[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Daniel J. Willis]

My knowledge on this consists rather more of hearsay than substantial scholarship, but i'd have to say i think Randall's assessment is pretty spot-on, a bit of compromise and ability to see both sides of an argument goes along way.

It's always confused me why there's still so much focus on this issue, especially when most discussion seems to revolve around the idea of archer X ,shooting arrow Y, at "knight" Z wearing breastplate of n thickness or design. I know a lot of people are really interested in the scientific and engineering technicalities (science has never been my thing) but its all fairly removed from the battlefield context where the longbows strength comes from the ability of a few thousand archers to fire several arrows a minute all at roughly the same area or group of people. The fact that a certain armour may stop whatever % of attacks becomes increasingly irrelevant the greater the number of them coming at you gets.

I don't think the longbow would have gained the sort of enduring public perception it has if it hadn't had at least some significant impact on the battlefield during its early use, but this doesn't mean that the "longbows could drive their arrows through nearly any armour" concept needs to be accepted, just that they were a more effective (longer range? more consistent, reliable? etc etc- all issues as important to weapons as their basic "power") weapon than had been used previously, or simply just that they were utilised in a tactically superior way.

Admittedly its impact will have been exaggerated, and of course armour would have adapted to counter the new threat, though even if it didn't the idea that you would stop wearing armour simply because it didn't stop arrows is logically flawed, since once (if) you've got past the arrow storm you still have the rest of the oppositions force to contend with (who presumably are still outfitted in their full kit).

[Josh Warren]

Randall, when you say that Mark Stretton punched through 16ga breastplates, do you know how far through the plate the arrow pierced? How much force would be left to the arrow after piercing? Would the man inside said 16ga breast be killed, injured, unharmed?

[Dan Howard]

[Bill Tsafa]

I hope you guys are not confusing yourself with modern bows that have 80% let offs. Modern bows are 70 or 80 lb standard with such a great let off that it only requires about 10 or 20 lbs of force to aim. If not for the huge leverage very few people would be able to loose such a powerful bow accurately.

I am not sure how much strength training you people have done, but I have about 20 years hardcore power lifting style training. I also do archery so I know how both effect each other. The fact is that after you hit puberty you will reach you maximum strength potential within 5 or 6 years if you train hard. From that point you may be able to streach it another 5% or 10% till you hit your 40's. However that extra 10% will be very hard to maintain. If you slack for more then a week or two or get sick and take time off, it goes down. What I am trying to bring out that after a certain point you get diminishing returns. You pull a 50 lb bow today, and at 60 lb bow in a few months, then a 70 lbs in two years, then an 80 lb in 4 years and a finally a 90 lb in 10 years. Perhaps within a time span of 20 years you might hit a peak were you are pulling 100 lbs accurately.

Pulling a bow uses the front and side delt to brace the bow and the tiny rear deltoid to draw it back. Working rear delts is not something that is typically hammered by people in the gym. So they may be benching and squatting a tremendous weight but have weak rear delts. I never concentrated on rear delts until I started archery.

Below observe the type of excersise that is required to specifically target the rear deltoid muscle. You will never see anyone doing this unless they do archery. The angle is slightly off, but it hits the relevant rear delt muscle not the less. It works:



My routine consists of pulling the cable back to my ear and holding for 10 seconds, then doing 10 short reps, and then finally holding of another 10 seconds before putting the weight down. I do this for 4 or 5 sets each arm. The emphasis is holding the cable by my ear where is where I shoot from. Compare my position to the picture below with a real longbow.



and in the other hand...

[/img]

Modern weight training has helped modern athletes set records in all sorts of sports that were previously unthinkable. This includes all track and field events including running, footbal, baseball, tennis, bob sledding and even pingpong ball. The better nutrition has also added to better results. Nutrition in the 15th century was horrible by modern standards. Furthermore archer were regarded as the lowlifes of the army and where not very respected, so they definitely were not getting first cuts at chow time. All this is pointing to the direction that modern archers should easily outperform 15th century archers. If the are not, then I must question the standard and source... in this case the 150 lb Mary Rose bows.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Well, I know what Robert Hardy would say to you, Vassilis. He addresses this type of argument, writing, "The sad fact is that if an archer today can command a 90lb bow but not a 150lb one, he seems unable to accept the fact that his forebears thoroughly outclassed him."

