[Matt J]

Hello,

I've found a similar thread on here, but it did not answer what I was looking for. So, here it goes...

Why didn't Knights use bows? Or, why didn't Archers use plate armor?

I know that knights thought bows were cowardly, and I'm sure plate armor was out of the budget for most archers, but is that the only reason? Are there any instances in history of bows being used with heavy armor?

I know that some parts of the armor may make it difficult to use a bow, but you could still have a guy with a more open helmet, no gauntlets, and maybe even a less covered drawing arm.

Thank you.

[Alexis Bataille]

brigandine (plate armour) was used by archers but knights was more shock troops than skirmishers.

[Jeremy Wolf]

It was probably a matter of expense for the most part. My understanding is that Archers wouldn't have worn Full Plate, obviously, but when you look at period representations of archers you sometimes see them in open-faced helmets, and thick cloth or leather armor. They may have worm chain-mail and/or Jack chains as well. I think by and large the answer to your question is that if they could afford armor, they would probably have it, but I don't think the distribution of armor was universal enough to make a statement for sure.

[Pieter B.]

[Matt J]

Thank you guys for the responses. That was some helpful information, especially the last post's examples of armored archers.

It seems it does mainly have to do with expenses, but it does seem that no amount of money could buy a full harness suited for archery. A lot of those archers don't even seem to be wearing a backside to their breastplate. Their helmets are not full faced, and I'm pretty confident that it isn't solely because of the price.

I have a follow up question regarding Brigandines. I know it's generally a bad idea to rank things better or worse when often times things are just different, but how do brigandines rank up in terms of defense? In my mind I've always ranked them as less protective than mail, but I'm getting the impression that I have it backwards in my mind. Now, I've never heard of brigandine style leg armor, so maybe mail just has better coverage, but referring solely to the chest portion of the body, does a brigandine offer greater protection than mail? I'm also under the impression that it was not uncommon to wear a brigandine over a mail hauberk, but I'm just curious about the differences between wearing one or the other, with a padded jack underneath.

[Jeremy Wolf]

I'm hardly an expert- but Brigandines were a very common type of Armor in the middle ages, especially among foot soldiers The name Brigandine is derived from the word Brigand, which we now take to mean Bandit but initially referred to foot soldiers, so this type of armor would be heavily correlated with foot soldiers. It would probably afford great protection against cuts and arrows and such. One advantage it probably had over Chainmail was greater rigidity. Chainmail doesn't protect against impact damage- a sword blow might not hew your body but it might still break bones. Brigandines aren't a fabric of mail rings, and so were more rigid, thus protecting against degrees of impact force. A Brigandine probably offered greater overall protection than a mail shirt, but they were often worn in conjunction. I would say based on it's popularity alone, it must have been at least equally as effective, if not more so, than chainmail.

[Pieter B.]

[T. Kew]

A few thoughts:

Re breastplates alone, the obvious archer who you're referring to is already wearing two full layers of armour on his torso: he has a fully padded jack, and the rim of what's probably a mail shirt underneath it. Why bother with a backplate?

Re open-faced helmets, these are extremely common throughout European history. A fully closed helmet is restrictive, hot and tiring. While they have a place, especially if you are doing front-line combat, there is still loads of evidence for people making the tradeoff of having a visor open or absent. It may be less protective, but you're so much more able to see and breathe that it can often be worth it.

Re brigandine, it's a series of solid iron/steel plates. Better than mail for raw protection, but correspondingly harder to fit, pack, and cover gaps (full plate is further still along this axis). It's a really good midpoint for infantry or medium cavalry, though, and extremely commonly worn by them. Obviously, it's still nice to have mail sleeves and skirt, or a mail shirt, just to fill in gaps like the armpits.

Re shooting a bow in plate, I've done this for kicks. Full plate harness, including spaulders and demigauntlets. It's a bit awkward, but works fine. Unsurprisingly, you can also find plenty of artistic depictions of this, if you dig through manuscript miniatures or similar. Obviously, it's rarer than archers in lighter armours, though (see below).

Re knights not being archers, why would you take your highly trained expert melee combatants, outfitted in a full steel skin, and have them shoot a bow at people? You'll still need to have some fighters to go handle the melee, and not using your knights for this means that you have to use less armoured, less trained troops to do it instead. In smaller scale operations, raiding and skirmishing and so on, we have plenty of reason to suppose knights used missile weapons such as crossbows.

Re archers not being armoured, armour is expensive and heavy. Once you've got a helmet and a jack, you're reasonably well sorted, and so you want to pile on more armour only if you need it and can afford to. To a first approximation, therefore, you mostly see archers armouring up in three situations: 1) They're an honour company who need to have flash-looking equipment, 2) they serve a dual purpose role as medium melee infantry, 3) armour is readily available so they can access it easily.

The second point, in particular, is probably a key reason why English longbowmen adopted armour on a fairly large scale relatively early. Perhaps their distinguishing feature as a medieval missile unit was that they were extremely willing to engage in melee combat. Even Agincourt, one of the iconic victories of archery, is settled when the English archers down bows and join the melee as flankers.

