Re: (TFT) Targeting Horses and their Riders

[raito@raito.com]

> horses in leather aren't invincible to longbows, as was demonstrated on
> numerous occasions, including the 100YW and War of Roses.  However,
> fully-armored knights with shields could usually close to combat with
> minimal difficulties which is why the French began to fight dismounted.
> Also, Pavisiers (heavy infantry with very large shields and a spear/sword)
> also historically weathered the arrow storm and in at least one instance
> drove off the English longbows.

But the lance charge has another dimension that hasn't been discussed yet.
The knights trained to charge stirrup to stirrup. Very little chance of an
arrow coming in at an (yaw) andgle. A lot of that arrow fire was indirect
(meaning that it arced in), especially at long range (and probably
essentially unaimed). Was that indirect fire less effective?

> Now a different question is how many arrows does it take to STOP a
> charging
> horse / knight against a guy with a longbow or crossbow?  I think ALL
> pre-gunpowder weapons have missiles that are so slow you can nearly watch
> them so you can nearly dodge them.  This means that in a small skirmish
> they
> are less effective except in ambush.  If you watch archers now - including
> Japanese re-enactors - you can see the arrow flying and easily dodge it.

Yes, but massed fire makes dodging far less an option. there's also some
evidence that the longbow was used against armoured troppes to make them
move the way the enemy wanted them to move. Even if the arrows weren't
penetrating (there's research on both sides of whether arrows are
effective against plate, and nearly all of it biased one way or the
other), it still wasn't pleasant.

Most of those re-enactors are not using the poundage that would have been
used in combat.

> So the skirmish question, which is more important for TFT than the battle
> question, has a different answer RE: missile weapon effectiveness in
> general.

True.

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com
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