[Neurion]

Ohhh no, you're not getting away that easily.

I'll ignore your intended slight and try to state my case a little better

I should have perhaps said that the knight was the ultimate weapon on the medival battlefield, rather than saying the mounted knight.

Losing to the English at Agincourt was not the fault of the French knights, nor their training. To charge headlong through a muddy morass like that was simple foolishness on the part of the commanders.

Neither longbows nor crossbows could penetrate the best plate armor. Striking at a 45 degree angle, a bodkin-headed arrow or quarrel might dent or scratch armor plate, but hitting at any other angle the projectile would simply deflect.

Again, I say that the French knights did not yet have the advantage of full plate armor, as full plate only became availabe around 1450.

About the longbow tilting the balance of the hundred years war, I never said it was not an effective weapon, I merely said it was not invincible.

One contemporary record states that archers would be directed to release their arrows upward at a very high angle to try and disrupt a charge by knights. In this way, the falling arrows "might" just possibly peirce the armor plate in some instances, but in any case the primary intention was to kill the horses or cause them to become unmanageable through inflicted arrow wounds. Unhorsing them would, of course, make the knights slower, but no less deadly.

English longbowmen were primarily used to provide "suppresive fire" against the enemy, rather than attacking them straight on. Their primary function at Agincourt seems to have been to force the French kinghts to bunch up, making their charge less effective.

Also, according to John Keegan's "Face of Battle", the English archers were unable to stop the French knights in any case. What saved the English position was the stakes placed around their position.

Finally, simply stating that the heavily-armed and armored knights did not fare too well at Agincourt does not somehow prove that knights were ineffective, as you seem to be saying. In that instance the French knights lost mainly to the English knights, not to archers.