Hi everyone. Welcome to this Saturday Showcase’s Medieval Military-Historical Melee, where a bunch of our medieval milhist flairs will engage each other on the field, for the glory of our host, askhistorians, and for your education and entertainment. While I say ‘melee’ picture not anything too warllike, more of a friendly tourney late medieval tourney than a bloody battle. See u/Valkine going into battle wearing the crest of Devries, u/Hergrim showing his archery skills at the butts and u/Rittermeister riding like a master. So let me, tabard emblazoned with the arms of Williams, drop the baton to get this started.

The goal of this discussion is to use the new Spotlight format to get multiple flairs together to address some root concepts and associated misconceptions that come up time and again when people ask questions here in Askhistorians. Our topic today (now that I’ve belabored my silly alliteration enough) is armour penetration, and why weapons can be tactically effective if they don’t penetrate armour (that is, punch right through it). They can also be individually effective - defeating armour doesn’t require penetrating it, necessarily.

Week 17

 

On February 11^th a “Manifesto of the Italian Futurist Party” was published. The header said only “MARINETTI”, from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, poet, playwright, publicist, war veteran, interventionist and possibly anything else; as was to be expected for the founding father of the futurist movement. Marinetti had put the program together with the help of two of his closest – at the time – and more “political” collaborators: Mario Carli and Emilio Settimelli.

Nine years earlier – on February 20^th 1909 – Marinetti had created his artistic movement, futurism: a very Italian, but also international movement, as the publication of the futurist manifesto in “Le Figaro” in Paris clearly showed. A fact that mirrored Marinetti's formation and education; a man born in Alexandria where he had spent his youth, educated between Italy and France, passionate about both Italy and modernity – two things that at the beginning of the XX Century did not often go hand in hand.

He had soon met with a following among Italian artists; notably Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini – and Giacomo Balla who isn't in the picture.

Around the core platform of the manifesto, they built an articulate artistic machine: literature, painting, sculpture, architecture but also what we may describe as performance art (a “futurist night” typically involved poetry reading, book publishing, paintings display and some outrageous, extreme manifestation by the futurists themselves – the futurists notoriously brought their claques not to applaud but to hoot their performances and often joined the crowd disapproval – with a bit of a scuffle in the end, for good measure). Without going into many details on the artistic movement itself, since the following will focus mostly on the political side of futurism, a few things should be kept in mind.

Futurism was a movement that not only looked forward to the future, as the name suggests, but refused and actively opposed any glorification or even consideration of the past, bringing the XIX Century anti academia polemics to the extreme.

“Future” was to them everything new, even things we may find at odds with our artistic sensibility: industrial production, machines, the might of the masses, new political theories as long as they felt radical and anti-traditional and allowed room for display of artistic individuality (thus the futurists sympathetic approach to anarchism and their hatred for the drab homogeneous official socialism). The key objects of their fascination were movement, speed, dynamism; that of a flag, a running mob, a car, a train, a plane, a projectile.

New meant a chance of renovation, brought about by the belief that the immense irrational forces of the new century were going to sweep away everything on their path like an unconstrained tide. Thus humanity was going to break away from its past: new cities for the new futurist man to inhabit; new words for the futurist poet to write; new subjects for the futurist painter to draw, and so on.

Destruction and creation were two sides of the same coin: the futurist art was a violent creation, of a men caught in a constant struggle with himself, forcing oneself into and onto the future. From this, their love of anything that was abrupt, strong, decisive, violent, an act of (irrational) will.

Due to their own personalities and artistic choices, the futurists had to be a minority, an avantgarde, often opposed and ridiculed by the masses and the establishment^1 – something they frequently sought to deliberately. They had no ambition to fit in, to be well liked or praised but aspired to be the ones “standing on the most extreme peak of the centuries” looking at the unrestrained world of tomorrow, awaiting for the tide to ride into the future.

War came to them as this much awaited tide.

And their reaction was immediate.

 

The conflictual nature of this fight for the future had been a core theme of the national radicalism since the beginning of the century, as Italian sociologist and nationalist Mario Morasso had explained in 1905: The XIX Century had been the century of a democratic-humanitarian utopia, the XX Century would be the century of might and conquest. Woes to those who weren't to prove themselves strong; individuals, social classes and peoples were going to be irresistibly swept away by the new and terrible currents of energy that would compete for mastery of life and world [in a] universal expansion of struggle, of violence, of conquest […] It was the struggle for the dominion of the world; that spring that would excite [to fight] the most advanced of human civilizations […] The century of might had begun.

