Historical battle

[archangel]

Good to see so much great discussion generated from one programme!

Despite the shortcomings of the production ... and the lunacy of the woman handling documents with her bare hands ... it WAS GREAT to see a nice touch. (What appeared to be) the depiction of traditional arrows - fletched with goose feathers, neatly thread-tied, meant that SOMEONE with an eye for authenticity wanted to make them look like the real deal.

I agree with the remarks about the so-called armour penetration - surely they could have set up a suit subsitute at 150 metres and let rip. The combined mass of a full-flighted English shaft with a solid bodkin head would certainly have punched through curved steel armour with nothing more than a human body inside it. Vastly different from a plate of steel sitting on a solid lab bench.

[gilnockie]

With regard to the bodkin point deforming, I suspect that it happened because of the mass under the steel plate. I have seen high speed film of a bodkin point forcing its way through the modern equivalent of plate armour and it did so in a series of pulses. At least half the arrow penetrated the plate.

The demonstration on the program was not an accurate portrayal of how a bodkin behaves.

[GrahameA]

Good Morning All

A quote from the UK Telegraph from a review of "The Great Warbow".

In modern times it has become fashionable to question whether the potency of the longbow is romance rather than fact. Was it really possible that at Agincourt on October 25, 1415, a force of 5,000 archers, supported by just 1,000 men at arms, routed a four-fold superior force, many of them knights in armour? Tests with modern bows show arrows don't pierce steel: but such tests don't represent the real bows or the men who fired them. The power of a bow is measured in its draw-weight, and these days few men can pull a bow above 80lb. Bows recovered from the Tudor warship Mary Rose show a draw-weight of up to 180lb, and skeletons retrieved from the wreck show spinal distortions, indicating just what it took to be a proper archer.

If anyone would like to read the review:

http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/ma ... omain.html

[Dennis La Varenne]

Saul, et al.,

I watched the flamin' show too and it left me with that nagging . . . "Hang on a minute . . " reaction all the way through it.

I always understood that curved plate evolved in part because of the use of archery as artillery. The English archers were well known mercenaries and made a good living fighting for whomever paid well. This does not take anything away from Saul's proposition that the same armour served very well in deflecting blows. Remember, the English archers also carried mauls as well as swords and poniards for the close in stuff.

I would be less than surprised to find that English archers faced off against each other in different European tiffs.

In regard to the puncture ability of the English bodkin, they found one on the old battlefield, tested it and presumed that it was typical of all the tens of thousands shot in the opening stages of that battle. Good grief!!!!! Equipment standards weren't anything like the quality of today.

It beggars belief that the Poms would not have tried and used better metallurgical techniques on their bodkins as armour improved. It wasn't only the French who used the newer steel plate for their armour. In the same era, the English had a well practised delectation for lethal internecine quarrels between the various contenders for their throne and they shot the **** out of each other during them.

I just cannot believe that they did not know all about how to punch holes in armour at a distance. It was one of their favourite pastimes practiced and refined on each other far more than on the French.

The proposition of that show that crowd panic played a big part is not unreasonable AFTER the forward momentum of the massed infantry was brought to an abrupt stop by the English artillery. The main force of French knights dismounted and walked front on toward the English line, remember? They knew quite well what arrow shot did to horses. That show seemed to leave that part out.

The French were bottlenecked very badly and when those at the front tried to flee, they simply could not against those still going forward and who were also pressing and being pressed against each other from behind.

I think that this show gets our thumbs down from an historical point of view. I wonder if the others were as bad. It is good to have our ideas challenged, but not with half-baked absurdities.

The business of the post-battle slaughter I have always understood to be a normal and routine occurrence on all sides. Medical treatment was not dealt out to the grunts - only the tin hats who had a bit of money. Those worth ransoming were taken captive and their armour and kit sold off by the grunts to captured it.

