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Force composition in the Wars of the Roses

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Arlequín:
For the same reasons that archers in the HYW felt the need to dig pits, deploy behind ditches and hedges, or within and behind a field of sharpened stakes... alone the longbow was never enough. I'm not aware of a single battle involving the English that was not settled one way or another by a melee.

As for the WotR you have a range of battles fought largely with "household men and fee'd men", or those supplemented by numbers of levies, which by connotation we presume were low quality. After they end we see reasonable numbers of cavalry evident in English armies, probably the last thing you would expect to see after a war involving two sides predominantly composed of archers, yet there they were.

I think it was Commines who described the English archers in 1475 as not being of the same quality as they once were and how disorderly they appeared on the march - and he was there to see them. 'New men of war' crops up a fair bit in accounts, so maybe inexperience was an issue.

The summonses to provide troops that have survived often mention 'defensively arrayed', so we are talking men with a degree of protection being involved. The instances of 'naked men' are uncommon enough to warrant mention in accounts, so the typical soldier was probably reasonably protected.

While assessments of who had what (Bridport roll, Ewelme's and later ones from 1512 and 1522) show a lot of people with very little, there is nothing to say these were ever called up. Despite being called 'muster rolls' they were not, they were assessments, a very different thing.

The Duke of Norfolk's accounts list his non-household men of 1485 by village, but there are only a small number of men from each one listed, so perhaps he chose the best of a bad bunch. He should have had no difficulty raising the 1,000 men he promised, yet only raised 800 or so in the end; I'm guessing he discarded some who did not meet whatever standard he felt was acceptable.

In all there is nothing to suggest that troops in the WotR were largely composed of hordes of ill-protected men dragged from field and plough, nor that these men were 'expert archers' of the kind tried and tested before being sent to France, as was supposedly the case in the 'glory days'.

So was the longbow somewhat over-rated in terms of its effectiveness, or was the typical soldier protected sufficiently to somewhat neutralise its effects, or both?

MerlintheMad:
So, lots of bows still. But, lower quality among their total numbers. How to separate out the good and best quality bow from the lower quality bow? We can probably assume that the household yeomen were all good quality. That the "hand-picked" retinues were also good quality. But that the "levy" were assorted, mostly poorer quality archers. Some/many probably were told to ditch their bows and take to the "bill". So even though on a "muster" roll they appear as "archers", in reality they resorted to their secondary, or melee weapons as their main arms when arrayed for battle. This is all speculation.

In the army list I use, the original premise of it's designer included the notion that the poorer archers are there if you insist on using them. But the good and best quality bows are limited to 25% and 10% respectively, of the total in the army. You can shoot with the poorer quality archers but they will not reach as far or hit as hard. The good quality archers are the ones that made up the "warbow" of the HYW. They are still there, but they are "hidden" amongst the mass of archers mustered (and, of course, are employed by the nobility as household and retinue troops). The best of the best, c. 10%, or "one archer in ten" (I'm still without the original source that said that, and I still think it was Roger Ascham, but can't find it in "Toxophilus") shot the bow that exceeded a hundred pounds draw weight. These, when found amongst the population, would be snapped up by the noble households, and (imho) comprised the royal archers of the guard, and aboard the king's ships; nobody of lesser skill would be able to qualify for such employment.

So on the battlefield, the wargames table, you could array the masses of lesser bow as "billmen" or "spears", whathaveyou. Yes, they can shoot too (if "you" insist), but their skill will be less in addition to their bows being lighter draw weight than the "warbows" of c. 70-80 lbs, and the cream of the crop shooting c. 100 lbs. I don't know how "you" would model that. But in our rules it is all taken care of by "Bow 2", "Bow 3" and "Bow 4"....

Arlequín:
Sure, if you have a pool of archers of finite limits, then it stands to reason that the more that are recruited, the lower the average drops. There is of course a lower skill limit by which a man can no longer be considered an archer (especially if you're the guy paying his wage), there was a standard after all.

I can't say with any confidence that there weren't any 'billmen' either (whatever they were called), I'm just saying there's not much evidence. That being lacking, any consideration of numbers, proportions, or anything else is just pure guesswork and anyone's guess is literally as good as mine, if not more so.

Captain Blood:

--- Quote from: Arlequín on March 17, 2015, 08:05:53 PM ---I'm just saying there's not much evidence. That being lacking, any consideration of numbers, proportions, or anything else is just pure guesswork and anyone's guess is literally as good as mine, if not more so.

--- End quote ---

Which I think, Jim, is pretty much what you said very near the beginning  :)

And therefore seems as good a place as any to call a halt to this thread and preserve it, along with all its learning / guesswork for the benefit of posterity.

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