Wars and ConflictsÌý permalink
Longbows at Waterloo
This discussion has been closed.
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Tuesday, 2nd May 2006
Just read the Napoleons using rifles thread - - now dont laugh - but what would have happened if Wellingtons infantry had used Longbows at Waterloo ??
Faster delivery, longer range , no protection, what could have stopped a victory ??
ST
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Message 2
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Tuesday, 2nd May 2006
Takes longer to train a man to use a long bow than a mustet. Once trained to use a musket, it only became another drill. The Long Bow needed hours of practice weekly, or your muscles weakened. When did the Fench use rifles? Nap did not like them. The British weren't to happy about them neither, but they survived
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Message 3
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Tuesday, 2nd May 2006
agreed - longbows were a way of life not just a weapon - this is obviously not the easiest what if - but replace 1415 Agincourt foot soldiers to 1815 infantry - it could have been the final touch of the coin - can u imagine the Imperial Guard marching thru an arrow storm ??
ST -
Message 4
Posted by DaveMBA (U1360771) on Tuesday, 2nd May 2006
I expect you would find that artillery was rather more useful.
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Message 5
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 3rd May 2006
If the British had been armed with longbows, then surely the French would have been armoured? Muskets had a higher penetrating power at close range, whereas late medieval armour was pretty invulnerable to longbows. Accounts of Vernueil in the latter Hundred Years War had Italian mercenaries (in the latest armour) almost immune to the longbow. In the Wars of the Roses, archers caused almost all their casualties against the opponents archers, not the more heavily armoured billmen or men-at-arms.
And training an archer takes too long and isn't worth the investment. The Napoleonic Wars killed huge numbers, an army needed quickly trained replacements. -
Message 6
Posted by arnaldalmaric (U1756653) on Wednesday, 3rd May 2006
ST,
Further to other answers I'm fairly certain that the manufacture of musket balls and cartridges with the technology of 1815 was far easier and cheaper than the manufacture of arrows.
Cheers AA. -
Message 7
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Wednesday, 3rd May 2006
AA
thanx for that - it was just a question asked in the History bit of Cornwells Harlequin novel which i thought i would throw open to the panel
Its probably true that a regiment of archers would have caused great devastation though ??
or not
cheers ST -
Message 8
Posted by DaveMBA (U1360771) on Wednesday, 3rd May 2006
One horse battery would have sprayed canister into them and that would have been it.
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Message 9
Posted by arnaldalmaric (U1756653) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
ST,
Let’s assume that a British eccentric has raised, trained and equipped a regiment of archers and has enough influence that Wellington has been forced to bring them along to Waterloo.
So, thanks to Wellingtons policy of using the reverse slope to protect his troops from the French cannonade let’s also assume that this regiment has suffered very few losses up until, let’s say around 3:30 p.m.
At around this time Ney launches the first of his infamous cavalry assaults that was to continue for the next 2 – 3 hours.
The traditional response for infantry to cavalry in this period is to form square, vulnerable to artillery and infantry attack but virtually impregnable (given that it remains a disciplined formation) to cavalry. The reason, the bayonet. It was very difficult to get a horse to charge into a deep formation of bayonets. On the rare occasions it happened was either luck (Garcia Hernandez) or because the infantry broke (Talavera?).
Now it’s tricky to attach a bayonet to a longbow, the 15th and 16th century response to protect longbowmen from cavalry was to either entrench behind stakes or to give them some pikemen to hide behind. Neglecting to bring along some pike men leaves you with the stakes option. During the 15th and 16th century these were not wholly effective in withstanding a cavalry charge so why should they be better in the 19th? There is a flank or rear to exploit, a squadron of cavalry would have found it.
Finally as Dave MBA points out, the supporting Horse Artillery would be having a field day.
In isolation looks a great idea. Overall in practice slightly less effective. By the time the Guard make their final assault I can’t see there being many bowmen left.
Cheers AA. -
Message 10
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
AA
Thank you - well explained - and i now agree with you
ST -
Message 11
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
One horse battery would have sprayed canister into them and that would have been it. Ìý
Hi Dave
why would they be more succeptible to this than normal infantry ?
st -
Message 12
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
To all the above posters - thanx - i realise this is a bit far fetched as a What If
It came as i have mentioned from a Historical note in Cornwells Harlequin -
"Benjamin Franklin reckoned the American rebels would have won their war more swiftly if they had been practise Longbowmen, and it is quite certain that a battalion of archers could have outshot and beaten easily a battalion of Wellingtons veterans armed with smoothbore muskets"
The last statement is i think definitely true - which was why i started the what if - but as AA has pointed out - they were sitting ducks for outflanking by cavalry - I surrender
cheers ST -
Message 13
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
Sorry, but they were not Wellingtons Vets.
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Message 14
Posted by arnaldalmaric (U1756653) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
One horse battery would have sprayed canister into them and that would have been it. Ìý
Hi Dave
why would they be more succeptible to this than normal infantry ?
²õ³ÙÌý
In short they weren't any more or less susceptible to cannister than musket armed infantry. They may have been less susceptible if they were able to pick off the gunners at the longer range of the longbow. (In Wellingtons time this was part of the job of the riflemen, to pick off artillery gunners who strayed within range).
The job of Horse Artillery (HA) in this period (in the main) was to support the Cavalry. I'm not sure what the French Horse Artillery was doing during the French cavalry charges. I'll have to look that up. Without support cavalry were a little vulnerable / useless. (Just ask Uxbridge or Lord Lucan.)
Cheers AA. -
Message 15
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
Sorry, but they were not Wellingtons Vets.Ìý
who ?? -
Message 16
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
stalteriisok suggested that if the Americans used them against Wellingtons vets they would have out shot them. They would have outshot the red coats, but they were not Wellingtons vets.
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Message 17
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
stalteriisok suggested that if the Americans used them against Wellingtons vets they would have out shot them. They would have outshot the red coats, but they were not Wellingtons vets.Ìý
OH YES HE DID
OH NO HE DIDNT
I posted a quote which my "what if" was based on and it comprised of 2 different bits - one bit quoting Franklin - and the other bit saying they would outfight Wellingtons infantry
Cheers ST -
Message 18
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
Stand corrected.
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Message 19
Posted by arnaldalmaric (U1756653) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
Sit down and be corrected GrumpyFred, may as well be comfortable.
Cheers
?, AA. -
Message 20
Posted by ralphspikyhair (U1667317) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
I'd tend to disagree on your statement on armour. While plate armour was at it hight of sophistication and covered the body from head to toe rendering shields useless, I don't believe it was actually any thicker and more arrow resistant that earlier harness. English arrows could go through several inches of oak - I've seen myself the dammage done to a 15th century breastplate and sallet with a warbow (longbow) at a hundred meters.
Besides which the English were still using their bows a hundred years later, so armour can't have been that big a problem to them? -
Message 21
Posted by DaveMBA (U1360771) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
The problem with a bow is that to schieve any great range, you have to fire in an arc. Muskets were held up, but the parabola is somewhat lower. Consequently bows have "death zone", which only becomes effective with large numbers. Either side of it and the bowmen have to find the range again. A musketball will have a relatively flat trajectory and so will hit pretty much anything in between. Consequently a quick run through the death zone and a few rounds of canister and it is all over for bowmen. It is not much better for infantry with muskets, but then that is why they too had artillery and cavalry support.
On the question of horse artillery, it is a tired old myth put about by Kiley, Graves and others that horse artiolelry charged with cavalry - consider three things: a) cavalry rarely charged as it tires the horses, b) if they do, each horse is carrying about 25% of the weight dragged by each horse in a gun team, c) in a cavalry charge, cavalry have to keep moving - which leaves your gun battery a bit vulnerable to counterattack. Horse artillery was designed to be mobile to bring that punch to the required point quickly. -
Message 22
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
From what i understand - the last use of the long bow was negated because of the advent of firearms - not the improvement in armour
A good documntary i saw showed the the latest angled plate armour was very effective against the longbow - and all the different types of arrowhead
if my "What if" took place, the french troops would have been dressed as they were at waterloo - no armour - just the normal infantry tunics
cheers ST -
Message 23
Posted by arnaldalmaric (U1756653) on Thursday, 4th May 2006
The problem with a bow is that to schieve any great range, you have to fire in an arc. Muskets were held up, but the parabola is somewhat lower. Consequently bows have "death zone", which only becomes effective with large numbers. Either side of it and the bowmen have to find the range again. A musketball will have a relatively flat trajectory and so will hit pretty much anything in between. Consequently a quick run through the death zone and a few rounds of canister and it is all over for bowmen. It is not much better for infantry with muskets, but then that is why they too had artillery and cavalry support.
On the question of horse artillery, it is a tired old myth put about by Kiley, Graves and others that horse artiolelry charged with cavalry - consider three things: a) cavalry rarely charged as it tires the horses, b) if they do, each horse is carrying about 25% of the weight dragged by each horse in a gun team, c) in a cavalry charge, cavalry have to keep moving - which leaves your gun battery a bit vulnerable to counterattack. Horse artillery was designed to be mobile to bring that punch to the required point quickly.
Ìý
DaveMBA,
Forgive me, I have read some of your posts about Kiley, Jean Baptiste Grimbeauval and I am in general agreement. There is a lot of nonsense talked about Horse Artillery, otherwise why did it continue as a tactic until the early 20thC?
HA was there for support. In the tactics of the time it meant you sent the cavalry out to scout with a bit of HA (half a battery?). Then each covered the others withdrawal / or attack (or am I missing something).
Cheers AA. (Not challenging you DaveMBA, my unerstanding). -
Message 24
Posted by Brevabloke (U1685837) on Friday, 5th May 2006
This HA discussion reminds me of the "crash action" training that Spike Milligans Regiment went through with 25 pounders. Drive along towing your gun, then get the call, stop, unlimber the gun, get target information over the radio and then get off a few shots as quick as possible. Spikes team were the winners!!
As a former archer I just think that the sheer training required to be a good archer was against later use such as the Napoleonic wars. These guys (such as at Agincourt) trained for hours a day, as you had to develop the strength (which by the way has nothing to do with size, height or physique) to use the bow. -
Message 25
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 5th May 2006
As a former archer I just think that the sheer training required to be a good archer was against later use such as the Napoleonic wars. These guys (such as at Agincourt) trained for hours a day, as you had to develop the strength (which by the way has nothing to do with size, height or physique) to use the bow. Ìý
Hi Brevabloke
have you any suggestions why for several hundred years we had thousands of archers who had practised/trained since childhood - and on a voluntary basis whilst all this period no one on the continent did so
And for most archers the training and use was so intense that it actually deformed the spine
I have read several theories why - and the most common is that it was just a popular pastime !!
The best theory i have read is that after the Norman Conquest the saxon population was forbidden to carry weapons, but this did not include a bow - as this was used for hunting - so the locals took up the long bow as a 2 fingered gesture and as a means of defence (the same 2 fingers they showed the french )
I realise that in later years a law was passed to compel people to train - which is just as interesting - why did people stop using the longbow if it was just a pastime ??
Your thoughts
Cheers ST -
Message 26
Posted by abrazier (U3915690) on Friday, 5th May 2006
ST,
Further to other answers I'm fairly certain that the manufacture of musket balls and cartridges with the technology of 1815 was far easier and cheaper than the manufacture of arrows.
Cheers AA.Ìý
Bit of a late reply I'm afraid but I seem to remember that musket balls were made by pouring molten lead into a sort of giant sieve thing with carefully sized holes so that the lead ran out in musket ball sized droplets which fell into a vat of water and solidified. Very quick and very simple. -
Message 27
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 5th May 2006
I'd tend to disagree on your statement on armour. While plate armour was at it hight of sophistication and covered the body from head to toe rendering shields useless, I don't believe it was actually any thicker and more arrow resistant that earlier harness. English arrows could go through several inches of oak - I've seen myself the dammage done to a 15th century breastplate and sallet with a warbow (longbow) at a hundred meters.
Besides which the English were still using their bows a hundred years later, so armour can't have been that big a problem to them?Ìý
Not surprisingly, I'll stick to my original assertion about armour.
I've also seen the demonstrations of the penetrating power of longbows. Invariably it's set up so the arrow strikes the target at close to perpendicular which maximises the penetrating power. However, angling the armour 20 or so degrees takes most of the penetrating power away and causes the arrow to glance off. Demonstrations of this are very convincing - arrow deflected even at ranges of 10-20 yards.
The later armour was a major development partly due to a better method of steel manufacturing which made it harder, but also because the designers recognized that sloped armour was more effective and they employed that knowledge. Armour from 1430 is a very different beast to armour from 1410.
Regardless of abstract concepts of potential penetrating power, the results on the battlefields of C15th France and England proved that archers were becoming less and less relevant as the century wore on. Few of the latter HYW battles were decided by the contribution of archers - it was the armoured blokes with bills, axes, hammers etc. who decided the day which does say something towards the declining effectiveness of archery. In the Wars of the Roses, the tactic with your archers was to try to shoot up his archers, but if he decided to advance with his billmen and men-at-arms, then the commanders of the day knew that standing there shooting at them would not work. -
Message 28
Posted by Brevabloke (U1685837) on Friday, 5th May 2006
Thanks for the thoughts Stalter - I never knew the archers in the mediaeval period became deformed by practice! I suppose it is possible given they were using such heavy bows on such a regular basis. Mr favourite bow was a 50lbs compound which is delightful to shoot but 50lbs less than what the english archers used. I have shot 60lb recurves and longbows, which felt very different indeed from each other and from a compound bow. A 60lb longbow is hard work, so the war bows must have been beasts! I have seen a slim woman of 5 foot nothing shoot a 70lbs longbow effortlessly; technique over bulk anytime!
