Quote Originally Posted by Lokiss View Post
If memory serves, the victory of the English at Agincourt was due to the French heavy calvary (of which they brought toooons) getting stuck in the wet mud. I think they tested it and determined a longbow couldn't punch through the armor the French were wearing.

Hand to God.
I read a paper by a physicist who'd done some calculating on this same matter. In it he mentioned a test where it was confirmed that the arrowheads in fact could penetrate the 1mm plate at about 200 metres but not the thicker type of breast plate. He also included some statistical reasoning, giving about every 100th arrow a kill. Can't remember if he included disabled horses in that figure. I think so.

The fact that the horses got stuck in the mud actually only served to prolong each wave's exposure to arrowfire, causing routes before they could reach the english line. Was it something like 15 charges made over the course of the whole day? Imagine that... "But it's MUDDY, Sir!"