Posted on 01/24/2015 5:34:10 AM PST by Plainsman
For thousands of years, the bow and arrow was used for war. Those days are long gone, and most people today only know of archery through TV and movies. However, as the Danish archer Lars Andersen has proved, Hollywood archery has very little to do with actual war archery.
Lars Andersen originally started using bow and arrow to fight in pretend battles during Larps (live action role play) events, where he played a soldier in a medieval-inspired army. While Larps can be about anything – the Danish/Polish Harry Potter inspired larp College of Wizardry (cowlarp.com) recently got world-wide media attention and there wasn't a rubber sword in sight there – many Larps take place in fantasy worlds inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And it was at one of these Larps, that Lars started to learn to shoot fast while moving.
In 2012, Las Andersen released his video, "Reinventing the fastest forgotten archery", where he showed how he had learned to shoot from old archery manuscripts. Using these old, forgotten techniques, Lars demonstrated how he was now the fastest archer on the planet, and after its release, the video got 3 million hits on YouTube in two days.
Since the 2012 video was released, Lars has studied and practiced, and he is now able to fire three arrows in 0.6 seconds – a truly stunning feat making him much faster than the legendary fictional archer Legolas (played by Orlando Bloom in the Lord of the Rings movies).
His newest video debunks several Hollywood myths and shows off not only impressive feats like grabbing and arrow in mid-air and firing it back, but also the ultimate archery trick; but you'll have to watch the video to find out.
The military arrows came in at about 750 grains and were good to about 400 yards. At Crecy they faced knights dressed in chainmail and were very effective.
I shoot large bullets in the 400 to 500 grain range and 750 grains is a very scary number. The projectile just keeps going after hitting the target.
Consider the time involved in making an arrow by hand in those times then think again about those numbers.
In my misspent youth I was very interested in archery and I would make my own arrows. I would say that the difference between the ones I made and the ones the English used is that theirs were heavier and had a hand forged ‘bodkin’ point. Their arrows were only meant to be used once or twice and much time after the battles was spent collecting arrows and ‘refurbishing’ them for the next one.
But you do have a point, it would have taken a long time to build up reserves for war.
On a secondary note, when the Romans at Carrhae in Parthia fought the Romans the surviving legionnaires wrote of their despair at seeing all of the camels laden down with arrows for the horse archers that were attacking them. I recall reading that a Parthian ‘Fletcher’ could make a new arrow every fifteen minutes or so as long as they had the supplies available to do so.
It was said that the initial French charge was met by 75,000 arrows in one minute. The archers must have had to release one arrow before the previous one landed. They didn’t need much accuracy, they were firing into a mass of horsemen. A horse struck by an arrow became uncontrollable, some turned around and drove into masses of French men-at-arms following behind the cavalry. The longbow was employed by both sides at Agincourt, but the French bowmen were said not to have played much of a role.
You can only have 10 arrows in a NY quiver.
I think the French were dominated by crossbowmen, who they left behind in the initial attack.
I just did the calculations. At 170fps initial release, a warbow at 45 degrees would shoot nearly 300m but take 7.5s to reach the target. That is plenty of time for a 2nd shot.
That’s what I like about FR.
We really get to the bottom of things here.
Tested, calculated and re-tested. Nice.
“New York quiver”???
Isn’t that what Crispie-Creme Christy does when he gets around DeBlasio?
It’s long past time to ban multi arrows in the draw hand. Someone needs to pass a law.
The course of the battle never allowed much scope for the French longbow men. It’s too complicated to rehearse the entire battle here, but the French did just about everything wrong, and the English did just about everything right.
The weather and battle site selection helped too. War horses carrying heavily armored knights didn’t do well in a deep, sticky, muddy farmer’s field after a full night’s deluge, and near stationary targets under masses of bodkin tipped English arrows made for a slaughter. The cream of the French nobility was nearly wiped out. Considering the relative size and condition of Henry’s army the English had good reason to call the victory miraculous, but it was a combination of providence and stratagem.
www.instructables.com has several designs for pole lathes, lathes develop in the middle ages driven with foot power. They are very simple.
There was a story from Agincourt (or it could have been Crecy) about a french knight that was hit in his leg as he sat on his horse. The arrow punched through his armor, his thigh, the saddle and hit his horse. The horse wheeled around and another arrow hit the knight's other leg and repeated the process. The knight was stapled to his horse by arrows.
Per Wiki, there were between 5000-6000 English archers at Angincourt. It’s not unconceivable that each archer was supplied with 100 arrows.
I meant Agincourt, not Crecy.
Plate armor came later and was pierced by crossbows which frequently used bronze bolts.
Very bad news.
I hope Lars writes a book showing the old techniques that seem to be so effective. Probably not a lot of sales but it would preserve the techniques.
The arrow also would cut through any modern soft armor like warm butter. The only thing that might deter the arrow would be modern hard steel plate armor.
The bow and arrow wielded by a skilled archer is still a fearsome weapon.
Can't remember where, or what I was reading, but I do remember it being a crude hand drawing(s) of the minimum requirements for a archery practice field, and during the time period, there was one just about every other block, in all of the villages / towns, and the requirement that the men in the village had to go on say every Saturday, (can't remember the actual day required) to train. Also gave an age requirement(s), on who was required to attend.
The French, at Agincourt, thought it would be a good idea to just ride over their own crossbowmen - I guess they didn't like Italian mercenaries.
Is he as accurate as Howard Hill?
***I think the French were dominated by crossbowmen,***
Genoese mercenary crossbowmen. At Agincourt a rain came up, the English bowmen unstrung their bows and kept their strings from getting wet.
The crossbowmen did not, and their crossbow strings became slack. The French then rode down their own crossbowmen because they could not shoot with slack strings,
or so I’ve read.
I have read that the French did equip several companies of long bowmen who were just as good as the English.
The problem was, when the serfs were trained and given bows, they considered themselves to be FREE MEN, and were not willing to go back to being serfs after the war was over.
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