The plaqn defeat the archer

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#1

During the Hundred Years War, the French were defeated by the English(and Welsh) Longbowmen time and again. Each time they set their horses to the gallop, they charged into a storm of arrows which slaughtered them.

One particular french Duke came up with a plan which involved exhausting the archers’ arrow (ammunition) supplies. He studied the English tactics and the supply of arrows the individual archer would carry. He came to the conclusion that if one sent in the worst troops first, and kept pushing them forward, eventually, the archers would run out of arrows. At which point one would send in the knights and finish them off.

So, one day, in Britanny, he hears of an English wagon train moving from one castle to another and being escorted by a column of 250 mounted-archers (read mounted-infantry). So, off he sets with approximately 6000 men, to attack them. He puts his plan into action and sends in his poorest troops, which are anihlated. Following them are his Men-at-arms, which are of a better quality. They too are decimated. Finally, he sends in his knights. The English bowmen stand their ground and decimate the knights also.

So, why did the plan go so drastically wrong?

The wagons were loaded with supplies of arrows which were being distributed among the English castles. :cool:

#2

well, why cant the french copy the tecnology and used the long bow as well?

#3

It takes an immense amount of training to use a Longbow effectively. That’s why despite a Longbow being significantly more dangerous than the early matchlocks, the firearms replaced them very quickly. For many years football was illegal in England because it distracted the men from their Archery practice on sundays. Without that huge amount of training, longbows simply weren’t effective.

32Bravo - not managed to find a reference to that. It sounds a bit like a corrupted version of the Battle of the Herrings - could this be it?

#4

i read a military related magazine, they talked about the british longbowman, it saids despite being lightly armed outside of their longbows, The biritish bowman emphasis on team work. When the French soldiers saw layers and layers of corpse of their own, they are somewhat terrified. then one bowman will approach him by attacking his upperbody, while the other bowman will attack his lowerbody. which makes make very effective against the french.

#5

Not certain about that. I have a number of books on the Hundred years War. I’ll see if I can locate it and get back to you.

The above almost fits, but there is no mention of transporting arrows. The crossbow was used by the English, but not to a great extent.

#6

In his book Longbow… Robert Hardy suggests, among other reasons, that the French aristocracy were afraid to all ow their serfs to have bows as they might have turned them against themselves. The French generally hired Genoese mercenaries, who were adept with the crossbow. However, it proved no match for the Longow in battle.

The English developed the use of the longbow over generations. There are the reasons as mentioned by pdf, but also there was the logisitics of it. The skills of the bowyers and fletchers. In battle, an archer would loose arrows at a rate of 12 per minute. Most of them were faster, but they kept to this rythm, to conserve ammunition. Potentially, five thousand archers would loose 60,000 arrows per minute. They did not all loose at the same time, mainly because of their position on the battlefield, one flank might be engaged by the French while the other flank was disengaged at that time. Still one can see the potential for exhausting arrow supplies. Crecy was a good example of this. The French put in no less than nineteen attacks. Between attacks the archers would wait until the enemy had withdrawn, and then range about the field collecting arrows from the ground.

http://members.tripod.com/~midgley/crecy.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Longbow-Military-History-Robert-Hardy/dp/1852604123

#7

I think this probably relates to the Battle of Agincourt. many of the French were crushed by piling in upon their front ranks which had been knocked down by the archers. Once the French closed with the English Knights and Men-at-arms, many of the archers placed their bows on the ground and attcked the French, hand-to-hand. The archers were far stronger than their adversaries, the result of a lifetime of drawing huge bows. Also, they were much nimbler as they were not encumbered by a lot of body armour, so it was easy for two or three archers to take on a French Knight. Of course the French did not like this as it was not considered chivalrous to engage in combat someone beneath one’s station.

http://www.geocities.com/beckster05/Agincourt/AgBattle.html