[RL History] Why is the longbow better than the shortbow?

[S'mon]

I watched a program a little while ago about Agincourt and how it wasnt the longbowmen that won the day, rather that the incompetence of the French Knights who lost it. They got themselves in a muddle and bogged down and a huge number were captured. They were then slaughtered.

While Im not fond of the current rewriting of history thats going on, this program was quite interesting.

I watched it too - it had good points but their weapons test on the longbow was a travesty. I don't know what the pull weight was on the longbow, but I do recall them saying that the plate it failed to penetrate was 2mm thick - something over _twice_ the historical thickness of plate armour in that period. I've seen enough demos where bodkin arrows fired at close range easily penetrated plate armour (front, back & the mannequin in-between) to be highly sceptical of their claim that the longbow was as ineffective as they claimed. OTOH their demonstration of how the wet Agincourt clay could effectively hold fallen plate-armoured knights immobile seemed credible, and helped explain the origin of the "a fallen knight is as helpless as a turtle on his back" myth.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Well the level of historical knowledge here is certainly impressive...

1. The Battle of Stirling in Braveheart is a-historical, the real battle was fought around Stirling Bridge. Wallace let a chunk of the English knights cross the bridge, then attacked before the army could form up, driving them back into the river.

Oh, come on? You think Braveheart was inaccurate simply because they left out the darned bridge? Braveheart was wrong on so many more levels than that it's scary!

(Being in truth more about Normans fighting Normans for Norman reasons...)

I liked the movie, but historically accurate it most assuredly was not.

And yes, I didn't mention that the English won Agincourt, I figured that people would click the link provided.

And I will grant that the English didn't so much win Agincourt as the French lost it. (One of my favorite really stupid battles. At others the French pulled such wonders as riding over their own mercenaries to get to the front, and charge their knights into forests... Not good choices.)

The draw on a longbow is almost three feet, the draw on a shortbow around 2, combined with the greater draw the clothyard shaft had amazing penetration, especially with bodkin points, long narrow points of about the same thickness as the shaft with either a round, square, or triangular cross section rather than the traditional broad point, designed to penetrate armor.

Some of the tests shown on the history channel were, umm, biased. The thick armor they tested against was similar to jousting armor, meant to be worn for short periods of time and on horseback. Armor for any who were actually likely to see fighting were generally thinner. (Though the armors worn by Henry VIII are amusing as they go from stripling yout, to something resembling a pot bellied stove with legs... Iron armor that scalds with safety indeed.) As for the effect on chain mail, well... what armor?

The Auld Grump

 

[mythago]

Arrows for the English and Welsh longbows were about a yard long, as well.

The thing about longbowmen is that they could be commoners, i.e. you could train more of them. Knights were noble born.

 

[Wilphe]

I agree with the other comments in the post.

The English Longbowmen were effective for many reasons:
1) trained all their life, i.e. high level archers with a PRC
2) Their bow had a heavier pull than the average European hunting bow

Likewise, the Mongol archers with short composite bows were effective
1) trained all their life, i.e. high level archers with a PRC
2) Their bow had a heavier pull than the average short bow

It's more like:

English Longbowmen:
1) Are 1st level commoners with Martial Weapon Proficiency - Longbow.

Mongols:
1) Are 1st level Warriors with Mounted Archery.

If there enough archers putting out enough arrows, then the individual archers don't need to be that good at archery

 

[Wilphe]

I've been doing some reseach. One source (popular mechanics) sites the draw of Mongol bows at 160 lb. and their range at 600 yards. Another source puts that range at 440 yards (and 660 yards with flight arrows). Also, in 1796 the Ottoman Sultan Selim fired an arrows from his composite short bow a distance of 972 yards. A record distance that held up until 1979 (and that shot was using a foot bow). These ranges can be misleading because of the affect upon them by the arrow's weight. A heavier arrow is needed for armor penetration.

But how far they can send an arrow is not the range they get used in combat. A 5.56 bullet will travel downrange for a km or so, but the combat range of the rifles that fire it is only about 400m or less.

If your side is only armed with bows as a primary weapon, and the enemy is primarily equipped for melee, and you are more lightly equipped and hence more mobile, you can close up a couple of spearlengths and shoot them from there. They can stay put and get shot, or break formation to chase you, fail and get cut down, which is more or less what happened at Carrhae...

 

[S'mon]

And yes, I didn't mention that the English won Agincourt, I figured that people would click the link provided.

Sorry, I didn't mean to pick on you in particular AuldGrump, I meant there were so many misleading statements in this thread as a whole, even for the Internet, I was taken aback.

 

[S'mon]

It's more like:

English Longbowmen:
1) Are 1st level commoners with Martial Weapon Proficiency - Longbow.

Mongols:
1) Are 1st level Warriors with Mounted Archery.

If there enough archers putting out enough arrows, then the individual archers don't need to be that good at archery

Given that the English longbowmen were yeomen who trained from childhood with the longbow and fought effectively as light melee infantry on many occasions, I'd say they were easily 1st level warriors also. Obviously neither the typical English nor Mongol archer were high level members of any prestige class, unless you have a very abnormal take on D&D level distribution. BTW given evidence from eg the Mary Rose (longbows with draw weight over 135lb) and skeletal bow-use related deformities in skeletons of longbowmen, I would think it reasonable to allow mighty non-composite English/Welsh longbows in an historical campaign set in the period.

 

[Dirigible]

Nope.

The real reason : all Welshmen (and Welshwomen) have upper body strength exceeding that of a kodiak beer.

It's the lavabread, see boyo?

edit : Bears don't have an upper body, do they? They have a front and back. Hmm...

 

[Aaron2]

But how far they can send an arrow is not the range they get used in combat. A 5.56 bullet will travel downrange for a km or so, but the combat range of the rifles that fire it is only about 400m or less.

The range statement was in direct responce to a claim that the english longbow significantly outranged the mongol comp. shortbow.

At this point I'm going to start to study the battles of the crusades. I hopefully will find be able to find a battle where longbows and turkish shortbow were both used. Anyone?


Aaron

 

[Pbartender]

Uh, better revisit high school physics...

...All of which is long-winded way of saying "Yep, it makes sense for longbows to do 1d8 and shortbows to do 1d6, and for mighty compound bows to be able to add more damage."

Well said, Olgar.

I might add...

When all is said and done a bow is a glorified spring. The amount of energy you can impart to the arrow is directly related to the amount of enregy you put into the bow when you draw.

Normally, the amount of potential energy a bow (spring) can store is directly related to what and how the bow is made (the spring constant). Thicker bows and bows made of composite materials (or metal, like many crossbows) can store much more energy than an 'ordinary' wooden bow of the same size. The trouble, however, is that you now require a much stronger person to reach the full draw of the bow.

One solution is to devise a mechanical means of drawing the bow. Hence the invention of crossbows, for which you draw the bow with the assistance of a lever or winch.

Another solution is to increase the length of the bow. The longer lever arm reduces the pull of a bow without reducing the power of the bow (or it increases the power without increasing the pull). That means you can either... A) Make it easier for a weak person to draw a bow with strong pull, or B) Make a bow for a strong person that has just that much more power. The English longbows during the 100 Years War seem to fall into category B.