fogman wrote: 10 years after agincourt, the longbow was obsolete.
I am sorry but this is hopelessly wrong, in my opinion.
First of all, "obsolete" is generally taken to mean - something that is no longer produced or used, something that is out of date.
This is from Wikipedia and I think it is fair . . .
"English use of longbows was effective against the French during the Hundred Years' War, particularly at the start of the war in the battles of Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), and most famously at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). They became less successful after this, with longbowmen taking casualties at the Battle of Verneuil (1424), and being completely routed at the Battle of Patay (1429) when they were charged before they had set up their defensive position . . ."
So there is some agreement with you there about Verneuil (and Patay) but it should be remembered that Milanese armour was the best and most expensive armour available at that time and it was worn by only the richest knights on the battlefield, a relatively small proportion of an army. But then . . .
"More than 130 bows survive from the Renaissance period, however. More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's navy that sank at Portsmouth in 1545 . . ."
and . . .
"Longbows remained in use until around the 16th century, when advances in firearms made gunpowder weapons a significant factor in warfare and such units as arquebusiers and grenadiers began appearing. Before the English Civil War, a pamphlet by William Neade entitled The Double-Armed Man advocated that soldiers be trained in both the longbow and pike; this advice was followed only by a few town militias. The last recorded use of bows in an English battle seems to have been a skirmish at Bridgnorth, in October 1642, during the Civil War, when an impromptu town militia proved effective against un-armoured musketeers. Longbowmen remained a feature of the Royalist Army, but were not used by the Roundheads."
So, strictly speaking, it could be argued that the longbow did not become obsolete as a battlefield weapon (something that is out of date) until the 17thC. My own view is that it really becomes generally obsolete as a battlefield weapon in the 1590s. This is taken from George Gush (I should point out that his assertion about the role of the longbow at Flodden is not accepted by everyone; some historians have suggested that a statute passed shortly after that battle was intended to address the poor performance of the longbow there). He writes,
"The traditional English weapon; it could still be a battle-winner (Flodden 1513) and up to the 1560s most English 'shot' were still archers, especially on the Border, where the bow was preferred to the heavier and clumsier arquebus. After 1589 archers were dropped from the standard company organisation, and they officially disappeared by the mid-1590s, though there are a few signs of their use in England in the early 17th Century . . ."
"However, the older weapons were gradually supplanted by the new, and in 1558 English companies in Ireland had about 50 each of longbowmen and arquebusiers. A Leicester- shire company of 1584 shows a later stage in the transition, having 80 pikemen and 80 men with firearms, as against 40 billmen and 40 archers. Though Sir John Smith wrote approvingly of this organisation in the 1590s, and recommended the formation illustrated, he was a longbow-enthusiast, and it seems likely that the 1580s saw both the appearance of the musket and the disappearance of the bow from English first-line service. The London Trained Bands dropped the bow in Armada year, and in 1595 it was ruled unacceptable for trained bands 'shot' generally."
http://greatestbattles.iblogger.org/Ren ... nglish.htm
Fm Verneuil 1424.zip
But they still managed to make the turn. I realize now that those house rules you mention are applicable to a FoG challenge. The game I played was not one of those. It was ex-FoG, as it were.