European Archery/ Agincourt/crecy/etc

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by RDGAC

Bloody hell! I think that sort of penetration wasn't really approached until the very heavy "Spanish" musket made its appearance on the battlefield (though that'd be Michael's hobby-horse I think!), and curiously enough, even that seems to have performed much the same for penetration. I seem to remember a tale in which a ball fired from a large musket (presumably something around .90 - 1" bore and long-barrelled) went straight through the breastplate of one cavalier and into the poor fellow behind him, embedding itself in the latter's chest.

This sort of penetration did indeed take muskets. Low draw weight bows were replaced by high draw weight bows because the low draw weight bows weren't good enough at penetrating armour. Using high draw weight bows comes at a significant cost: your archers need to train more, need to be fitter, and need to be drawn from a smaller pool of potential recruits.

High draw weight crossbows can out-penetrate bows. At the time, the best available armour penetration in a one-person long-ranged weapon (javelins can be very good for armour penetration as well, but are shorter range).

Muskets beat crossbows, while not being any slower. Maybe less accurate, but cheaper.

As for longbows beating plate armour, the thinner parts of plate armours could be penetrated at close enough range, while the thickest parts could not be penetrated at any range. "Thickest parts" tended to be chest and head, thinner parts the limbs where you prefer to carry less weight.

With the advent of the musket, where thicknesses needed to double or more than double to stop musket balls, you see the coverage of armour shrinking in order to keep the total weight acceptable. Late engineer armours could be very thick (>8mm, iirc), but gave good protection.

The numbers work out at about 70J of energy to put an arrow through 1mm of iron plate (which means that complete arrow-proof is attained at, at most, 2-3mm - don't trust iron or mild steel under 2mm to stop arrows at short range!), and about 1000J to put a pistol/musket ball through 3mm.

Originally Posted by RDGAC

Wherein, I suppose, lies the problem; the size of your army (and, by extension, the number of places it can be in useful strength) is governed by your supply of strong men with very well-honed right arms!

The Chinese did very well in maintaining large numbers of archers. The military examination system was very archery-oriented, so meant that those seeking promotion or entry into the army as officers would be competent archers. Archery had been a "knightly" skill in China since sometime B.C., so no social stigma (except general anti-military stigma at times). That, and archery being an essential skill amongst the Chinese-ruled/Chinese-ruling/neighbouring nomad populations, and the large population meant that archers were present in numbers that would have made the English greatly envious.