Archers

How effective was a group of archers against knights/foot soldiers? Was there any tactics that were developed to counter archers? Were archers held to the same training standards as other soldiers?

>training standards
Unheard of in post-Roman Europe until the 16th century. Armies would briefly practice moving in formation while already on campaign, at best. This is not to say that individual skill and fitness were not valued but there were no formal standards.

Archers were almost completely ineffective against an actual army in combat.

The distances a group of archers would need to stand back would make their arrows unable to pierce most types of protection.

Their true charms come out in the days and weeks after an engagement. They would rarely kill a man outright but the wounds they caused would.


For a large army having lots of wounded is worse than having lots of dead.

If they were useless then armies wouldn't bring them.

The lethality of arrows is highly exaggerated by media and fanboys but let's not go overboard. There were plenty of medieval battles won thanks to the archers disordering the enemy.

The thing that is often underrated is their melee fighting capability (probably because of popular media). In Agincourt for example they were engaging in melee too once enemy troops got close, finishing them off. They had another role as a light to medium infantry. Their gears were also pretty decent, not just shitty tunics and daggers (or something like that) besides their bows. I don't know if it's unusual or not, but they didn't step back (aka skirmish) like when you play Total War or (modded) Mount and Blade.

There were training standards implemented by Henry V for longbowmen when he instructed every able-bodied men to practice archery, IIRC.

I'm going to say that's complete shenanigans despite not having a source myself.
While armies as a whole might not have trained together, companies or whatever form of unit comprised of several men would have. This is the whole point of formations that where used, like the schiltron in Scotland or Swiss/German pikes.
I do recall there being basic tests to join mercenary companies, although none of which where in any shape or form difficult, like the landsknecht had you hop over some obstacles.

Arrow wounds rarely killed but they were very very common, very few troops were completely armored, and even if they were things like horses usually were not.

Archeres allowed an army to attack from a distance and were best used when protected by infantry

Their combat effectiveness (ability to kill in combat) wasn't as great as their tactical effectiveness. The fear of getting hit by an arrow was probably worse than getting hit by one, assuming you were wearing armour and had a shield.

Are you retarded? Mercenaries drilled all the time.

Period writers state their effectiveness was greatest when used in large numbers. I assume this means their effectiveness came down to sheer volume of fire to hit weak spots in contemporary armor.

Their effectiveness was also related to the level of armor of their opponents. Sources mention the largely unarmored Irish mercenaries at the Battle of Stoke Field got slaughtered by English archers while the German mercenary pikemen who were armored got off okay. At the Battle of Flodden where fully armored men-at-arms formed the front rank archery was said to be largely ineffective.

When a group of archers was caught without defense such as other infantry or stakes they were almost invariably slaughtered by cavalry. Which is why most armies sought to use stakes or infantry to defend them. Burgundian ordonnances go into detail as to how this was accomplished.

Prior to roughly the 14th century archers were typically the less well paid individuals. Crossbowmen on the other hand were paid more than say foot Sargents. By the 14th century this changed due to the English fielding archers en-masse, they started being paid more accordingly and came to form the best paid soldiers outside of men-at-arms.

Civic militias in a number of places refer to individual and group training as being done occasionally. The Swiss were known to have communal training on holidays.

The Henrican archery statutes were more about enforcing moral virtue than military effectiveness. They were still enforced over fifty years after archery had become obsolete, and finally struck down in 1621 so that the militia armed with pikes and guns had more time to train. The archery statutes are a far cry from the actual hiring of captains to conduct regular drilling of each shire's trained band with marching, evolutions, target practice and mock skirmishes.

That sounds like distinction without a difference.

I don't believe that men were really all that scared of being hit by arrows either. In most of the firsthand battle accounts I've read they were pretty cavalier about arrows. Sometimes literally.

Post proof then.

Against knights (I assume on horseback) they would be pretty damn useless. Don't know enough to give you a definitive answer about the footsoldiers though.

Just shoot the horses.

GOAT as long as the archers are also on horseback and are also steppe niggers (Magyar, Parthian, Mongol, Jin, etc.)

>what is horse armour

very uncommon, extremely expensive, not normally worn as a full set and was invented after the 14th century

Don't talk about topics you don't understand.

Best known for ruining videogames forever.

how so?

It weighed so much that a full set simply wasn't worth it, it was monetarily expensive and the horse would get tired very quickly. Realistically it looked more like this where there are still obviously weakspots

The golden age of the longbow were the wars of Scottish independence during the 13th - 14th century. Longbows were quite effective against Scottish infantry formations. Against cavalry, the effectiveness of longbows is generally overrated. Longbowmen could not stop a cavalry charge made against them as was seen in battles such as Patay or Verneuil where French cavalry mowed down the archers effortlessly with negligible losses. Longbowmen needed wooden fortifications and heavy infantry to protect them.

Realisticaly? The example I showcased is a example from the burgundian wars. Morover the gendarmes of the italian wars wore such armour extensively

No one claims archers could stand like pikemen in the face of the charge and shoot them all down though, obviously they required support.

