Cosmoline said:
As I understand it the original English bows were of extraordinary power, with considerably more draw weight than most modern recreations.
This is true, however one must understand it within the context of how it was deployed.
Those type of longbows then were not the portable and useful on the move devices they are thought of today.
It took a lot for the average sized man back then to pull a 150 pound draw weight bow.
They couldn't do it with arm strength alone, but rather had a complicated draw process utilizing body weight and the bow braced against the ground to draw the bow, while maneuvering their body with the bow during the draw to eventually have a drawn bow and nocked arrow.
They were good at it and quite fast, but it was very hard on the body.
Use of these bows was so hard on the body their bones can be easily distinguished today from other bones because they are identifiably disfigured from regular bow use.
You can rather definitively tell if someone was or was not a longbowman just by their bones it is that bad.
The use of such bows also left a bowman far more stationary than presumed by people picturing modern and fantasy bow and arrows and bowmen.
Using the ground to cock a bow you can't draw with a normal pull does not allow one to move with a nocked arrow.
Long bowman were more siege engines than anything.
They also required protecting to be effective for the same reason.
How effective these bows are against armor also varies considerably. As essentially light artillery bowmen rarely fired directly at the enemy, this would mean they were in highly risky close range for the stationary use of bows in formation. If they were that close they could easily be killed.
Undoubtedly these bows would pierce most armor fired directly at the armor, but this was not how they were generally used, and if the enemy was so close that direct fire was used, it was generally not for long before switching to another weapon before being overtaken.
Instead they tended to fire at an angle, massive barrages of arrows that traveled long distances, and then ranged down on opponents. They had far lower velocity at these distances, relying more on momentum from weight of the projectile than initial velocity.
They were still quite deadly, and in such massive numbers could not be ignored or shrugged off. Only knights in the heaviest plate armor could resist such indirect barrages without great risk, and even they had to protect certain areas vulnerable to penetration like the front of even fulling enclosing helmets. This often meant they couldn't even see where they were going while facing barrages of arrows.
The arrows could find chinks and vulnerabilities in even plate armor.
Armored guys were harder to kill, but tired faster, and could travel less distance without being so exhausted that they were less effective once in battle.
One of the big reasons heavily armored knights were cavalry on horseback. Most foot soldiers would be exhausted marching the distances required before engagements in substantial armor.
lemaymiami said:
One of the ways to deal with an armored individual was to take him down (or knock him down) then simply use the right tool to finish the job (a thrust with a narrow bladed knife under the armored area, a thrust into the armpit or through the eye - lots of ways to finish off the armored guy. Yes, it kept them in the fight and made them harder to kill - but it also made you slower, less maneuverable, and made it all too easy to tire you out in combat with an un-armored but much quicker adversary...
Armor is not only to defeat enemy weapons, but to force a certain type of weapon to be used that is less incapacitating.
The armor and counter armor arm's race has always been constant and ongoing, expected by forces facing other forces. People make armor, others make things to defeat it, people make fortifications, people design things to defeat them.
However consider the difference in incapacitation if the enemy is forced to use things with small points to fight you because that is what will defeat certain levels of armor.
The result is instead of using the most devastating weapon to flesh, inflicting massive wounds that easily take you out of the fight, they are instead forced to use less incapacitating but higher penetrating weapons.
Compare it to say forcing modern forces to use mass produced AP rounds instead of mass produced expanding rounds. The expanding rounds may be far more devastating to bare flesh, but more readily defeated by the levels of body armor issued to the opponent. Requiring projectiles that do more poking than tissue destruction.
Which means those hit are less immediately incapacitated and can shoot back longer, even if they ultimately die from the wound.
Things were no different in mail, plate, etc
If the enemy had to use bodkin instead of deadlier broadhead, or weapons that concentrated force on small points instead of destroyed massive amounts of the body at a time, the person hit was less incapacitated. That still made them more effective even if it didn't keep them from being killed.
There are some rare examples like at Agincourt when bowmen grabbed melee weapons and helped engage the heavily armored, knocked them down and killed them.
But this was because they were in deep mud and had just walked through it in heavy armor being bombarded and stressed out by arrows, giving a terrain advantage to the less encumbered.
Many of them even drowned in their heavy armor in the mud unable to get up, rather than dying from any battle inflicted injury. Dying in inches of mud and water.
Just imagine being in heavy armor, completely fatigued, trying to get up from deep mud. You put your metal clad arms down to push yourself up and they just sink into the mud, you try to stand and your legs are in the mud. Thick mud that goes up to your ankles or knees is exhausting to walk through without armor, add armor with weight and more surface area being sucked down by the mud and its several times the work. Fall over in that mud and you may not get up.
Often the heavily armored had the advantage, even when mortally wounded were not incapacitated as much as the less armored and so can take more of the enemy with them.
Yet nothing is certain or constant. Military engagements are always strategic, as can be the strategies before them. Forcing your heavily armored opponent to chase your faster lightly armored forces over long distances before turning and engaging them at your leisure when and where you choose can be as much a part of the strategy as the eventual battle. Fresh lightly armored troops can then be much more effective than those who have marched long distances in heavy armor and can barely stand and hold their weapon much less effectively fight in formation.
