Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I've read the whole thing and I'm not convinced at all.

First of all, nowhere does he prove archers didn't volley fire. All he says is there's no written evidence of it, and then claims that the TV battle starting with a volley of arrows is false.

But it still seems perfectly reasonable to me. You wait until the enemy starts charging with infantry and cavalry so they're not huddling under shields, the general makes a visible signal, and all the archers immediately draw at the same time and let forth a single volley at the ideal moment for the volley to meet the enemy. Of course it's not going to "mow down" the enemy -- that's a strawman -- but the article makes clear all the significant damage it does cause.

I totally buy that after the intial volley, it's just randomly spaced shooting at whatever rate individual archers can draw. And I buy that the initial volley wouldn't have archers holding the bow taut for 30 seconds until a dramatic command to shoot -- rather, upon command, they would draw and fire in a single motion.

But nothing in this article suggests that the initial archery attack wouldn't be a volley. And common sense suggests that it would be, just as infantry and cavalry charge in a synchronized way in response to a command. In other words, quite similar in fact to how movies and TV shows do depict it -- just without the separate first "draw" command that gets held for drama.

Am I missing something here?

View on HN

> First of all, nowhere does he prove archers didn't volley fire. All he says is there's no written evidence of it

Proving a negative is difficult, but it is evidence that an historian of warfare has never seen it. If it happened much at all, there should be examples of it.

Edit: To quote the OP: "... as hard as it is to prove a negative, I will note that I have never seen a clear instance of volley fire with bows in an original text and so far as I can tell, no other military historians have either. And we have been looking."

> it still seems perfectly reasonable to me

Where's your evidence? "seems perfectly reasonable" leads to belief in witchcraft, the stars orbit the earth, leaches cure disease, the lack of germ theory, etc. That's why we modern humans require evidence.

> Proving a negative is difficult, but it is evidence that an historian of warfare has never seen it. If it happened much at all, there should be examples of it.

Be very careful with that assumption. Brett Devereux (author of the blog) himself constantly points out that our historical sources are often very limited because they were written by the nobility who only wrote about their own social class, completely ignoring the majority of people actually involved in a military campaign or civic life. We know a lot more about the generals and cavalry than the foot soldiers, archers, or supply train.

I think that argument cuts the other way on this one. If there were some higher-rank person, presumably a noble, ordering a volley, as depicted in TV shows, and as happened with firearms, there would be a bias towards mentioning that person doing that, to demonstrate his command, rather than towards omitting him!

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. They would definitely mention their command over a cavalry charge (usually fellow nobles or knights depending on time period and polity) but archers were generally lower status, even though they were better trained than some farmer-soldier from a distant retinue.

During Roman times they were mostly auxiliaries that contemporary authors generally ignored. Even in later battles like Agincourt where we have better sources and the longbowmen were decisive, more seems to have been written about their field fortifications against cavalry charges than their ranged tactics.

I think his arguments on the formations and draw strength are compelling enough, I’d just caution reading too much into absence of evidence when dealing with the low level details.

> I wouldn’t be so sure about that. They would definitely mention their command over a cavalry charge (usually fellow nobles or knights depending on time period and polity) but archers were generally lower status, even though they were better trained than some farmer-soldier from a distant retinue.

But we do have so much written about musket volleys, and those were done by lower status soldiers as well. It is very strange that much was written about musket volleys but not archer volleys.

The printing press fundamentally changed everything so our sources get much more socially inclusive starting with the arquebus onwards (but not so much the hand cannon, which predates the press). This cuts across all subfields of history because society no longer depended on expensive scribes to preserve sources and publish new material.

More importantly, volleys were crucial to breech loading gun tactics because unlike an archer a gunner is very vulnerable while reloading, since they have to hold the gun, load the powder and ball, and pack it down with both hands. The musketeers were in a formation several lines deep so that when the front line fired, they’d go to the back to reload and it worked much better if it was organized. This cadence also informed the pikemen defending them when it was safe to move and reposition. Archers could “reload” from a quiver much faster so there was no point in coordinating it.

Indeed, it would make sense that musket volleys evolved from archer volleys than being spontaneously invented as a tactic for a weapon that was competing with the bow.

Musket volleys are much closer to javelin volleys than archer volleys though.

When was the last recorded javelin volley? I think there is a suggestion of a historical transmission from the late Classic era to the early modern era and it was possibly archery. Not to mention crossbows.

One thing that I don't enjoy from COUP is he often demolishes ideas that approach strawman territory (is a barely coordinated order to start shooting a volley? or does it have to be something else), but I understand that from his perspective as a teacher, he has to disabuse his students of all the nonsense tropes they pick up from tv shows and movies.

> I think there is a suggestion of a historical transmission from the late Classic era to the early modern era and it was possibly archery. Not to mention crossbows.

The most obvious reason they practiced volley firing for muskets is the large amount of smoke they produce, once one person shoots the rest can't see where they would fire so you want everyone firing at once so they don't block each other.

