[Randall Moffett]

Kel,

Still not sure about the COP thing. Even with little overlap it should keep a massive number of injuries specifically here than a cuirass of plate. Having worked with both originals and reproductions I just cannot see the gap on a state of the art COp from Crecy or Poitiers having a drasitcally lasrger or smaller hole as some of the COPs even have gussets like that of the Hirshstein castle COP. It is possible some of the knights and MAA of Poitiers had no back plate like the Pistia Alterpiece and solid breastplates.

Part of the problem is that the main group promoting the flanking as the turning point miss the fact this was a very small number of men at arms and archers. The bulk of them remained to the front. So it may have been what tipped the battle but the bulk of the attack was still the men at arms and light infantry and archers before the French.

Baker states well before the flank this of the archers and crossbowmen of the English, "The men came togethre in a fearful conflict of lances, swords, and axes. NOr did the archers fail in their duty but, from a safe position protected by the mound (the hill they were on), they attacked those above the ditch and beyond the hedge, aiming arrows which defeated armed knights, while our crossbowmen let fly bolts fast and furious."

This is at the beginning of the battle. He does indicate both the archers and crossbowmen were unable to stop the french but I still think it is more numbers than archer issues.

I personally feel the Cleric was more accurate than most. He was there and while we have to be careful about exaggeration with any one I see nothing that makes me think he is incorrect.

RPM

[Dan Howard]

[Clifford Rogers]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

I don't think enough emphasis has been placed on the effects of exhaustion. The longbows obviously had an attritive effect, you can't stand under an arrow shower indefinitely. But when you look at other battles like Hattin, Nicopolis, even Towton and others (I know of several like this in the Baltic Crusades and the Hussite wars), there does seem to be a pattern of particularly armored troops reaching a sudden collapse point where they simply can't fight any more. I know from fencing in HEMA tournaments that even a really fit person (unlike me) is totally exhausted after just ten or fifteen minutes of hand to hand fighting. Mounted warriors would usually break off and ride away at that point, but if you are advancing on foot, especially in full cavalry harness, you are on a one way trip, victory or death. A lot of times, that ended up being death.


Also.. my understanding of the organization of a "lance" is that each knight or man-at-arms has 3 or 4 attendants who are not going to have full harness. I'm not sure where these people would be in Agincourt but from what I've read they were considered indispensable for the 'lance' to function effectively.

J

[Matt Easton]

I think the implication at Agincourt is that the 'knight's' attendants would have not been in the lead van (which advanced on foot), unless they happened to own complete harness.

Of course another point that many people overlook in these discussions is that whilst it is not necessarily easy to kill or incapacitate a fully armoured man with arrows, it is no easier with hand weapons. Numerous late-14th and 15th century sources (eg. Fiore dei Liberi's Fior di Battaglia) state this explicitly. Men in full armour were not easy to kill and even in single duels with pollaxes or in jousts serious injuries were rare.

We know that Henry's army took lots of prisoners, ergo, lots of men had survived the arrows to arrive at the English lines and be made prisoners. Boucicaut was one of these of course (and one of the few who was not executed!). I know of no evidence that Boucicaut was seriously wounded at Agincourt (or Nicopolis for that matter) - presumably he and men like him were simply battered and subdued.

As a question to the main contributors to this thread I am interested to know your view on something: What percentage of the French army at Agincourt do you think was wearing some form of complete plate harness? My assumption based on reading the common books by Barker, Curry etc is that we might only be looking at 20% of the French army in full harness (which may still number 2 or 3000 men...). Views?

[William P]

and also, the archers wouldnt have exactly been in tip top condition either
remember henrys army was wracked with illness, and also had problems wwith food supply, so they were starving alittle.

these guys have also been plugging away with arrows for however long the battle has gone, and while theire well trained, with bows that powerful,... thats still a tiring excercise.

and while we assert that not all plate was the best at agincourt..at the same time not all archers had 130-150lb longbows.. id be willing to bet most were 100-130lb's. which haave less effect on armour..

battlefield detectives also noted that there was a minor funnelling effect caused by the ground.causing men to bump into each other, knock into each other etc

and when you fall in mud, in harness, youll be quite hard pressed to get back up again.

its possible that the archers might have been a little more mobile, and been able to wear down the men at arms more easily.



its also interesting that henry supposedly had a few primative connons with him there at agincourt, but i think he never got to use them,, so no AK-47's but i think a couple of small biombards would have made massive difference even a small cannonball would TEAR through a file of armoured men, killing at least the first man in the file..

though apparently they wernt actually deployed so thats a moot point,.

