Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
"James A. Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Peter Gutmann wrote:
>>Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed.
>>Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners.
>>Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a
>>"we'll turn a blind eye" notification to his troops.
>
>The english army was well disciplined, and in battle did what it what it was
>told. About half way through the battle of Agincourt, King Henry decided he
>could not afford so many troops guarding so many prisoners, and told them
>kill-em-all. Nobility had nothing to do with it. It did not matter who
>took you prisoner.
As I said in my previous message, this is the topic of endless debate, and in
particular the high death toll among the nobles could arisen from any number
of causes. For example at Crecy the French king (Philip the something'th) had
the oriflamme (French war banner indicating that no prisoners could be taken)
displayed because he was worried that the gold-rush for enemy nobles to ransom
would screw up the French battle order, resulting in huge losses when the
French ended up at the losing end. There's speculation that they did the same
thing at Agincourt, because no French chronicler of the time raised even a
murmur about the killings. So something like that could have been just as
much the cause as any order given by Henry V to dispatch leftovers after the
battle (for example the mass slaughter of the first and second lines
("battles") of French, bogged down in mud (the battle was fought in a rain-
soaked freshly-ploughed field), by English commoners occurred very early in
the battle, while the killing of stragglers under Henry's orders didn't happen
until the following day, or the very end of the battle for prisoners). If you
really want to continue this, please do it in soc.history medieval, there are
already thousand-odd-message threads going over every nuance of this.
Peter.
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
-- Peter Gutmann wrote: > Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. > Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. > Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a > "we'll turn a blind eye" notification to his troops. The english army was well disciplined, and in battle did what it what it was told. About half way through the battle of Agincourt, King Henry decided he could not afford so many troops guarding so many prisoners, and told them kill-em-all. Nobility had nothing to do with it. It did not matter who took you prisoner. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG QwzmnNSSaHhQhQItWATHwnWB7cLchcXDK+wV1pDP 4p0FRureqYrveRbFxz5h7VDonlv9au7JlTFdp/2BL
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
"James A. Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >I find this very hard to believe. Post links, or give citations. Normally I'd dig up various refs, but since this topic has been beaten to death repeatedly in places like soc.history.medieval, and the debate could well go on endlessly in the manner of the standard "What would have happened if the North/South had done X?", I'll just handwave and invite you to dig up whatever sources you feel like yourself. >>(There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and >> removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English >> commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing >> nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to >> pieces on the spot. > >Wrong > >French nobles were taken prisoner in the usual fashion, but executed because >the English King commanded them executed. Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a "we'll turn a blind eye" notification to his troops. When you have English commoner men-at-arms (front row) meeting French nobles (front row, hoping to nab Henry and other for- ransom nobles, and to some extent because it was unseemly to let the commoners do the fighting, although they should have learned their lesson for that at Courtrai) there's going to be a bloodbath no matter what your leader orders. For the peasants it's "get him before he gets me", not a chivalric jousting match for the landed gentry. In addition the enemy nobles had weapons and armour that was worth something, while a ransom was useless to a non-noble (if Bob the Archer did manage to captured Sir Fromage, his lord would grab him, collect the ransom, and perhaps throw Bob a penny for his troubles). (There's a lot more to it than that, but I really don't want to get into an endless debate over this. Take it to soc.history if you must, and if anyone's still interested in debating this there). Peter.
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
-- Peter Gutmann wrote: > That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones > (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, > in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather > ineffective against the armour) You have this garbled. According to http://www.royalarmouries.org/extsite/view.jsp?sectionId=1025 by the fifteen hundreds, the very finest armor could deflect almost all bodkin arrows - but very few could afford a complete set of the very finest armor - and the battle of Agincourt occurred well before the fifteen hundreds. Presumably the armor improved (and became heavier and more expensive) in response to the battle of Agincourt. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG wY4Gt1+GdEkqgNLQxKrMduPJSg/k6DEUpWEGeADc 48Orz+xAb/+RsojnqG7H/GLzb+Ll5QWvCCvF9MkuG
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
-- Peter Gutmann wrote: > That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones > (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, > in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather > ineffective against the armour) I find this very hard to believe. Post links, or give citations. > (There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death > toll and > removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English > commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing > nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to > pieces on the spot. Wrong French nobles were taken prisoner in the usual fashion, but executed because the English King commanded them executed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG R2tc27UGwjykTsUjBSVNU/VakHCZzthZfJpceSzP 49ifULPODBC+M+WzhF3jxg1W5+UV7ABaMjvVW7R8b
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
"R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >These were not the sort of sporting arrows skillfully shot toward gayly >colored targets by Victorian archery societies (charmingly described by Mr. >Soar in later chapters) but heavy "bodkin pointed battle shafts" that went >through the armor of man and horse. That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather ineffective against the armour) tend to favour the muddy ground trapping men and horses, lack of room to manoeuver/compression effects, and arrows killing horses out from under the knights, at which point see the muddy ground section. Obviously the machine- gun effect of the arrows was going to cause a number of minor injuries, and would be lethal to unarmoured troops, but they weren't quite the wonder-weapon they're made out to be. (There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to pieces on the spot. Again, arrows didn't have much to do with the loss of so many nobles). Peter.
