Combat of the Hundred years war

Could the Anglo-Welsh longbow actually pierce French plate armour used throughout the Hundred years war? I've heard people claim that the longbow only penetrated the weak spots near the arm-pits and the neck. Some suggest it only destroyed cavalry charges and others claimed that it only pierced the chain mail and as this was supposedly more prominent than plate, it made it seem super effective.

If it was so effective, why did the English lose the war?

(Side question- which was more effective: the Italian crossbow c. 14th century or the Anglo-Welsh crossbow, assuming the wielders are equally skilled?)

Wasnt that war of roses shit going on at the time of maine?
thats my best bet to why they lost; civil war.

The actual fighting of the wars of the roses started in 1455, the hundred years war was over by then.

The war of the roses happened after the 100 years war.

The longbow was mostly used against charging heavy cavalry in Agincourt, the arrows mostly killed the horses who lost momentum due to the mud on the terrain. The knights when then killed by infantry.

The English lost the war because after Henry V 's death there was no organised continental campaign to keep what they had. The English also had spent exorbitant amount of borrowed cash and raised taxes,the war was also unpopular in some circles of the court and more specifically in the Lancastrian faction. Eventually the French realised that new technologies like the canon were extremely effective against fortifications and infantry and they formed an army of professional soldiers/mercenaries that was more specialised, rather than feudal levies and noble cavalry.

>Harry doesn't die like a faggot
>has a successful male heir who rules competently
>retains control of northern France, dauphin and heir become bros
>cultural transfer
>glorious Anglo-French alliance
>Europe is conquered and kraits get BTFO
What could have been

The arrows killed the horses and then the knights were basically slaughtered by hand.

It's like beating up someone after they've had a bad car crash basically.

The longbow was phenomenally successful for a period of fifty years. Eventually the French regained their lost land through a mixture of luck and not retardedly charging anymore. The longbow never lost it's role however - the English were still using it on the 16th century with a lot of success.

The reason they were still using longbows was because it actually won in 1v1 against gunpowder. Gunpowder however pierced armour and as I said was cheap. Eventually the arquebus took over because it was powerful, simple and cheap (the English were using studio much yew that they ran out and had to buy it from Germany, to the point that deforestation for English longbows became a political issue there).

As to the crosbow question, they both had their uses. Crossbows were superb, powerful siege weapons but they had a low firing rate. They were better when used from supporting a fortified position (or with a pavise set up) but out in the open the longbow wrecks them

*from a supporting or fortified sorry. Enjoy this meme

Even if it could, I don't think it would have been terribly relevant seeing as most soldiers weren't wearing plate armor.

>glorious Anglo-French alliance
>anglo-french alliance

This would never happen in a million years.

That's the problem with feudal monarchies, even if you successfully raise an heir that is competent , eventually someone down the line is going to fuck it up.

There was never going to be peace unless the English completely neutralised the Valois dynasty, this was because the Valois kings got support from French nobles who were pissed off at the English nobles getting continental holdings. The French only needed someone to rally to, but because up until Charles VII, the french kings were extremely incompetent on military and political matters, the French just didn't give a shit about the war with the English, but were even more pissed off at Burgundy.

>charging heavy cavalry
>at Agincourt

Are you mixing up with Crecy? Agincourt was almost entirely an infantry vs infantry battle with a small number of French cavalry on the flanks trying to surround the English but being beaten back almost instantly.

Was the end of the hundred years war like the US retreat from Vietnam? Did England BTFO France in (((most))) battles, but the war just became unpopular at home among the barons?

Not really
Their was plenty of BTFO battles on both sides

OK, I'll try to condense this into a paragraph instead of a book chapter.

Yes, the bow could pierce some armors, but not all armors were created equally. Some pieces, like helms, are particularly thick, whereas limb defenses are quite thin. Some armors were heat treated, making them harder; others were not. It also depends on the range and arc of the arrow's trajectory. Couple this with the layers of mail and padding underneath, even if an arrow penetrated, it may not have been lethal or necessarily even debilitating.

What made the longbow effective was not its power, but how it was deployed (as Kelly DeVries argues, and I am inclined to agree with). Horses are a great big fucking soft target and are put to route pretty easily with volley fire from flanking positions. A large part of the reason for the French military defeats through the 14th and 15th centuries is because, whereas the English began to fight consistently dismounted, the French often continued to fight from horseback. A well disciplined infantry force will, 9 times out of 10, defeat an opposing mounted force. Horses are generally a liability on the battlefield.