[Randall Moffett]

Jean,

Seems much of the Lance attendants were used elsewhere. Several people take the term valet which is used in the period texts in the final group that does not join in the battle as being made up of this group.

William,

Hard to say what the draw weights are for any one but the archers of Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose. That said not sure we can assume it was markedly different.

As far as cannons go I'd be hesitant to put any real use of these there as none of the people present at the battle indicate they did much or anything, most not even mentioning them.

It is highly likely any cannons Henry had were left at Harfleur. They had issues with bringing enough supplies do to room, unlikely to bring large cannons along over arrows and food.

RPM

[Kel Rekuta]

[Josh Warren]

[Kel Rekuta]

[Clifford Rogers]

[Clifford Rogers]

[Matt Easton]

Very interesting, thanks.
I'm presuming that the number of French men-at-arms is to some degree a matter of conjecture still then? I am surprised that the French men-at-arms outnumbered the militias which had swelled the French force on the march. My impression previously had been that these militias, together with various less-armoured retainers, such as the more lightly armed gros valets probably outnumbered the men-at-arms. But you think not?

In regards to the equipment, I have been listing a few examples of armour left in wills from this period here:
http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewtopi...mp;t=18196

I find it interesting that on one hand some people who are listed as civilian tradesmen owned quite extensive amounts of armour in England at the time (presumably they had served as men-at-arms, or someone in the family had), but also the amount of armour left in wills suggests that a good percentage of lower status men-at-arms would have been equipped with somewhat of a mixture of armour, some perhaps a generation old. In some of these wills they list items of armour, but certain pieces we expect to see are not there - such as listing a bascinet, haubergeon and gauntlets, but in some cases no mention of arm or leg plates, or a breastplate/cuirass/coat of plates. This makes me wonder if actually a lot of men-at-arms were not as well equipped as we might have believed. Certainly some period art shows a great variation between what individual men-at-arms wore at this time. Not that this necessarily makes much difference, I just find it interesting.

Great thread!

[Kurt Scholz]

Could it be that in times of military deployment a great armour purchase started with peacetime prices skyrocketing the worse the organization and distribution system was? So it was perhaps handy to have some necessary and hard to procure items at home while not necessarily investing into a complete outfit if missing parts were deemed easy to obtain or unnecessary because they weren't priority items for recruitment. Could some families have had each a share of an armour suit? What would some communal organization or the king take care of to provide in what quantity?

So I'd be interested if we have sources on the increases of prices on the armour market.
If there's little increase we face a working system and have to find out how it works.
If prices skyrocket we like have a dysfunctional system with a high degree of individualism and little enforced regulations on uniform armouring.
The adoption of old and makeshift armour would in my opinion most like reflect direct repercussions on the iron market and the prices of iron tools (plows for example) without necessarily affecting the prices of more developed armours. This would equally mean a chaos with footprints in a different place. Such armour in my opinion will be good at range and weaker at close quarters.

So what do the sources say?

[Matt Easton]

Pieces of armour and weapons are often mentioned in English wills of the time. They were left to specific people, just like any other belonging. Sometimes you can see that the deceased owned more than one example of a specific piece - for example there are wills where 2 or 3 bascinets are mentioned and each one was left to a different person. 'Pairs of plates', mail shirts, bascinets and 'gloves of plate' are mentioned a lot in wills of this period, arm and leg armour less so. I don't know why that is.

[Clifford Rogers]

[Clifford Rogers]

[Graham Shearlaw]

wars all aways lead to the price of weapons and armor going up, look at the spike in the cost of 7.62x39mm back when the Iraqi Army was rearmed.

so haveing some armor saved money and was often mandated by law.
but as your armor was only checked a few times a year so passing round the armor was often used to cheat the system.

i do think that on a familie and local level there was a lot of armor shareing, after all it is no use at home.

[Matt Easton]

[Matt Easton]