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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Coroc" data-source="post: 7560571" data-attributes="member: 6895991">@<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=4937" target="_blank">Celebrim</a>Wait, what? Longbow points go right through anything but double layer mail ('chain') without hardly slowing down. The rise of the longbow and the crossbow was a big reason behind the rapid development of plate armor. The longbow will absolutely penetrate a gambeson ('padded') without much difficulty. While a gambeson will dissipate a lot of the energy of the shaft, you're still going to end up with a barbed arrow sticking in you 4-5" deep. Remember, many 13th and 14th century knights would be wearing mail over a gambeson, the longbow would frequently penetrate the combination to a depth of 2-3" (driving cloth and broken rings into your body as well), especially at ranges under 75 yards. And given the rate of fire, once you started to get hit and were now in shock and debilitated, you'd quickly turn into a pin cushion.Nope, it will not except eventually at point blank range and it just won't penetrate plate as many other weapons will not penetrate plateThe kinetic energy of a heavy crossbow (arbalest or such) is 2x or more than that of an English longbow so it might have somewhat better chances, but even the worst arquebus bullet will have kinetic energy 5x- 10x of a longbow.As I stated the cause of death was often not the wound but an infection. So main purpose of medieval armor  was not to get hit less but to not get hit at allWhy? Because of infection risk.Of course in the beginning longbows would more often penetrate the lesser armor  but as soon as good suits of full plate were available at least for knights and nobility they would only get taken our by a lucky arrow through the helmet slit or such, The hail of longbow arrows might be stressing or irritating and might kill their horse or their worse clad underlings but the knights were close to invulnerable.I recommend you check up the vids of scholagladiatora on youtube this guy does talk a lot about all kinds of weapons and also missconceptions like longbow arrows or katanas cutting through hardened steel - they only do that in holywood. @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=277" target="_blank">jasper</a> matt Easton also did some videos on the battle of agnicourt and longbow use ethere and how it did affect various troops.</blockquote>

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