Morasso's positive take on this “dark lord-ish” scenario was based on a rational-scientific approach to the irrational. What he described was in his mind, a necessary consequence of the unfathomable energies developed in the industrial age, energies that had shaken first and then destroyed the thousand years old balance of the world […] not only on an economic ground but also on a political and moral one, breaking entirely with uses and traditions that had appeared immutable before.

If the nationalists focused progressively more and more on the “technical”, social and political consequences of the new industrial production forces (so that their renovation became a renovation of the state and then the individual, as citizen), the futurists attention was drawn more to the individual, whose fight – both heroic and tragic – appeared almost Promethean in nature, but of a joyous, violent, sacrifice. Their renovation was one of the spirit – evolving almost in an anti-state direction, opposed to that of the nationalists like Rocco^2 .

The futurists had already been on the interventionist side at the time of the Libyan War of 1911-12; in their proclamation for the war the futurists had explained that “men had to be allowed any freedom except that of being cowards; that the word Italy ruled above the word Liberty; that the memory of the great past of Rome had to be destroyed by a present one hundred times greater”. The exaltation of (future) Italy remained a central theme of political futurism and, if the Italian primacy had taken in the past a federative accent with Italy looking for its place among the European nations – the futurist view mirrored the nationalist adversarial concept, where Italy had to fight for its place against the other European nations. Only through a “ten years long blood shower” could the peoples get accustomed to the new era.

The futurist sympathy for war was obvious: war was both destruction and creation, violent unleashing of the most powerful forces of modernity, clash of nations, of peoples, movement of innumerable masses and arena for individual glory. War would break with the past. According to Boccioni “One had to be brave enough to destroy and smash even those things one held dear out of habit. […] One needed to take side, to let passions burn, to push one's faith to the extreme, for that future glory that every Italian worth his name felt deep inside but wanted [for now] too feebly. […] There had to be blood, there had to be dead. The Italian Risorgimento had been done tiptoes, like good mannered people would, with too little blood.”

Blood was a necessary sacrifice to get rid of the past; as Giovanni Papini in his distinctive excessive style remarked, “life wasn't sacred […] industrial civilization, like warlike civilization, fed on carrion: cannon fodder and machine fodder.”

I guess I should have posted this here, but I wrote this yesterday for the Friday thread about the real-life pirate king of Madagascar John Plantain and the myth of pirate utopias.

Well, I won't be showing off my archery skills at the butts (or hay bales in my case) any time soon, but I do have a few thoughts on why archery doesn't need to kill armoured men in order to be successful. Agincourt is a great example of this and, as I've been looking heavily into the recently, so I'm going to use it as an example.

I've previously discussed the potential penetration of armour at Agincourt, but I didn't discuss it in the overall context of the battle. Before I begin, I should mention that /u/wotan_weevil provided evidence of the armour for arm and leg harness being <1mm, while /u/WARitter challenged Clifford Rogers' breakdown of armour quality. I've also begun to warm to the idea that the Mary Rose bows drew around 140-150lbs @ 30", but I'm not yet willing to commit to that. I will, however, allow that Rogers' estimate of energy at release (85j) might be more acceptable than I'd previously thought. Rereading Williams has also made me realise that, for limb armour, his assumption of 40mm penetration required to kill or disable does not apply, so I've decided to use 40j for a disabling wound for 1mm metal (the test arrow barely penetrated at 30j but penetrated 40mm at 55j)

This does have an effect on whether or not arrows could have penetrated to a lethal or disabling depth. Based on Goll's thesis, here's the average thickness for different elements of harness.

Upper Arms: 0.9mm (three thicker than average, four had 0.9mm thickness)

Lower Arms: 1mm (7 equal to or more than average, 4 significantly below average - 3 x 0.7mm, 1 x 0.6mm)

Hands: 0.9mm (disregards the outlier, 5 of equal or greater thickness, one of lower thickness)

Helmets (sides): around 1.7mm (average for the left hand side was 1.7mm for the ear and cheek, average of the right hand side was 1.6mm for the ear and 1.8mm for the cheek). There's a lot of variation, with some as thick as 3.2mm and others as thin as 0.8mm. 18 of the 30 samples, however, were 1.6mm or more, while only two examples were 1mm or less.

Upper Legs: 1.1mm (13 equal or greater than average, 12 less than average. Some were as thin as 0.7mm, but 18 were 1mm or greater)

Lower Legs: 0.8mm (8 equal or greater than average, 5 less than average)

Using 60j as the energy of an arrow at long range, the ability of the armour to resist penetration is relatively low. Unless deflected, the arrow will penetrate Milanese arm and leg armour at long range, and the sides of low quality helmets as well, though the Milanese helmets still offer protection. At close range, however, they would be penetrated to a dangerous depth unless deflected. And that's the critical element: the armour was designed to deflect blows and arrows, so this would have had an effect on the probability of penetration. Similarly, the compound angle formed by the plunging arrow, the curvature of the armour and the angle of the limb or body would have impacted both on the energy required to penetrate and on the probability of a deflection, while the movement of limb or body under the impact of the arrow would have sapped it of energy.

