Battles of the late Third Age

[Kuruharan]

The French knights at Agincourt didn't have full plate

The battle was fought in 1415. If full plate was not around by then, please enlighten my bottomless ignorance as to when it was in use.

However, be careful. Too many more years into the future and you get into the Gunpowder Age, and my statement was specific to the ages before that really began exploding on the scene (even though by this point it was already in some use).

the majority of their casualties were caused by suffocation in the mud, and the English dismounted knights and men-at-arms.

What difference does that make? Even ignoring the fact that I disagree with your statement that plate armor could not be penetrated, your contention is that the heavily armed knight was the most effective fighter in the whole era before the advent of gunpowder. This is one of many instances where the heavily armored knight just did not fare too well.

If you would like another instance, aside from Mongols, of the mailed chivalry of France (considered for some unfathomable reason to be the best, I think they just thought they were best) "not doing too well" look at the battle of Nicopolis in 1396.

The "invincible longbow" is a quaint English myth.

Well, something certainly tilted the battlefields of the Hundred Years War in their favor against most reasonable expectations to the contrary for a considerable period of time.

*Cough* anyway, back to warfare in the Third Age of Middle earth...

Saurman's followers seem to have been of a rather plodding sort or Saruman did not encourage them to take initiative themselves. It is probably some combination of both. The Isengarders could have caused much more havoc had they reordered themselves and pressed an attack rather than drawing off in the first battle.

[Neurion]

Ohhh no, you're not getting away that easily.

I'll ignore your intended slight and try to state my case a little better

I should have perhaps said that the knight was the ultimate weapon on the medival battlefield, rather than saying the mounted knight.

Losing to the English at Agincourt was not the fault of the French knights, nor their training. To charge headlong through a muddy morass like that was simple foolishness on the part of the commanders.

Neither longbows nor crossbows could penetrate the best plate armor. Striking at a 45 degree angle, a bodkin-headed arrow or quarrel might dent or scratch armor plate, but hitting at any other angle the projectile would simply deflect.

Again, I say that the French knights did not yet have the advantage of full plate armor, as full plate only became availabe around 1450.

About the longbow tilting the balance of the hundred years war, I never said it was not an effective weapon, I merely said it was not invincible.

One contemporary record states that archers would be directed to release their arrows upward at a very high angle to try and disrupt a charge by knights. In this way, the falling arrows "might" just possibly peirce the armor plate in some instances, but in any case the primary intention was to kill the horses or cause them to become unmanageable through inflicted arrow wounds. Unhorsing them would, of course, make the knights slower, but no less deadly.

English longbowmen were primarily used to provide "suppresive fire" against the enemy, rather than attacking them straight on. Their primary function at Agincourt seems to have been to force the French kinghts to bunch up, making their charge less effective.

Also, according to John Keegan's "Face of Battle", the English archers were unable to stop the French knights in any case. What saved the English position was the stakes placed around their position.

Finally, simply stating that the heavily-armed and armored knights did not fare too well at Agincourt does not somehow prove that knights were ineffective, as you seem to be saying. In that instance the French knights lost mainly to the English knights, not to archers.