So there is no reason to believe the practice evolved from anywhere, they is no world where they didn't volley fire with muskets that produce a lot of smoke since its the obvious thing to do.

Well, you aren't really aiming with early firearms. You are just shooting in the general direction of the enemy. So I don't think smoke really explains it.

Volley fire wasn't employed for the earliest uses of the arquebus.

>When was the last recorded javelin volley?

After photography for sure, the Zulu used them extensively when beating the British.

Fair point. I hadn't considered them within the context here. I suppose a call out to New world natives' atlatls as well is necessary.

Javelins continued to be used around the Mediterranean until the gunpowder era, so there's no reason volley tactics could not have been transmitted directly.

Really? That's interesting, I can't recall ever coming across that myself. I have some research to do.

> he has to disabuse his students of all the nonsense tropes they pick up from tv shows and movies.

Where do you think current students get their misinformation? A lot from TV?

Exactly, and we do have records of javelin volleys (Roman pila) but not of archer volleys … to me that is telling in its own right.

While obviously it's impossible to be sure, I think you're making the wrong comparison. What you're saying is that a hypothetical archer-commander might be less likely to be mentioned than cavalry due to being lower status. Potentially, yes, but what matters here is that they're more likely to be mentioned than archers, who are even lower-status. Wherever archers are mentioned, this archer-commander ought to be mentioned too.

An analogous example might be comparing chariot-riders to the actual charioteers, or elephant-riders to the actual mahouts. Generally speaking, it's the noble riding in the chariot or on the elephant who gets mentioned or depicted; the charioteers and mahouts remain anonymous, if they're mentioned or depicted at all.

So if you came across some hitherto undiscovered civilization in whose writings and artwork charioteers were mentioned and depicted, but the nobles you'd expect to be riding in the chariots never were, you might reasonably infer that in this unusual hypothetical civilization there were no nobles in the chariots, otherwise they'd be the ones mentioned or depicted preferentially over the charioteers!

Similarly, if these archer-commanders existed, they'd be preferentially mentioned or depicted over archers. So given that we have plenty of mentions and depictions of archers, but not of these archer-commanders, I think it's reasonable to infer from that alone that they didn't exist.

How they compare in status against cavalry would only be potentially informative if we had no depictions or mentions of archers at all. In that case, your argument that they might not be depicted or mentioned due to being lower-status could make sense. However, when there's someone obviously even lower on the totem pole who we do have plenty of mention of, that's the informative comparison, not a comparison against cavalry.

> What you're saying is that a hypothetical archer-commander might be less likely to be mentioned than cavalry due to being lower status. Potentially, yes, but what matters here is that they're more likely to be mentioned than archers, who are even lower-status. Wherever archers are mentioned, this archer-commander ought to be mentioned too.

I don't think this follows in practice, particularly since what's missing here is not names of archer captains but descriptions of the mechanics of volley firing (which may have been routine in certain circumstances, or not). Seems like attribution of the outcome to the excellence of the calvalry captains' flank attacks and valor of the Lord's retinue in holding the centre whilst merely noting that a grouping of archers were present without attributing anything to any decisions made by any individual archers at any level is pretty consistent with their low prestige (apart from Agincourt and a possibly apocryphal story about Harold Godwinson, archers don't seem to get much credit at all for being decisive, despite archery being important enough for peasants who wielded blunt instruments and blades in their day job to get compulsory longbow training).

Brett's argument that longbow volley firing would be difficult to time and probably not beneficial (especially compared with musket volleys) is compelling, but the argument that battle narratives don't really describe volleys, except in translations of words that may not have meant volley, isn't really in a context where archers rarely get much credit for anything .

Xenophon mentions archers and slingers in the Anabasis.

If archers were effecive thy would win battels and b the hero and in turn the nobels.

That has causation backwards: nobles weren’t cavalry because cavalry won battles*, but because cavalry was so expensive that only nobles and well funded centralized states with professional armies could afford them. You not only had to train the rider from a relatively young age but feed and support all the horses they’d need - armies rode in with at least three horses per rider on campaign to keep the horses from exhaustion (not including all the ones they’d train on). Supporting cavalry easily cost 5-10 times as much as supporting an equal number of infantry.

* Which it very often did, but for unrelated psychological reasons.

You only went to that effort to support cavalry because it won battles.

Cavalry won battles in societies that favored cavalry. If your society was built around elite warriors, your army probably relied on cavalry, because those elite warriors wanted to be individually as effective as possible. But if the state was responsible for raising the army and there was a middle class with sufficient combat skills available, infantry (such as Roman legions or mercenary pikemen) was often more cost-effective.

War elephants also beat cavalry in sufficient numbers. Various European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern powers tried them but found that they were not cost-effective. South and Southeast Asia thought otherwise.

