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Also the question regarding bodkin arrows is not entirely debunked/confirmed. You shouldn't rely on the demonstrations conducted by certain YouTubers who shoot some arrows at replica armor to gain views.
The danger posed by bodkin arrows lies in the mass deployment of arrows rather than individual shots.
You don't have to penetrate the armor. you have to penetrate the open flesh.
You do this by "blackening the sky with arrows"....
I guarantee you, I dress you in a full set of armor, and have longbow men rain arrows on you... You will have to clean the mess in your pants.
Anyway, not everyone had a full suit of armor back in the day on the battlefield. So shooting arrows in massive groupings had a much better chance of being effective against any open flesh.
Once you get the horses panicking(though, good trained warhorses don't panic like that, but like armor was so expensive, not everyone has a good trained war horse.), it's GAME ON! Cavalry knights fall to the ground, and get eaten alive by lightly armored "mop up teams".
So, figure, effective range of longbow men to be 250-300 yards on open flesh.. Most people in good shape, can run a 100 yards in under 15 seconds. Take out the Cavalry get them on the ground, in their heavy armor... Cover the 300 yard distance in under 45 seconds, kill everything that moves on the ground or trying to stand up.
Cavalry in this case is most effective, kept way in the rear as a reserve flanking force on the bowman. Send them WAY around their flank so that they can travel the distance and keep surprise...
Longbow men, all dead.
English longbows absolutely annihilated French heavy cavalry. So many knights died in this one battle that almost the entirety of the French aristocracy fell apart.
There are a lot of myths about heavy armour and one of them is the myth that if you wear if, no one can hurt you unless they pierce the armour. Any part of the body that has bendable joints cannot be heavily armoured or else you can't move. You need holes to see through. All of these are soft spots. When the enemy longbows are so numerous that the entire sky is just a rain of arrows, the chances of an arrow hitting one of those weak spots is actually pretty good.
Additionally, longbows are incredibly mobile while heavy armour knights are stuck waddling in slow motion as soon as their horses die from arrow fire. Heavy armour is just that, it is heavy. Wearing it will make you tired. When you approach, the enemy moves back and you have to spend 4 times as much energy to keep pursuing them. As the battle progresses, the day grows long. It's hot inside. Your sweat inside of the armour. You burn even more energy because of the internal heat of the suit.
Longbows absolutely do destroy heavy cavalry.
It does in regular conditions, but longobows aren't a regular condition. Their superior range makes things tricky for heavier cavalry that don't charge as fast.
Cavalry are countered by pikes because horses won't generally run into a wall of sharpened steel.
Heavy cavalry are countered by longbows because they're strong enough to punch deep into a horse's flesh and, in large number, even knock riders in heavy armor from the saddle.
Skirmishers are countered by longbowmen because they have far superior range to skirmishers.
Lighter cavalry are not countered by longbows because they ride swift and the longbows won't have a ton of time to pick them off.
But not all armor parts are equal, or equally thick, even if we discard the obvious weak spoints and joints, shoulder plates for example are not as thick as breastplates, an arrow may not pierce your heart, but it might slightly pierce the side of your arm, which could be enough to remove you from effective combat.
Plus we're talking about modern industrial methods vs medieval smiths, not everyone wore top tier armor, and even the top tier armor wouldn't have access to 100% evenly perfect steel, meaning even a top quality breastplate could, potentially, be pierced if an arrow hit a small area with slightly lower quality steel.
That being said, I still don't think that's enough to claim arrows would "counter" knights, far from it, in fact, it's the other way around, knights should erase archers from existence in any regular engagement, but, as I said, perhaps they should take greater debuffs from fighting in bad terrain, while archers could get greater buffs, so that a good archer commander fighting a really bad cav commander could still win if terrain conditions were favorable.
There's a big leap between "arrows can, sometimes, slightly hurt knights" to "archers counter knights".
Exactly.... So, I have a 1000 bowmen, right??
I shoot a 1000 arrows ever 2 seconds....
