The Fog Of War

[Mayerling]

Hi all,

The problem I have always had about Agincourt is whether it was a real demonstration of Henry V's military abilities or a fluke. The victory led to a break in the fighting, and to Henry's marriage to the daughter of the King of France, and then the birth of their son (who became Henry VI), but Henry won Agincourt in 1415 and was dead by 1422. There was no real military follow up (no "Jena to follow Austerlitz" like Napoleon had), so we have to just accept the result of the campaign Henry V had to the Agincourt victory.

What would have been interesting would have been Henry living until the 1430s and facing Joan of Arc. That would have tested military leadership against military leadership.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Scorpio



Well so Shakespeare said, (hence my quip), but he never embroidered did he?

All the best

Dave

Hi Dave,

I don't think any samples of Master Will's embroidery or sewing exist today. He probably left that to Ann Hathaway and their daughters.

Jeff

[Scorpio]

This is why the English archers did not run, when approached by French cavalry.

[Phil H]

Not sure how your post relates to mine, Scorpio?

Phil

[Scorpio]

On "knights" v infantry: I once talked to a professional re-enactor about this. he had been engaged in some quite large scale (I think TV) re-enactment, being an archer facing a charge by mounted men at arms. He said it was the psychological factors that tend to be forgotten - the moment all the visors came down, the moment the lances were put into rest, the moment the horses went from walk to trot, trot to trot to canter etc. Even when there was minimal risk, he said his mind was telling him to RUN!

On the strength needed to pull a long-bow: Have they not found from bodies dug up at places like Towton that C14th and C15th archers were physically deformed, one arm/shoulder being much more heavily developed than the other?

Phil

Various anti cavalry devices were developed during the middle ages; Robert the Bruce's forces made good use of caltrops: a multi pronged piece of metal cast upon the floor, and shallow ditches. The English used a hedge of stakes thrust into the ground. Incidentally, many of the stakes at Agincourt fell flat due to the waterlogged soil.

[Steve S]

All the above factors...........

[Phil H]

The two recentish books on Agincourt are:

Juliet Barker: "Agincourt: The King + The Campaign + The Battle" (Abacus 2006)

Anne Curry: "Agincourt: A New History" (Tempus 2006) - this is the one that looks again at the numbers involved and is more than a little revisionist. It was highly thought of when published.

Phil

[Phil H]

On "knights" v infantry: I once talked to a professional re-enactor about this. he had been engaged in some quite large scale (I think TV) re-enactment, being an archer facing a charge by mounted men at arms. He said it was the psychological factors that tend to be forgotten - the moment all the visors came down, the moment the lances were put into rest, the moment the horses went from walk to trot, trot to trot to canter etc. Even when there was minimal risk, he said his mind was telling him to RUN!

On the strength needed to pull a long-bow: Have they not found from bodies dug up at places like Towton that C14th and C15th archers were physically deformed, one arm/shoulder being much more heavily developed than the other?

Phil

[Damaso Marte]

I am not particularly familiar with the Hundred Years War, but there is a long tradition in European warfare of heavy cavalry proving ineffective against lighter, unmounted, and disciplined troops. Disciplined being the most important word there.

If the sight of a heavily-armored man on horseback charging directly towards you does not cause you to panic or break formation, your odds are actually pretty good.

[Graham]

It so happens that I know the terrain of what is now considered (by Glenn Foard et al at Leicester University) the actual terrain of Bosworth rather well....I think that Richard did end up stuck in a marsh, and that that marsh is located on the east side of Fenn Lane. Drop me a PM some time, maybe?

Re: longbowmen, yes, it was possible that by shooting in an arc that some arrows may have found a target; it is very likely that some archers were thus employed. However, the English longbow was, and still is, an extremely accurate weapon up to around 300 yards in the hands of an expert, and a good archer in the 15th/16th centuries could certainly be reasonably confident in hitting his target at up to such a range. There is much debate regarding the actual accuracy of early musketry, but the current thinking is that even with a firearm such as a smoothbore matchlock the available accuracy, to a reasonably well-trained marksman, was surprisingly high at relatively short range. Long range aimed shots came only with the rifle, and even then only with the introduction of the Minie rifle in the 1850's.

I have actually used a longbow, and I discovered the following:

1] even though I am 6'4" tall and hairy and macho and horrible with it, there is no way I could fully draw a 72" longbow having a draw-weight of even 100lb in order to hold and aim an accurate shot with a 36" clothyard arrow. Further to finds on the Mary Rose, it seems that some longbows of that era possessed draw-weights of up to and over 150lb.

2] I have witnessed experienced longbowmen hit a 'gold' (approx. 8" diameter) aimed at well over 100 yards. Had that 'gold' been a Frenchman on Agincourt field, he'd have been a goner.

There is a story that a mounted knight at a medieval English battle was struck by a clothyard arrow in his armoured thigh; the arrow went through his thigh and also his horse, killing it stone dead, and was lodged in his opposite thigh. How they separated man and horse is not recorded.

Graham

[Phil H]

If the marsh was where Richard ended up. As I'm sure you know, the location of the Bosworth battlefield is now being reviewed!

On the wider poit of archers, they did not need to aim - by firing up, the arrows fell in a deadly rain.

Phil

[Graham]

The English had to fight in the mud also,even if they were mostly archers.

Yes, but they held a line and allowed the French to charge at them, which is apparently what the French liked to do, thinking as they did that charging at your enemy was chivalrous and glorious. War-horses did tend to get stuck in the mud - reference Richard III in the famous marsh at Bosworth.

Graham

[Scorpio]

The English had to fight in the mud also,even if they were mostly archers.

[Graham]

According to the actor Robert Hardy (he of All Creatures Great And Small fame, and an acknowledged expert in the use of the longbow in war), a properly trained and practised archer could loose (not 'fire' - a bow is not 'fired') between 10 and 16 arrows a minute. These would be aimed shots, and would be reasonably accurate at ranges up to 300 yards. The type of arrow depended upon the target. Hardy said that at Agincourt the English archers tended to aim for the horses of the French knights and cavalry, as a captured nobleman would be worth a groat or two in ransom. However, the archers also used the deadly 'bodkin' arrow, designed to penetrate plate armour. So if there were 3000 archers at Agincourt, each loosing a average of say 13 arrows a minute, that would equate to 39000 arrows a minute giving the French something to penser about. Devastating, and not seen again until the invention of the machine-gun. By the way, I think it was estimated, from the findings of the wreck of the Mary Rose, that a longbowman had a store of around 120 arrows, so enough for about 10 minutes concentrated shooting.

I did visit the field of Agincourt a few years ago. It's not all that impressive, just a flat expanse of farmland, but the day I was there it was absolutely pi**ing down, and so muddy it was trying to suck my shoes off; so if the mounted pride of France, weighed down as they would be with armour, got stuck in the mud, then no wonder. Some other historian - not Hardy - said that had the weather been dry and sunny at Agincourt, then things might have gone the other way.

[Scorpio]

Well they do say that the really devastating power of the English/Welsh Longbowmen wasn't their accuracy, (though at close enough range they could be), but their ability to put so many arrows in the air at once...a skilled man could fire off six arrows in a minute...

Plus of course, didn't I read somewhere the French horsemen were forced to dismount because of the mud and in their heavy armour plod through the same,under heavy fire, and being fairly well exhausted before they reached Henry's men?

All the best

Dave

I think ten shots per minute was expected from the Archers at Agincourt.
They would have ran out of arrows after 15 to 20 minutes.