[Adam Simmonds]

[Bill Tsafa]

Regarding 15th century diets, it is well documented to give just one example that that scurvy was common. scurvy, which I am sure I spelled wrong, comes from lack of vitamine C. One of the first things to be affected is the gums in the mouth. The teeth fall off. These also makes a person vulnerable to other illnesses. I think it is safe to say that scurvy has been pretty much illiminated in the western world.


Regarding draw weights, if you look at that picture I am pulling a 200 lb rack for the reps and sets that I discribed before. Now factoring in the assistance of the pullies I am really pulling 100 lbs. I know for certain cause I have measured it by hanging a 100 lb dumbel and seeing it complety balance. I feel confident in saying that I can get a few arrows off with a 120 lb bow and hit a target at 75 feet. But thats it, after a few shots my aim will be worthless. I have trained enough years, 20 to be exact, to know that now matter how much training I do, my strenth will not increase. My skills continue to increase but not strength. I have to work hard just to maintain current levels.

[Steven H]

Vassilis: Do you have bone spurs?

I ask because the english longbowmen did. They exercised and practiced their archery so much that their bodies built extra bone to compensate for the stress they put on themselves. The skeletons of archers are distinguishable from the rest of society at that time.

So until you've been doing this so much and so hard that you develop bone spurs then you have not matched the degree or efficacy or specificity of the training undertaken by longbowmen.

Your personal experience aslo does nothing to explain the modern reconstructors of Medieval archery who can and do pull and accurately fire 150+ lb bows.

The Great Warbow was not based just off of the Mary Rose bows. The Mary Rose bows were used as a model to build accurate modern replicas, which were also tested. These modern replicas, made using the same specs as the Mary Rose bows, had pulls around 150 lbs. And the research you are dismissing was professional peer reviewed research. I would not dismiss it out of hand without some actual evidence.

[Josh Warren]

The real question is:

What can those 150-pound bows put an arrow through?

Absolutely any breastplate made in the 15th century?

Only the low-quality/thinner ones?

Personally, I think a well-aimed arrow from a very powerful longbow might have pierced armour like this:



But armour like this:



...would resist most any arrow fired from even a 150+ pound longbow at close range.

Note that few places on the upper body are defended by less than two thicknesses of steel. Later suits would see the breastplate almost completely covered by the plackart, forming an almost total double-layer. The large pauldrons with their reinforcing plates overlap the breast quite a bit, too.

[Ross Tippin]

For what it's worth, here is some data from a paper by Prof. P. L. Pratt from the Imperial College of Science and Technology re the estimated draw weights of English Longbows from the Mary Rose and other sources:

Bow: estimated draw weight, actual draw weight when tested in modern times, assume 30" draw length unless otherwise noted
X1-2 Tower of London - 98 lb.
Saxton Pope, Tower Bow 98-101 lb., 65 lb., 28" draw
Galloway, Tower Bow, 98-101, 100 lb. 28" draw
MRA 1 - 102.4 lb., 102.8 lb. 30" draw
X1-1 Mary Rose Bows - 101 lb.
A812 - 110 lb.
A3952 - 115 lb., cracks in sapwood, not tested
A1654 - 124 lb., cracked at 79 lb. 29.5" draw
A1648 - 136 lb., 60 lb. 30" draw
A3975 - 137 lb., Cracked at 42 lb. 22" draw
A1607 - 185 lb. (172 lb. at 28" which author thought was more likely the proper draw weight b/c the bow would probably have snapped at 30"), modern experiment: broke at low load; degraded

Additionally, data for the 5 surviving bows known previous to the discovery of the Mary Rose are as follows (from Robert E. Kaiser's paper (1980):
1. Bow from the Battle of Hedgeley Moor in 1464, during the War of the Roses: 60 lb draw
2. Bow from around the time of the Battle of Flodden in 1513: 80 to 90 lb draw
3. and 4. recovered in 1836 by John Deane from the Mary Rose: A modern replica made in the early 1970s of these bows has a 102 lb draw
5. Bow from the armoury of the church in the village of Mendlesham in Suffolk, England and is believed to date either from the period of Henry VIII or Queen Elizabeth I. The Mendlesham Bow is broken but has an estimated draw of 80 lb.

