On Arms and Armor

[Russ]

Hi,

Well since you mentioned Clifford Rogers you might want to read this: The English longbow as a killing machine.

http://militaryrevolution.s3.amazonaws.com/Primary sources/Longbow.pdf

Cheers, Greg.

The author wisely speaks in couched terms about times and effect:

Indeed, the first two sources he cites in his book as making
the case ‘against the decisiveness of the longbow’, John Keegan’s The
Face of Battle and an article by Claude Gaier, both deal with periods
70—130 years after the battle of Poitiers, and it is well known that the
murderous effectiveness of the longbow at Poitiers led to great changes
in armour design intended in part to make men-at-arms less vulnerable
to archery — a point, which, by the way, offers further evidence for the
ability of arrows to penetrate the armour of 1356.44 I am willing to
concede Gaier’s point that in the decades after the end of the Hundred
Years War in 1453, armour improved (and archery declined) to the
point that the English longbowmen were no longer capable of wreaking
the kind of havoc I have described above

(bold added).

The English lowbow in certain times and places was very effective. In others, not so much.

Even Rogers seems quite content to concede that it was not the longbow that brought about the end of the era of heavily armoured cavalry.

Have you read Keegan on Agincourt?