The French marched into battle using traditional close-range tactics of knights in armor, but the English combined the strength of their knights with a new type of weapon, the longbow, wielded by thousands of archers. The English were able to concentrate arrow fire in a way that the French could not, and, despite being drastically outnumbered at the outset of the battle, the English won the day. For reasons we come back to in later chapters, this battle and others like it (for example, the Battle of Crécy) marked significant turning points in the nature of battle, spelling the beginning of the end for knights resplendent in suits of expensive armor.

Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evoluti…, loc. 723