Okay then. Yes, the English and the Welsh used longbows, but no, they did not make other archers and definitely not crossbowmen look like children playing with nerf guns. The main reason English longbowmen are famous is because there were loads of them and because they trained often it's not surprising some of them were good. However, the longbow is one of the most overhyped weapons at the moment; people often insist it goes through armour, limbs, armour again, and then kill the horse the guy was riding who was shot in the thigh. Definitely off. A rain of arrows would certainly hurt and harm, but most would simply not pierce armour. A trained crossbowman was far more likely to defeat heavy armour than a trained longbowman. Mind you, I shouldn't have said 'lol, no' but it seems an often repeated mistake that longbows somehow dominated. They didn't. Knights dominated. Famous examples include Cressy (or Crécy) and Agincourt, but all too often the longbow-proponent heavily exaggerates the effect of the longbows in those battles. At Agincourt however the French allowed themselves to be funnelled into a charge against defended position. Granted, that allowed the English longbowmen to kill quite a lot of horses and soldiers, but you have to bear in mind that it was simply not a good field for the French to fight. The approach to the English was muddy, which slowed down troops and the troops behind those were slowed down more, the English were behind stakes, which slowed any horseman incredibly and the slowed horsemen could easily expect a big wallop of a pollaxe. The pollaxe would have defeated more approachers than the longbow would have simply because an arrow usually does not harm someone armoured in plate and mail with padded protection beneath. It might pierce the upper layer but the padding would often stop it. How different with a pollaxe; a smash with those could buckle plates if the smasher was lucky (and the smashee wasn't), it could bruise, break and displace bones, without actually piercing the plate. No doubt some of the French died due to longbow fire, but the longbow was merely a factor there, rather than decisive. An equal amount of crossbowmen in place of the longbowmen might very well have done as much or perhaps more damage, but the crossbow is less romanticised and thus considered the inferior weapon.
Crécy by the way featured overly impetuous knights charging well-chosen (and well-defended) positions up-hill. This also meant the French, who fielded considerable amounts of Italic mercenary crossbowmen hardly could return fire for fear of hitting their own knights. If anything I'd say both those battles were won because the English leaders in those battles worked more tactically than their French counterparts. There is more, much more, to both these fights than 'the winner had longbow, that's why they won. '
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Topic: Derailed into Sabers vs katanas vs rapiers (Read 45512 times)