Lorica Hamata being pierced by arrows

[john m roberts]

There are too many varieties of mail for those questions to be answered. You'd have to do an analysis for every type of mail separately. Some types of mail were significantly heavier than others and some were more resistant to arrows than others. Roman mail tends towards the heavier part of the spectrum but some types of European mail were proof against everything - even axes and mounted lances. The French called it de toute botte. I'm guessing that it may have been too heavy or not as flexible as other mail types or it would have been more common. The most popular method of increasing the protection of a mail hauberk (for those who could afford it) was to simply wear a second one over the top but it doesn't seem to have been needed for arrows - it was usually done when expecting to be hit with mounted lances. Instead of two layers of mail, Richard the Lionheart wore an iron plate under his mail during his joust with William de Barres. There was also mail specifically designed to resist a mounted lance called a "jousting hauberk" (haubert de joute). This was at a time when jousts were conducted with fully sharpened war lances.

This will help
http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

Dan, the link isn't working for me. I'd like to see this article.

[Dan Howard]

Try googling "mail unchained myarmoury"

Or go to the Features page and click on "Mail: Unchained"
http://www.myarmoury.com/features.html

[Luka Borščak]

Myarmoury is down at the moment...

[Iosephus]

When we combine this style of bow with rapid-fire releases, we can visualize what Crassus was up against. ;-)

Hi,

Just to help visualize and get the feeling of mass archery, maybe some of you will find the following interesting.

Every year in Hungary there is a gathering of traditional archers where the focal point of the day is a mass-archery event. Usually there are 1000+ archers shooting together in a coordinated fashion (simulating a battle). According to the coreography every archer got 10 arrows to shoot, the first 6 are shot during a rotation system similar to later renessaince musket fire drills (first line shoots-walks back & reload-second line shoots - walks back & reload etc.). The last 4 arrows are fired in a classic massive-archery-barrage way - everybody shoots at once.

Here is a video about last year"s event recorded by a local televison. The video is quite long and it is in Hungarian so I suggest you better start watching at 1:00:45, when they start the rotating shooting. At 1:06:35 they start the volley-fire and they finish at 1:07:40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW_qHY2VV-k

In about 7 minutes 10.000+ arrows are fired by "weekender" hobby archers.

The video has another interesting point at 1:17:25 when the participants start to collect the arrows and the "battlefield" with the target dummies can be seen after the shooting is done.

I know it has nothing to do with armour penetration by arrow but maybe it can help to explain what type of stress had the romans to endure and why the parthians could scare the sh*t out of them. I was a spectator in 2012 and I can imagine how terrifying an archery-barrage like this could be when you are on the receiving end.

[Benjamin Abbott]

I appreciate he has not been working up to it since childhood but my point is that from what I have read about Manchu tradition the 100lb+bows were for non mounted troops (and the 150lb+ ones for excerise and strength testing only only) due to the effort of puling them and that mounted bows were of the 60-80lb region as they had to be manipulated whilst sitting and controlling a horse, a completely different proposition than being able to use your whole back in a foot draw.

What's your evidence for this? Mark C. Elliot's The Manchu Way argues that about 80lbs "was considered minimal for a grown man" (page 179) and 133lbs was required for participation in the hunts (which were mounted). The emperor in 1727 stated that 80lbs or greater was enough, and in 1736 an officer complained that few of the younger soldiers could use bows above 92-105lbs with ease. And all of this data comes from a period of likely decline in Manchu archery. See here for a compilation of sources. The overall weight of the evidence indicates that a draw of approximately 80lbs constituted the minimum for competent mounted military archery by Manchu standards, and that best mounted archers could draw 100lbs and over (apparently up to 133+lbs for the elite group who participated in the hunts). This stands consistent with the data from other archer cultures such as the Turks. In general, quality mounted archers wielded 80-120lb bows, even going back to 1000-400 BCE.

We don't know for sure what kind of bows the Parthians used at Carrhae, but based on the above it's likely at least come of the archers involved drew 100+lbs. Roman mail would have had to have been quite heavy and thickly padded to resist arrows from such bows at close range, depending on arrow weight and arrowhead design. (The mail test from The Knight and the Blast Furnace by Alan Williams involved a very substantial quilted backing that would weigh about 3lbs just to cover my front torso from shoulders to navel. It additionally used only one type of arrowhead simulator, and arguably not the most efficient one against mail.) I suspect there's considerable truth in the accounts from Plutarch and Cassius Dio.