Posted on 10/25/2009 4:20:42 AM PDT by Pharmboy
French crossbowmen were “completely outclassed” by the English archers, who could send deadly volleys farther and more frequently
The crossbow had a significantly greater range. While the longbow's potential rate of fire provided a vast advantage, the difference was the archer. Without the strength and skill of years of experience, the longbow would have provided little advantage. It was the warriors, not the weapon.
Knute Rockne and Vince Lombardi combined got nothin’ on that pregame speech.
An Urban Legend perhaps, but I understand that the Brit's two-finger "up yours" gesture arose from the fact that the Frecnch cut those two fingers off of any longbowman they captured so he was henceforth useless. The "up yours" defiance indicated they could still use the longbow.
There are plenty of opportunities in Fairfax. If I could, I'd start with a gun line in the parking lot at Fair Oaks Mall pointing west toward Chantilly.
thanks, bfl
” Our king went forth to Normandie
With grace and might of chivalry
There God for him wrought marvelously
Wherefore England may call and cry: Deo gratias:
Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!
He set a siege, the truth to say
To Harfleur town with royal array;
That town he won, and made a fray
That France shall rue til Doom(e)sday. Deo gratias....
Then went our king with all his host
Through France, for all the Frenchmen’s boast;
He spared no dread of least nor most
Til he came to Agincourt coast. Deo gratias....
Then, forsooth, that knight comely,
In Agincourt field he fought manly;
Through grace of God most mighty
He had both field and victory. Deo gratias....
There duke and earl, lord and baron
Were taken and slain, and that well soon,
And some were led into London
With joy and mirth and great renown: Deo gratias....
May gracious God He keep our king,
His people that are well willing
And give him grace without ending
Then we may call and safely sing: Deo gratias....
The guy who got replaced was a grizzled veteran, but he wasn't a tip top nobleman, and did not have the social rank to command the huge number of high nobility in the French Army. The original battle plan was that the French bowmen, crossbowmen, and skirmishers, would attack first. They would soften the English up some, and give Henry a Hobson's choice. He could either absorb the fire of the French bows and crossbows, without replying, or he could have his longbowmen expend their very limited number of arrows on the French auxiliaries, leaving their longbows useless when the main French force attacked.
Fortunately for Henry, and the rest of the English, the new French commander simply assumed victory was his, and laid his plans not with a view to winning the battle, but to making sure Henry, and the high nobles immediately around his banner, were killed of captured by French nobles, not commoners. In the ensuing battle, the French formations, trying to win honor, not victory, merged into a single jam-packed mass of humanity, slogging through the mud straight at Henry's banner.
Cutting off fingers isn’t a legend, I don’t know about the two finger salute
Gettysburg, and the other places you mention, are living, breathing communities of Americans. To expect them to maintain their surroundings as a perpetual museum is unrealistic.
Even the place you admire in France isn’t really kept...it’s a working farm, not an archaeological preserve.
Yes, I like preserving old things and places. However, I respect the rights of the people who actually live there and own it. I really appreciate the Codori family of Gettysburg for keeping that old barn with the cannonball hole in it...but I have no room to squawk if they decide to fix it or raze it.
Bests to you and yours.
Highly unlikely. The battle was devastating to French morale, which it wouldn't have been had they lost a roughly equal conflict. It also made an enormous stir throughout Europe, which again an equal conflict would not have.
It is also relevant that the English were exhausted from long marching trying to evade the French, suffering severely from dysyntery and significantly malnourished.
If the English hadn't tried to stick with their archers and dismounted men at arms approach to battle after effective artillery made it obsolete, they could have kicked ass for at least another century.
Centuries Later, Henry V’s Greatest Victory Is Besieged by Academia
Ny Times | 10/24/2009 | James Glanz
Posted on 10/24/2009 10:38:13 AM PDT by Saije
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2370050/posts
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Bump for after dinner...
bttt
Field artillery didn’t come in until the 30 years war. What made the kinds of longbows needed to shoot through French armor obsolete was the little ice age and the collapse of the food system needed to get people big enough to pull them.
The final English defeat in the Hundred Years War was at the Battle of Castillon in 1453. They were defeated by French artillery. Admittedly, this was in an entrenched camp they attempted to storm, but the technology was the difference.
The basic English tactic throughout the war was to take up a defensible position and then slaughter the French, who were generally stupid enough to march right onto the killing field.
Had the French, for example, surrounded the English at Agincourt, which they could easily have done, and waited for hunger and thirst to do their work, the battle, to the extent it could be called one, would have been a French victory. 24 or 48 hours would have done the trick. Of course, doing so was not possible for the French, as it required a firm command and did not fit into their cultural meme of the glorious charge.
The Little Ice Age and any effects on the strength of the populace didn’t really kick in until the mid-1500s. The longbow was used extensively in the English civil Wars of the Roses, at least their early stages, and was largely responsible for the truly astonishing death rates in some of the battles.
The English longbow was used well into the 16th century. I’m not really sure why the longbow fell out of favour. It was probably the most devastating infantry weapon in existance until the introduction of the mass produced breach-loading rifle in the second half of the 19th century, but once the art had gone, it was almost impossible to get back because it took a lifetime of training and practice to become proficient in the use of the war bow.....
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