Is it true that the English won at Agincourt because their longbows were better than French crossbows?
The longbow is often given credit for Henry V's success at Agincourt (1415), as for earlier English victories over larger French armies at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). It is sometimes thought that it was superior to the crossbow more frequently used by England's opponents, but in reality both were powerful ranged weapons.
Crossbows fired bolts that were heavier than longbow arrows but took longer to reload. A crossbowman could shoot perhaps two or three times each minute, compared with around 12 for a well-trained longbowman.
At Agincourt itself, longbows, the French crossbowmen only shot one over-hasty volley by which they did injury to very few” then “withdrew for fear of our bows”. But, as the English army employed proportionally more archers, this does not mean the longbow itself was decisive as a technology. How efficiently it could penetrate plate armour is disputable, and rapid fire meant they quickly exhausted their arrows.
