THE ENGLISH LONG BOW.

[Peter Hudson]

Originally Posted by urbanspaceman

All this talk about penetrating armour has made me realise I have absolutely no idea what percentage of the enemy had plate armour, and also, as has already been mentioned, mounts skewered with arrows dropping themselves and their riders into the melee would have left plenty of opportunity to shoot into un-armoured areas of the body, as I'm assuming virtually no-one had full body armour in the grand scheme of things.
I do realise we have an interesting, academic discussion here on the forum, but some of these videos are rather over-dramatised, are they not?

Agreed Keith ... Essentially much damage to the attacking French Cavalry would have been caused by horses dropping under their riders...Once they were thrown off I imagine the Knights were in something of a crush with horses behind them crashing into the melee and knee deep in bloodied mud...plus weighted down in full suits of armour.. The archers were also in the business of taking prisoners for bounty money and were armed like soldiers ...
Amazingly the French seem to have been goaded into the attack and failed to deal with the flanking English archery lines. ...The lines of archers on the English flanks thus had a very successful day. The French also had archers however, they didn't use them...
The video is only an aid to instruction/knowledge and some may be a bit much ...or over the top. I use them a lot but hope readers can fit the good parts into my equation. Regards, Peter Hudson.