Donald Featherstone and Robert Hardy both seemed to be under the impression from their research that French cavalry attempted to get around the English position and attack them through their baggage train. That would have put them in serious jeopardy and I can understand why Harry did his prisoners in. In the middle of a stoush, you just could not take the risk and jeopardise the lives of all your men for the sake of a few knights.

They were not disarmed as the custom of the day went once captured. So you cannot tell me that those blokes wouldn't have laid into the English if their cavalry broke through.

Dennis La Varenne

PS: As an aside, that bloke who did the shooting demos in the 'doco' could hardly draw his bow at all. I did not see him do any better than 3/4 draw and his arrows came out like a salmon pushing upstream. I don't wonder he couldn't get any penetration. Did anyone else notice this????

[tracker]

On foxtel the other night there was an interesting show about longbows. It had some footage of the testing to destruction of some of the bows from the mary rose. Poundage was between 150 and 180 pounds at full draw. There was also some discussion on the skeletal deformities that the archer's from that time suffered from.

Two fellas with 90 pound yew bows tried a variety of different bodkin style points against chain mail and plate armour. The chain offered very little protection against long bodkin points. The plate did much better. One thing they showed was that the short bodkin points performed much better on large sheets of plate armour rather than small individual bits of armour. They were penetrating the sheet but against a curved bit of neck armour they were bouncing straight off.

Another interesting thing was some written evidence indicating that up to a third of the arrows at Agincourt may have been tipped with those large divided swallowtail heads. They called them "horse droppers".

The best performing bows against armour in the show were LARGE crossbows around 300 pounds. The bolts out of those were smashing into everything like butter.

Mick.

[hubris]

his arrows came out like a salmon pushing upstream.

hahaha... like the time I accidently fired one of my arrows out of my wifes 35lb bow... what the!!?!

[Dennis La Varenne]

Saul,

We shoot bows and fire guns. (See Anglo-Saxon - scutan, (or) scotan, v.t. to shoot, as in archery.)

Dennis La Varenne

[hubris]

hahah... you're almost as bad as my wife!!!

[rapsod]

Does anybody know rules for longbow making? I know 5 rules but I need last one 6th rule (that rule them all).

First rule: limb width : limb thick = 8 : 5

Second rule: the unstrung bow is height as archer is plus 4 fingers

Third rule: Brice height is 1/12 of height.

Fourth rule: Bow's width-es part is handle.

Fifth rule: crossection of limbs must be D shaped.

Sixth rule: relation between size of central part of bow and limb end (quantity of taper)? This is big problem. Why? The limb must work in whole lenght. If end is too thin it will bent more at the end of limb and that is not good. If end is too thick it bent more at handle and that is also not good. See the problem???

[GrahameA]

Rapsod

I am unsure if their is a 6th rule. The are normally tapered by eye so they bend full compass/

[rapsod]

There must be 6th rule. Why? Because there is 5 : 8 rule and all other rules. This is STANDARD. I think that there is 6th rule. The question is can you call any bow longbow? Well you can if it is very long bow. But can you call it ENGLISH LONGBOW? No, because it doesn't fallow all 6 rules. I think that this 6 rules was basic for making english war longbow. I think that was few rules for arrow either.

[woody]

To test a steel bodkin pointed arrow such as was used at the battle of Cressy, I borrowed a shirt of chain armor from the Museum, a beautiful specimen made in Damascus in the 15th Century. It weighed twenty-five pounds and was in perfect condition. One of the attendants in the Museum offered to put it on and allow me to shoot at him. Fortunately, I declined his proffered services and put it on a wooden box, padded with burlap to represent clothing.

Indoors at a distance of seven yards, I discharged an arrow at it with such force that sparks flew from the links of steel as from a forge. The bodkin point and shaft went through the thickest portion of the back, penetrated an inch of wood and bulged out the opposite side of the armor shirt. The attendant turned a pale green. An arrow of this type can be shot about two hundred yards, and would be deadly up to the full limit of its flight.

A quote from Hunting with the bow and arrow, by Saxton Pope

I reckon Saxton Pope thinks the show was a load of rubbish too