This isn’t entirely down to arbitrary cultural preference. Terrain and enemy composition are relevant. All of the cultures that used war elephants successfully lived and mostly fought in elephant habitats. Likewise, cultures on or close to the steppe had much more of a cavalry focus because cavalry was so much more effective there. When the Romans went east, they didn’t stick to their heavy infantry, they developed cataphracts. And their eventual conquerors, the Turks, replaced most of their traditional cavalry with infantry as they expanded westward into Europe.

It's less about cultural preferences and more about fighting with what you have.

If you have a feudal society based on personal relationships between the elites, you probably can't raise large bodies of heavy infantry. You don't have the people trained to fight in formation, you don't have the resources to equip them, and you don't have the capacity to organize them. Instead, you have the elites, who are often well trained and equipped. The elites have their personal retainers, who are pretty much the same. There can be some mercenaries if you can afford them. And then there are commoners who have to fight for various reasons but often lack both training and equipment.

Elephants used to be native to North Africa, until the Roman Empire drove the subspecies to extinction. Carthaginians, Romans, and some Macedonian kingdoms used them in war. Persians and other Macedonian kingdoms imported elephants from India. But none of them fielded more than tens of elephants at once, at which scale infantry was capable of countering them. Some contemporary Indian kingdoms found it practical to have hundreds of elephants on the battlefield, which was qualitatively a different situation.

You fight with what you have but then sometimes you lose to someone who has a better army than you do and disappear from history. So in the long run you end up fighting with what actually works in your terrain. And I think it's very interesting that horses, who are only really indigenous to the steppe, ended up proliferating over the entire earth in a way that elephants did not. Hundreds of elephants on the battlefield sounds great if you can feed them though!

> Cavalry won battles in societies that favored cavalry.

And the reason that those societies favored cavalry is that they won battles.

It'd be very silly to favor something that doesn't work, and any attempts to do so probably wouldn't last long.

>It'd be very silly to favor something that doesn't work, and any attempts to do so probably wouldn't last long.

What are your political beliefs? Because this argument applies equally well to cavalry as it does to communism. Would you seriously claim that all stupid political beliefs are new?

Communism has worked pretty well for the leaders of those states. For the people, not so much.

I just want to note that communism has quite poor record of surviving.

Unless you take People's Republic of China about them being communist rather than capitalist at face value.

Armies are combined arms, with few exceptions (Mongolian horde, perhaps), they didn't have just a single unit type. But armored heavy cavalry (with stirrups) wasn't some kind of weird sociological hang-up of European nations, it was a very effective unit type to have in your mix, such that societies were "willing" to spend significant resources in supporting the existence of that unit.

Here "willing" really means, "subjected to competition pressure such that societies that didn't support heavy cavalry units were for the most part militarily bullied into either annexation or standing up their own heavy cavalry support system."

That lasted until the technological realities of war changed (sufficiently-advanced firearms), at which point quite rapidly those societies stopped fielding heavy cavalry, which is another data point that this wasn't some kind of peacock display from nobles.

Having a unit type in your toolkit is one thing, and expecting it to play a decisive role in battle is another. For example, Alexander's heavy infantry was supposed to anchor the enemy in place as cavalry won the battle, while Roman heavy infantry the primary fighting force.

Mercenary pikemen ended the dominance of heavy cavalry in Europe before firearms became common. But that didn't make heavy cavalry obsolete, and neither did firearms. Cuirassiers had a prominent role in the Napoleonic Wars, and French cuirassiers actually wore their breastplates a few weeks into WW1.

Who is “you” in this case? Is you the Roman state or is you a random noble trying to curry favor and glory?

The former supported cavalry because it won battles but the latter did so because it earned them prestige among their peers. It also helped them feel powerful when they rode into battle literally hoisted above the common foot solider, as if they were closer to the gods.

There's a notable technological divergence between the Roman and the noble - stirrups that make cavalry charges possible. Roman cavalry were usually lightly armed and armored and had a very different function on the battlefield.

Also as I recently learned from Lindybaige video, war horses themselves were “one shot weapon” - you would train one to do a “cavalry charge” and would not be able to repeat it with the same horse. So in essence, even more expensive!

Well, in the Bhagavad Gita and in Ramesses' inscriptions, chariot archers did win battles, were the heroes, and were the nobles. There's some speculation that changes in weaponry making this approach obsolete were the main cause of the Bronze Age Collapse. (Devereaux is writing about more recent wars, but archer volleys from chariots seem even less likely.)

The nobility were involved in military campaigns. The wealthy always being completely insulated from danger in war is a modern thing. When we talk about our historical sources being limited, it's because they focused on things like battles and military strategy, precisely because it is interesting to the wealthy people who support historians.

The things we don't know about are irrelevancies (to wealthy people), like almost any normal aspect of a common persons normal life. Really the only way you can find out how normal people lived and spoke is through records of trials.

edit: I mean, when to start firing is not a decision that the archers are going to get to make on their own. It's not folk wisdom.

> edit: I mean, when to start firing is not a decision that the archers are going to get to make on their own.

