Belaric Slingers Merc

The battle you're thinking of is Verneiul in 1424. The French had hired about 2000 Italian mercenaries who were armored in the latest face-hardened 'arrow proof' full plate. The Longbowmen proved ineffective, but the Italians blew there chance for victory by continuing onwards to loot the English baggage train and by the time they got back they found that the Duke of Bedford had rallied his men and beat the French. As usual. ~:)

BDC, composite bows were treated to enable them to survive the effects of bad weather, the same as longbows needed to be, so it is wrong to say that an eastern composite bow would fall apart. Sure, eventually it would do, but then what doesn't in our blessed isle? ~:)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Smaug-V

"then the longbow earn its infamous 'armor killer' title lateron"

I saw a program recently which tested the penetration power of an english longbow against the sort of armour french knights would have worn at the battle of Agincourt. Surprisingly, despite the reputation of the English Longbowmen, it in fact didnt have the ability to penetrate the plate armour.
Apparantely.
Didn't mention slings though.
Maybe thats how we won ~D

---

Yea I saw a program saying that an arrow shot from the longbow into a charging knight at a close distance (cant remember exact) would strike at 140mph
gotta love the history channel baby

~:wave:

I prefer using vanilla merc slingers than vanilla archers but the fact that all good slingers are mercs balances that out a bit.

But all must hide from my 4/6 archer army! :hide: :whip: :smash: :skull: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:

Kiowa, of course arrows were better for some battles.
Arrows could easier be fired over obstacles and it could be lit. Perfect for sieges.
Also, while bullets could deal horrendous damage to the body it was seldomly deadly (in fact a very positive property as the man would demand care and could later tell about the horrible slings) to anyone with armour or even just dense quality clothing. The clothing would enter the body along with the bullet, but not in a ripped state such as with the gunbullet, so the injured man would 'merely' need to pull at the clothes and out would come the bullet. The same would not be possible with arrows (unless you wore quality silk).
The slingers would also need considerable space to operate. Each sling is slung over the head and out to the right (at least that was how it was done back then). That makes the slingers bad at forming good units, and thus very unruly before a battle as they would be everywhere and nowhere.
Also their trajectory are much lower making them hard to use if there is a guy in front of you, so no more of the several ranks we see.
All this makes the slingers perfect skirmishers but obviously inferior to the bow as a weapon used en masse (bows can be in dense and deep formations).

Red Harvest... Try and read Xenophon's Anabasis. There they arm Rhodian and other traditional slingers with slings, eventhough these guys had signed up as hoplites (and were thus not the best slingers around). But these guys, only a few hundred kept the Persian archers and horse archers, who as we know numbered thousands, at bay. So obviously the sling was superior in range to the composite bow (the compound bow is a modern invention).