"R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >These were not the sort of sporting arrows skillfully shot toward gayly >colored targets by Victorian archery societies (charmingly described by Mr. >Soar in later chapters) but heavy "bodkin pointed battle shafts" that went >through the armor of man and horse.
That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather ineffective against the armour) tend to favour the muddy ground trapping men and horses, lack of room to manoeuver/compression effects, and arrows killing horses out from under the knights, at which point see the muddy ground section. Obviously the machine- gun effect of the arrows was going to cause a number of minor injuries, and would be lethal to unarmoured troops, but they weren't quite the wonder-weapon they're made out to be. (There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to pieces on the spot. Again, arrows didn't have much to do with the loss of so many nobles). Peter.