Why not?

> The wealthy always being completely insulated from danger in war is a modern thing.

It’s not even true for all (or probably even most) of modern times. For instance the upper classes of Britain in WWI suffered much higher casualties than the lower classes.

I don't think WWI can be firmly called "modern times" with regards to warfare. It was a notable event in the transition to modern, but the cavalry charges against machine guns and such are reason enough to exclude it.

The modern period of history is widely considered to have begun in or around the 15th century. A common epochal event is the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Any definition which lumps drones and airplanes together with swords and muskets is not useful, in my opinion. The last ~100 years are totally different from what came before.

Then use a more descriptive term than "modern".

Pretty soon it will mean "pre-drone".

Post-WW1 = post-modern

(Too early to tell just how disruptive drones will be or even what is exactly a drone.)

> The wealthy always being completely insulated from danger in war is a modern thing

even in modern wars it is far from true (if your country is getting overrun by enemy being rich is not enough to completely insulate you)

Yea but you'd need some sort of argument why class intersects with how archers are characterized when they are. At best I think you might say "we don't know".

We do have written records of how to fight battles: Maurice’s Strategikon, for example. You think he may have mentioned it somewhere.

The volley could just be an emergent result borne from the fact that if an attacking army was outside the maximum range of archers, and then charged, all archers would have an enemy within a reasonable range nearly simultaneously. If every archer let loose when there was an enemy in range, the end result would be an initial large volley.

Not really scientific but you can see the exact same outcome in video games. After the initial synchronized volley, it becomes more of a constant barrage as each archer's differing rate of fire causes shots to become desynchronized.

Is it true? I have no idea, but it's hardly magical thinking. It's logical but could still be untrue for other reasons not assessed.

It's only logical with video game reasoning imo. In actual life each archer would have a different bow, varying physical strength, ability at the extreme end of their range, visual acuity, practice assessing where the extreme end of their range even is, etc etc.

It seems extremely unlikely that a group of individuals would all make the exact same choice simultaneously without a prearranged signal for it. And I think the post itself makes a strong enough case for why that signal wouldn't be made.

archers wouldn't do the because unlike a gun you cannot hold it loaded for long. So your order would be draw and fire. You can of course hold abow drawn for maybe a minute - but why do that when you can fire 6 arrows in that time which might hit.

If the enemy is out of range you might wait with an arrow knocked but not drawn - but if that is what they were doing the order would be to draw. there is no real point of such an order though - archers are themselves smart enough to estimate their own range (which as the other response pointed out was not the same for every archer), and thus make their own decisions. The only reason to hold fire until everyone was ready was if the combine fire was devistating enough - but there is every reason to think combined fire wouldn't be devistating.

It's difficult to hold even a 30-40# for more than ~10 seconds fully drawn.

You can of course have the arrow nocked for as long as you desire.

Maximum range varies per archer. Each bow is different, and each archer is different. This isn't modern mass-produced armaments (though they did mass-produce bows, each one was still made from a different piece of wood with its own quirks), and maximum range also depends on the archer's draw length (how long their arms are) and strength.

One of the stories about Agincourt (that the author didn't mention and I don't know if it's true) is that the French underestimated the range of the English archers and drew up inside their maximum range, so were getting shot before they were ready for it.

So "everyone shoots when the enemy gets into range" would still not be a volley as each archer judges for themself when the enemy is in range.

Videogames are unrealistic. There's no such thing as a discrete "maximum range" for archery, because the closer the target the harder the arrow will hit, and there's a point where the arrow will simply fail to do any damage when it hits.

Also, not everyone can fire an arrow equally fast. And even if they did, when they're acquiring different targets (lest they all shoot the same person) they can take slightly different amounts of time to choose who to shoot.

Also, speed isn't really the limit for firing in the first place - if someone thinks there aren't any good options just yet, they might wait a second or two before there's a good option, and now they're way out of sync with anyone who saw a good option immediately.

Videogames are just terrible because their physics are wildly unrealistic, and the human factors are removed entirely.

> But it still seems perfectly reasonable to me. You wait until the enemy starts charging with infantry and cavalry so they're not huddling under shields, the general makes a visible signal, and all the archers immediately draw at the same time and let forth a single volley at the ideal moment for the volley to meet the enemy. Of course it's not going to "mow down" the enemy -- that's a strawman -- but the article makes clear all the significant damage it does cause.

It’s not perfectly reasonable at all. When the enemy is charging, what you want is maximum efficiency, which means a rate of shooting as high as possible, which means everyone shoots as soon as they are ready, which precludes synchronisation.

When the enemy is not charging and just manoeuvring, volleys are counter-productive because you just give them some time to hide behind their shields and move between volleys.

I can imagine maybe one time when such tactics could work, it’s in an ambush. But then it’s not large scale and it is quite difficult to pull it off, because you need to synchronise the archers without giving away their presence. And it’s quite far from the autor’s pet peeve, which was archers fighting like they had guns in big battles.

