Oftentimes misconceptions about rality has it's fallout in one's judgement. One of those misconceptions is uttered below

First Adventure Gamer Fallacy:

Longbows can penetrate heavy armor, and where the penultimate weapon in medieval times.

This is, in short a direct outcome of nationalistic british, better to say english, propaganda* through the ages.

Sure, Crecy and Agincourt saw "the flower of french chivalry defeated", but those were quite singular events. Most of the time, the armored mounted warrior reigned the battlefield. The success of the archers against heavily armored knights were only possible when huge amounts of arrows were shot at small groups. Only with large numbers of fired arrows did some penetrate weak spots in the knight's armour.
Only crossbows did stand a chance of penetrating the armour, which evened the battlegrounds in northern Italy in the struggles of the Kaiser against the cities and the Papacy. Still, this led to an increase of armour for the knights, which made them once again rulers supreme on the field of honour. Only large and well trained bodies of infantry and use of firearms led to a demise in chivalric battle value. Though the mounted warriors themselves transformed into cavalry, remained the decisive shock weapon until the development of the Machine Gun.

*Which sees and elevates the brave,free and industrious yeomen as the foundations of english superiority in world history. Of course the yeomanry has it's laurels and distinct place in history, especially on an economic scale. But especially the 19th century saw a lot of "yeomanry-hype", and with it, longbow-hype.

EDIT: Changed the entry.

Quote from: SettembriniWell I just read in my Prolus copy one thing that I want to call:

First Adventure Gamer Fallacy:

 
 The success of the archers against heavily armored knights were only possible when huge amounts of arrows were shot at small groups. Only with large numbers of fired arrows did some penetrate weak spots in the knight's armour.

Not quite so, i believe. Longbows were very effective against the French Knights because they remained mounted and so the rain of arrows killed their horses, thus unmounting them and breaking up both the charge and the formation. It also rammed home the importance of having a well balenced force with more than one component to it, such as an infantry to ram home such an advantage, archer as well as mounted force.

I recommend The Art of War in the Middle Ages by Sir Charles Oman for lots of goodies about the effectiveness of archers in warfare.

Quote from observer at battle of Crecy (where there were some 3000 horsemen charging): "For the bowmen let fly among them at large...sending the horses mad. Some stood stock still, and others raced sideways, and most of all began backing in spite of their masters, and some were rearing and tossing their heads at the missiles, and others when they felt the bit threw themselves down. So the knights in the first French battle fell, slain or sore stricken, almost without seeing the man who slew them."

The fact that the French refused to ditch their horses and continued to charge headlong into slaughter didn't help, not did the fact that their Genoese crossbowmen didn't have the range of the English Longbowmen as they were shooting uphill. The age of the unmounted 'man-at arms' came along.

More to the point perhaps from a gaming perspective, shoot the horses!!

I'm totally with you there, the horses I forgot, but they were just as important.

Still the fallacy is to think of the longbow being inherently superiour to armored knights, especially their armour. When Longshanks went to war with the Welsh, he had many archers, as the Welsh were themselves archer-heavy and without heavy armour. Against the Scots, he came with knights.

The longbows merits were long range and rate of fire, not penetration. Those were giving military commanders additional tactical options, which could win a battle, if circumstances allowed. Henry V or Eduard III used those tactical advantages masterfully, accompanied by tactical blunder(s) on the french side.


As a source I can give thumbs up for this jouyous read:
Delbrück, Hans (1920): History of the Art of War, University of Nebraska Press; Reprint edition, 1990. Translated by Walter, J. Renfroe. 4 Volumes.

EDIT: Oman was priour to Delbrück, and Delbrück refers to him in quite some detail. if you want, I could look up what he wrote on Oman's archer chapter.

Sure. The more the merrier. I have a feeling that Oman might be a little outdated by todays standards. He does tend to use hyperbole a bit, but his sources are obviously from a while before his period, so it's to be expected really.

When I read Keenan's take on Agincourt I never got the impression that the Yoemen won the battle for the English due to the superiority of the longbow against armor, but rather the French Knight refusing to engage the Yoemen 'peasants'... meaning that large gangs of Yeomen were able to pull french knights from the mass waiting their turn against the few English Knights and butcher them while the other French Knights looked on.  

It wasn't technical superiority so much as an obstinant adherence to a code of conduct that was not based on anything but an innate sense of superiority.

Quote from: SpikeIt wasn't technical superiority so much as an obstinant adherence to a code of conduct that was not based on anything but an innate sense of superiority.

I can agree with that.  Keegan's description of the battle is pretty good for that.

I hate it when gamers fetishise a weapon, that quote from Ptolus, Settembrini, really sours me on buying it.

Oi Vey! why is it I always get his name wrong? Keegan/Keenan....shouldn't be hard, no?

Gamers DO fetishize their weaponry, sad but true. Of course, this is really a bit more limited then the katana fetish, don't you think?

