French Archers & Crossbowmen in the Hundred Years WAr

[Dave Knight]

I am doing some research into these troops and their effectiveness for a possible 100YW rules project.

Their presence at battles is often noted but their tactics and effectiveness is not, other than they were normally (always?) outshot by English archers.  Can anybody point me in the direction of some reading maerial on this subject?

Dave

[Erpingham]

It's not something I've ever found a dedicated study of.  It is mentioned in passing in numerous books reconstructing tactics and reports of battles.  For example, The Great Warbow has diagrams of how French/Burgundian armies around the Agincourt period deployed on p322 and 340.

There are a few articles on Genoese crossbowmen in the Crecy period.  e.g. DeVries and Capponi The Genoese Crossbowmen at Crecy in Livingston and DeVries The Battle of Crecy : A Casebook.  Less depth than one might like though.
This oldie by David Nicolle.
Russell Mitchell The Longbow-Crossbow Shootout at Crecy in Villalon and Kagay The Hundred Years War (II) ; Different Vistas

I'd also recommend reading this discussion on My Armoury in a search for clues - starts of with Genoese then wanders Europe.  There are lots of nuggets here worth knowing, but there's a lot of panning to do.

Finally, its worth reading Diaz de Gamez The Unconquered Knight for a soldiers eye view of crossbows in action in this period, albeit Castilians in French Service. 

Crossbow info may be a bit scattered but I've seen even less condensed info on ordinary bows in French service.

Hope that is a start

Add : Inexplicably lost the link to My Armoury topic - restored

[Dave Knight]

 Thanks Anthony I feel a bit better about not being able to find much myself.   I will follow up your leads

[Dave Knight]

The Great Warbow appears to be unavailable.  Has anyone read the Osprey on the crossbow and know how useful it is in terms of 100yw tactics?

[Dave Knight]

The Great casebook is £80😮
Found the paperback much cheaper so will get that😎

[Duncan Head]

Dunno about the casebook, but abebooks.co.uk have copies of The Great Warbow from £32.95 and amazon have used copies from £30.15.

[Erpingham]

The Great Warbow appears to be unavailable.  Has anyone read the Osprey on the crossbow and know how useful it is in terms of 100yw tactics?

Good background but very little specific to that conflict.  In Osprey terms, there is more HYW specific in David Campbell Longbowman v. Crossbowman but I found this disappointing overall.

[Erpingham]

The Great casebook is £80😮
Found the paperback much cheaper so will get that😎

Mine is the paperback and it is a good quality production - I presume from hardback price they are intended for libraries.

[Dave Knight]

It arrived yesterday  and has given me a few thoughts on crossbowmen, at Crecy at least, which may not have been typical of the whole period of course

[Erpingham]

It arrived yesterday  and has given me a few thoughts on crossbowmen, at Crecy at least, which may not have been typical of the whole period of course

I think I have two particular questions.  At Crecy, the crossbow force in action is Italian and professional.  It probably fights Italian style.  We see less of the French militia forces, who are at the back of the army and don't really engage till the following day, when they are caught unprepared by the English, so we don't learn about their fighting skills.  Did these militia fight in the same way?  We know the "bonnes villes" had crossbow and archery guilds similar to Flemish and German cities - do they fight along those lines and is that particularly different to Italian style?

Second, do tactics change through adapting to the English?  The early 15th century crossbow and archery deployment is in front of the wings of the lead battle of dismounted men at arms, mirroring the common English deployment.  Yet the model seen at Crecy and Poitiers has the crossbowmen seemingly in advance of the army as a whole.  Has there been a change or have we too few data points and both methods were always there to choose from (the Italians could deploy their crossbows as wings, after all)?

[Dave Knight]

My instinct is that the French tactics would change to counter the English in the same way as the men at arms went from invariably fighting mounted to more often dismounting