Lies and deceit!

> Chainmail wasn't impervious to all attacks and especially not arrows. In fact there were special arrowheads developed (called 'bodkin' points) designed specifically to penetrate maille armour. Shields or hardened plate armour and the padded gambeson underneath were what saved soldier's lives from arrows, not chainmail.
> 95% of casualties weren't inflicted during the rout - an army would only rout when they already lost a good portion of their men and there was no hope of winning. It's very difficult to catch up to and kill a scattering army and usually not worth the trouble since your own forces would be scattered in the process.
> Well, the definition of "child" has changed dramatically over the centuries so I'm not sure what to make of this one. And neither does OP.
> High-born commanders... yeah, that's fairly accurate.
> While it's true that every archer (even the feared English longbowmen) were also foot soldiers trained in melee and utilised swords, falchions and such for personal defence, the bow was not an entirely useless defence weapon. Even the mighty longbow could be used to keep a handful of people at bay. And even when they were deployed en masse, archers would wait until the enemy was within a reasonable kill range and aim for the torso. The idea of archers simply lobbing arrows hundreds of yards at a very high trajectory is something seen in movies and nowhere else - especially in the days of armoured fighting where the only hopes one would have of penetrating armour with an arrow is by shooting them up close.
> Fire like a machine gun? No it ******* couldn't. First off, you don't "fire" a bow because there's no fire or gunpowder involved. Shouting "Ready! Aim! FIRE!" to medieval archers would cause them all to look around in panic wondering where the fire was. And secondly, the typical rate of fire of an English archer was something like 12 arrows per minute. Hardly machinegun-like now, is it?
> Well, their arms had to be. And it was quite easy to get that arm strength just by practising (it was actually made law for citizens to practise archery every Sunday so they'd be prepared for war). Being an archer didn't require special heroes of Herculean strength - it just required an average Joe who'd undergone the same training as everyone else.
> This one is somewhat true, there are accounts of "pincushion" Crusaders who were stuck with multiple arrows but could continue fighting. However all armour has gaps in it, and I don't think Crusaders would just march defiantly into a storm of arrows expecting not to get hit in the eye socket or something.
> A 'knight' was a rank of nobility, not a dude in armour. While it's true that the nobles who fought in battles were usually the only ones who could afford a full set of plate armour, many 'knights' never participated in any fighting. And any PTSD suffered by a knight on the battlefield was also suffered by the common foot soldier. It wasn't a condition exclusive to knights.
> Yeah, more or less. But notions of honour & glory were ways of encouraging soldiers (especially nobles) to fight.
> Not entirely true. Bows were still more 'effective' than even firearms of the American & French revolutions, but they weren't used because bullets were cheaper to produce, could be carried in greater quantities, were more effective against shields & armour and required less strength & training to use.
> Plate armour wasn't entirely bulletproof.
> Not sure.
> Not sure.
> True. Battles were actually pretty rare, sieges were the most common form of conflict. And even then they weren't exactly Helm's Deep. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IO-CooA4_Y
> It's pretty hard to 'hack' through mail, and even in the days of full plate armour many soldiers still carried arming swords & bucklers (such as archers).
> Back then they were all just called "swords". Terminology for different sword types is a modern invention.