[Philip Dyer]

I've remember reading that for large portion of the Middle ages, England, Wales and Scotland had hard setting up stables for large number of robust, high maintenance, war horses and that Professional well paid archers and foot men at Arms where cheaper to outfit and maintain. Since they didn't have the land or money to maintain large bodies of heavy cavalry bowl over things, they found it cheaper have professional archer which was also well equipped enough to multi role as melee combatants, thus the usage of relatively heavy armor for archers, Mauls and mallets which can serve as stake drivers and heavily armor men smashers and longbows. Also, this goes to explain why English melee specialist (Man at Arms) armor cover more area of the body, they were on foot more often, thus more target areas were exposed because you don't have horse to cover your inner thighs and high saddle to cover your crotch. Also, most of what we consider as knights weren't knights because for you to be considered a knight, you can to be dubbed and thus serve under a baron or the king or queen. Also, I've read it was actually not at all uncommon for Barons to raises squadron or heavily armored mounted crossbowmen.
brignandine and plate are both better protection than mail, but they both harder to clean, repair, fix , fit for large numbers of people, and can't cover joints like mail can. Large ponys and breeds other than chargers were much easier to take care off have higher stamina but are unsuited for high impacted charges, lacking the mass of chargers, hence they were used by the English and Scots as mount for scouting and raiding units.

[Mart Shearer]

[Timo Nieminen]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

It's worth keeping in mind that fully armored cavalry used bows across much of Asia, from Constantinople to Japan. Such horse archers used various styles of bows and armor, often different from what was common in Europe, but it was still standard practice for a lot of the world. Mounted crossbowers existed in Europe in significant numbers and often wore extensive armor. There's some evidence that French mounted archers, as well as crossbowers, used their weapons from horseback. Writing at the end of 16th century, Sir John Smythe wanted to revived the tradition of mounted crossbowers as well as institute mounted archers armed with a English-style yew bows. Nothing ever came of this, but it's interesting that was his dream.

Smythe wanted the following armor for his mounted archers:

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

Archery duels did occur, with some noted examples in the 'Wars of the Roses'. Such duels were a very good reason to wear armour - the 'naked' would be taken out much quicker.

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

It also occurs to me, from working on a movie about Jeanne d'Arc years ago (never got made, unfortunately), and thus having read as much eyewitness testimony as I could, that archers, crossbowmen, handgunners and even gunners with small wheeled culverins (we are talking before 1430 here) were often very close to the hand-to-hand fighting so that their weapons would have maximum effect. Armour is a very good idea if you are going to do that - along with a sword at your side.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Henry O.]

On the subject of knights with bows, the 13th century King's Mirror also suggested that an armored horseman might choose to bring a bow or crossbow if they wanted to.

[Lukasz Papaj]

Maile- wearing archer cavalry called "pancerni" ("armoured ones") are found in Polish army even in late XVII century.


Tactically they are filling gap between shock cavalry (hussars) and light cossack/ulan units (than again the actual lines were quite blurred, especially in cossack units that tended to pick up more armour and armament as they were employed in field)

As for the question though, it is mostly a matter of using best tools for the job.

Heavy cavalry is the most expensive to field, then we go all down to levied troops.

Logically, if you are trained and can afford it you will want to be in most elite unit possible. So once your status and wealth allows you to, you join heavy cavalry, and heavy cavalry uses lance as a tool for the job. (plus pair of heavy pistols in later eras)

Once you are in the field you move and attack with your unit, outside rare occurrences when pre-battle skirmishes happen - and even that those are for lower tiers of troops. Honour, dignity all that, plus you cannot really swap equipment on the fly.

Bow and arrows takes space, both on foot and on horse, and those are not throwaway tools, that you can just ditch in mud and forget. (note just how much compact are firearms in that respect). So as a soldier, one could have bow and paraphenalia as equipment, but during pitched battle those would be under care of his attendants in the camp, to use in hunting or skirmishing.

Japanese context is different, as here you do not have massed shock cavalry per se (at least to my knowledge) , so you have commanders in second line doing all the troop management and sometimes engaging in archery duels with their equivalent on the other side.

When analyzing historical record it is good to understand the importance of unit on the battlefield, in contrast to usual free-for-all every-man-for-himself unorganized blobs of battles portrayed in movies and many games

[Mario M.]

[Timo Nieminen]

[Mario M.]

Yes, I know.

I merely provided the Shelby's statement to cool off those who use Emperors personal boasts of strength as a proper source for draw weight.

Most sources usually are a statement of soldiers ability to draw a bow of a certain poundage, meaning draw once without losing form.

This does not mean that they would use such bows in combat, where regular repetitive drawing is necessary.

You also presented one of my favorite sources;

"In comparison, the 500 troops at the small Dezhou garrison acquitted themselves with honor, all of them being able to take a five-strength bow [67 pounds], 203 a six-strength [80 pounds], 137 a seven ­strength [93 pounds], and 85 a ten-strength bow [133 pounds]."

I love that one, merely 17% of the garrison was even able to draw a 100+lbs bow, and nearly half the garrison could not go above 80lbs, and these guys were bragging.

I am not insulting them, I just see it as a proper dash of realism.

Short, skinny and malnourished medieval/early modern period men pulling 100+ lbs was not an usual trope.