Still, it does now appear that penetration of armour was more frequent than I previously thought. Less well made or lighter armour would have been penetrated quite deeply from a dead on arrow, and this would have left a lasting impression on those fighting beside them. And, when even the best made armour could be penetrated with a good hit, even the best armoured and wealthiest of knights must have been afraid of death from arrows. And, even if the arrows didn't penetrate, their impact would have staggered the wearer and created bruises. The energy transmitted through a padded jack, for example, is roughly the same as a .357 magnum through a bullet proof vest. While steel might handle the distribution of the energy more efficiently, being hit but multiple arrows is going to hurt and it will unnerve you. Even if the arrow is deflected with minimal transfer of energy, the noise it makes will be disturbing.

Now, most professional soldiers won't be dismayed by arrows glancing off. The fear of combat never leaves you, but you learn how to cope with it and keep on going. Those who have experienced battle, especially against the English, will know how protective their armour is, and it will give them confidence when the arrow just bounces off. Those arrows that hit and aren't deflected, but don't penetrate, are where things start to get hairy. Even with the varied effects of adrenaline, the majority of people are going to feel the pain and shock of the hit and very few are going to be able to avoid the natural desire to flinch away from the arrows and seek comfort in solidarity in closeness with others.

When penetration did happen, these effects would be enhanced. Monstrelet, Le Fevre and Waurin all write that "the French began to bow their heads so that the arrow fire would not penetrate the visors of their helmets", just as the author of the Gesta writes that English arrows "passed through the sides and visors of the helmets". These are the most important sources, the Gesta being written by someone present at the battle (although not involved), while Monstrelet, apart from having military experience, appears to have followed in the footsteps of Jean le Bel and Froissart in collecting and sorting through oral accounts in order to get the most accurate (although this might not always be the most true) account her could. Le Fevre was, at the time of Agincourt, a herald on the English side, while the 15 year old Waurin was present with the French army at the battle.

While other English accounts refer to arrows penetrating armour and wounding men, they're all rather generic rather than specific. Of the French accounts, the Monk of St Denis states that the English arrows wounded the French men-at-arms ("The English, however, thanks to the disorder brought about by their archers whose shots, as dense as a hailstorm, obscured the sky and wounded a great number of their opponents"), but gives equal weight to the fact that English archers had better freedom of movement ("As they were lightly armed and their ranks were not too crowded, they had freedom of movement and could deal mortal blows with ease."). Jean Juvenal, however, claims that the arrows were relatively ineffective against armour ("The French were scarcely harmed by the arrow fire of the English because they were well armed.")

These sources are not necessarily in conflict with one another. The Gesta, Monstrelet, Le Fevre and Waurin focus their attention solely on the potential of an arrow penetrating the side or visor of a helmet. These are not the parts most vulnerable to long range arrows, but are likely indications of what occurred at close range. Jean Juvenal, on the other hand, is probably talking in more general terms. That arrows have difficulty penetrating good armour head on and at range can be seen as early as Poitiers in 1356, where the best armoured men and horses were station in front of the others and proved functionally invulnerable to the English archers until they were attacked from the flank. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that sixty years would improve armour to the point where only close range archery was a threat (although it could equally be that the bows used at Poitiers were significantly lighter in draw weight than those at Agincourt).

Interestingly, the French sources suggest that there were archers out in front of the English army and attacked the French ahead of the main body. The Monk of St Denis writes that the English had "other light troops who formed the vanguard as was customary", the Chronique de Ruisseauville specifically mentions them attacking ahead of the army, "They came very quickly, the archers in front running without armour and with their breeches hanging down, always firing on the French, and our men of France advanced in fine fashion and without rushing", and Monstrelet, Le Fevre and Waurin have all the archers going on in front of the men-at-arms after the first English advance, "first the archers, of whom there were a good 13,000 [Le Fèvre says 10,000, Waurin does not give a number], began with all their might to shoot volleys of arrows against the French for as long as they could pull the bow."

Clifford Rogers takes this to mean that there only a few English archers, around 250, acting as skirmishers, but it could have been many more, perhaps more than a thousand. Their role and purpose seems to have been to keep up concentrated close range fire on the French as they advanced. This effect of this was two fold. It increased the chances of wounding the French but, more importantly, it also forced the French to keep their visors down, even as they had to lower their heads, restricting their vision, in order to better protect their faces.