Well nearly - 4pm UK time today and you can find it on my channel here https://www.youtube.com/user/todsstuff1

The main film can be found here https://youtu.be/ds-Ev5msyzo

This film was funded by a Kickstarter drive and is presented by myself, Dr Toby Capwell (historian) , Will Sherman (fletcher), Joe Gibbs (archer) and Augusto Boer Bront (armorer).

We use equipment made by the contributors, but also by Isak Krogh (mail aventail), Christine Carnie (arming cote), Phil Parkes (mail standard) and Owen Bush (historic irons and steels).

‘Arrows vs Armour’ is back and we are shooting medieval war arrows at the top half of an armoured knight using armour and arrows that are correct in every detail. This film shows exactly what happened…….

Thousands of knights were slain by the English archers at battles like Agincourt, even though they wore full armour; we just didn’t know how and this film goes a long way to explaining what actually occurred.

TV companies have no interest in doing these tests for real with correct armour and real experts who talk about what they see, not about what the script tells them to say. We film it and we show it. No pre-written scripts, no hype, no fluff, no predetermined TV outcomes; just factual truth.

All filmed by professional TV crew, but working for us, our way.

This project generated so many questions that we had to make other films to answer them, so later today a further 3 films will be released looking at mail, armour materials and arrow head materials and a further 4 more films over the next couple of weeks.

We hope you enjoy them.

Tod

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I'm not sure I can properly express how excited I am about this. :) Looking forward to viewing it. Thanks for doing such well conceived videos. :)

Amazing work all of you! I'm stunned and will watch this video many times. Excellent! Three things comes to my mind:

1. For the archer, its all about getting enough arrows at the target and let the odds do their work. It would be very interesting to learn the effective range of such a bow that Joe's using and how many arrows an archer can shot during the time a knight can walk the distance.

2. Mail and padding did not help the knight at this distance against Joe's bow but mail was the main armour for many centuries and I don't think that they would have used such a "useless" armour so what do we know about the draw weight of longbows from Hastings to Crecy? Or where there no mass archers on the battlefield before the 1400th century?

3. What about different draw weights? How would the mail and padding stand up against a 80 pound bow or a 120 pound?

Tod, watching the video for the second time (and its still amazing) I came of thinking about the different marks the mild steel heads and the case hardened heads did on the plate. What if there are surviving parts of armour with markings that could tell us if they where made by case hardened heads by comparing the marks made on the armour used in your test?

I should start saying the video was great, and I hope Tod keeps the armor for further testing with crossbows, turkish bows, javelins and such, as I suggested earlier.

On the video itself, I couldn't believe the shoulder protection was so vulnerable to arrows, I thought they would rather deflect these in frontal shootings ...

By the way, the issue with Turkish composite bows is important, cause French cavalry was using armor way less developed than this at Nicopolis and they managed to do a cavalry charge against a Turkish formation very similar to the English use: archers in the front with spikes in the ground. From the sources I looked over, only the wooden spikes managed to harm French horses, who charged all the way through the arrow shower delivered at them. The French managed to destroy the lightly armoured turkish foot but started having problems with the Janissaries and the heavy cavalry launched later (most of them were taken prisioners rather than died in combat). I think that could bring a similar number of views to your channel.

The French commanders at Nicopolis were veterans from the English wars, made the same mistakes against the Turks and those who survived made the very same mistakes again at Agincourt.

As far as mail goes, it seems that something interesting was happening with the aventail, it was quite obviously many times tougher than the mail shirt, but it seems those shots weren't closely analysed in video.

Seems that at least few shots were resisted very well, but was it aventail alone?


Did it actually bounce out of mail or actually a segment of breastplate hidden under aventail? Or mail collar worn under the avnetail, so second layers of mail?

And the arrows that got stuck seemed to be turned aside significantly, would probably have hard time reaching flesh. Hopefully there will be some pictures of that.

Pedro has a good point. Common soldiers with bows of various sorts feature in many states without it causing terror in their nobility. One might go as far as to ask what period evidence we have that the longbow was banned in France to protect the nobility? Or were there other reasons why the bow was less favoured there?

Jean Juvénal des Ursins did make the claim that the French crown opposed mass archery out of concern that it threatened royal & noble power.

"In short time the French archers became so expert in the use of the bow, that they could shoot with a surer aim than the English. Indeed, if these archers had formed a close confederacy among themselves they might have become more powerful than the Princes and nobles of France. It was fear of just such an outcome that made the French king suppress the archer army."

French armies certainly did include archers (& crossbowers) at various times, but it may also be true that the political threat from large numbers of common people possessing military power as archers caused conflict & decreased the overall effectiveness of French archers.

Thanks to Tod & company for another fantastic test. I am a little surprised by how vulnerable the gaps at the shoulder were in the tested harness. Various later styles of plate armor offer better protection to that area. Sir John Smythe wrote of an arrow piercing a gusset of mail but in that case he specified how the victim had lifted up his arm to strike with a weapon beforehand (thus exposing the mailed armpit). I suspect soldiers in later kit would be almost immune to arrows when advancing with arms & head down.

Thanks Guys,

A few points.

