I have dabbed in medieval history just enough to realize two things, how little of what is common knowledge is truth and that there is no definite truth, as even the biggest experts can't agree on all the details. But I am able to spot the gross errors and set them somewhat straight. There is reading material out there that tells you of the common missconceptions and how they came to be.
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Originally posted by Derakon:
<STRONG>Chainmaille is crappy armor. I know this; I make it.</STRONG>
You definately make something that has enough characteristics of medieval mail to vaguely resemble it, but if there is more to it we can only guess. The rest of what you said puts a big questionmark on your expertise.
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Chainmaille armor was made because Dark Ages smiths lost the technology needed to make high-quality sheets of metal
What technology and what sheets of what metal? That line so full of prejudice and contempt for what you claim to be an expert of.
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5) Skilled bowmen were pretty fast. Again, it's hard to say how quickly time passes in Dwarf Fortress, but an archer standing his ground against a charging foe on a horse had plenty of time to shoot him down. See also the battles of Crécy and Agincourt (and note that the French knights wore armor of chain and plate).
Yes they were definately fast. Now you mention Crecy and Agincourt. Do you know anything on them besides the info from wiki like sources?
At Crecy The English archers were very effective there but it was not to the supposed killing power of their bows.
They won the shooting duel against Genovese crossbow men as Genovese positioned themselves inside the English shooting range and were without their heavy shields, so it was the rate of fire that made the winners.
They were able to stop the cavalry charge because of the inadequate barding. They disturbed the cavalry charge enough that they failed to break the prepaired English line.
They destroyed the foot knights by ruining the French formation enough that by the time the front men reached the English, they were spread 100 yards deep. So the English were able to mob and bring down the french one at a time.
But already at the battle of Poitiers two groups of mounted french knights, 500-600 men in total, had to be stopped by the men-at-arms as they advanced on th archers, because they put heavy barding on their horses. Than the archers were repositioned to the cavalry flanks, since the French had put heavy barding only on the front.
At Agincourt the archers didn't play any significant role. Also, Agincourt is noted as the first battle where the french knights were entirely in plate. Crecy was mostly mail.
There was some death to arrows, but that came from massive amounts of arrows fired and not some uber killing power you imply. An arrow can penetrate mail and often gets stuck in it, which is a big problem in itself, or even plate in rarest occurances, but not consistently.
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Again, and I repeat myself for emphasis and italicize it so you'll maybe read it this time, maille was for guarding against slashing blows. This is the task it is most ideally suited for, as it can take the slicing action and spread it across a much larger area. Most notably, maille was not for piercing attacks, which would just puncture through. Nor was it for bashing attacks for that matter, where it did nothing except give you some interesting bruises.
So you waited to see what kind of weapons your opponent unsheathed and if it wasn't a slashing weapon you either go home or suicide yourself.
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archery is a hard skill to learn. Secondarily it has to do with the archers' weakness in melee range; they were classic "glass cannons" in that they could do a hell of a lot of damage, so long as nobody got close to them. Archers weren't invincible. But neither were they ineffective against armored units. If they had been, then nobody would've used them, which is clearly not the case.
Many nations didn't use them on the battlefield exactly for these reasons. The English did because they had a large supply of cheap, somewhat efficient archers plus trained melee soldiers were rarer and armour was expensive.
Bodkin arrowheads were the most suited for armour penetration, but that does not imply how effective they were at it.
A response to Samyotix:
a)What was used to protect against other weapons and why anyone bothered with mail and slashing weapons if that was such an inferior option?
b)As you said it was the purpose of crossbow to penetrate armour and bow. The winch ones had the draw power of 300lb and upwards to how ever slow you wanted to load them.
c)You should do some reading about the armour, especially the padding.
d)SCA is about fun not realism.Again, and I repeat myself for emphasis and italicize it so you'll maybe read it this time, maille was for guarding against slashing blows. This is the task it is most ideally suited for, as it can take the slicing action and spread it across a much larger area. Most notably, maille was not for piercing attacks, which would just puncture through. Nor was it for bashing attacks for that matter, where it did nothing except give you some interesting bruises.
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Topic: X-bows... is there anything they DON'T do? (Read 5265 times)