[Pieter B.]

Now look that's the kind of information I was hoping for

Even the guys with the best armor might at one point raise their visor for the melee fight and the ones without a visor/bevor at all would be even more vulnerable. In his book Mike Loades also states that specific orders for the recruitment of huntsman/foresters were issued when a certain Edward started recruiting more archers. Hunters never really make it a point to go for long distance kills, they want close range and precise hits. Exactly the kind of skill the king must've been looking for when recruiting archers.

[Randall Moffett]

Dan,

To my awareness there are only a few times this comes up in period texts, the concept of aiming for the face. Though they are not Dupplin Moor or Halidon Hill. Both these accounts state the Scots were 'wounded to the head' if I remember correctly. I have not read the likely sources of this in a few years but I suspect the origin is a secondary book taking the wounded to the faces to mean aimed for the faces which is not the same thing. Seeing how many Scots were likely wearing little armour and with shields not sure that is surprising. That said Le Bel mentions other injuries as well so once again how is this short little excerpt in relation to the entire story. Was this at the start of the battle when they forced the Scots to charge? Context is pretty important in the understanding of these things.

Pieter,

That may be true, though having spent years on looking at 100 Year Wars recruitment I think Mike is over exaggerating this. The bulk of archers were levied for much of the period and there is 0 about huntsmen in any of the docs I have read and I have looked over most the royal records from Henry III to Henry VIII. But let us say his assumption is right. Why would they not shoot at other lightly armoured places than just the face if they have such great aim? Seems once again highly selective to fit their interpretation from the evidence.

The entire concept is calculated on luck and chance which seems a poor way to win tactically. I would not be surprised if archers were at times marksmen but others such as Froissart indicate volume of arrows was a major factor in battles such as Najera.

Now something I was reading the other day by Le Baker stated something like, "aiming arrows that defeated armed knights." which actually comes up rather frequent in many of these account. One could assume that this meant that they aimed for the face. Perhaps. But that is not what the author said. In this case La Baker simply is stating that arrows were defeating (i.e. creating casualties, repelling) the knights, not just men-at-arms but the knights he spoke earlier so highly of. He later calls them Fatal arrows as well. Then you have Froissart "As soon as the men of arms entered, the archers began to shoot on both sides and did slay and hurt horses and knights" Slaying and hurting horses and men-at-arms. Once again the how is left out.

I think the simple answer is archers could be used for things besides just crowding knights and men-at-arms to create casualties and even deaths. Assuming they were all killed in one way such as the face seems rather unlikely and myopic when looking at the sources as a whole.

The other big issue is that few people have read the entire account but just small snippets of armour is invulnerable or arrows penetrate castle walls type of arguments.

Another aspect to consider is these works were done for the upper class not commoners. Archers and non-nobles are supporting cast. Why do we have such a focus on their fights and at times great details of the gore.... because that was their part. You have some honorable mentions but the archers are not the actors but extras to people like Froissart.

I saw Mikes book. I think he has some good points but the aiming for the face to me is as I said above far too limited to be a battle winning or impacting strategy. All the enemy would have to do is modify their behavior or equipment and the only way they were defeated would be gone.

And even though others have stated dismounted knights were the solution there are still devastating losses by dismounted knights and men-at-arms. AS well there are great cavalry successes against them. Somewhere between them is the real story.


RPM

[Pieter B.]

The point regarding huntsman being mentioned and that the welsh used their longbow at close ranges is in his opinion (and I share that view) indicative of what an archer was usually expected to do. That is shooting at close ranges say less than 50 meters.

Keeping in mind that multiple tests have shown a gambeson as being adequate against most arrowheads leaves only a few other lightly armored targets available. I might have overstated the great aim aspect, shooting at heads from a distance of 50 meters or less doesn't require good aim in relative terms.

You can draw parallels with musket armed line infantry to a certain extent, they were trained to hit a large moving target (a formation of large group of soldiers). They didn't use rifled muskets for a good aim, they used smoothbores with the tactic to put as much lead in the air in as little time as possible. Longbow archers aiming for the head had a smaller target for sure, but did they compensate for this by a rate of fire four times as high as a musket and the better accuracy of a longbow?

What other targets would they aim for, limbs or such? Those don't seem like a good target being smaller in profile and decidedly less likely to cause lethal damage. On top of that I believe even limbs were covered more often than faces.

Taking 100 archers and telling them to roughly aim for that large line of heads ahead of them seems like a sensible thing to do. If the shot goes over the first line it might descend afterwards and hit someone down the line in the face or helmet. If you passes alongside someone on the first row it might hit the person behind him too. And if your arrow is a little to low it will still hit a person in the first rank in the throat or chest area which would also penetrate/kill if a certain number of cases. But keeping the effectiveness of medieval armor in mind that does seem like a smaller percentage.

