Quote Originally Posted by Charge
Parthian surely can. And so huns,mongols,... english longbowmen have managed this against medieval knights! And you say 50 meters...
Did not. Heavily armoured cavalry developed on the steppes specifically to counter the ubiquitous archery there; the whole point was to render the elite shock cavalry as blow- and missile-proof as possible.

The English archers had major issues inflicting actual damage on knights even at Grecy, and back then most knights didn't wear much more than mail which isn't even particularly arrow-proof as armour goes. They could wound the unprotected horses, sure, and savage lighter-equipped support troops, but the knights themselves were quite well able to repeatedly charge home against the English heavy troops - what now the archers caused enough confusion and disorder in their ranks the impact was greatly lessened.

Once true plate came about - partly in response to the longbow actually - the bow was well on its way out. Top-grade full plate tended to bounce musket balls at reasonable distances, and already in the early 1500s or so military writers began lamenting the fact even the heavy, fully developed lance had great difficulties killing anyone when two forces of knights met at full tilt...

Few volleys should be enough to kill 200 unarmoured skirmishers...
Open-order skirmishers hava actually had a tendency to be annoyingly hard to kill with missiles; too much empty space for the projectiles to fall into, and the nimble fellows tended to have a habit of simply dodging the slower ones like javelins.