>No one claims
You'd be surprised what people claim on the internet. For some reason people are under the impression that the job of archers was to kill knights when knights were already countered well enough by organised infantry formations at that point. Personally, I think it has something to do with some kind of republican idealism that projects some kind of modern class struggle onto history (the common man overcoming the haughty aristocrat, etc).

Some English archers seem to have had served double duty, fighting with polearms in the melee.

The Swiss encountered English archer mercenaries during the Burgundian wars, overrunning their position everytime. From what I understand they employed heavy armor (at least up front), a very rapid advance and effective skirmishers (primarily gunners and crossbowmen) of their own.

This. We see this in plenty of depictions from the early 16th century.

What surprises me however is that in depictions from the late middle ages (13th - 15th century), we don't see all that much horse armour. One would expect them to at least use some padded linen to cover their horses as that would have provided a great defence from arrows. Or maybe the threat of arrows to horses is generally overrated.

Where is that artwork from? Got a link?

Yeah late medieval 14th and 15th century it became more common but was still expensive and the horses tired out extremely quickly + top speed was reduced, it wasn't hugely effective against melee weapons either.

They used linen.

That could be the case but it still surprises me that we see little visual evidence in depictions. In the majority of late medieval depictions (at least those I've seen - feel free to provide images that disprove me, I'd be very much interested in them) we see the horses either uncovered or only covered by a rather thin rug bearing the colours of the man on top that seems to have more heraldic purposes.

The picture itself seems to have been taken from a later collection of images. The text below says that it was painted by an unknown Bavarian master.
Here (pic) we have another one though that can be attributed to Erhard Schoen.

It should be added that there seems to be some symbolism in that image though. A part of the army depicted is composed of craftsmen and they're bearing the tools of their craft to tell the viewer that these are not professional warriors. e.g. we see obviously farmers, but also miners with pickaxes, tailors with scissors, bricklayers with trowels, etc.

Here's another painting dated 1520 showing Emperor Maximilian and Henry VIII and their respective troops. In any case, in depictions from the early 16th century we see a lot of horse armour. Before that time period we see (at least in my experience) very little.

Caparisons were quite effective, it wasn't complete protection but it was pretty good, while many were for show when padded and quilted protection was quite good, this was used in the Sudan Empires for centuries.

also as far as I can tell, full barding was so expensive and somewhat unpractical that it was mainly ceromonial or for melee (the tournament type) very late german armor in the 16th century was very ornamental and was not worn by foot troops any longer due to gunpowder.

>Caparisons were quite effective
My point is that in the majority of high or late medieval depictions they aren't even worn. And those that are depicted seem quite thin rather than looking like real protection. It's not like they lacked the ability to depict this and they did bother to depict other types of armour in great detail.
By no means I'm saying that padded armour (or even more elaborate means - e.g. I've seen a mail covering for a horse in an Osprey book) didn't exist. I'm merely saying that I find it odd that it wasn't depicted more.

Medieval period, if we are talking longbows with a draw weight of 120-150 Ibs then generally they could sometimes, but not always penetrate mail, depending on the construction, angle of fire etc, though its not that common and Gambesons or other clothing underneath additionally prevents penetration. Gambesons alone are quite hard to penetrate. As for plate in later period, unhardened plate can potentially be penetratee at certain points with a very good shot, but it was considered highly unusual when it did. I've seen tests of a 130 Ibs yew bow against a hardened steel breastplate and it barely scratched it.

As for training, most training was individual, you would train your own martial skills, armies might drill if they have the time.

For archers it depends on culture, some cultures were famous for archery and simply practiced it more, loosing arrows from a 120 Ibs+ requires a ton of strength hence why in England they practiced every sunday. Also this is why its funny when a skinny girl is using a bow in hollywood films, when a sword is much easier to wield.

Art's art i guess, many artists even today draw shit they know nothing about see drawings of spartans, quite possible these artists had never seen a battlefield, couldn't be bothered to draw everyone's heraldry or thought they looked better drawn thin or without.

I can accept such explanations for individual artists being inaccurate about certain things but this is a too common phenomenon to be ignored. And if they were inaccurate about horse armour, why do they bother to draw infantry armour in great detail?

>I can accept such explanations for individual artists being inaccurate about certain things but this is a too common phenomenon to be ignored.
No, not really. Monkey see, monkey do.

>And if they were inaccurate about horse armour, why do they bother to draw infantry armour in great detail?
Because it's easier to get a person (or, even better, a mannequin) to stand still in a studio for hours at a time than it is to get a horse to do the same and if you're comissioned to draw some rich asshole in his battle rattle then you're of course you're going to pay more attention to his armor than the horses'. These patrons wanted images of themselves looking regal and poised, not the detail of their sellswords' outfits.

Again: there are countless depictions from various parts of Europe drawn during the middle ages. They put a lot of effort into depicting details on people, their armour their weaponry - yet they couldn't be bothered to depict armour on horses? Your argument is simply not convincing. If you have access to look at the weapons and armour of people you also have access to the armour of horses. In particular if we take into consideration that we're talking about a time period of multiple centuries here. Do you want to tell me honestly that in all those years nobody bothered to look up horse armour when they put great effort into looking up everything else and in the 16th century suddenly discovered that horse armour exists after all? And it's not like there absolutely were no depictions of horse armour - take this late medieval chess piece for example. However, these depictions in painted imagery are exceedingly rare (I have yet to see one; there is one depiction of something similar to it from a biblical illumination but that seems to depict some kind of chimaira). There are lots of depictions of battles and none of them I have seen show horse armour.

