!
Great video. In terms of the efficacy of bows, I think one thing that's seriously underestimated is the wood of the shaft - upon which will depend its flexibility and so also its shock absorption. An arrow that flexes on impact will have far far less efficient sectional density compared to a more rigid one. And to test this, one really needs to know precisely the wood employed, harvesting techniques, and growing conditions of contemporary arrow makers - and we can probably only approach an approximation. To my mind, there's likely as big a difference between the timber being used by modern arrow makers and that of their mediaeval peers, as there is between that used by makers of modern furniture, windows, etc. and their historical counterparts. Put simply, modern timber is generally fast-grown, fast-matured, and soft. There would also of course be as wide a variation in quality of arrows used at Crécy etc. as there was in quality of armour. Shoot enough arrows, and you probably get the desired effect where the best arrows meet with the worst armour.
“Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary evidence”
But there is no really extraordinary claim here, both positions are believable. We are not in some conspiracy theory or scientifical theory which destroy almost all our knowledge on the subject.
The first evidence is the shaft of the arrow that does not withstand the impact with an armor. You can also use a Mongolian bow twice as good as an English one, the result is the same.
@@ciprianganea759 A mongolian bow is not twice as good as a longbow or even better, the lbs is usually comparable its is just smaller so more adapted to shot from a horse, and its short size comes with a disavantage, it made it more sensible when you shoot and so less precise, and also less adapted to shoot heavy arrows (arrows with better penetration power), if you want to pierce a protection you should definitively take a longbow.
@@niels8143 Just some facts, you decide: archeryhistorian.com/mongolian-bow-vs-english-longbow-advantages-and-drawbacks/ . Good to know that modern tests have shown that recurve bows are more effective, as well as those made of composite materials. The bows in Eastern Europe and Asia have been recurved for at least 2000 years and have been made of composite materials for 1000 years. When the English returned from the Crusades, they also came with recurve bows. Do you really think that the English nobles with experience in fighting were so stupid as to leave their good bows and buy some more inefficient bows at prices 5-10 times higher? (Eastern bows were recurve made of animal horn, wood, sturgeon glue and sometimes silk, the long English bow was made of wood from the Iberian Peninsula and rope).
@@ciprianganea759 I don't see in what you source contradict what i said. It said it itself " The English bowmen of the Hundred Year’s War fought with France, showered the French nights with heavy, armor piercing arrows. The Mongol’s arrows were intended to be used on more lightly armored adversaries." The mongol bow has usually a better range (the only thing i didn't say) and is smaller, and so more suited to shot mounted on target poorly protected when the longbow can shoot heavier arrows with good penetration power and has more precision and so is more suited for foot archers against heavily protected target.
What of kind of senseless demonstration your anecdote is supposed to be ? First, the arc turquois (i don't know how you call that in english) wasn't the same bow than the mongol one, the composite and curved bow are not all the same. Secondely yeah english nobles returned from the crusade with recurve bows, and so ? Did these bows became the usual standard bow in England ? No. Do you think the english were so stupid to not use a better bow once they put their hands on it ? The longbow was more adapted to their style of warfare and so it became the stantard bow in england, as much as the composite bow was more adapted to the mongol's style of warfare ,adn so it became their standard bow.
Please a video of the Siege of Malta and the first Siege of Vienna
He do a siege of Vienna.
There is no point in doing that because king and generals have already covered those sieges
mate on that video on tods workshop he says that he is not using a full heavy draw longbow that has a full 10 stone draw. thus it was the second bow down from that one. he could'nt draw it.
This has always been one of my favorite discussions, mostly because the passion involved. I figure the truth is a bit like with Kevlar armor and other bullet resistant armor. Can a bullet go through Kevlar?, depends on a lot of things like distance to target, location of shot, caliber of the firearm, and so on.
I agree. On one side we have those who have armour at heart. They ignore the written accounts explicitly saying that arrows penetrated, orchestrate tests against armour made of modern steel and claim that arrows can't penetrate.
On the other hand we have those who care about the scientific method, how evidence is corroborated and the truth.
I don't get the confusion
Yeah the armor stops one arrow, but if you sent 100 arrows at someone, it only takes 2-3 of them getting through to disable or kill
"Everybody quarrels over the English longbow." Ey, I see what you did there.
I didn't. What did I miss?
@@shanerooney7288 quarrel is another name for a crossbow bolt. Not exactly an arrow, but similar...
@@pmurnion not at Simular
And interesting way of looking at this debate. I might have to reconsider some of my views on the Longbow. The things one learns everyday.
I think the answer is both.
The armor must have worked, or as in the time of muskery they would have stopped wearing it.
Long bows must have worked or they would have stopped using them.
My theory is similar to the moderate view but more conservative, I think the tods workshop example is the best case with high quality armor of the time as mentioned in tods video the armor was medium carbon steel, not mild steel if I remember correctly. but I think at least a sizeable amount of man at arms Armor was of lower cheaper quality, I have seen tests of reproduction cuirass armor that has been pierced, yet the penetration was only 1-3cm at most thus the underlayers of mail and padding would stop the arrow. But it could potentially penetrate deep enough to cause shallow wounds at the thinner areas of Armor like the arms and legs and likely bruises and I think this would debilitate and demoralise the man at arms and greatly reduce his fighting ability when reaching the English knights, thus resulting in them deciding to retreat. I don't think the arrows would have torn through them like in movies but I also don't think they'd be completely ineffective either.
I love that there is some nuance here rather than the usual blank assertions that armour will defeat longbows and that's it. The fact of the matter was that the longbow was effective in the field where good armour was present and the mystery lies in how it was effective. Most modern tests are straight shots to the breastplate (thickest armour), but in the reality of battle an entire suit would be tested. The sheer number of arrows output by thousands of longbowmen would saturate the target- my guess is that most attacking knights would take several arrow hits at least. With such a rate of hits it's a dice roll whether you get hit through the visor, on the arm or some other weak point. Not even going into the disorientation and impact energy of hits taken on the armour.