Talk:Battle of Crécy

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    A major change in this version is the commander of english troops: it was Edward III not the Black Prince, that was only 16 at the time. A very smart 16 however, since he led one of the english infantry squadrons... Muriel Gottrop

    Contents

    [edit] French attack

    The French's first attack was thrown by the Genoese crossbowmen, however they did not accidentally smash into the charging French cavalry. They were ran down by them because the dead mercenaries did not have to be paid. Since many of the Genoese crossbowmen, were throwing their crossbowas away so they would not have to make a second attack on the English.

    Therefore the numbers of casualities incurred by the French at the battle are disputed by historians. The French after the battle played down this slaughter of their allies because of the political ramifications. That is to say that the Genoese would not provide the light artillery that they so much desired to push back Edwards' army!

    Also the French charged fifteen to sixteen, showing true valour, grit, determination and chivalry. One thing to note is that the Bishop of Durham took charge of the defensive line after the King had held him and his men (only a dozen or so) in reserve. The Bishop carried with him a huge ball and spiked chain and shield with which he blew a massive blow against the waves of mounted knights (most of the French nobility). The Black Prince did indeed fight at the age of 16, the King commenting that although it looked at one point as if the French would capture him, actually breaking the line (until the Bishop arrived) that the boy could learn to fight his own battles as he had had to do!

    [edit] The Effects

    there needs to be MORE!!!

    wow could you be more vague (82.28.237.200 (talk) 21:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC))

    [edit] English arrows or mud?

    I believe I saw a show on the History Channel which reviewed this battle. They did a study with the long bow and arrows used against french knights. Their study showed that the iron tipped arrows didn't penetrate the french steel plate armour. Instead their study showed it was the "sticky" mud on the battle field which slowed the knights and eventually falling them. The mud would stick to the surfaces of the armour where as "clothed" light armed troops which had no problems killing French nobles did not get stuck in the mud as bad. They were able to use daggers and such to stab the fallen knights in the arm pits, eye slits, and etc. So the study showed it was mud and not english arrows which defeated the charge.

    ALL You might wish to look at this article -which discusses the PHYSICS involved in the archery/long bowmen at Agincourt and Crecy: http://www.stortford-archers.org.uk/medieval.htm Truth to tell, BOTH were such overwhelming military victories, I fail to see the 'nitpicking' concerning this article. Sure, it's nice to be able to re-write history, but the fact remains the English archers carried the day (on BOTH occasions - Agincourt/Crecy).

    I read the mud slowed the knights down, making them easy targets for the longbowmen, then after the battle the (?name?) came out with long knives and killed any knights who remained alive on the field, pushing through eye and air and underarm openings in the armour. There is a name for the long knives, which is what these folks were nick-named (I'd have to look it up). The importance being, the common soldier killing nobility anonymously in a non-chivalric manner.Stbalbach 20:10, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
    I think the long knives you're talking about were called "mercy-givers" or something like it. Prottos007 (talk) 23:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

    It was the Battle of Agincourt.

    EDIT: According to the same show on the History Channel that reviewed this battle, it was mostly due to mud and the basic problem of crowd control which secured English victory over the French.

    First of all, the English forces were arrayed on the highest terrain they could find. The eager and overly ambitious French troops decided to attack the English lines along the same level of the terrain, of which a natural chokepoint/bottleneck exists. Second, the English archers switched to melee weapons and attacked the French troops; a move that stunned the French army. In confusion, the French army turned back and trampled on their own troops that were stuck in the mud.

    The end result? A French defeat due to French mistakes and lack of discipline. Superior strategy and the introduction of longbowmen did not contribute to the English victory; it was more of a matter of choice of terrain and vigorous defense coupled with French mistakes that led to English victory.

    [edit] French Knights and Men At Arms vs. Longbows.

    One of the problems with the contemporary version of the Battle of Agincourt and the Yeomen vs. Knights debate is that people have lost touch with what medieval weapons and armor were capable of. As one of the previous comments states, the arrows fired by longbows could not in any way penetrate steel plate armor, even at a 90 degree angle. The true purpose of the Bodkin arrow tip is not to pierce armor, but its ease of manufacture.

