It's a warrior race disregards ranged weapons as cowardly episode

In the ancient era, these skirmishers mainly used slings. In the medieval era, they mainly used crossbows.

Bows took more practice, but there was still more glory in being a front-liner than a skirmisher.

Yeah, but only cause Fate and Destiny

And even though Hoplites aren't Homeric:
>What is Marathon?

Also the French were attacking up a hill. There's a (poorly maintained) monument at the site that you can climb up and view the lay of the land and where the French and English forces were. The English didn't have to move. Takes a lot to beat that.

I think you have gotten the wrong idea about archery. A warbow was not something for a weakling, longbowmen were beefy as fuck. Sure, they weren't knights, but
>weaklings, the little boys, the untrained and incapable
Not by a long shot. pun entirely unintentional

It's almost like they dun fucked up and chose a bad spot to meet the enemy.

Aye, people forget that it was law in England that every able man had to train with a longbow weekly.
There was even some (maybe disproven?) evidence to suggest that it warped the archer's bone structure

Yet hoplites trounced Persians.

I'm mainly thinking about ancient combat rather than medieval combat. In the ancient era, military doctrine primarily revolved around armies of infantry in tight formation, and all other types of soldier played a supporting role.

Later on, people started to think of bows as being valuable as well, and not just a weapon for the irregulars.

Swords? They're for pussies. Manly men get up close.

Come on Bennett, throw away the chicken shit sword, you don't just want to swing that blade, you want to put the knife in me, and look me in the eye, and see what's going on in there when you turn it, that's what you want to do, right?
Come on, just between you and me, don't deprive yourself of some pleasure, come on Bennett, let's party!

The Persians used a lot of archers in the Greco-Persian wars. I mean it really depended on the contingent, like the Persians used bows and spears and so did the Medes I think, while the Ionians sent Greek Hoplites.
The whole "their arrows will blot out the sun."
"Then we will fight in the shade" exchange I think is in Herodotus, along with most of the badass lines in 300.
Laconic wit, best wit

>Knife
Nothing beats the tactile sensation of choking the life out of your enemy, feeling his struggles weaken, feel his last gasp, with your own two hands.

Quick googling gives me this, looked around but saw no articles about disproving the findings:
dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2235150/Elite-archers-drowned-aboard-Henry-VIIIs-flagship-Mary-Rose-identified-RSI.html
from 2012, and seems pretty legit. The archers are described pretty much exactly as I imagine them from The White Company/Sir Nigel

It's good to remember that while bows have been around for a long time, the specific type of heavy warbow utilized by the English was a new, high tech innovation for it's time.

There were horse archers in the ancient era. The Parthians gave the Romans a hard time with largely horse-archer armies.

Persian armies used lots of archers and light infantry too.

Before that you had chariot archers, though there would often be a spear guy in the chariot too.

I read once romans didnt think much of it and got auxiliary's to do it for them.

>the specific type of heavy warbow utilized by the English was a new, high tech innovation for it's time.
I find this view pretty euro-centric, user. Composit bows are older and more refined than a simple longbow.

The horse-archers were considered barbarians. It was largely a tactic of convenience based on their culture, that just so happened to be very effective against a mainly-infantry army.

The Persian armies were trounced pretty badly by the Macedonians led by Alexander, and used greek tactics up until times became more modern.

The charioteers were mainly noblemen. The chariot was considered the ultimate war vehicle until Alexander demonstrated just how weak they actually were against an organized army, where they could be trapped to a halt in a nest of blades, and the drivers cut down.

For it's time and place then. Bows were also viewed very differently outside of Europe, being considered a weapon for nobles in many places.

Bows don't actually kill you as easily as other weapons, so I can see why people might be biased against them.

The same goes for early guns. Lots of Napoleonic soldiers got shot lots of times in their career. Infection is the problem, not the lethality of the weapon.

Melee fights generally end with someone crippled or dead because there's no other alternative.

It's not about killing outright, it's about incapacitation. Yeah, you might survive being hit by an arrow, but you're not going to keep on fighting with about an arm's length of wood sticking out of you, and a sharp piece of iron logded somewhere in your arm pit or somewhere else.

That's why. At least a sword has the decency to kill you.

I don't know Marcus Cassius Scaeva fought despite worse wounds and survived.

>alledgedly

the crossbowmen were mercs all the way from genoa

>it's a warrior race disregards ranged weapons as cowardly episode

What? What episode? What show?

Are you actually referring to something specific, or are you just complaining about some old cliche that fell out of fashion years ago?

