As part of an ongoing debate about how to make re-enactment battles more realistic, I need to set down how I think Wars of the Roses battles work, and it would be useful if you all could sanity-check me.

Note that the following is purely my opinion - I may be wrong, if so, please tell me why you think so!

Note that what I'm describing is the "idealised battle", where both sides engage on a featureless plain. This is very rarely actally the case, but it's best to start here as a baseline

A) Troop types; I think that these are broadly

- Archers (self-explanatory. If it becomes important, I'd expect archers to start the battle with two arrow bags, or about 48 shafts each)
- Billmen (or equivalent polearm - will vary in how much armour they have, but less than men at arms)
- Men-at-arms (full armour, poleaxe or equivalent weapons)
- Cavalry (not that many - most of your men at arms are fighting dismounted, and you will remount them for the persuit. Partial or full armour, lances and warhammers, maces etc as second weapon)
- Handgunners (more heavily armoured than archers, I'm assuming a relatively slow reload time)
- Artillery (only important in feild fortifications. If used in open feild, acts as super-handgunner rather than "artillery" in napoleonic sense)

b) Deployment

Force initially deploys as a DEEP line of billmen, (one of my big gripes with re-enactment is thin bill lines - I think these would buckle under impact, and certainly couldn't sustain casualties) interspersed with knots of men-at-arms to act as linebreakers.

Archers are in front of this, either as a continuous line, or small "wedges" - I don't know, and don't think it makes much difference tactically.

Cavalry are either deployed behind your line as a reserve, or on the flanks, to try to turn the enemy flank.

Handgunners, if any, are deployed in your bill line.

Add stakes, calthrops and strange burgundian gadgetry in front of your line to break a charge, if you like.

Lines form probably 400 m apart (...ie out of arrow range, but not far outside), and glower at each other until somebody (the numerically superior, or the side that isn't sitting in a feild fortification) starts moving.

c) Battle itself.

One line moves forward into arrow range. At this point, the archers of two sides can either engage in an "archery duel", or the attacking side keeps moving forward to the attack without stopping. Obviously, which you think will be better depends on whether one side has a clear superiority in archers.

If you fight an archery duel, that will result in most of the archers of BOTH sides getting removed from the equation, either as casualties or because they've expended all their arrows. Survivors fall back through the bill line, and your line moves forward as per the second option.

If you go straight to the attack, the defending archers get about 2 minutes of shooting (...because that's how long your line will take to move from maximum archery range to near contact), then fall back through your bill line just before contact.

Handgunners (in the bill line, and more heavily armoured than archers) will hold their (one shot) fire until point-blank range, then fall back to the back of the bill block to reload.

The bill lines bear most of the fighting, with fresh troops being cycled through from the rear ranks to replace casualties and allow the men at the front to get rest and water.

The archers who've fallen back through your bill line get rid of their bows, and are now lighter infantry with falchions and bucklers, mauls etc, and add weight to your bill block, help contain any penetration etc.

Cavalry tries to turn enemy flank, and stop enemy cavalry doing the same. Direct cavalry attack on a formed battle line is an act of desperation, with little chance of success.

It's going to be difficult to break one bill block with another. That's where your men-at-arms come in. They have good armour and poleaxes, an ideal combination to act as "linebreakers", opening a gap in the front of the enemy bill block.

Once that gap appears, your billmen follow in, and it's the beginning of the end for that block, because once it loses cohesion, it'll crumple fast. Unless reserves get committed to contain the break through, there's a good chance it'll take your whole battle line with it when it collapses, too.

Once the battle line does collapse, individual units can fall back in good order, but most men are likely to run for it. Your cavalry (the stuff you had mounted during the battle) harries the fleeing enemy to prevent them reforming, while the men-at-arms mount up to begin the mounted persuit proper.

Now, I don't think any battle actually follows such a "pure" picture, mostly because you can radically better your chances by erecting feild fortifications etc.

First, Scratch the calvary - not in England where there were so many archers.

Likewise scratch the gonners. Guns aren't reliable in the rain.

Also think the big guns are for sieges.

Phase 1 - Bowmen and the "black rain". Keep them restocked with waggonloads of arrows.

Advance begins with the heavily armored in front, lesser armored billmen are behind them, taking advantage of the protection of the heavy armored to shield them from arrows.

Upon contact with the enemy, you're clear of the arrowstorm and billmen continue to use protection of heavies and use longer weapons to reach into combat. Lines break up periosically, mass confusion ensues, groups try to stay close to their banner. Eventually, one group retreats or runs for it.

