It is also worthy of note that the English bowmen prized archery skill so much, that it was said that to hit a target the size of a head at 200 paces meant you were ‘ok’. I wonder at the feats accomplished by a truly skilled marksmen!
I doubt it!
Ship-to-ship longbows* had around 180 pound pull. You wouldn’t want to be using something that heavy repeatedly during a land battle.
*as found on the Mary Rose (about 120 years after Agincourt, but bows wouldn’t have changed that much because of the rising popularity of Firearms.)
Yeah IIRC the pull was more along the lines of 80-120 lbs. A friend reconstructed one a while back with a pull 90 lbs (he’s a historian and has made other types of historical weapons). I’m rather fit and I couldn’t pull back the string anywhere near the back of my ear!
Well, you wouldn’t have bothered pulling it all the way back to your ear. Waste of effort. The idea was to get as many arrows in the air (and hopefully ultimately the enemy) as possible. I’ve heard good archers can have two arrows in the air while stringing the third.
They also wouldn’t have bothered with much aiming beyond pointing it in the right direction. It was a case of quanity over quality.
I’d say that if you aren’t going to fire the arrow properly then there’s no point.
If you’re not pulling the sttring back to behidn your ear you’re nto imparting all of the possible energy to the missile.
The incredible thing about these people is not just that they could fire 2 arrows in such a short time, but that they can do it properly, imparting as much ebergy as possible to every missile.
Well, on the first volley I see no need to rush, they would have plenty of time to do it right. I would think aiming would be crucial for a missile. You don’t want them to come up short, you want them concentrated. Also once the advance started they would have wanted to pick off horses. Plus drawing them correctly would have yielded more power, and with the bodkin arrows thats key.