Crecy, without the cut

[learnsslowly]

OK. That didn't work. I'll try it without the cut.

Comments

Crecy

[amazon_ahoy]

I see it now! So the main line was slightly downhill from there, and the bows could probably reach to the crest of the rising brownish field.

Re: Crecy

[heliopausa]

That seems a long way - but I am no judge of distances!
How far could a longbow arrow fly, still retaining enough power to hurt someone badly?
Could an arrow take down a horse?

Re: Crecy

[amazon_ahoy]

Oh, now you're asking

Re: Crecy

[heliopausa]

Thank you! I can see how (given a large enough body of archers) they'd be enormously useful for a force trying to hold a position against an oncoming force (unless the oncoming force were infantry with a Roman tortoise-shield defence).
Do you think they'd have enough accuracy to still be useful when battle was joined? (I do know who won at Crecy, and that the longbows get a lot of the credit! I'm just trying to visualise why.)

[heliopausa]

Supposing that the caption on the previous entry is for this picture: is that the height Edward would have seen the battle line-up from? i.e. before the fighting - when it was actually happening I presume he was down engaged in it, for morale purposes if not for anything else.

[learnsslowly]

I think we can assume that Edward would be looking from about the height of the first photos if/ when he wanted to see what was going on, since it was very obvious how very much less one would be seeing from the ground. Even if he were at ground level, on a horse, he would see more than on foot and the distances were such that he could in any case have received speedy reports from someone up the windmill

[amazon_ahoy]

Another factor that needs to be considered is that, while medieval crossbows could shoot faster than a lot of people think, they were still slower than a longbow. A hand-spanned crossbow could probably shoot five or six bolts in a minute but had a short range. A windlass bow, which equalled the longbow in range and was a bit better at penetrating armour, could probably only manage one. I started shooting the longbow in my 30s and don't do much more than the occasional weekend session knocking around in the back field, and I can still get off 13 arrows in a minute for a short period

[heliopausa]

This is all very interesting info! How many arrows would an archer carry with them? Were there runners re-supplying from the rear?