How did the English win at Agincourt ?

[bigdummy]

Well if we accept that the French army contained around 10,000 fighting men (which is fairly conservative I think), then I think it is fair to say that only about 30% of them could really have been wearing full plate armour? I find it hard to believe that the French could field more than a few thousand men wearing full plate harness. If you look at German and Italian tomb effigies from this time it is surprising that some still show a considerable amount of exposed mail armour, and that is on the tombs of comparably wealthy men at arms. There were plenty of poor men at arms who could not afford tomb monuments... what must they have been wearing? A mixture of old mail and coats of plates I should think. Plenty of places for arrows to stick there.

If we now fast forward to the mid-15thC you have a far higher percentage of men at arms in high quality all-encompassing plate, coupled with guns that can nullify the English habit of entrenching and pallisading (as happened at Chastillon). And you see lots of French victories.

Medieval Knights typically fought as a Lance or a Gleve, a unit of 4 or 5 horsemen. Of this unit, only the knight was in full armor and on an armored horse. The other horsemen include both lancers or demi-lancers (partly armored horsemen on unarmored horses) and unarmed servants (valetti). In the Baltic a Lance also included mounted crossbowmen.

This is a little bit later period (about 50 years later) but it gives you a pretty good idea of a 15th Century Army on the march, how much armor they wore and the ratio of armored to partly or unarmored in the cavalry and infantry... from the Wolfegg Hausbuch

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... eerzug.jpg

So for example Medieval records indicate 200 lances or 140 lances or so on. 200 lances translates to 600 - 1000 cavalry.

Of the entire force of a typical Medieval army, the cavalry contingent is often less than half.

So lets say for sake of argument (totally ball park guess) you have 5,000 cavalry, 5,000 infantry... this might mean somewhere around 1,500 actual fully armored knights.

BD

[bigdummy]

What a fascinating guy...

Yes he really is. He kind of shows up in Bohemia on the eve of the Hussite uprising like some kind of Clint Eastwood character, with a mace and a patch on one eye, and proceeds to help them organize a world beating military system. Some of his early agincourt style victories were won with as few as 400 infantry and a couple of dozen wagons against ten times as many enemies including at least hundreds of knights.

I hadn't really taken note of him before. Shame that the Wiki page doesn't mention his involvement at Agincourt, but I see from Googling that he was there. I wonder what the background to his involvement is - do you know?

No, I don't, but he was a knight, he may have been a man-at-arms or the leader of some Bohemian mercenary infantry, who were already sought out as mercenaries by the early 15th Century. There is very little about him available in English, I managed to secure a good book on the Hussites but it doesn't go into that part of Ziska's life. I'm hoping to dig up some records in Czech but I don't have a good Czech speaking contact yet for my research, I have found good help for this sort of thing with Polish and Lithuanian speakers though so I have high hopes. When i find out more about this episode related to Agincourt I will post it here.

BD

[admin]

Yeah, I tried searching online and drew a blank - people just mention he was there, but with no background. Having read a fair amount about that campaign it seems a bit odd to me, because unlike Edward III's campaigns, Henry seems to have done most/all of his recruiting in England and then shipped it over to France as a complete army. Finding foreigners in Henry's army is quite hard.

[bigdummy]

Yeah, I tried searching online and drew a blank - people just mention he was there, but with no background. Having read a fair amount about that campaign it seems a bit odd to me, because unlike Edward III's campaigns, Henry seems to have done most/all of his recruiting in England and then shipped it over to France as a complete army. Finding foreigners in Henry's army is quite hard.

I agree it's a bit of a mystery. There are some period records indicating he was there, I can find them for you tonight if you want. Beyond that I think it's just in "foreign" and therefore simply off the radar as I have found for so much of the major facts of history from Central Europe.

BD

[Thearos]

The English may have had better armour but they were ragged and Juliet Barker suggests that they armour was probably badly affected by the Somme autumn weather they endured while being shadowed by Boucicault.

--operationally, if I understand the campaign correctly, the French played a pretty good game, harrying and shadowing the English chevauchee along the Somme.

[Dan Howard]

People may go on about how hard it is to wound a man in state of the art early-15thC plate armour, but frankly I don't think it is any easier with a sword or spear! Arrows at point blank range and in volume are just as likely to find a gap as a hand weapon is, and they have roughly equivalent piercing power as a sword or spear.

FWIW my only problem is with people who claim that an arrow can reliably punch through pieces of solid plate. It can happen under rare circumstances such as when a thin piece (helmet visor) is hit at point blank range, but nowhere near enough to affect the outcome of a battle. I agree completely that if enough arrows are shot then some are going to find gaps and weaks points and that this would create attrition enough to affect the outcome.

[old_wolf]

I have a feeling that the French force really isnt infantry (except the crossbow men). I suspect they are a mixed force of dismounted knights, dismounted men at arms, etc. They dont seem to have done much if any training to fight together as infantry.
For one reason or another they seem to have gone forward without shields for the most part (over confidence in their newest armor maybe?)
They seem to have attacked when Henry moved the English line into longbow range. The French seem to have initially intended to wait Henry out and were standing in position but they seem to have lacked small unit (company, platoon, and squad equivalent) control. They got bored, disorganized and inattentive, which is what allowed Henry to, apparently, uproot his sharpened stakes, move forward into longbow range and pound the stakes back in without the French being able to restore enough order to be able to attack the English in the middle of this move.
That left the French with 3 choices: A. Retreat. They were probably psychologically unable to do such a thing and trying to retreat their already poorly organized force while being shot by the longbows would have been a disaster anyway. B. Stand still and absorb the arrow storm until the English run out of arrows. Marginally better than choice A (at least the better armored front of the troops armor is facing the arrows), but still not something they were psychologically prepared to do. C. Attack, which is what they did.
The French probably lost the battle due to a simple but disatrous lack of basic small unit infantry drill. The French seem to go straight for the center of the English line (understandable, that is where all the high price ransoms are and since they expected to win they wanted to get the prisoners before someone else did). As they go forward the arrow fire seems to be coming in from the flanks and quite naturally the troops on the flanks begin to shy away from it, compressing the army's frontage. Apparently to the point of becoming a mob, sort of like a modern crowd stampeding at some large public event, they jammed up so much they couldnt fight effectively. What they needed to do, was stop and dress the line periodically as they moved forward, but since they dont seem to have been real infantry that doesnt seem to have been in their playbook. This lack of training killed them.
When they finally arrive at the English line they are tired, jammed together and a good number are wounded and some down/dead from the arrow fire. The English line is supported by a line of sharpened stakes, is properly spaced and as rested as a bunch of troops with the sh*ts can be expected to be. On the flanks the archers are now running out of arrows and are closing in on the most wounded parts of the French mob, wielding the hammers and mauls that were used to pound in the stakes. The French army, essentially fed itself into a meat grinder.

[admin]

The last 3 or 4 pages of this thread are very interesting and have primary source evidence that I was unaware of previously:
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=15454

[admin]

Interesting test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCE40J93 ... re=related

Of course we don't know that much about the breastplate, but it is allegedly 14 guage carbon steel.

[bigdummy]

I don't believe that is anything other than mild steel. These tests you see on youtube are always rigged on both sides. Either the armor is shit or the bows are shit, depending on the outcome the 'testers' want to see.

Mike Loades got a different result with a really historically made breastplate, from only 20m

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk

BD

[admin]

See that's an interesting example, because I would say that many factors in that test are stacked in the breastplate's favour, yet still it gets a hole in it.
- Firstly the arrow is shot out of a silly air gun. That does not replicate the way an arrow comes out of a bow. However, for the sake of argument let's say that the energy at impact is the same.
- Secondly the arrowhead is obviously crap. It got blunted by hitting a thin plate - any quality hardened steel tip should have retained its point after that impact. This suggests that the breastplate was made of harder steel than the arrowhead, which is silly. Edward III, Henry IV and Henry V all repeatedly specified that arrowheads must be made of hardened steel.
- Thirdly, they have used an arrowhead of square bodkin type - most tests suggest that the 'compact broadhead' design which is diamond-sectioned rather than square is more successful against plate armour, and was the typical English arrowhead of the Wars of the Roses, for example.
- Fourthly, the shaft (and therefore the weight) of that arrow seems to be somewhat less than usual for a war arrow. This contributes towards the shaft snapping, which disipates energy, and also means the momentum/energy stored in the arrow is less at a given velocity.
- Lastly, this is a breastplate with several advantages stacked in its favour, yet it still got a hole in it. Now think about the fauld, backplate, gorget, spaulders, cuisses or any of the other parts of armour that are made of thinner plate than the breastplate. The breastplate is just about the hardest piece of armour to compromise, after the helmet, and in this test the arrow had many factors against it, yet it still made a hole.

[bigdummy]

I'm sure there are always factors back and forth, but do you think Mike Loades was trying to force a certain outcome?


I picked him as an example because I figured he was the closest thing to a neutral test you could find on youtube.

But yes, Alan Williams points out that armor on the perifery of the body was often quite thin, particularly before the second half of the 15th Century. Under 1mm in many cases. So at point-blank range like you see in that video, especially say, in the back, I suspect it could be pierced in the limb armor and possibly the back-plate as well, or even the back of the helmet. At distance, which is how those weapons were most effectively used, I don't think so much.


One interesting thing I've noted from reading about medicine in the Medieval period, on the one level it wasn't always as crude as people assume. They seem based on literature and forensic examinations I've seen some summaries of, to have been able to cure sword-wounds and even puncture wounds fairly effectively. The most common remedy appears to have been fat and salt. This is what Cortez's men used for example in the New World. However an injury which pierced the intestines or other organs in the abdomen, or caused a punctured lung, or fracutred a skull, or caused any kind of spinal injury, was almost certain death. So this is why unlike in RPG's and video games, armor in the torso and the head was far more common than armor for the limbs, and even where full harness is worn, armor for the torso and the head was the most substantial.

BD

[admin]

I'm sure there are always factors back and forth, but do you think Mike Loades was trying to force a certain outcome?

Not at all actually. I class him as neutral (humbly, as I also class myself). Both of us are fans of both bows AND armour.

My assertion is that the way this test was set up the breastplate held all the cards, for the reasons I have listed above. The biggest problem seems to be the arrowhead used. Yet despite this the breastplate still got a big hole in it...

[admin]

At distance, which is how those weapons were most effectively used, I don't think so much.

I actually don't think the longbow was primarily a long range weapon at the time of Poitiers and Agincourt. The sources talk about the French infantry being pinned at the front by the English men at arms and then the English archers pouring arrows into their flanks.

That makes a hell of a lot of sense if you think about it - it means the arrows are hitting with more power, at a flatter trajectory on thinner parts of the armour (rather than falling downwards on helmets), causing maximum distress to the enemy as they are fighting hand to hand at the front and being assailed at the flanks at the same time. I think that whilst the archers did start shooting at 250 yards or thereabouts this was probably a withering hail intended to provoke the enemy and unsettle them. The sources suggest to me that the real business was done at almost point blank range - note also that this is how it is shown in manuscript images.

[bigdummy]

Not big enough to hurt the guy wearing it

[admin]

The hole was substantial, against a soft square-sectioned arrow from an air-gun. And this was a hardened steel breastplate. Just about the thickest and strongest piece of armour an arrow might encouter. At least 3 Kings of England must have wanted their archers to have hardened steel arrowheads for some reason....

Archers shooting into the enemy whilst they are engaged in hand-to-hand fighting:

[Motley]

Not big enough to hurt the guy wearing it

but Matt's point is that was with a soft arrow. Have a hardened arrow head of the correct type and all other things been equal that test would likely have shown something different. That is before we address Matt's other points.

Oh I would like to consider myself neutral too please. My view is kinda simplistic, They used armour so obviously there was a reason for that, it worked. They used archery so obviously there was a reason for that, it worked.

EDIT: looks like Matt beat me to it, with pictures too!

[Bulot]

Sword & buckler on the battlefield ?
Weird.

[admin]

My view is kinda simplistic, They used armour so obviously there was a reason for that, it worked. They used archery so obviously there was a reason for that, it worked.

Yes, this is the overall key point. Clearly armour and archery both worked and were successful for several centuries all over the world. I think what the debate boils down to is just percentages and probabilities.

It is clear from a host of sources that English archers were very successful in the hundred years war, though lots of people seem to disagree on precisely why.

For me the whole plate-penetrating debate boils down to two key facts that can not be gotten past:
1) At least 3 English Kings went to great effort to ensure that their archers were equipped with hardened steel arrowheads for some reason, and
2) There are a bunch of contemporary written and artistic sources that describe penetration of plate armour (including helmets and the faulds of cuirasses).

That sort of makes the whole thing a non-debate in my mind. Maybe armour penetration isn't easy and maybe it didn't happen to incapacitate knights very often, but it seems clear to me that sometimes it did. And modern archers can put arrows through steel plates.

My advice - use a pavise... (as it seems the front rank of the French infantry at Agincourt may have done - again, evidence that they were scared of longbow arrows despite their armour).

[admin]

Sword & buckler on the battlefield ?
Weird.

Not at all, sword and buckler was very common on the battlefield for more lightly armoured soldiers. It was the standard sidearm of English archers.





http://www.thearma.org/essays/SwordandBuckler.htm