I think the plate was basically invulnerable to the arrows so as far as I am concerned plate of this intermediate quality is basically immune to penetration and of course as the distance went up even more so.

The mail was noticeable easy to penetrate and in many ways this was also o the case in this film I made with Matt Easton https://youtu.be/7iU3q23jGX0. Basically as we all know mail is not great against penetration, but I think I would actually say that it is rubbish against penetration.

So really the arrows are looking for the gaps and that was a strong part of this film was to understand if that was the case and I think it was - mail is where you want to land.

So what is effective against mail? Well I/we will likely come back to look at this properly, but I have personally put a 75lbs through shoddy mail and gambeson at 20m with a 45g arrow so Joes 160lbs/80g arrow at 100yds would deal with mail without thinking and I would think that a 100lbs at 100yds would be much like a 75lbs at 20 yds. So from my empirical testing and view point a 100lbs bow in 1066 would put an arrow through the armour of the time most of the time.

Mail could be and was tougher than what I tested against in what I was doing above (not the AvA test linked here in the OP), but of course lets not forget that mail came in so many varieties, specifications and qualities as did its underpinnings so that to say anything definitive is impossible, but what I can say I that some present would be better and some worse, but all of it would be vulnerable to some degree.

Tod

The aventail tested here gives a sense of how heavier mail may have performed historically. The idea of mail being rubbish against penetration conflicts with a number period sources. We do have plenty of accounts of arrows defeating mail, but also of mail resisting arrows or of mail claimed to resist arrows. For example, Augusto Boer Bront on Facebook a year ago described a circa-1453 Italian military manual that recommends good-quality hauberks for light cavalry over brigandines because they stop crossbows, bows, spears, swords, & handgonnes while covering more area. These claims seem hard to believe because of modern tests, but we don't know exactly what they meant by good-quality mail. We do know that some mail was made of hardened medium-carbon steel, at least in the early 16th century.

I suspect the lighter types of historical mail existed to defend against cuts & the sort of lower-power thrusts that would commonly be delivered in combat.

I will be interested to hear how the team decided between the 'high' / Hardy & Strickland and 'low' / Weapons of Warre estimates of the draw weight of the Mary Rose bows (average around 110 lbs at 28" or average around 150 lbs at 28") I have trouble understanding where the two models disagree and Joe Gibbs at hillbilybows never replied to my inquiry a year or two ago.

Edit: humh, AVA2 - How powerful is a Warbow? starts from lots of premises I don't know the basis for and does not talk about Kooi's model at all. 82 grams is heavier than Ascham's "quarter-pound arrow" which I thought was generally seen as old man's talk?

Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:

The aventail tested here gives a sense of how heavier mail may have performed historically. The idea of mail being rubbish against penetration conflicts with a number period sources. We do have plenty of accounts of arrows defeating mail, but also of mail resisting arrows or of mail claimed to resist arrows. For example, Augusto Boer Bront on Facebook a year ago described a circa-1453 Italian military manual that recommends good-quality hauberks for light cavalry over brigandines because they stop crossbows, bows, spears, swords, & handgonnes while covering more area. These claims seem hard to believe because of modern tests, but we don't know exactly what they meant by good-quality mail. We do know that some mail was made of hardened medium-carbon steel, at least in the early 16th century. I suspect the lighter types of historical mail existed to defend against cuts & the sort of lower-power thrusts that would commonly be delivered in combat.

There is also the Chronicon Colmariense, March 1298 MGH SS 17 p. 264 http://www.mgh.de/dmgh/resolving/MGH_SS_17_S._264

Quote:

"Among which (multitude of soldiers lead by Adolph, King of the Romans) those who had iron helmets on their heads and a gambeson (ie. a tunic thickened with linen and tow, or sewn together from old cloths) and above that an iron shirt (ie. a garment woven together from iron rings), through both of which no arrow from a bow can harm a man, were considered armed men. And a hundred of these armed men hardly feared a thousand unarmed."

A bow in central Europe in 1298 was probably not as powerful as a bow on the best ship in England in 1544, but it shows that mail and a gambeson together were seen as providing good protection against arrows.

I agree that sources seem to say one thing a practical testing shows another, but the hauberk we tested was certainly not as heavy as mail could be, but it would have weighed vastly more had it been of the same grade as the aventail and still we penetrated that even with its very heavy padding. Yes mail could be made out of better than mild, but firstly how often was that the case?

As regards poundages I can't answer, but I do know that Joe has personally examined bows at the MR.

Regards

Tod

Regarding the idea that Princes were afraid of their subjects owning ranged weapons, I know that, that wasn’t the case in Germany. The re-enactor group KSK 1475 has done a lot of research into medieval records. A lot of men, both in the cities and in the villages, were required to own weapons or armour. Most of the weapons were ranged weapons, being crossbows and guns. This was a little later than Agincourt and in a different area. Still, the duty to own weapons seems to be the norm, and not the exception.

As far as armour, I kind of wonder how people without armour would have faired. If in the migration period most people didn’t even have mail, that would explain why the weapons were not as pointy. I also, think distance played a role. Also, shields. I think shields might have been helpful.

I think it is also important to consider that archers force you to do things, like wearing a closed visor and carrying heavier armour. And even if you are safe, it causes you to worry, what if I am not.