Yes, as I understand it its that at the time Agincourt happened, in Europe military combat had shifted to weigh completely to the side of Knights leading the warfare; the armies were designed around the idea that the Knight was the most important element of any force.
Agincourt demonstrated that this was no longer viable, and in that sense was a very real technological improvement; it didnt mean that the night was useless, or that the Longbow was an uber-weapon (the crossbow wasn't really the "uberweapon" either; you have to wait for gunpowder to get to that, to the weapon that REALLY marked the end of medieval-style warfare). It did mean that a wierd shift in weight that happened to continental european armies now had to shift back to more balanced forces using more balanced tactics.

Think of it in game terms: when an RPG or wargame introduces a certain class/feat that is so broken, that it doesn't really make any sense at all to take any class/feat BUT that one if you have the choice; then in a subsequent update, they introduce a counterbalance, a fix to the rules, that suddenly makes it more sensible to create a more varied set of classes/feats.

RPGPundit

Quotethat quote from Ptolus

Oh! It wasn't a direct quote! I generalized a statement in Ptolus, the quote was meant to be the Fallacy. I better change it. The correct qutation is:

QuoteSidebar:
You might have read that one of the most devastating aspects of the firearm as it developed in the real world was that it could pierce armor. However this fact was also true for the longbow, but the d20 System rules don't grant the longbow special "armor piercing" qualities other than a deadly 3x critical. The same then, should apply to firearms in the abstract combat system of the game

Sidebar in Technology chapter, p. 559

@Pundit: Interestingly enough, even after Agincourt, or Crecy for that matter, the French did'nt really change their force composition. At least there is no evidence for it. So the real military revolution started when large bodies of Infantry was trained well OR cohesive enough to repel an armed attack. The swiss and the development of trained masses of pikemen were the real changebringers, with the spreading use of firearms, this change was cemented.
If the longbow would have been the "unbalanced weapon", everybody would have sought out to get them. But history shows us, this wasn' t worth the hassle.

As basically we are all in the same boat here, I would go out further and postulate, that the Archetypical Elven Archer (AEA) is a mystified wet dream of this english patriotic myth. Ther is some evidence, that Tolkien himself wanted to write a true national epic. Any thoughts on that, and the origin of the AEA? Were Elves beforehand into longbows?
What I read is that Rohan was meant to be the Saxons, just with horses. Tolkien noted several times, that he thinks Hastings could and should have been avoided, had Harald had better mounted warriors. Thus Rohan is "wishful revisionist history", directly from Tolkiens personal historical views and emotions.

Quote from: SettembriniIf the longbow would have been the "unbalanced weapon", everybody would have sought out to get them. But history shows us, this wasn' t worth the hassle.

The other problem being that to get a really good archer you had to train for years if I remember my reading right, (it's a much more difficult weapon to learn then a sling or crossbow) when the people found other persuits and didn't have the requirement of training, they couldn't field the units and moved on.  Of course it was somewhat of a mistake from some angles, I think it was Ben. Franklin who wrote something or other about wishing for a bunch of english longbows during either the revelutionary war or just before it, due to the better rate of fire and the lack of the smoke cloud to give away your position.

The typical 'proverb' about getting a good longbowman was to start with his grandfather. So yes, training was a serious issue. In fact the true superiority of the crossbow (and later firearms) was really a logistical one. Quite simply it is much faster and easier to train people to fire crossbows accurately, thus more crossbowmen can be feilded faster. larger units, faster replacement of casualties with only a slight drop in overall performance...

Contrary to popular belief military stuff isn't always the best available. its the most practical.  And over a long time frame the most successful weapons are the simplest to use.

Quote from: SpikeThe typical 'proverb' about getting a good longbowman was to start with his grandfather. So yes, training was a serious issue. In fact the true superiority of the crossbow (and later firearms) was really a logistical one. Quite simply it is much faster and easier to train people to fire crossbows accurately, thus more crossbowmen can be feilded faster. larger units, faster replacement of casualties with only a slight drop in overall performance...

I picked up a book on the sling awhile ago, and one of the comments from the author was that the groups of people who used bows stayed with them for a long time and the people who used slings stuck with them for a long time, but they never really switched back and forth. There is a lot to be said for the long history of using the weapon. (and the sling can be made of almost anything which helps in that regard.)

Quote from: SpikeContrary to popular belief military stuff isn't always the best available. its the most practical.  And over a long time frame the most successful weapons are the simplest to use.

Which explains why the AK is still all over the place, as a friend of mine put it, it's peasent proof. (and you can get a ton of them if you have a government)

I'm happy to see that Israel is looking to switch from the M16, and the new Tavor that they are looking at...  I've decided that if I ever win the lottery, I want one. :heh:

When it comes to Agincourt, one shouldn't forget the atrocious battlefield conditions, which where heavily stacked against the French.

Quote from: JongWKWhen it comes to Agincourt, one shouldn't forget the atrocious battlefield conditions, which where heavily stacked against the French.

What?  You mean marching uphill through mud isn't advantageous when attacking massed archers?

I really liked Bernard Cornwell's view on the battle in his archer series, I thought it was very well done.

All of that said, let's not forget that fundamentally Agincourt was about the power of a group of people with sufficient determination. What defeated the French, at the end of the day, was King Hal.

RPGPundit