>hands
A real man can kill any opponent with abs alone.

Entire pre cameras history is like this.

Samurai used lots of bows early on, and viewed it as honorable. Same with the numerous steppe tribes between asia and europe. The romans didn't consider ranged weapons cowardly at all, and used javelins pretty effectively, and later on adopted the horse archers of their eastern enemies too.

I think it's mostly a european knight thing, that whole situation with attempting to ban crossbows, etc. Like others have mentioned, the greeks seem to have had an issue with them as well, but that sort of attitude has never stopped ranged weapons from actually being used when they were useful.

The reason many civilizations thought arrows were fucking stupid is that they couldn't even pierce basic armor most of the time. Alexander outfitted his soldiers with mostly leather armor and small shields and lost very few men in combat against the Persians. He was almost killed by an arrow in India but Indians had access to better steel.

But the first sentence not only doesn't answer the question but adds something irrelevant to the discussion dumb weeb faggot. Also reminder samufags got REKT by Yi Sun Shin when they tried to invade Korea.

I need source for that leather armor statement.

*linen armor

The important thing to remember is despite all posturing to the contrary, most sensible people are pragmatic when they need to be.
All is fair in love and war, and all that

>The reason many civilizations thought arrows were fucking stupid is that they couldn't even pierce basic armor most of the time.
Dead french knights would beg to differ.

Except they were finished off in melee you fucktard the Agnicourt meme needs to end.

There are no records of french knights being killed by an arrow in this war.

>upset frenchman
Please.

Typical cause of death was drowning in the mud or being cut up by English soldiers. Longbows killed more people and fucked up more shields than the average bow but come on.

>americans are unironically retarded enough to believe arrows can pierce plate

don't forget vikings being epic warriors and samurai slicing tanks in half

>plate armor
>Hundred Years War
Pick one. This is why nobody takes Veeky Forums's interpretations of history seriously.

linothorax

>it's "arrows are useless against plate" episode
Reminder that said arrows were almost never used outside of volleys in military formations.
VOLLEYS NIGGA VOLLEYS
DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND IT
YOU SHOOT AND HOPE IT HITS SOMETHING CRITICAL
AND IT DOES, BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY FUCKING ARROWS, ONE OF THEM IS BOUND TO HIT A WEAK SPOT

No user, plate armor is inpenetrable by normal weapons and surrounded the full bodies of all knights throughout the entire Medieval Era.

The longsword couldn't even effectively break through maille, anyway. Why would an arrow have more success?

daily reminder that yew longbows were folded over one billion times and arrows fired from them could pierce stone walls

Bodkin arrows were specifically made to penetrate mail.

But the question is, does it protect against nuclear deep-strikes and mind-worms?

>don't forget vikings being epic warriors and samurai slicing tanks in half
This is what it sounds like to me everytime someone gushes about the monstrous muscular hulks that are the english archers and their masterful crafted bows, made out of the finest yew and folded ten thousand times and which could pierce ten knights at once. Such a magnificant weapon that was never overstimated by english historian.

>hundred years war
>the early 15th century during which armor consisting mostly of plates with mail voiding became the predominant form of protection for very wealthy men at arms

You can pick both if you want, actually, or just the first one. Unless you mean to imply that the only form of plate to ever exist was Renaissance Era fully articulated plate.

>t. French Knight

>Never wore plate armor.
>Never got hit in the chest or face with a mace while wearing plate armor and getting super bruised and concussed from the blow.

>you should shoot the armor directly into the armor plate, hoping the arrow would penetrate the armor
"You should shoot your bullets into the bulletproof kevlar vest, hoping the bullets would penetrate the vest".
This is literally what you just said, just in a different form.

And nobody had the idea to make swords that are pretty great at penetrating armor? Why would a long bar of metal be worse at this than a tiny piece of it?

Citation need, faggot.

Also if it's not fully articulated plate then you have POINTS NOT COVERED WHERE ARROWS CAN HIT AND INJURE YOU

How is this hard for armor autists to understand? Do they think all armor is made of adamantium and arrowheads are paper mache?

To be fair the crossbowmen didn't accomplish anything and were already running away when the knights ran over them
Thay deserved getting stomped more than getting paid

>Implying all bows used in war were like the biggest English longbows with 130+ lb draw weights
>Implying it's that hard for a hardy and a fit person who's spent their life doing manual labor to pull back a bow with 60-80 lbs

>Medieval Europe. Sure, bows were used, but where considered unhonorable peasant weapons by the French after they got repeatedly BTFO by English archers.

