WOTR: Use of bills / bows as separate units?

[Uxbridge]

Just starting to get an interest in WOTR so have read virtually nothing as yet, planning to start with the book of the same name by Matthew Lewis.  I have however seen a comment elsewhere that bills were NEVER used as stand-alone formations and that they were only ever seen in units where they were combined with bows.  Is this accurate?  Were bills (and I suppose by default, bowmen) NEVER used in their own formations? 

It may well be true but, while I have not been very interested in WOTR up to now, I have numerous sets of rules covering other periods of Anc/Med warfare (DBA, DBM, DBMM & ADLG) and not one of them mentions anything about combined units of bill and bow, not at all, despite, in the case of ADLG at least, the rules catering for mixed units that shoot as bow but fight as bill.  I find it hard, though not impossible, to believe that the authors / researchers missed that bill / bow combined was the default unit of the time, so much so that independent blocks of bill would never be see.  I could see them ignoring it maybe if combined units were beyond the scope of the rules but that's not the case.  So have they just ignored it?  Or is the 'bills never being seen alone' the pet theory of just one author that no-one else agrees with (I've come across a few of those over the years).

Even the newer Never Mind the Billhooks (which we may also pick up), the author of which AFAIK is highly knowledgeable about the period, allows for the use of separate bill and bow units from what I've seen in battle reports.

Any views from those more extensively read on the history?

[Norm]

To my knowledge, nobody actually knows for sure, but there is an increasing tendency in rules to allow for mixed units of bow and bill to represent various contingents representing land owners, those of status and towns / cities, bringing their mixed contingents to rendezvous with the main army.

Accounts generalise in battles opening up with the bow shooting. Is this a case of each mixed contingent throwing their bow forward or something more centralised? At Towton, it appears that Fauconberg commanded the bow, so centralisation must have been a possibility.

There is also an account (this might actually be from Agincourt) that once  the heavy infantry engaged, bowmen would gather in small knots, placing themselves in gaps and shooting at local targets, so more of a sniping role role than an arrow storm / barrage role by this stage of battle.

The archer of the time was capable of melee combat, but they were a precious resource.

It seems at this point in time that mixed units is a way to go, though in my units, I open battle with units / contingents with their archers physically at the front and then on close contact, I switch them to having the billmen to the front and so essenitally my unts are either in a shooting mode or a melee mode for want of a better expression.

[Atheling]

I agree with norm on most of his points- there is simply so much that we don't know about Late Medieval Warfare when it comes to wargames rules all we can do is give it our best guesstimate.

The archer of the time was capable of melee combat, but they were a precious resource.

All combats would have ended in melee and that included the archers getting stuck in IMHO.

[bigredbat]

With To the Strongest!, we came to this five or six years ago when researching the WotR list, and unfortunately there didn't appear to be enough information to be certain how they fought. In the end, I built a list that gave the players the choice of whether to go with separate units or with mixed units.

[Charlie_]

The 'mixed unit' of bow and bill used on a wars of the roses battlefield would have been an entire 'battle' (division/battalion) of several thousand men, three of which made up an army in most battles. Obviously in most wargames such large groups will be broken down into smaller 'units', so that's when the question of how they should be grouped arises.

So one question is how the bills and bows interacted in such a large formation in a big pitched battle.
Another question is how they would interact in smaller skirmishes, which would be different.

[Atheling]

I should have added, it is very possible that on the indentures of the time, "Billmen" were listed as Archers much in the French Manner of listing Archers as "archers" when most of the time they were a lighter form of cavalryman.

[Uxbridge]

Very interesting, thanks so much for the replies.  So nothing wrong in having essentially all of the non MAA infantry as bill & bow 'Household' units but equally, at least as far as we know, nothing to stop you fielding units of just bow or bill should you wish.  I guess it would depend on how far apart they were too, I can't see it having been a very good idea to have large units of bows isolated and far from MAA or bill units.  Just wanted to be sure I wouldn't be doing something that we know for sure never, ever happened if I put down a unit or just bill or bow, that it MIGHT have I can live with

[Charlie_]

Very interesting, thanks so much for the replies.  So nothing wrong in having essentially all of the non MAA infantry as bill & bow 'Household' units but equally, at least as far as we know, nothing to stop you fielding units of just bow or bill should you wish.  I guess it would depend on how far apart they were too, I can't see it having been a very good idea to have large units of bows isolated and far from MAA or bill units.  Just wanted to be sure I wouldn't be doing something that we know for sure never, ever happened if I put down a unit or just bill or bow, that it MIGHT have I can live with

Nothing stopping you doing anything!
The two things to balance are what looks 'right' (good) which is purely subjective, and what would make for an interesting game.

I would say a 'household' unit will look even better as men at arms, archers and billmen all mixed together. If you look at the Perry Miniatures Facebook page and find some of their WOTR battle reports,  you'll see that's how they do it. In my opinion it looks miles better than having men at arms,  billmen and archers all in separate units.
But then you might have the situation that every unit on the tabletop is identical in terms of rules.
But then again you could have the bulk of the armies made up of these mixed household units, but still have rules that allow pure men at arms and pure archer units in addition.

[Charlie_]

To show what I mean, here's some examples from the Perrys WOTR games, mixing men at arms, billmen and archers together into 'household' units.