> upon command, they would draw and fire in a single motion.

You cannot really do that without extensive drills that were not really a thing in pre-modern armies. There are too many variations in individual strength, not really standardised equipment, and different people behaving differently. Even if you take 10 people, you would not get synchronised arrows if you did that.

> Am I missing something here?

Why would they? What advantage would they gain doing so? Particularly when doing it more naturally is more efficient and effective (not going to repeat the story’s argument, but there are several).

>You cannot really do that without extensive drills

Allow me to introduce the longbowmen whose skeletons adapted to being professional longbowmen.[0]

[0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285885888_Architect...

That is entirely different. The drills in question are necessary to have a group of people act in a coordinated way. That requires collective training and discipline, not merely individual training. Your example is of people who trained extensively, sure, but this was not collective manoeuvres that are required for something like firing volleys. It’s also discussed in the story.

Do you think these professional soldiers trained enough to modify the structure of their bones yet not in a highly coordinated manner with each other? Have you heard of military drills?

The fact that I used the term should have tipped you off… Now, can you read the posts before replying?

They aren't military drills; they're legally required to practice for two hours every Sunday (IIRC), which is a world apart from coordinated formations. Notably, you can practice just fine alone, while coordination drills notably require multiple people.

I don't see what's so beneficial about a volley. Concentrating the arrows allows the opposing force to ready their shields which renders the volley less effective, and advance in between volleys. It's better to rain arrows continuously which prevents the opposing force from defending in any capacity without stopping their advance entirely.

Arrows are not more effective (e.g. armor penetration) in a volley, and the psychological effect is also less for volleys I would argue: you know a volley is coming, duck and cover, and afterwards it's clear, vs a continuous rain where you never know when an arrow is headed toward you specifically.

>Arrows are not more effective

In this scenario, how big is this impenetrable (and undoubtedly heavy) shield you are lifting over your head with one arm while charging the enemy?

TFA has diagrams showing the size and coverage of some typical shields, and discusses how even light armor was effective against arrows.

One example given is a Scutum (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutum) which weighs around 22 lbs- "light enough to be carried with one hand"

Looks good. Now run across a field towards archers with that thing over your head and try not to take an arrow in the gut.

Or, you can protect your front while the arrows get dropped on your head. Decisions, decisions...

Generally arrows are gonna be coming from in front of me in the field, not arcing over like artillery.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0AWfhAcFu_k?si=XokulP_9f3aFl2mu

However, if the enemy has an elevated position, that is literally what the romans did.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation

Anybody who has ever been in a serious snowball fight knows the power of the two snowball technique, a high lob to distract followed by a quick fastball (to the face/torso). An army of professional archers would undoubtedly be experts in the same technique.

What would a high lob do, when your target is wearing a helmet and shoulder armour?

More importantly, people's silhouette from side-on is far bigger than their silhouette from the top down.

Maybe go to a LARP or reanectment event and participate (arrows with rubber endings) to compare if there are differences with your close range snowball fight.

"army of professional archers would undoubtedly be experts in the same technique."

Because I do doubt that a lot. There is no one shooting in the air on a battlefield to distract.

Your LARPers are nothing like historical professionals. It's like asking a bunch of chubby Sunday Leaguers to imitate a Champions League team.

Not. Even. Close.

Hm. Are you aware that reenactment and research often go hand in hand? And if those people won't know, who actually try it out - then sureley you would know better. But how?

You might have mixed up LARP and HEMA.

No, I did not.

But I just stated, that both exist and shoot at people with arrows.

(But both do get mixed up, as people involved often go to both events.)

And LARP is not scientific, but reenactment often has historians included. Also as part of research. I did not think that point was somehow unclear.

To answer below: My fellow Sunday Leaguers also study and re-enact Champions League football. It's a lot of fun but I'm not foolish enough to think I belong on the pitch in a real competition. I didn't train my whole life to be an expert footballer and most researchers didn't train their whole life to drive an arrow through a man in battle.

[You can click the timestamp to reply directly to any comment]

And there are still native tribes doing hunting and warfare with bows, that were and are studied. And some reenactment freaks are in a way better shape than their ancestors ever were, due to heavy training and better food.

Nobody is shooting in the air with an arrow to distract like you would a snowball. You shoot straight.

Please comment here when you know of any LARPers taking on (${insert_professional_sports_team_here}) so I can watch the match!

Do you have any experience with a professional athlete in any meaningful direct way?

It's normally described as a professional is to a good amateur as a good amateur is to a 5 year old toddler.

I am (or was) a pretty good athlete myself and I still regular shoot with bows (and toy arrows) at people. And I have trained with better athletes. So I value my own opinion here.

I've trained with professional fighters in the UFC, and played for as a warmup alternate for my city's MLS team. I've also played extensively with professional soccer players in invitation only pickup games.

The difference is truly profound. While I understand you may value your experience you might allow for some lack of direct personal experience.

