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French learned how to defeat the longbow men once they stopped offering battle to its advantages. Long bow no good in forest, inclement weather, rolling terrain.
French learned how to defeat the longbow men once they stopped offering battle to its advantages. Long bow no good in forest, inclement weather, rolling terrain.
What they learned was to never ever attack English archers in an all out frontal assault when they were drawn up in a massed formation. They finally learned the lessons of Crecy, Pontiers, and Agincourt. The French adopted more hit and run tactics, hitting English forces while they were on the move, breaking the archers up before they could organize and mass.
For a period of roughly 1000 years, from the 4th to the 14th centurys, warfare was mostly dominated by the mounted armored cavalryman. There were, of course, some exceptions in which infantry played a major role, but mostly the horseman was dominent. It really was not until the era of the English archer and the use of massed pike formations that infantry came back into it's own. As others mentioned earlier, horses would not charge into a wall of pikes wielded by massed men. While the longbow made a deadly impact, it's arrows were not quite as good in piercing armor as once thought, good armor was pretty effective in turning even a solid hit at close range away.
Wasn't the Byzantine Kataphract very effective armored mounted unit during the middle ages besides the failure at Manzikert? Also another good example of cavalary was the Muslims during the 7th century after Mohammed's death. Light armored cavalry helped them carve an Empire from Persia to Spain. Also let us not forget about the Mongols who were able to carve an empire using calvary from Central Europe all the way to the Sea of Japan, from Northern Russia to the Himalayas of India.
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