Another thing you could do is simply mix a few bills and other polearms into archer units. So for gaming they considered genuine archer units, but not all models will have bows, with a few billmen in there. This is what I've done for some of my French units.

[Uxbridge]

Nothing stopping you doing anything!
The two things to balance are what looks 'right' (good) which is purely subjective, and what would make for an interesting game.

I would say a 'household' unit will look even better as men at arms, archers and billmen all mixed together. If you look at the Perry Miniatures Facebook page and find some of their WOTR battle reports,  you'll see that's how they do it. In my opinion it looks miles better than having men at arms,  billmen and archers all in separate units.
But then you might have the situation that every unit on the tabletop is identical in terms of rules.
But then again you could have the bulk of the armies made up of these mixed household units, but still have rules that allow pure men at arms and pure archer units in addition.

 
Yeah, the only point I was trying to establish was whether it would be totally ahistorical to see one or more units of bill or bow fielded separately, just that simple question.  Of course there is nothing 'stopping' me from doing anything from a gaming perspective, but that wasn't the point! My question was solely from the historical perspective.

Thanks for the images, they are similar to what I've looked at elsewhere (I've looked at hundreds from books, rule sets, blogs and gaming group pages etc.) and I suspect most of the units I field will be combined in one way or another, based in such a way as to provide flexibility between rule sets, I tend to make rules fit around the way I have based, not the other way round, though being cognisant of at least the suggested basings for the rules I intend to use can make it easier from the outset.  Of course even then the rules rules you intend to use may not be the rules you end up sticking with.  But one thing IS certain, I don't ever re-base.

Those French look great (one of the guys here has already done both sides for WOTR so at one point I did consider doing French or Burgundian.  I'm not sure I have quite the same level of interest in that as I do with doing WOTR given the history and the characters.  Not decided yet though).  My thinking basing wise, from several videos I've seen, is to have a command stand of bills as the middle base of 3 with archers on each of the flank stands, allowing me to swap the bill stand for archers for a pure archer unit and the vice versa with swapping the bows for bill stands.

Given how prevalent these mixed bill/bow units were, I find it surprising that all of the tournament ancmed sets of rules I have (games that no longer appeal) totally ignore it with ONLY bill and bows fielded separately.  As was pointed out to me, one sort of accommodates it by allowing bills to interpenetrate bows bit otherwise it's ignored.  Beyond the scope / intent of the rules I guess.

[SirRoystonPapworth]

My 2p worth…

One of the enablers of the war in England was the ending of the war in France. Meaning there was an awful lot of experienced soldiers in England. Well, at the beginning of the wars..

Would they forget their training and experience in France and effectively become an armed mob? I think not.

I think that mostly bills and bows would be fielded separately, yes some could be deployed behind the bills (which may be fronted by men-at-arms) or in front (eg at Towton).

Unless of course you feel that during the HYW they were combined units…

[Captain Blood]

There may be something in the once long-running, now preserved in aspic, ‘Force composition in the Wars of The Roses’ thread here that helps address your question, although you’ve probably already spotted that…

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=59060.0

[historian in harness]

My 2p worth…

One of the enablers of the war in England was the ending of the war in France. Meaning there was an awful lot of experienced soldiers in England. Well, at the beginning of the wars..

Would they forget their training and experience in France and effectively become an armed mob? I think not.

I think that mostly bills and bows would be fielded separately, yes some could be deployed behind the bills (which may be fronted by men-at-arms) or in front (eg at Towton).

Unless of course you feel that during the HYW they were combined units…

Which assumes that they were being fielded as separate units when in expeditionary armies.

I am very much of the opinion that from the time of the establishment of the 'indentured retinue' (so aorund the 1330s) onwards, what we generally term 'household troops' in the Wars of the Roses would have comprised archers, bills, and men-at-arms working together as a single unit, rather than differently equipped troops being stripped out, with all the problems that removing the inherent camaraderie and command and control would entail. It doesn't mean that it wasn't done, but that it was rare.

To my mind, at the level of abstraction at which big battle rules work units should be of mixed type as the norm.

However, I also recognise that this debate is very much a 'marmite' thing! 

[Patrice]

I would think that they may be mixed when arriving on the battlefield, but at some point they could be separated if needed, with their own command.

At some moments you would need to have bowmen separated and shooting together for better effect; at other moments (or in smaller skirmishes) groups with a rank of bows and a rank of bills and switch ranks if needed (as Norm says).

It gives interesting tactical choices (protect the bowmen with some of the bills, or send all billmen directly into melee? taking the risk to leave the bowmen alone) but that depends if your rules allow this.

[Cubs]

What sort of size of units are we talking about? When is a unit a single unit, or two units one in front of the other? From what I've read of the WotR, where possible the archers would be supported by billmen where possible for when the enemy got close and/or the arrows ran out, but there was also a gulf between the ideal and the reality of who was available at the time. A knight or lord might turn up for the muster with a bunch of archers but not a lot of billmen, or vice-versa.

As others have said, what was listed doesn't always seem to have been what we think of - an archer on the lists might just be an unarmoured dude who turned up for battle and can't be listed as anything else. Or a billman might turn up with a bow and be used as such.