As for your bonus question - define "effective." Effective at what? Rate of fire? Penetration? There are all kinds of measures. Besides, they were usually employed in different ways. Bows were lighter, cheaper, fired faster and required less skill, making them ideal for mass volley fire by less-skilled levy troops in field battles. Crossbows, being slower but with considerable more penetrating power, were more useful in sieges, where the defenders could shelter behind walls as they reloaded their weapons and could pick targets below.

Yes, I'm a medieval military historian.

Thanks for the answer.

All these Roman Civil Wars, could have been avoided, had you only kept the empire intact.

bows took less skill?
i thought that it was the other way around.
cross bows were the ones anybody could pick up and use.

>French plate armour used throughout the Hundred years war
Plate armour developed during the hundred years war, it was not used "throughout" the war. And no, arrows could not reliably penetrate plate. They could not reliably penetrate mail or gambeson either. Historical sources tell us that armour provided a reasonably good defence against arrows.

>Some suggest it only destroyed cavalry charges
Archers alone could not bring a cavalry charge to a halt. They needed infantry and fortifications to protect them, otherwise the cavalry would ride them down, which is what happened at the Battle of Patay, where the archers did not have the time to fortify their position.

>the Italian crossbow c. 14th century or the Anglo-Welsh crossbow
You're thinking in modern nationalist terms. Back in those days the production of weapons was not tied to the state but a matter of private entrepreneurship, guilds, cities, etc.. Weapons were not generally issued but people brought their own equipment. Some may have bought locally, others may have imported their weapons. The wood from which the English longbows were made may have been from Southern Europe. The crossbows and guns fielded may have been German made, etc.
This idea that a certain nationality only had access to a certain type of troops/weapons is something straight out of a video game.
Certainly, some areas were more renowned than others for producing a certain type of goods (usually due to environmental factors that favoured the production in that region rather than an inherent "national" predisposition of the locals), but there was nothing to keep an Englishman from buying an Italian made bow, a German made armour, a Spanish made sword, etc.

>Horses are generally a liability on the battlefield.

I'm going to ask that you clarify this before chimping out over how inaccurate it sounds.

But 90% of the french at Agincourt fought dismounted tho

after their horses got shot or stuck in the mud, yes

But it is relevant to the most of the big battles of the hundred years war, at Crecy the regular infantry barely reached the field, at Poitiers the french dismissed most of the regular infantry before the battle. At Agincourt there simply was not any room for the lower class troops and they never participated. For most battles of the war the english fought rich nobility

No, They main body of the French nobility fought dismounted from the start while the flanks contained small detachments of cavalry, just as they did at Poitiers,

fuck, *the

>Horses are generally a liability on the battlefield.
I suggest you rephrase this, because it sounds awful.
Horses were perhaps liability in logistical sense, or when fighting mounted without previously breaking up infantry formation.

>They could not reliably penetrate mail or gambeson either.
Are you suggesting the longbow was altogether ineffective? If it couldn't even penetrate the most basic armour how could it kill at all? Also others in the thread seem to disagree, could you provide a source as this seems unlikely?

>Are you suggesting the longbow was altogether ineffective?
I am saying the effectiveness is overestimated while the effectiveness of mail and gambeson in particular is generally underestimated. Gambeson was good armour, and it offered reasonable protection against arrows. Modern experiments have confirmed this.
Lots of archers shooting at lots of men might leave some of them wounded and thin their ranks but archers alone could not win battles.

Lads why is the tabard-and/or-cloak-over-plate-armor combo so fucking A E S T H E T I C

It was however probably the terrible defeats of the end of the war that turned Henry VI. into a human potatoe, thus leading directly into the War of the Roses.

Not really, both sides had their fair shares of btfo's, england won one half and france won the rest.

The main reason the english had a chance to win in the first place is the civil war in France between Burgundians and Armagnacs, which undermined the Authority of the french king and provided the Plantagenets with a powerful ally in the continent. And even with that, they simply couldn't project force effectively across the chanmel. I'd say the only chance they had to maintain some of their territories in France was during the Treaty of Arras, where the english diplomats sperged out and refused every peace offer the French, while Phillip the Good left the war. After that, the war was over.