Wherever you look in medieval art you will see infantry in the center flanked by longbow archers, crossbows or guns. The enemy would come closer and closer and present a near continues line of heads along the entire length of the enemy infantry. Unarmored limbs being hit would certainly disable the person for that fight at least, but arrows shot at that near continues line of heads (which is 5+ ranks deep) would be the real killer.

If the enemy is at 80 meters and closing you need to get your shot within a 25-35 centimeter height parameter, arrows passing along a head of the front row soldiers would certainly find a target in the second or third row. Say they walk briskly at 2 meters per second because they need to maintain formation, this might give you 30 seconds to fire. At these distances firing rate and that near constant shower of arrows recorded by the chroniclers make sense. In 30 seconds 100 hundred archers could theoretically loosen 600 arrows on a horizontal trajectory at a dense formation with largely unarmored faces.

Is the face or head the worst target you could aim for? It's probably not the easiest since the torso covers a much larger area, incidentally protecting the torso seems to be a prime occupation of most soldiers throughout history. How successful were they? I look at the wisby skeletal analysis and see 45% of all damage marks on the skull, roughly 40% on the lower legs. How many damage marks registered on the rib cage, collar bone and spine? A grand total of zero I believe. We have a few certainties: spears, pole arms and crossbows were used in this battle and a lot of people had head wounds and no torso wounds recorded in the bones. Did they all fight unarmored except for a shield covering the torso, I doubt it. Could it be that they all had adequate torso protection? More likely. Dan pointed out that Towton is a bit of a mystery and perhaps not entirely representative of normal battles but here too around 70% of the wounds were above the neck.

Aiming for the face regardless of weapon type seems like a good tactic to me, not limiting at all. Medieval man-at-arms managed to kill each other on horseback all the time with just swords. Did they all have the eagle eye accuracy to thrust their sword in the narrow visor slit or under the armpit the majority of the time? I don't think so, they opened up their visor once they had spent their lance and the melee began. It would explain that account of the battle of Fornovo. Furthermore in Bem cavalgar the Portuguese KING advises against using sword thrusts and suggests cuts with a shorter sword. It's ludicrous to think a king in 1437 to use a sword cut against plate armor. He knew something we don't and the most likely explanation is that visors were raised and bevors dropped once a cavalry melee began.

[Randall Moffett]

Pieter,

I do not mean to be rude but I am not convinced aketons were proof against arrows. Not even remotely actually. First off we have limited ideas on which aketons were most common and know there were a variety of types that likely had different protective qualities.The only testing I have seen that shows this result is not what I would consider the average aketon or bow to fit this. If you stack the deck you are far more likely to win. All the testing I has seen has had major pitfalls either benefit to the bow or the armour. Alan Williams testing of the joules needed to pierce an aketon compared with joules of impact energy decent testing with warbows like in the great warbow and the like show it is within the realm of variables to make it possible.

Regarding aim.... volley fire of muskets has little to do with aim. You point in one direction and fire. Aiming in a larger sense is largely a modern focus with firearms. I'd love to see evidence that the average soldier of the musket period was taught to shoot moving targets generally. That does not seem supported by most the evidence I have seen from the 1500-1800s except for a tiny percentage of sharpshooters which are not the norm.

The scenario is simple. 5-10k archers all directing arrows in one direction. You throw out 12 arrows a minute. You are going to hit something. Arms, legs, heads, torsos, feet. It is going to happen. It is simply statistics.

When you gain the bulk of your troops through the levy you will not be getting only marksmen. Pretty much guaranteed.

Now back to foresters. Yes for sure some were brought in. But assuming they made up a significant number would require evidence, of which sadly there does not seem to be. You may believe his opinion is right but unless it has grounding in evidence not sure what weight we should give this, at this point it is just a good idea.

Back to the faces. This assumes that a large number of the men fighting either had their visors up quite often in battle or no visors at all. Could be. But yes I do think there are places that can make good targets other than the face. Areas lacking plate protection make up a fair amount of the average armoured man.

RPM

[Alexis Bataille]

Except in siege, longbows was used only like artillery right ? (no real aiming ?)
To return in the penetration subject in archaeology arrow and javelin heads is sometimes roughly the same.
But the kinetic energy of the javelin can be twice of the arrow , So if you make an armour that can hold arrows it will not automatically repel javelin strike.
"Williams, Alan - The Knight and the Blast Furnace~A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period" give around 120 Joules for arrows and 200 J for crossbows .
Running shot of a javelin is 300 - 400 J.
Landsknecht or Swiss pikeman wearing a Niirnberg infantry armour in the mid- 16th century can absorb up to 300 J pointy projectiles.

[Pieter B.]