I am not sure what exactly is your point here? Is there any technical point that I made that makes you think I lack insight into the topic? Then please share.

> Maybe go to a LARP or reanectment event and participate (arrows with rubber endings) to compare if there are differences with your close range snowball fight.

This one - which was simple enough to find lukan. [You can just click context near the timestamp above you comment to see the comments made before]

Yes? That was debated in this thread. Don't you think it is a good idea for someone who is talking about arrow fights, but has by his own words only experience in snowball fights, to actually try out a arrow fight to better know what he is talking about?

A unit of archers has a very limited supply of arrows, enough to shoot for a few minutes before they have to resupply. They also cannot precise aim a lobbed shot because their weapons do not have the appropriate sight nor a rifled barrel to maintain accuracy or energy with a high lob. Arrows fired in an excessively high arc are wasted.

It seems like your intuition of weapons and warfare comes from mass media, not historical evidence or practitioners.

We have skeletal evidence of professional archers. It takes years of dedicated practice since adolescence in order to modify the bone structure like that. That additional bone strength means these professionals were likely able to use draw strengths no modern enthusiast could even touch. It also follows that if they were part of a standing army, they also undoubtedly practiced skills together and used a variety of equipment, like short bows and longbows.

Unfortunately, we have no mass media that reflects what a professional archer of yesteryear looked like because that profession died centuries ago and nobody has modified their skeleton to amuse us. However, we can tell from some of their bones they were somewhat lopsided as the arms were conditioned for purpose. For example:

"The men of the Towton population appear to have been engaged in a habitual activity that preferentially loaded the left humerus when compared with the right. This disparity is strongest in the distal humeral shaft. The loading pattern varies such that it creates signiﬁcant differences between limbs in diaphyseal shape from the mid-distal to midproximal shaft." [0]

Despite what the weekend warriors and LARPers would like to believe, the historical professionals really were anatomically and physically better at the job.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285885888_Architect...

What does draw strength have to do with not having an computed sight for hitting a moving target with a top-down shot, or the lack if rifling to keep an arrow from tumbling when gravity slows it down at the top of the required ballistic curve? Or the scarcity of ammunition? These are issues if technology, not of training or exercise.

Who needs sights or rifling? Just like any professional athlete, thousands and thousands of practice shots (eg, 10,000 hours) to develop muscle memory is all it takes to become proficient.*

*And we have the bones to prove it!

Dangerous arrows tend to come from the same general direction. If the archer is close enough to shoot straight, arrows coming from above have so little energy that they are mostly harmless. If the archer had shot them with enough energy to penetrate armor, they would land behind you.

There is literally an entire section dealing with this exact question that answers it.

The one thing that theoretically would be advantageous about a volley is that it's impossible for a target to block/dodge all of them. FTA (though focusing on how useful shields and armor are):

> arrows at range move slowly enough to be actively blocked and dodged

It's just that this one theoretical advantage isn't enough to make volleys useful in practice, since volleys decrease the total number of arrows you can shoot.

I think the blog post is arguing against a volley that happens all in one instant, requiring all the archers to synchronize perfectly. This seems pretty easy to argue against because while movies do it because it's dramatic and cool, it's harder to justify in actual combat situations (and the post goes into great detail on the pros and cons).

However, it seems a lot more reasonable to suppose that archers were sometimes told to hold until a given strategic moment. In that case, you might see something resembling a volley when, say, an advancing enemy reaches a particular position and the archers begin loosing. But I don't think that's what the post was talking about.

I agree. It’s talking about large scale synchronized firing. That’s the normal definition of a “volley of fire” isn’t it?

Just waiting until someone says to start shooting isn’t a volley. It’s just holding fire.

> You wait until the enemy starts charging with infantry and cavalry so they're not huddling under shields

Why wait for a specific command? It sounds like as an archer maybe you could try and hit a few far-off enemies whenever you wanted. There will be a critical period when most of the arrows will be released and be most effective, but the primary limiting factor is the archer's fatigue level. The article makes it clear there's not really a shortage of arrows.

So it's probably more like "people start talking, some arrows start flying, as the enemies get closer more arrows start flying". Which is pretty different from a coordinated volley.

There's no evidence of it in contexts where we would expect something like this to be mentioned. So the absence is a strong indication that it didn't happen.

> You wait until the enemy starts charging with infantry and cavalry so they're not huddling under shields, the general makes a visible signal, and all the archers immediately draw at the same time and let forth a single volley at the ideal moment for the volley to meet the enemy.

Yeah, pretty much nothing of that is actually reasonable.

First off, pre-modern military command at a tactical level is almost completely nonexistent. The only command that can be reliably given is "go", and even then, unless you're decently well drilled, that's still as likely to come from following what your neighbors are doing than being able to pay attention to your battlefield commander who might be a half-mile away. And archers are the least trained portion of the pre-modern battlefield!