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Thanks for the comments.

Ignoring the comments about guns not working in the rain - it doesn't ALWAYS rain here, you know! - handgunners are included for completeness. I'd also see some cavalry presence, but not a great number until the men at arms remount for the persuit phase.

Also "wagonloads of arrows" are only going to be needed if the enemy is disorganised and attacks in several echelons, so I get time to shoot up each separately, like the french at crecy.

If I attack in a more organised manner, it's only going to take a couple of minutes to close from maximum bow range to contact at a walk - I don't expect to be able to close much faster and keep coherency. That means my archers will only get off max a couple of dozen shafts each. The sky turns black, but only for a couple of minutes, then the forces are in contact.

The biggest difference is that you see lines as being much "looser" and less "brittle" than I - fair enough, neither of us can fully support our views from period sources.

I'm basing my opinion on what seems likely to work well, and the weapon combinations used - in what you're thinking off, there's far less specialisation between the men-at-arms and billmen, one is just a heavier version of the other, whereas in my version, they actually have different roles.

My gut feel is that it's easier to break the line of "looser" units, and I see that as rather more catastrohic than you - in my mental picture, a unit will desperately try to reform its broken line, but it'll be bloody lucky to do it, and probably go down in a rout if it fails, whereas you seem to see that as reasonably easy.

Incidentally, thinking about how to apply this to a european scenario made me realise that the swiss/german forces fit my model quite well, too - just loose archers and cavalry, and substitute doppelsoldiers with zweihanders for men-at-arms with poleaxes as linebreakers.

Thanks for your input - no one on the UK board has said anything sensible yet.

I have no desire to derail you thread, so feel free to email me separately - gwen@historicenterprises.com

Unfortunately, it's rather less intellectual than this board, if you know what I mean - more conversations about beer and who's crewing who than history, and - with some honourable exceptions - far too much bollocks talked for it to be a particularly good research resource.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

Well, I tend to agree with your evalutation. As to whether it "worked well", or not, is a subject for debate. It was a tactical system developed to fight foriegn enemies with well understood advantages and disadvadvantages - the civil wars were the first time it was employed in earnest against similar armies.

From the accounts of the war, the vollys of arrows did not have the same effect as they did on the continent, as both sides were employing them - it forced one side or the other to close, but both sides were able to inflict casualties to a relitively equal degree during this 'phase' of an action.

Regarding the cavalry - in most engagements it did not play a decisive role during the engagement, for the obvious reasons. Then again, it may have played a decisive role at Tewkesbury, if the '200 speres' were mounted. Again, it may have played a decisive role (although not neccessarily men at arms, but rather mounted infantry) at Second St. Albans.

Reading the descriptions of English battles of that conflict, and comparing them to what I know regarding continental developments (and what I say will be extremely unpopular amonst the anglophiles - and please understand that I am one, but I must "calls em' like I sees em"), the English tactical system is dated - it reminds me of a bad Highschool football coach with no imagination, who runs the same plays over and over again - or the John Bell Hood school of tactics.

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Thanks for the comments.

I won't take it personally if you don't think the system itself isn't an especially good one - I don't have any axe to grind that it's ideal, I'm really just trying to work out how it was done.

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you know! - handgunners are included for completeness.

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Yeah, it doesn't always rain, but there doesn't seem to be a great number of gonners documented on the isle.

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I'd also see some cavalry presence, but not a great number until the men at arms remount for the persuit phase.

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And perhaps a few hanging well back out of bowshot and as errand runners, but not likely large groups of armored heavy calvary.

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Also "wagonloads of arrows" are only going to be needed if the enemy is disorganised and attacks in several echelons, so I get time to shoot up each separately, like the french at crecy.

If I attack in a more organised manner, it's only going to take a couple of minutes to close from maximum bow range to contact at a walk - I don't expect to be able to close much faster and keep coherency. That means my archers will only get off max a couple of dozen shafts each. The sky turns black, but only for a couple of minutes, then the forces are in contact.

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Our archers can shoot pretty fast. A couple of dozen arrows will be gone in no time. I don't see lines of engagement as being one or two men deep. Even after initial contact, archers can drop shots into back ranks and support forces - if only to harrass. Recall a couple of documented cases of nobles getting offed after lifting their visors or removing bevors. I doubt they did it in the first minute of battle while walking to the fray. Also, if the archers use up their 2 doxen arrows in the first two minutes, what do they do then? Go home?

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The biggest difference is that you see lines as being much "looser" and less "brittle" than I - fair enough, neither of us can fully support our views from period sources.