FTFY

A smaller point has less armor that it needs to push through, which makes it easier.

To be fair, the crossbowmen were supposed to have pavises to protect them, but they were deployed without them for... reasons. They didn't accomplish anything because the English longbowmen had longer range and were shooting them to death with impunity, which would not have happened if the crossbowmen had the shields they were supposed to have.

user, are you telling me that only arrow heads can have small points? Not swords? Ever looked at the points of rapiers, small swords and even fucking late medieval longswords?

No they weren't. There is some evidence to suggest that bodkins were bird hunting arrows, not even armor piercing ones. They find some bodkins that don't even have hardened tips and would just bend when they hit steel plate armor.

And a bodkin isn't gonna do shit to mail over padding.

Real armor piercing arrowheads were just an acute pointed square head.

Capwell, Tobias. Armour of the English Knight, 1400-1450. London: Thomas Del Mar, 2015.

If you weren't this much of an illiterate dickmuncher, you would have reed this book and discovered that your arguments about how early forms of plate armor were penetrated exactly in that method, you dumb fuck, making your larger argument correct but some minor details need correcting.

You faggot.

I don't need no girl!
I don't need no sword!

IMMAKILLYOUNAOOOOOO!

>No they weren't. There is some evidence to suggest that bodkins were bird hunting arrows, not even armor piercing ones. They find some bodkins that don't even have hardened tips and would just bend when they hit steel plate armor.
>no citation again

I've read that and all it does is prove my points.

ITT everyone thinks that arrows could never penetrate knight armor and I guess all those knights at Crecy just got upset they were hit by ineffective arrows and killed themselves on their own accord.

ITT everyone thinks they are historians, or were at Crecy.

Kill yourself.

>made a valid point
>"le kill yourself"

Summer kiddies can't leave sooner.

>ITT everyone thinks that arrows could never penetrate knight armor
Because this is right.

Then how did they get defeated by archers? Because they did as a fact.

You didn't read the rest of the post, obviously.

The arrows didn't hit their armor, they hit their horses, which caused them to fall into the mud and drown.

>Then how did they get defeated by archers?
They got defeated by their own stupid strategies and of the complete english army, which doesn't consist only of 100% archers. Also those archers often got into melee.

Also, just for fun, the french won. So they didn't get defeated, just in some of those battles.

So all this argument over archers not being effective against knights is pointless bullshit, because they were clearly beaten by longbows and le armor meme means dogshit.

Considering Hundred Years War took place in 14th and 15th centuries yeah they had plate you fucking idiot when do you think it was used? In 17th century?

Let's post the most meme things about history

>katana
>longbow
>vikings
>Spartans
>muh le war is hell WWI
>le AK47 is reliable

>no mongols

As far as Wikipedia says, the way it worked was that no one had really used archers in large numbers up until the Battle of Agincourt. Until that point, battles had usually been decided by the knights. So when Henry V showed up with an army of almost entirely archers and was still outnumbered, the French were sure they would curbstomp the English.
Then they had to walk 300 yards of knee-deep mud under constant arrow-fire.
Regardless of how many got killed by the arrows, by the time they hit the English line they were so exhausted that they could barely fight.

Replace longbow with "platemail" and AK47 with "le M16 was supreme gun" you've got a solid list.

>shitposting this hard
And Veeky Forums tries to talk shit about Veeky Forums not knowing about history. Literally everyone here bases their historic knowledge off of garbage media.

>before Agincourt
How about the motherfucking battle of Crecy for one.

>abs

A real man can kill a man with naught but his hate filled stare.

>you guys, Mongols prove that archer cavalry will beat any army, swear to god! They beat everybody in Europe, and camped outside the castles, and, and got bored and... and left.

But plate was effective in all of europe, while the longbow is an english historians meme.

It's less that arrows can penetrate plate, and more that the constant hail of arrows meant at least one had a good chance of hitting a weakpoint and getting in there.

With that said, a good deal of knights were ransomed, not killed. It suggests to me that they made it through the fighting pretty okay aside from being exhausted by the conditions, unless they were crushed by horses or killed in melee.

M16 WAS a superior gun.

WMDs

>the Mongols are a meme people because they didn't take over all of Europe
>let's just ignore the fact they took over almost all of Asia barring Japan and the Middle East, they're a meme people!

You aren't wrong. Strangling someone makes my penis hard.

asia is a meme region

>all of Asia barring Japan
And Vietnam. They had basically the same experience as the US.

Can't wait for summer to end.