Thus, it appears from estimates based on the few surviving longbows that they had a draw weight in the range of 80lb. to 137 lb. with a few outliers (i.e., the 60 lb. and 172 lb. bows). The Mary Rose bows, excluding the outlier with the 172 lb. draw, were all between 101 and 137 lbs.

I find this more range of say 80 to 135 far more reasonable than the 150 lbs. that many people seem to like to throw about. 150 lbs. is a very, very, very heavy bow and I don't think that many people could use them.

Also, are the Mary Rose Bows representative for most English Longbowmen. (note that the bows from sources other than the Mary Rose seem to have lower draw weights.) I seem to remember reading somewhere that they were elite/Royal? archers and tended to be quite large for the time (ranging from 5' 7" to just over 6' tall with large, heavy bones and shoulder showing obvious signs of wear from archery practice. I question whether the larger forces drawn for the armies of the 100 Years War would have been full of such large men with the musculature necessary to draw such heavy bows as were found on the Mary Rose.

I think Vassilis is correct when stating that modern nutrition and training techniques make a large difference in the potential for human performance. Remember in the early 20th century when heavyweight boxing champions generally weighed between 180 and 200 lbs. and offensive linemen in the NFL seldom exceeded 210 lbs.? How would these champions of days gone buy do today if you threw them into the ring or field of play with their modern equivalents? They'd probably do ok once given modern diets, training methods and, unfortunately, huge quantities of anabolic steriods and human growth hormone, but if you put them in without these aids used by modern athletes, I'd wager that they wouldn't fare too well.

From what I've seen form studies of skeletal remains, the average Englishman in the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman Periods was about 173 cm (5'8") and in the High Medieval and Tudor Periods about 170 cm (5'7"). More than the height, I''ve always been struck by how slight in build people from the 19th and early 20th centuries appear in old photos. Although I've seen no weight estimates of Medieval English populations, the average Englishman in the late 18th Century was 168 cm and 60 kg (5'6", 132 lbs.) and the average for military inductees in the American civil war was 5'8 1/4" and 146 lbs for Northerners and 143 lbs. for Southerners. Gaging the quality of nutrition that these populations received from their average heights, I would guess that medieval Englishmen fell between late 18th century Englishmen and mid-19th Century Americans in the quality of their diets, so I estimate them to have weighed somewhere between 135 lbs. and 145 lbs on average. Basically, we're talking about little guys who weren't eating too well. I doubt they would outperform dedicated people using modern training methods with respect to drawing heavy bows. Also, let me preemptively do away with a straw man generally erected in the form of silly cracks about modern people eating McDonalds and preindustrial peoples eating healthy, organic foods: I'm not talking about couch potatoes eating junk food when I assert that modern diet and training make a big difference. My point is in the context of what is available to modern people who engage in serious training and eat a proper training diet, which is much better suited to building a physique capable of handling heavy bows than the low protein diets that Medieval people had to make due with.

[Dan Howard]

The above data is sadly out of date. Hardy relied on computer modelling to determine the draw weight of many surviving longbows. On top of this several reconstructions were made to exacting specifications and they coincided with the estimates given by the computer modelling. There is very little doubt left that the draw weights given in The Great Warbow are accurate and that the above figures are too low. If The Great Warbow is correct (and there is little to indicate otherwise) then Medieval longbowmen regularly pulled 150 lb longbows. I used to be a sceptic but the new evidence is very compelling.

Aside: I also love the way they dismantled the myth of the so-called "shortbow". They use the term "warbow" because the term "longbow" is superfluous. Every self bow that was heavy enough to be used in combat is a longbow.