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I'm not saying that ranks broke up into hundreds of individual skirmishes - ala "Braveheart". There had to be some rationality and discipline. Look at the archer/billmen ranks in the Burgundian "Master WA" engravings - ordered ranks. I'm saying more flexible sub-units are more likely and are better able to organize after the inevitable breach rather than being a thin line that disintegrates.

Massive discipled napoleonic era ranks and blocks of pikemen aren't documented and would be a bear to maintain with larger groups. However, to support ordered ranks, Machiavelli's "On War", (from only a few decades later) does discuss and draw ordered ranks and such, and I doubt it was a new concept.

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I'm basing my opinion on what seems likely to work well, and the weapon combinations used - in what you're thinking off, there's far less specialisation between the men-at-arms and billmen, one is just a heavier version of the other, whereas in my version, they actually have different roles.

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No, I think we are discussing the same thing. Heavy armored Poll-axers & hammers in front to defend your own people and crack enemy armor, billmen to the rear looking for openings. Try to take down the other guy's hard crunchy shell and break into the chewy center while staying together & preventing the other guys from doing it to you & yours.

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Jeff, you seem a little dubious about the arrow loads I'm suggesting for archers.

Two arrow bags is four dozen shafts, not two dozen, and about as many as an archer can easily carry along with his other gear (...and notably more than I've ever seen a re-enactor carrying!)

Compare that with the 60 rounds a victorian soldier is carrying for his martini, let alone the 20 a redcoat is carrying for his musket, and it doesn't sound that bad, especially since you can salvage arrows fired at you and send them back.

Even the best archers I know are pushed to keep up a rate of more than twelve shafts a minute for any length of time. That gives me twice as many arrows as I can use in the time it takes the enemy to close, unless they get hung up over obstacles or something, so there'll be plenty left to snipe with later, even if you don't have wagonloads of spares behind your lines.

I'd see archery as primarily happening in a defined phase of the battle, prior to the two forces coming into contact. You will certainly be able to take occasional targets of oppourtunity during the main fight, but that's a bonus, nothing more.

Flat shooting into a press of fighting men is going to be chancy, and unless the bill blocks are even deeper than I expect, lobbing rounds indirect over my men's heads into the enemy ranks is going to be worse.

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Originally posted by NEIL G:
Two arrow bags is four dozen shafts, not two dozen, and about as many as an archer can easily carry along with his other...

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Neil, you are absolutely right. However admittedly we (Wolfe Argent and I think most everyone else) have been using arrow bags that only hold a dozen each to protect the fletchings. Jeff J. may have not realized that the Mary Rose standard was two dozen a bag. In fact, the bags offered by H.E. which is where I sourced mine come only with one dozen leather inserts.

With a longbow, I can loose 12 a minute. (More with a recurve and backquiver.) The problem I have is really what do we use for arrows to protect the opponent from NOT getting hurt. SCA blunts are nice but hard to come by. And we aren't using SCA helms with 1 inch or less eyeslit openings.

Neil, could you further detail or perhaps explain the exact archery regulations for WotR events?

My post was primarily intended to discuss how we think Wars of the Roses battles worked in reality in period, not how we can re-enact them today.

UK wars of the roses battle re-enactments don't tend to include much archery in big battles, just bill blocks. Where they do appear, archers don't get to shoot at people, just lob shafts indirect into empty safety areas.

Sone other periods allow shooting at people, indirect or flat, using bows of specified low poundage, rubber tipped blunts and careful aiming!

Regardless, Two-dozen/four dozen - it's still not enough. Put those lazy archers to work! The historic "trained-from-boyhood" bowman ought to be able to far outperform our modern dabblers in stamina. Sure, they might have carried a few dozen with them initially, but I can't imagine there was no resupply. My mental image is of several small boys running between the archers and the supply train, as well as scurrying about gathering fallen arrows.

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My figure of 24 shafts per page is based on surviving examples of leather spacers. I can't comment on the osprey reconstruction - my memory is that it looked broadly OK, but I didn't count the number of shafts it held.

I'm happy on the idea of boys running fresh shafts to the archers (....and probably mugs of ale for the billmen, too) but don't regard it as especially critical in feild actions in the WoR. The early phases of the 100yrs war, where you have to fight off repeated waves of French and can stall them in your killing zone, yes, no question. But that isn't the situation here.

I'm happy on the idea that "real" archers have more strength and stamina than any re-enactor, but while that is going to increase their range and hitting power, i'm not sure it'll increase rate of fire.