At least a few are hitting...... But if you put up 30,000 arrows in a minute...(which is a low estimate) You're getting more than just a "few hits"......
That's not the strategy you would use for longbows to begin with. Longbows are a group formation weapon that are most effective at putting huge amounts of arrows in flight in a very short amount of time, to create chaos at great distance, in rear massed positions.
So, imagine.... You have slow moving formations coming at you on horse and foot. You're putting massive volleys of arrows behind the forward line...
Then charge the line, force a retreat....
They have to retreat over all the dead bodies of their fallen comrades that you just put massive amounts of arrows into.... They are mostly bleeding out or wounded and ineffective in battle. IE Agincourt. Morale plummets huge in cases like these.
Thats why you hear of things like Roman battles ending with the mass slaughter of their enemies on their knees, being dispatched 1 by 1......
You don't even need it to rain, the amount of blood spilt will be all the mud and slippage you need.
If you can get the army to half panic before you get to them, it's a slaughter. morale cohesion is EXTREMELY important in battle.
Of course if they were fighting 1000 knights in an open field it wouldn't even count as a battle.
Longbows were never and are never put on the field by themselves. They usually have a forward force to act as shields, 2 different kinds preferably...
Slingers......
or heavy short bows... Which WILL put arrows through armor, EASILY like freaking butter......
Then either Pike or foot.... It's the same tactics though just at a shorter distance and range.
Short bows are good for within `100 ft(that would be their furthest effective range)
While the pike holds the front.
Shortbows are shooting everyone in the chest and up.... as fast as you can nock the arrow.
This is a short explanation of what tactics were used by military leaders of the time.
After carefully selecting and preparing the ground on which they fought, they often deployed their soldiers in a solid defensive line. Once the battle began, the foot soldiers closed ranks to resist enemy assaults. Only when the enemy had lost momentum and become disorganized did the infantry launch an all-out counterattack. Such tactics were not particularly elaborate, nor were they always successful. Yet when employed by disciplined professional soldiers, they were quite effective.
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During Roman times, they used a method of "Shield locking" though the shields didn't actually mechanically LOCK together... The morale of the men carrying the shield was the lock.... And locking shields, is a cohesive battle gesture meant to reinforce morale, so that your army does not lose momentum, become demoralized and disorganized.
HOLD THE LINE!
Your argument seems to revolve around saturation, having a ton of arrows so -something- can get through, but that would apply to any troop on the battlefield.
The point is, if archers can "counter" heavy cav, which is their own counter, then they can counter everything else and nothing should have a counter against them, if they were supposed to be so deadly against armors which makes them highly ineffective, imagine the damage they would do against any target without.
Again, even if you're being countered if you're bringing out many times more soldiers than your enemy, and if terrain is on your side, and if the enemy general is, or is acting very poorly, just like in agincourt, then archers can win, and they should, being countered shouldn't mean victory is always, 100% impossible, it just means that, in a big battlefield, with proper tactics being used, cav should reduce the effectiveness of archers, archers should butcher unarmored troops, etc...
But you do bring up a good point about synergies of different troop types, and that really could create some interesting combos and hybrid boosting their allies instead of simply countering their enemies, or perhaps unlocking certain unique counters for different troop tactics through special tactics not known to just any 5 martial commander on the field, that could make things far more interesting.
Edit: Also, I know you didn't say that, but heavy armor doesn't make people slower, and medieval armor was made in a way that it could sustain itself, so most of it's weight wasn't being carried by the actual person wearing it, it was also very, very mobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc
Granted a soldier or knight wearing plate would tire more quickly than someone without heavier armor, but they'd also train, a lot, with their armors to get used to it, and it's not like a total war game where troops can get exhausted before they even finish their very first charge into the enemy's lines
Longbows had advantages and were a useful tool but their value is often oversold. Also their value relied on the fact that the troops were *already training* in a way that made them good longbow users due to their material circumstances. Other countries for instance couldn't have just started up longbow units and of course even if they did you'd still need those favorable conditions for it to pay off.