In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109953591903164550,00.html> The Wall Street Journal November 4, 2004 BOOKS In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down By NED CRABB November 4, 2004; Page D10 The opening slaughter of what came to be known as the Hundred Years' War took place on Aug. 26, 1346, near the village of Crecy in northern France. There King Philip VI's French army bore down on a much smaller English force commanded by Edward III. What happened in the ensuing few hours still lives, in the French national consciousness, as one of the most painful blots on the proud escutcheon of France. As described in Hugh D.H. Soar's "The Crooked Stick" (Westholme Yardley, 241 pages, $24.95), a fascinating study of a forgotten weapon, King Philip's shining knights, encased in magnificent armor and thundering toward the enemy on huge war horses, were practically annihilated by an enormous black cloud of thousands of arrows that rose from the English lines and descended with murderous effect. These were not the sort of sporting arrows skillfully shot toward gayly colored targets by Victorian archery societies (charmingly described by Mr. Soar in later chapters) but heavy "bodkin pointed battle shafts" that went through the armor of man and horse. And the black cloud wasn't just one surge, it kept coming and coming, arching high over the battlefield, as each of the 6,000 archers released an average three or four arrows a minute. For centuries the longbow dominated battle, affecting the fates of nations. Royal blood soaked the ground, and with frightening suddenness King Philip's now much reduced 27,000-man army was in desperate retreat from Edward's 9,000 Englishmen. Sixty-nine years later, at Agincourt, similar clouds of battle shafts released by the archers in Henry V's small, wet, hungry and sick army devastated a French army so badly that scores of ancient aristocratic lineages were ended in a few hours of battle. The English longbowman had emerged from centuries of hunting in the dark forests of his native land and into the glare of battle to end the dominance of the mounted knight. The knight and his "destrier" horse, also armored, were the medieval equivalent of an Abrams tank, owning the battlefield for centuries and vulnerable only to other knights and crossbowmen (who had to stop and rewind their weapons) at close range. And now here was this peasant fellow in his hooded cloth shirt, leather jerkin (close-fitting, sleeveless jacket), soft leather boots and crude helmet bringing him down into the mud. Whence came this man, with a great bow taller than himself? As Mr. Soar fascinatingly elucidates, he and his weapon have a long history. Over centuries, the English archer had developed an extra-long bow hewn from the yew tree. Many types of wood possessed the essential power-making qualities of tension and compression, but yew was by far the best. "Though notoriously difficult to work with because of its often tortuous grain," Mr. Soar writes, "yew has an elasticity superior to all other timber." Yew gave the warbow tremendous thrust, sending feathered (fletched) shafts 250 yards, compared with the shorter handbow's 50 or so and the crossbow's 100. To this day, as Mr. Soar shows later when he describes longbow archery's evolution into a garden-party pastime and Olympic sport, no superior wood has been discovered. Examining the longbow's heritage, Mr. Soar takes us to Paleolithic and Neolithic prehistory for a vivid reconstruction of the ancient bowman ancestors of the men who stood at Crecy in 1346. He begins with a typically pithy statement: "Matters were not easy for our early ancestors. It was their fate to be at once both predator and prey. At best, this was an unattractive lifestyle and one fraught with inevitable uncertainty and danger." To improve the odds, early man devised the pointed stick with which to skewer his food and his enemies. From the pointed stick came the spear with its sharp stone point, and then the need to give it propulsion other than by simply throwing it -- and thus, inevitably, the crooked stick with its primitive string of plaited grass, sinew or hemp. Eventually the bow was strengthened by the use of horn on the tips, where the string was either tied or slipped into a groove at the shaft, and sinew and hemp gave way to linen thread or silk, a far more elastic means of projecting arrows. The longbow's supremacy lasted about two centuries, shifting the balance of power mostly to England, whose kings issued royal decrees banning certain "idle" games and demanding that all able-bodied young men in every village and town diligently practice archery. The English were especially deft at instituting battlefield discipline for archers, training them to move in formation on command, usually by horn signals. The Frenc