    A good poster on the subject of arrows vs. plate armor is here: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/engin/home/material/ancient/AW_poster.jpg

    I also saw the television show on the Battle of Agincourt, and their version makes much more sense than longbowmen piercing plate armor.

    There are several problems with this:
    1. First, and most importantly full plate armour was not developed until the early 1400s, almost half a century after the Battle of Crécy had demonstrated the power of the bow over maille. At Crécy, the French knights would have been wearing mainly maille, with large sections of reinforcing plates and possibly the occasional brigandine, and a bodkin point arrow can easily defeat maille. (The illustration in our article was made in the fifteenth century, and is probably not an accurate depiction of the armour worn by the French knights that day). Thus the whole "could longbows penetrate plate" debate is irrelevant for Crécy, although it is more significant for Agincourt. (Even then, joints were maille covered until well after Agincourt).
    2. Secondly, numerous historical accounts state, again and again, that they could penetrate plate armour, even if only at close range and not reliably. For example, Dr. William's interesting poster states that his results are all estimates because the museums would not let him shoot holes in the artefacts, however in the early 20th century Dr. Saxon Pope received permission to fire a reconstructed Mary Rose longbow at genuine armour, and it did penetrate. So if your reproduction test doesn't do it, most likely there's something wrong with your test.
    3. Third point may explain the second, Dr. Williams suggests a typical 12th century longbow arrow as having a kinetic energy of 80 joules. He doesn't say how he derived this figure but it is low. Other researchers find 100 joules to be a more likely figure, with some perhaps as high as 120 joules [1]. Yes, this did require an immensely strong bowman. That's one reason why it took years of training.
    4. Finally, as Dr. Williams observes, the ability of the plates to resist penetration depends very much on the quality of the steel, and it is unlikely that every two horse knight had the best stuff available. Further, his tests are done with 2 mm plate. Actual plate varied in thickness both due to errors in manufacture and to reduce weight in less exposed areas -- didn't matter much if someone fired one arrow at you, but when they put out 60,000 per minute, different story. (This is probably the reason why there is so much argument about this today; so many modern reproductions are done with modern steel plate, which is completely uniform thickness and far stronger than what was available 600 years ago.)
    -- Securiger 05:53, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    It's also worth making the point that horses tended to be far less well protected than the knights they were carrying. Barding was a relatively late invention, I don't believe it was used at Crecy. Even after barding, it's not clear how heavily the average horse would have been armoured. Shooting a horse is an effective way of stopping a cavalry charge.

    --Merlinme 17:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Really not convinced the balance of this article is correct

    Following on from the previous discussion about the effectiveness of longbows vs. knights, I really don't think the balance of this article is correct. The conclusions seem to be based on the principle that the longbow could not have possibly caused casualties by penetrating the knights' plate armour. But they weren't wearing plate armour. As has been pointed out, all over plate armour only came to be commonly used 50 years after Crecy. Crecy is not the same battle as Agincourt. The French knights would have been wearing mail reinforced by plates, which is not the same thing at all; the plates don't cover the whole body and they don't have the same structural strength. Longbows could definitely cause casualties to men armoured like this. The sheer scale of the French losses of knights, and quotes such as:

    "[by the end of the battle] the whole plain was covered by men struck down by arrows and cannon balls"

    surely reflect this.

    To some extent this is all speculative, so please change back if you can find sources to back you up. But in the meantime, I'm going to make some quite radical changes to the article, to reflect what I think would be a more accurate reflection of the effectiveness of the longbow against the armour of the time.

    --Merlinme 15:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] Genoese Crossbows

    I quickly read through the article, and while interesting, it doesn't really say which side the Genoese are on, up until the sentence "This battle established the military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armoured knights".

    I believe you'd need some sort of sentence clearly indicating their allegiance, being mercenaries... Kareeser|Talk! 14:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


    According to Noted military historians R. Ernest and Trevor Dupuy,abt 6000 Genoese crossbowmen were amoung the est 60,000 soldier French army. See the 1986 edition of "the Encyclopedia of Military History".