[Nick Trueman]

Hello

I shot a arrow at a shield once, a forged bodkin type head out of a 120 pound warbow. It was very funny it hit the sheild boss and the shaft of the arrow just turned to splinters. This has no bearing on the arguement but it was so funny, I dont know why.
The boss sustained a little ding, and my friend was cranky because i hurt his arrow.

I know technique is the key, much more so than strength.

[Nick Trueman]

Hi again

Another factor maybe that a massed groups of archers on the battlefield were not expected to have perfect accuracy? The point of firing a large volley of arrows was as much to damage as to demoralise a enemy. The Mongols, and other nomadic tribes were using this type of demoralisation of enemy units with great effect. The english bowmen probably had a similiar view point, ie showering a enemy at a high angle with large volumes of arrows would certainly effect the morale of their targets, spliting units up and of coarse killing or maiming one here and there.

Just a thought
?

[Hisham Gaballa]

A lot of people here are mentioning the thickness of plate armour, I think the curvature of the plates was just as important, as this allowed arrows to glance off. The effect on morale is also probably true, while plate armour is effective, having to advance under a hail of arrows must have been very scary, especially if you know that raising your visor to get some air would probably get you killed.

A lot of people have also mentioned Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt and Flodden. At Crecy and Poitiers the French men-at-arms were not wearing full plate armour, they would have been wearing a combination of mail and coats of plates. At Agincourt a lot of other factors came into play; squabbling among the French nobles before and during the battle, tactical errors, poor leadership and the fact that it had been raining the night before, so the French men-at-arms had to wade across the battlefield literally knee-deep in mud. At Flodden the English archers caused most damage to the Scottish right wing, which was made up mainly of unarmoured Highlanders.

Its also funny how while every one mentions Agincourt, no one ever mentions the battles of Patay, Formigny and Castillon, where the French showed that they had learned the lessons of Agincourt and French men-at-arms defeated English longbowmen. It’s also worth mentioning the battles of the Wars of the Roses such as Towton, where the presence of archers on both sides cancelled out any advantage.

[Geoff Wood]

[Dick D]

Vassilis Tsafatinos

You are probably able to pull a 100lbs bow with ease just from strength, however you could draw a much stronger bow with proper archery technique. I’m an archery trainer since 12 years. (and probably shoot about 200.000 arrows). And just by looking at the two pictures with you using your longbow I can see some improvements for you when handling a very strong bow.
First and the most crucial is that you don’t align your shoulders, that means that you have to use your muscles to prevent your shoulders from collapsing, there fore putting unnecessarily strain on yourself. This will lock your back and prevent you from pulling with your full strength.
The second I see is that you are probably shooting at a target atleast 50 yards away. Instead of raising your bow arm when aiming onto a target far away you need to tilt your hips more, so that your upper body remains the same as if you are shooting at a closer target. If you don’t do this your body wont align and also take unnecessarily effort.

I’m sure that with more training(technique) you could pull a 150lbs bow without problem.
Its good to see that you are shooting both left handed and right handed, as your body would be disformed if only using a strong bow in one direction. Keep it up and you'll be surprised of what the human body can do.

Note: Pulling a bow that is too strong without training is dangerous, as a bodybuilder I guess you know that, but for the others that are reading: Don’t even start pulling a 50lbs bow without proper instructions.

The trick in archery is to release the arrow with the least effort, that is the key in many sports.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Bruno Giordan]

Renaissance armor was proofed against blows and even against firearms after fabrication: the test consisted in administering a "gran botta" (full blow) with a sturdy weapon.

The possible dent was the seal of being proofed.


The Gonzaga are shown in their documents from mantuan archives to be very strict in pretending that any piece they received from Brescia or Milan would have had to be severely tested with a full blow.

In later times armor was tested against muskets.

Armor failing the test was to be left unpaid.

Source: Vannozzo Posio, "Le armatore delle Grazie tra storia e leggenda", mantova, Diocesan museum editions.

Posio is still the curator of such museum, also being one of the best italian scholars on the matter.

He has been able to identify the real owner of the Grazie armor thanks to two rediscovered documents from the mantuan Gonzaga's inventory.

[Bill Tsafa]