My real limitation is that any enemy is going to minimise the amount of time he spends taking hits from your archery by moving from maximum range into contact as quickly as possible, and once he's in contact, I don't see archery as being decisive.

I don't think You can shoot through a bill block, and I don't see how you can shoot a bow from the second rank - unlike a handgun, you can't draw it in a confined space while being jostled all the time. You may be able to knock off individuals on the fringes, even quite decent numbers of them, but it isn't going to influence the outcome of fight.

Incidentally, I seem to remember reading that the "war stocks" in the tower included (...and this is from memory, so it may be wrong) 11,000 bows and about 500,000 arrows, which would give a ratio of about 4 dozen per bow. Not conclusive (especially as I'm not sure I'm remembering the figures correctly), but suggestive.

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My recollection of the contents of arrow bags comes from a plate in the "Osprey English Longbowman" (not currently accessable) That bag held far less than 2 dozen arrows.

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I have been told that Osprey color plates, while being nice in overall look, are not necessarily as accurate as they could be but that was from someone from an 18th and 19th century LH perspective. Any comments from someone with regards to the 14th and 15th century?

I don't think I've seen any at all with only one dozen holes (...which doesn't conclusively prove they didn't exist, just that either they didn't survive, or they survive and I just don't know of them).

I'd take surviving original artefacts as better evidence than any reconstruction of that artefact, no matter how good.

Therefore, I'd say the way to bet right now is that arrow bags probably hold about two dozen shafts, and forget the osprey plate.

Should have never brought it up, 'cuz now I'll have to check it's ultimate source & I'm too lazy for that

Regarding shooting into an engaged block - not as direct fire, (unless you're an elf, then you can shoot 3 arrows 20 meters and through a keyhole) but a lofted shot can get a fair accuracy on a calm day. A shot can be dropped a reasonably specific depth (say the fifth rank) into a fighting group with a fair assurance that you won't hit the combatants in your own first rank. Yes - this is all conjecture on my part, and No - I can't do it.

And then there's harrassing fire into the rear echelons, self defensive fire in case of a breakthrough, "shoot & scoot", firing into a retreating enemy and other manouvers that we dabblers have no appreciation of. My point is that archers have more utility than loosing a few volleys before the fray and then standing around scratching their collective arses.

To get back to your original subject - Reenactors can't use arrows to their full potential and the archer's range of applications any more than we can use our pollaxes to bash in each other's armor. So, we have to have them shoot to the side, and/or blunt or nerf the arrows like we do the other weapons.

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All of the Mary Rose existing fragments for bag spacers were for 2 dozen arrows. (Provided that they published everything they had and that I've seen what they've published...)

Going from memory, I thought Chef had mentioned to me that 2 dozen was standard issue for a mounted archer for CoB. Chef, is my memory still intact on this point???

- saw something with less arrows
- saw something with more arrows & simplified the drawing
- conjectured the design

The caption also mentions "several leather discs of 5-inch diameter were recovered from the upper decks of the Mary Rose". These must be the 24-holers you mention.

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Next question: I always thought English archers would stick their arrows into the ground before them and therefore get accused of poisoning their shafts. Which makes a good defence but a poor attack. So how did they handle charging? Is it possible to pick your arrows out of their bag in a hurry or is this problematical? What about tucking arrows in your belt?

Two points;

First off, the aim of the thread was to discuss how real battles actually worked in the c15th, not how we should try to stage mock battles today.

Even if we were, given that I think you saved your single handgun shot for point-blank range, I don't think we can do this safely - even a blank powder charge would be dangerous at that sort of range.

Second off, I don't think that Handguns would have been considered "Strange new devices" by the Wars of the Roses. At Crecy, yes, but that was more than a century earlier. If anything, they are routine if specialist kit by the 1470s.

Any professional soldier would be reasonably familiar with their effects, if not necessarily with the specifics of their opeation.

Again, I'd argue that there's nothing special about handguns that is particularly likely to cause troops - veteran or otherwise - to panic.

Even when they are still uncommon, in the mid c14th, I can't think of a single account that speaks of "panic" caused by handgun fire.

One of the accounts of crecy talks about cannon being used "...to freighten the horses", but note that even this - the first recorded use of cannon, when they would still have novelty value - doesn't suggest that they are in any way particularly scary for humans.

If you want to depict troops breaking under fire, archery is more likely to cause this than firearms. Even then (...and at the risk of offending every archer in reenactment), there isn't a lot of evidence even for this.