    Did really contemporary sources consider this evidence for the superiority of English crossbowmen over English longbowmen? If that is true, we would need a source. As far as I know, Genoese and Pavise crossbowmen enjoyed a continued popularity after this. Judging from the French chronicler's description that seems like a very unfair conclusion to conclude that this demonstrated the superiority of English longbowmen. This archery vs archery is a fight between better protection and higher penetration (possibly also more ammunition since bolts are typically smaller than arrows) versus more range and higher rate of fire. It goes without saying as to who is superiour will depend on the conditions. In unfavourable terrain (more cover would favour the closer ranged weapon), without their shields, tired and with weapons in very suboptimal condition from rain the Genoese couldn't make a good account of themselves. -Sensemaker

    [edit] Welsh Arrows?

    Welsh arrows? Welsh Longbows? No English ones?

    I believe it's a commonly held mis-conception that it was only Welsh archers - there were some, but by no means did they outnumber the English archers in armies of the time. I'm off to do some more research (outside of Wikipedia) before I edit, but I shall return! --Gavinio 23:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

    Knerlo 01:01, 25 April 2008 (UTC)Knerlo== Size of armies ==

    The numbers in the box are different to those in the article itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.241.3.112 (talk) 22:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

    I agree that the numbers need to be looked into. This edit specifically calls out having pulled numbers from the German Wikipedia simply because they appeared more plausible, and without citing any external source. -Harmil 13:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

    Just To Add ≤I would just like to add that to my knowledge, that the bowmen where a mix of Welsh & English in total of around 5000 on foot and another 2000 on horse. And that the English also employed a practice that was picked up from the Saracens from the earlier crusades of horse archery. the English also adapted there long bows more efficiently for more power taken from the smaller composite bows, which made the longbow more powerful in the right hands than we think. Another thing I would just like to add, fighting in or without armour is exhausting, stabbing cutting and thrusting to kill someone in armour in mud seems hard work. Try running in mud for a short while a combination of deadly arrows, cannon, mud, barricade of dead bodies, and then the use of spearmen, men at arms and the bowman’s the mercer givers. Also include the slaughter of the Genoese crossbowmen by the French knights and the crushing and friendly fire damage done by the continues charging of the Frence is in my mind that gave aid to a more bloody battle. The English tactics where good, I note that, Poitiers and Agincourt also won the day with bow, ether the French are consistently unlucky or tactics and bow where a big part in winning the three battles.'June 2nd 2008'Carucatus —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cracatus (talk • contribs) 11:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


    I have edited some of the numbers as they seem to be incorrect, it is highly unlikely that there were 60,000 French soliders participating in the battle and 47,000 of them died. I have cut the numbers down to the more accurate 30,00 (as was said by first-hand English accounts). I have also cut down the number of French casualties to 12,00 although I do not know the number of dead Genoese Crossbowmen. It can be assumed that nearly all of them died (they could fire about three bolts a minute compared to the English/Welsh Longbow that could fire up to 12 arrows a minute!) as they were the first to engage in battle against a technologically superior enemy.

    [edit] Solar Eclipse?

    Several historical accounts of the battle describe a large flock of crows above the battle field, a violent rainstorm and an eclipse of the sun. The only substantiation I have for this is in Our Island Story. Does anyone have a better authority? It would be good to include some information about these. --Gilgongo (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

    NASA's eclipse database gives no indication of such an event. Algebraist 13:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Vandalism

    The first paragraph of "Aftermath" has been vandalized, though I can't see how it was done to correct it. drh (talk) 15:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Infobox Edits

    Trip Johnson, your infobox edits to Battle of Crécy do not make sense. Your source, whose reliability in questionable at best, says "Numbers in the French army are uncertain but may have been as high as 80,000 including a force of some 6,000 Genoese crossbowmen." You have 24,000 cavalry + 6,000 archers = 30,000. With the kill figures, 100%+ of the French were killed? I am assuming this is a typographical error, and no intentional. Please review and edit as necessary. If intentional, please substantiate. Thank you. Alphageekpa (talk) 09:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

    That is not me who keeps putting the numbers down to 24,000 cavalry. And unless you can give me concrete evidence that BritishBattles is unreliable (I don't see why it is, it cites secondary sources) I will be continuing to use it. (82.28.237.200 (talk) 23:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC))