[Ansteorra-missile] Re: [Ansteorra-archery] Combat Archery Question

[Eadric Anstapa]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Haines" <wyrmclaw at sbcglobal.net>
>
> 1.  If fighters have a problem with getting picked off by an archer in a
> melee, and then feel the need to complain about it, why don't they just
> avoid melees with archers, and let those that don't mind archers, play on?
> Or better yet, why don't the fighters put some more encourangement to get
> more archers to the field on their side to help take out the archers of
the
> enemy's force?
>

The people that complain the loudest are not the people from kingdoms with
strong archery programs.  There are the people from Kingdoms with weak
archery programs who come to Gulf War and get their butts shot off.  They
are at a complete loss as to how to deal with it and they just know that
they don't like it,

> 2.  From what little I've seen of combat archery, where archers stand
behind
> melee units and intermingle in melees....Is that how archers were
> historically used in field battles?  From what I've understood of history,
> archers were a backfield unit, behind the infantry, used to thin out the
> ranks of the opposing infantry as they approached.  Then when melee
between
> infantry broke out, the archers were halted to prevent friendly fire.
Then
> if the enemy infantry broke through the ranks, the archers could pick off
> those approaching infantry, until they were threatened, at which point
they
> ran for the hills.


You are correct.  In period archers did not get in and mix it up the way our
archers do.  They were used at a much greater range.  However they were
using 100+ pound warbows capable of hitting their chosen targets at a FAR
greater range than we could ever hope to achieve.  Give us 30# bows with big
bulbous heads and bug things on the nock end that drag and slow things down
and most archers aren't very effective past 40 yards and only the very best
at 60 yards.

>
> From a historical perspective of England, where every male was required to
> learn to shoot the longbow, I would think the English army would have an
> incredibly massive force of archers going into battle.  And with swords
(and
> many of the heavier metal armors) being fairly restricted to knights and
> nobles, and the common footsoldier being given a wide variety of weapons
> they could afford, if they weren't farm tools, I'd be curious to see the
SCA
> fighters in *that* kind of battle.
>

During the height of combat archery during the 100 year war  the English
army was usually two-thirds archers or more.  There is a reason  why time
after time the English defeated a larger, better equipped, in better health
French army.  Edward and is sons and grandsons new exactly what a longbow
could do and how to use it.

In other eras and cultures archers where less specialized meaning that in
other cultures, particularly Asian and Middle Eastern, most every fighter
learned to use a bow and did use it in battle when the time was right and
when the time was no longer right he would shift to another weapon.  The
English archers were often just archers and had no other weapons or weapons
training.  At Agincourt when they ran out of arrows they were just ignored
by the French.  That was until they picked up the only other weapons that
they had, the mauls that they had used to drive pikes into the ground, and
came upon the French from behind and started driving the French soldiers
into the ground.

Regards,

Lord Eadric Anstapa
Kingdom Archery Marshal, Ansteorra
eadric at scabrewer.com