Second, actually trying to hold everybody for a single coordinated volley seems incredibly counterproductive. The primary purpose of volley fire, as explained in the article, is to mitigate slow reload times. Archers have the opposite problem; they're going to exhaust their ammunition supply in a few minutes. Staggering the start time of the archer attack over, say, 30 seconds is actually a very significant percentage increase in the amount of time the attacking army is going to be harried by the archers.

> And I buy that the initial volley wouldn't have archers holding the bow taut for 30 seconds until a dramatic command to shoot -- rather, upon command, they would draw and fire in a single motion.

Already by this point, that means you don't have a single, solid pulse of arrows, but rather a continuous stream that's going to take--at least--2 or 3 seconds before everyone has loosed their first arrow. And quite probably, your slowest archers are loosing their first arrows after the fastest archers have loosed their second arrow. It doesn't make sense to me to call that a "volley", since it's not going to look anything like what we would think of as a mass volley of arrows.

Given that you're already stretching the definition of "volley" quite hard to match what you think is happening, and given that there is absolutely no sign that anyone ever thought trying to achieve a more cohesive initial volley was worth striving for, I think it does more harm than good to argue that volley fire existed in some form with regards to regular bows.

> There's no evidence of it in contexts where we would expect something like this to be mentioned.

What are those contexts?

Firsthand accounts of battles involving massed archers.

I think the most obvious context is visual art. There are thousands of depictions of medieval battles. Would really nobody think of depicting a volley of arrows in any of them? That would be a pretty spectacular sight with supposedly devastating effect.

> pre-modern military command at a tactical level is almost completely nonexistent

I think you mean strategic level. Tactically, they were able to hold formation, rotate, do all kinds of maneuver. Just look at how many "NCOs" are in a Roman legion. But it was difficult to control the units strategically, e.g. taking several units and moving them across battlefield in an organized fashion.

The general making a visible signal is a bad idea. Most generals even today don't have a cool bird's-eye view of the battlefield; they simply won't notice the moment, let alone be able to communicate their decision instantly. Okay, let's replace the general with the sergeant leading the archers.

But this leads us to the more important question: why wait until that last moment? If the enemy is within your range of fire, shooting at them is better than not shooting at them. You shoot at them all the way until they reach your own infantry, accumulating wounds and breaking up their ranks. Not shooting at them won't make the final arrow you loosen before they charge any more damaging.

The blog author has a great multi-part series on just this topic: https://acoup.blog/2022/06/03/collections-total-generalship-...

Large scale coordination during pre-modern warfare was effectively impossible. The battlefields would often stretch for hundreds of meters or even a few kilometers and it was too chaotic to see anything once in the heat of battle. Generals could issue some local commands, especially if they were at the head of a cavalry charge, but only the officers and bannermen leading a small formation could exert any real control over their soldiers. A general signaling ranged combatants is just unrealistic.

Your second point is spot on. Infantry formations don’t generally charge the way we think of charges - they were rather slow, controlled forward movements with weapons and shields lowered. otherwise the first soldier to trip or take an arrow would take down the entire formation. No one ever really pitches battle with their infantry starting in range of the other army’s archers so there’s never really a clear opportunity for a volley.

Cavalry charges are a bit of a special case because they’re especially vulnerable to archers, but they’re also the group most capable of avoiding volley fire. Cavalry charges don’t run into soldiers, they train for coordinated feints so they can quickly change direction unlike infantry. When attacking cavalry, archers generally want to have random fire to increase the chances of bringing down a single horse, which often causes enough chaos to break the charge.

The importance of having a reserve, so you can make a last minute change if you needed to.

I don't think the article is arguing there would not be a starting point to archer fire. One would expect commanders to make some decision about when their forces would engage, and even without explicit command most soldiers would probably recognize the same point as being ideal to start firing. It might not be as sharp as a line of muskets, but odds are everyone would have shot an arrow before anyone got off their second.

But volleys imply a specific coordinated cadence. If you're just telling your troops to open fire, whether it be with bows or fire arms, that's not a volley.

I think his argument about draw weight is compelling. In order to do a coordinated valley you would have to have everyone draw and hold.

Bows have highly variable “lock time”. There is no trigger and you can’t reasonably get an army to draw at the same rate.

Reload times are fast enough that the fastest archer may be able to be ready to fire again before the last archer has completed their first shot.

In those circumstances, you would simply get orders to start and stop firing.

You wouldn't hold the bow drawn. The archers would nock their arrows and at the command would draw and loose the arrow. That would result in them all shooting at roughly the same time. Just a second or so delayed from the command.

I would think it would work to drill on draw speed (where the faster archers paced the slower ones). So you'd be able to tighten up the release window quite a bit vs doing nothing.

Agreed; it's completely impractical for someone to "hold" a proper non-modern war bow at full draw. Every single instance I've seen of reenactment archery using an authentic bow has the archer smoothly nock, draw and release in one motion. There is no "aiming" like we see in modern competition archery - this occurs during the draw. Not to say these weren't accurate, some video I've watched of reenactment archery looks positively lethal out to about 30 metres or more.