As to why the continent stuck to crossbows such as the genoese mercenaries used, well the skill to load and fire one accurately (over short ranges anyway) is much less than that required to use a longbow. But I thought they still would have caught onto the idea, but no they didn't. Mind you all over the middle east powerful and accurate recurve bows were being used at that time. Oh and another reason is the skill rquired to make a good bow is massive, and its long in the aquisition. Making a crossbow I would reckon would be not easy, but easier. -
Message 29
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Friday, 5th May 2006
Archery practice was compulsory, was it not? Certainly it was in Scotland.
I read that Cornwell book too and iot is an interesting suggestion. To argue aganst previous posts (just to keep th ediscussion going) what if the theoretical archers Wellington had somehow been forced to take along to Waterloo had stayed inside a standard infantry square when the French cavalry attacked, i.e. use the redcoats to form a square with the archers inside. When attacked by infantry, if the archers could fire a lot faster and more frequently than the French muskets, then they might well have done significant damage. -
Message 30
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 5th May 2006
Or fired over the dead ground at Naps.approaching infantry. Oh Somebody mentioned the 25 pounders and Spike Milligan. The 25 earned the name Gypsy gun. They moved fast (More so in the desert) could unlimber fire a number of shots and limber up and get H--- out of it before the enemy could return fire. I am told by an old gunner, they could have the third shot in the air, before the first landed.
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Message 31
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Friday, 5th May 2006
ST,
Further to other answers I'm fairly certain that the manufacture of musket balls and cartridges with the technology of 1815 was far easier and cheaper than the manufacture of arrows.
Cheers AA.Ìý
Bit of a late reply I'm afraid but I seem to remember that musket balls were made by pouring molten lead into a sort of giant sieve thing with carefully sized holes so that the lead ran out in musket ball sized droplets which fell into a vat of water and solidified. Very quick and very simple.Ìý
That or in moulds (at least one of the 'shot towers' built for the former method still exists somewhere in England). Cartridges were made by rolling a piece of greased paper around an appropriate sized stick, filling it with a pre-measured amount of black powder, popping the ball on top and tying the whole thing up. Hardly the work of a craftsman.
Fletchers, by contrast, had to produce the arrow shaft absolutely straight but slightly tapering and with a special 'shoulder' to maximize aerodynamic effect. The goose feathers had to be cut to shape, glued and bound to the shaft, and the arrow heads had to be hand forged. A very time consuming and skillfull job.
Bows, meanwhile had to be made from imported yew, preferably from Italy which might have been a problem during the Napoleonic Wars (it's a myth that the yews trees to be found in many English churchyards were for bows. English Yew is far inferior to the Continental wood, and in fact it was illegal to cut down churchyard yews and make bows from them). Their manufacture was a work of absolute precision and was time consuming, where as the manufacture of muskets could have been done by several people making the individual parts.
Medieval longbowman had to train from the age of about nine, using ever more powerful bows, to be able to use the war bow. Meanwhile I learnt to fire the Long Land Pattern musket - the predecessor to the India Pattern used by Wellington's troops - with reasonable accuracy (i.e. I could hit a man-sized target at 50 yards)in under an hour. After that it would have just been a matter of a few months drill to be able to load and fire at the average three rounds a minute rate of the British 18th C. army. -
Message 32
Posted by DaveMBA (U1360771) on Saturday, 6th May 2006
The filled in square would just have been a better target for artillery and you cannot fire over dead ground since all ammunition is ultimately limited (that of course again speaks for firearms over arrows/bows) and you need spotters to maintain the fire.
AA, Kiley is about to get his come uppance with a new book on artillery development by someone, who has actually read the French manuals (helped by someone who has read the Austrian manuals!). Horse artillery didn't charge for weight reasons and cavalry trotted round most of the time anyway. It is just a lot of fantasy devised by the French in the late 19th century combined with falures by various authors to read more than one source that has given rise to these silly ideas. After all, having made the claim that Gribeauval invented the bricole 4 times in his book, Kiley was actually unable to substantiate it under questioning and of course was shown to be wrong -strangely, a lot of people seem to have missed the obvious conclusion about his whole approach. However, the same people believe the Da Vinci Code to be true for similar reasons - much to do with what they want to believe rather than what the eviodence shows us.
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