Ah I see what you get at.

So this whole discussion now hinges on two factors. Did gambesons/aketons stop longbow arrows at any rate and did fully armored man-at-arms fight with their visor raised most of the time. The latter I hold to be true going by art work, chronicles, skeletal analysis and the experience of reenactmentors. To prove the former we need tests and accounts to confirm it. I have found some high quality tests and a single account of the jacks effectiveness, I will come back this evening and post them.

Regards,

[Luka Borscak]

Pieter, do you shoot with bow and arrow? I do, but I'm not that good so I won't take myself into consideration, but much better bowmen than me would disagree with you what range is close range and what targets are likely to be hit by a longbowman at what range. 50m is a lot for shooting a head sized target. 30m is much better but in battlefield conditions with people and targets moving, you are still not very likely to hit a face you are targeting. Medieval hunters with medieval bows probably tried to get as close to the animal as possible, 15 to 20m is a good distance to be relatively sure you are going to hit a small target like a rabbit or something of that size. I know chances of hitting the face get a lot higher if multiple archers are targeting the same face, but the kind of shooting and targeting would, I think, be less than optimal until enemy infantry comes to the point where they actually engage your line of heavy infantry and you can shoot at those who are standing in a second, third or whatever row. At 50m and more and when people are moving, you'll be happy if you manage to hit the target at all, where, who knows...

[Randall Moffett]

Pieter,

I am not sure the entire discussion but a large part would rest there I think.

I have spent time trying to understand distance in the accounts of these battles and it is not the clearest by any stretch but I personally think there are multiple functions being given to the archers. We have clear evidence in the Deeds of Henry V that archers could be used at a distance to gall and cause some type of disturbance/casualties. I suspect at this distance it was inflicting rather limited or light casualties but to force the group forward they were under threat or they would remain there. But once again we cannot assume all battles worked the way Agincourt did exactly but there is similar evidence in multiple accounts including those of other battles. For the most part I suspect the more lightly armoured were suffering the most.

Now when I say this it is because I do believe there is a point when they switched to close distance. This would be more effective because of range. Loades testing indicated that against armour this would largely be the only chance for penetration but I think armies betting on armour penetration would be highly improbable. Just as I think limiting it to only faces would be. I think the visor would largely only be lifted on occasion, I suspect when they feel less threatened or at need. If you look at art there is an odd trend I have seen. The artists often like to illustrate all the man-at-arms with visors on or most without. In art there are a few depictions of visors being lifted but not many compared to gents with them down.

I personally think this is why men-at-arms in rank or stakes are so vital. Gives the archers more very close proximity shooting time.

Now to prove the aketon one would have to figure historically what the structure and materials would be and test a number of them. As well one would need to test with an adequate bow. I suspect the best way to do it would be to use multiple sections of aketon and multiple bows. I am not sure if angles are as important as with plate though but perhaps as diagonal would be through more layers slightly. I will say this. Alan Williams testing, even with a rather weak bow in the equation seems to get through I think it was 16 layers of aketon.

I have for years wanted to do a good project for armour penetration. Someday.

RPM

[Dan Howard]

IIRC Williams tested one patch that was lightly quilted and another that was simply folded. Neither is appropriate for textile armour but might be appropriate for underarmour. I use the term "aketon" to refer to underarmour, and "gambeson" and "jack" to refer to proper standalone armour. These armours are more heavily quilted and are too thick and rigid to be worn under armour, but would sometimes be worn over the top of mail. It is these constructions that need to be tested against weapons.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

This issue of shooting from very close or very far away (or somewhere in between) is one that comes up a lot of the time in discussions about archers and marksmen.

From records I've seen from Poland, the Teutonic Knights and Bohemia, in mid to late 15th Century they considered longbows to have a direct shot range of around 30-50 yards, crossbows (depending on the type and typically relying on some kind of support) 80-150 yards, and handguns 20-30 yards. There were always exceptions, some guy who could shoot the leg off of a gnat at 200 yards, but this wasn't typically relied upon. Guns in particular though were quite vaiable and could sometimes be made quite accurate with an expert gunner and the right kind of preparation (and a very good quality gun, powder, careful shot prep etc.). For long-range shooting (anything beyond the ranges cited above) they were usually used to shoot at general areas with enemy people (and / or horses) in them, rather than individual targets.

All three weapon types were also used to shoot at area targets, like clout shooting with longbows. Both with regular heavy hitting arrows and also for longer range, with flight arrows. Special ammunition like incendiary bolts seemed to be very tactically important for crossbows (and this was one of the things done at longer range, setting things on fire), and I assume bows too though I haven't seen records of it. Also other special arrows and bolts like ones that whistle (which apparently was very unnerving for horses as well as being useful for signaling). I would love to see a video of someone shooting a whistling bolt or arrow by the way, has anyone done it in modern times?