Instead of believing in the mere coincidence that generations of artists who put a lot of effort into drawing everything in great detail simply forgot about horse armour or were too lazy or whatever, I find it a lot more likely that horse armour simply wasn't that common before the 16th century.

>These patrons wanted images of themselves looking regal and poised, not the detail of their sellswords' outfits.
We're talking about all kinds of art here, many of them illuminations on chronicles depicting battles.

>There are lots of depictions of battles and none of them I have seen show horse armour.
I might add: this is not fully accurate. They do show some form of armour, usually a chanfron worn by the horses of kings. But nothing akin to what is seen on that chess piece. And the other participating horses are more often than not without any kind of armour.

And that's why nobody used them, except some poor medieval island. And only reason was, because they were... cheap.
>here were plenty of medieval battles won thanks to the archers disordering the enemy.
Literally fucking zero. Archers were never primary factor for winning battles. Even favorite example of >muh English longbow - Agincourt, was won only thanks to heavy melee combat.
It is basically some variation of confirmation bias.
>English won battle? Fast, check if they were English archers there
>In fact they were
>Clearly battle won only thanks to them
And let's forever ignore all weather conditions, English excellent tactics and morale, and complete incompetence of French in most cases.

If a human can wear a full suit of armor without much restriction of movement and exertion, why would a horse have an harder time ?

Loooooong
Liiiiiiiiiive
AGATHA

What is carrhae

Isn't it agreed upon that the majority of causalities pre-blackpowder era were caused by archers in most armies? The exceptions being armies like Rome and maybe Barbarians who really preferred close range. Given that most armies will retreat when their numbers start to halve, and archers have the first strike capability, it seems likely.

There are no "Archers" there is light infantry that can shoot with a bow and there is light infantry that cannot shoot a bow/doesnt have a bow.

Are they effective against cavalry at range? No. it would take an absurd amount of arrows fired at a horse to bring it down if you are firing from the front and even then it will be due to blood loss due to where its vital organs are located. Killing a horse with arrows is extremely difficult especially war horses which were usually the largest beasts they could find. And this is all assuming the horses are not covered with anything. Just try hunting a deer with a bow sometime and see even if you land a perfect arrow passing through its heart how far it can run.

Were they effective against infantry? Is it armoured? If yes then it is not effective. What archery is good at is causing chaos. It is difficult to maintain all your body parts covered and make sure you are not being hit at openings as you advance. It basically causes your charge to be slowed and careful.

If it is unarmoured or lightly armoured? Very deadly. The most deadly when compared to any other ''type''.

Again, archers would pull out swords and convert into infantry as soon as the range was closed. Even english bowmen were not exclusively archers. They were infantrymen who had bows.

Because he is already wearing a human in armor. Plus I would guess that the standing position of a human is far better to balance the weight on your bone structure, directly on the center of your mass.

Running in armor may not be as exhausting as one usually assume, but running in armor with a heavy backpack is. If you put a chest armor on your horse, it is far from his mass center (Under his belly) and that is exhausting, I guess, because it is always harder to lift some mass wich is away from your center.

It doesnt. It also doenst need one. Horses are very, very hard to kill. Do not expect even a pike to be able to hold back a horse even if it hits perfectly. A shire is harder to kill than a bear. Its bone structure is all the armor it needs.

Archers aren't cheap you fucking knob.

1/3rd of Charles the Bold's army was archers, even more if you don't count the pages and squires of the men-at-arms.

How about Halidon Hill? Not won by archers?
Do you have a single fact to back that up? How would you even know that? Figures for what weapon caused how many deaths per battle weren't even compiled until the 18th century.

The english archers at agincourt were paid 6d. a day and the men-at-arms 12d.

The way I understand it, archers were either used to defend walls or volley in battle, I assume against mass unarmored levies

Arrows aren't actually too effective against plate/mail so knights who could afford armor would probably survive

>mass unarmored levies

Don't forget dragons and unicorns.

Childhood is idolizing archers, adulthood is realizing slingers make more sense

Take a good look at the battle of Agincourt.

RHODIAN SLINGERS
YES
IMMEDIATELY

men at arms were higher class and some would be mounted

archers had to meet certain standards that left them with less archers than if they had loosened it

Aaaaand the point that they were cheaper still stands.

If slingers were so great then why did archers replace them?
And what standards would those be? Post proof.

>If slingers were so great then why did archers replace them?
no idea desu, I'd rather take an arrow to the dome than a stone

Because slingers have a shorter range

Atlatl > sling

Which was archers funelling heavy infantry into formation yet again

Longbows were favoured in England because of the Hunter culture there
They didn't fly so well elsewhere due to how hard it was to make the bow and how much more training it tecquired than the crossbow due to the sheer strength needed

Not harder ro make than a flail.