> In order to do a coordinated valley you would have to have everyone draw and hold.

Why? If I have twenty archers, and tell them to be READY, AimAndFire will result in a volley that is still restricted a couple seconds of variance.

A couple seconds is not consequential in a battle that may be limited by the rise and fall of the sun.

"Am I missing something here?"

The way a bow works. I could shoot much more arrows in my own rhytm, then coordinating with everyone in the unit and wasting energy holding the string longer than needed.

So I am pretty sure, there were some sorts of volley fire, when the archers start firing when the enemy gets in range. But once the shooting starts you would loose lots of kill power restricting your archers for very little gain.

I would ask the question the other way around: if you wouldn't learned of it in spectacular movies - why would anyone ever implement it?

With crossbows and musquets, where holding the fire does not cost energy - different story. But maybe try it for yourself: hold a war bow at full strength - you don't want to any longer than needed. So typical you pull and release.

In a cavalry charge, the shield protects as much (or as little) as otherwise. The horse is doing the actual work, while the rider can use the shield normally.

An infantry charge starts at the last moment. At that point, the infantry formation has been in the effective bow range for a couple of minutes. It would be stupid to exhaust yourself by running a long distance over rough terrain carrying a heavy load before the fighting even starts. And shields tend to be large enough that the additional protection from them outweighs the gains from reaching the enemy faster.

Another point: bows and arrows don't have a consistent load time or range across users. Different archers have different timing and effective ranges with the same bow and arrow. How do you pick a volley range? Or do you trust your men to know about how far they can shoot, based on their practice?

Nock time can be drilled, just like any other skill.

Generality: If (1) X is not done in the modern real world, and (2) your only experience with X is seeing dramatic Hollywood depictions of it, then "common sense" does not apply.

You're literally arguing with a professional military historian specializing in the time period where bows were heavily used. Consider re-examining your preconceived notions of "common sense" from this perspective.

I think the main argument against volley fire was that it's just impractical. An archer wrote a comment in another thread here on HN saying that they would do volley fire for an audience because it was expected, but the leader had only seconds to wait while they all drew back before they had to shout for them to loose. An archer just doesn't have the strength to hold the bow drawn and wait for a command like that. It's a waste of energy and resources.

What we see on TV is always one completely unprotected army, and one squad of arhcers.

But in the real world if squads of archers exist, then every single army would have a protection against them. The romans had the tortoise formation, I can't believe this was just forgotten for 1000 years.

Organized volleys would give the advancing infantry convenient time slots to hunker down behind their shields and reduce the effectiveness of arrows even further. A less dense but continuous stochastical distribution would be objectively more deadly, except perhaps against a force going for arrow evasion.

I love this comment. It’s just so peak Hacker News. You read the work of a professional, you have no clue about the field at all, and yet with full confidence you start writing a massive comment about how the professional is wrong based on you having watched some tv shows and your gut feeling.

I remember from a Lindybeige video that war bows have too much draw weight, so you can’t hold it drawn like in the movies. You have to almost instantly shoot it. You want war bows to be as powerful as possible.

you could hold a bow for maybe a minute - if you had extensive training. However there is no reason for anyone to train like that (they they didn't / couldn't). Someone strong can hold 200 lbs for a minute - but not longer. Or in that same minute you could launch 6 arrows - which is why they did the 6 arrows.

60 seconds?! No way. A few at war bow #s, at most. Even 30-40# is often <10 seconds.

Yeah, these bowmen weighed about 1.3X this draw weight. Imagine holding a one handed pull up, with 3 fingers, for a full minute.

That would be extensive training in holding a drawn bow. Which isn't training anyone would have had.

No one can sustain a hold of war bow weights for 60 seconds. That's 100#+ over three fingers and I'm not sure what the quality of tabs were like back then.

Investigate your pre-conceptions. Watch some actual tribal warfare. Realize that ALL FILM IS UTTERLY FAKE and ruled mostly by the rule of cool. "the general makes a visible signal" How? Turns out you can't actually do that on the battlefield for the most part.

I don't think that the onus should be on historians to prove that something didn't happen. Rather, the onus should be on people to prove that something did happen. It's fine to have arguments about how it's plausible (or not) that something occurred when we don't have direct evidence. But at the end of the day, I think it's better to not draw conclusions without actual evidence.

I'm pretty sure nobody in the historical record mentioned how their armies have never once used blackcurrant jam to destroy a rampaging army from Venus. Does that make such an event more or less likely for you?

People mostly don't go around listing off things they're not doing and have never done. Therefore, lack of mention that someone's not doing something isn't really evidence they are doing it, or at least is very weak.

What is the point of this post? Devereux is a literal expert in the field who has studied this for decades. You're...someone on the internet? What are you posting for? This is rank anti-intellectualism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com