In general, I think archers shot at very close range, when they could. If your enemy is trying to overrun your position and is held at bay by castle walls, wooden stakes, or a line of pikes, war wagons or a shield wall ... that was an ideal time to shoot at close range. If you were not behind such secure protection and were at risk of being overrun, it was typically better to shoot at very long range.

I think when a formation was breaking up for whatever reason (because panicked, or in order to loot, whatever) was another opportunity to shoot at point blank range. We see this portrayed in art and described in records and chronicles, not just in wars but also in for example urban factional clashes.




But if you were within 30 yards you were within a few seconds of being attacked with a hand weapon, and that is a risky place to be which kind of spoils the advantage of having a missile weapon. It's also arguably the zone where thrown weapons javelins and darts (and even rocks) were arguably the most useful, and people tend to forget that thrown weapons of these types and others were still in wide use into the 16th Century.

And just as we have accounts of bows and crossbows and guns being used at point blank range, so to do we have many accounts of their being used at a great distance, perhaps with less effect, but with the added advantage of being unanswerable if the other side was inferior in long range missile capabilities.

So personally, I think that both types of archery (and marksmanship) were widely used, but I suspect shooting at very close range was a bit rarer and definitely more circumstantial, I think it was the ideal in terms of offense but not necessarily in terms of risk. In my opinion, only at point blank range (50 meters or less) could you target someone's face with most bows, perhaps the exception being skilled hunters accustomed to shooting birds and so on. And if infantry or cavalry was under this kind of threat, in many if not most cases they had visors they could close or kettle hats or sallets they could pull down to protect their faces, so it might only be a fleeting opportunity.

Jean

[Alexis Bataille]

Ok, really good thanks. So crossbow is definitely more accurate than longbow on direct shot ?

[Timo Nieminen]

[Pieter B.]

[Randall Moffett]

Pieter.... this is not the test to use for penetration of armour. Their own words state they exclude the most likely types of heads for penetration like the long bodkin on this type of armour. This was one of the most common arrows in use during the end of the medieval period. They chose ones that would by design not penetrate.

" We knew that if the archers had used long bodkins, this type of armour could have been penetrated at this distance, but that was not the purpose of the test."

I had wondered if this was the test you were thinking of when you first said this. Just look up some of Marks other tests. He has published a half dozen or dozen of them if you want a comparison. Now that said I'd like to rerun many of the tests under some other conditions but these are the types of things that need to be really focused on and careful with. So we know some arrowheads would not do well against certain armour.... yep. We know some are more suitable. I suspect as well the layers of linen and such varied greatly person to person.

Dan,

A good point. I think Williams was 16 layers but could be wrong so hardly under armour at least not from the ones I know of. AS well we have no idea how thick the stand alone generally would have been, except really the one Burundian Ord. and that very likely is not ordinary but a higher than the standard of day as most his rules are above that mark. Seeing as how none of the remaining textile armour, likely under or over armour gets anywhere near that thick I really think there was a wide spectrum of such armours. I still think it would be of benefit to see a base number of thicknesses run at a variety of distances and poundage instead as we just do not really know the real average. We can guess at it but why do that when we can do a test that shows the capacity? Just seems more beneficial. I suspect it very much varied from person to person by economic factors.

RPM

[Pieter B.]

[Dan Howard]

Jacks can be sorted into two main categories - those meant to be worn on their own and those that were layered with mail and brigandines. The former are 20-30 layers thick and the latter are 10-15 layers thick. Sometimes some of these layers were replaced with stuffing, like in a cushion. The one in Chartres Cathedral is made of seven layers of cloth plus stuffing.

Edit: I just found this arrows vs textile test. Like WIlliams, the author doesn't seem to have quilted the layers properly, which increases rigidity and protective capacity but it still contains useable data.
https://www.academia.edu/5520314/Arrows_Against_Linen_and_Leather_Armour

[Pieter B.]

[Dan Howard]

[Randall Moffett]

Pieter,

I think your best bet would be to look at the Great Warbow for % on arrowhead types and how common they were. But if you reread my comments I NEVER said most common. I said one of the most common... The Great Warbow goes through this is rather good detail and there is a RA Journal Article as well but I have not been able to find anything but a short blumb on the RA website.

There was an article that comes to mind. It was published in the Glade. He went over several objects that he has shot. It is rather old and as I said before I feel many of these armour versus warbow tests are not finite in their conclusions to reality.

Dan,

But this assumption is based solely on these two ordinances. It basically ignores remaining physical evidence. We have objects that seem designed to be worn without metal armour over them that are not close to Charles's requirements even when counting the padding.

RPM

[Dan Howard]