8 ms·

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 evide

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?

kayodelycaon 2y ago
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.
- treis 2y ago
  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.
- maxerickson 2y ago
  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.
- ropable 2y ago
  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.
- IAmBroom 2y ago
  > 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.
ergsef 2y ago
> 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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
kergonath 2y ago
> 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).
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  >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_Architectural_and_biomechanical_alterations_in_medieval_humeri_is_there_a_pre-adaptive_relationship_to_humeral_form https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285885888_Architect...
  - kergonath 2y ago
    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.
Ferret7446 2y ago
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.
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  >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?
  - haiku2077 2y ago
    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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutum) which weighs around 22 lbs- "light enough to be carried with one hand"
    - onlypassingthru 2y ago
      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...
      - haiku2077 2y ago
        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 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation
haiku2077 2y ago
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?
- p_ing 2y ago
  Nock time can be drilled, just like any other skill.
gary_0 2y ago
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.
- MBCook 2y ago
  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.
enaaem 2y ago
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.
- bluGill 2y ago
  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.
  - p_ing 2y ago
    60 seconds?! No way. A few at war bow #s, at most. Even 30-40# is often <10 seconds.
    - Balgair 2y ago
      Yeah, these bowmen weighed about 1.3X this draw weight. Imagine holding a one handed pull up, with 3 fingers, for a full minute.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      That would be extensive training in holding a drawn bow. Which isn't training anyone would have had.
      - p_ing 2y ago
        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.
orthoxerox 2y ago
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.
- throwup238 2y ago
  The blog author has a great multi-part series on just this topic: https://acoup.blog/2022/06/03/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-ii-commands/ 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.
  - paleotrope 2y ago
mmooss 2y ago
> 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.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > 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.
  - Sniffnoy 2y ago
    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!
    - throwup238 2y ago
      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.
jcranmer 2y ago
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.
- Jap2-0 2y ago
  > There's no evidence of it in contexts where we would expect something like this to be mentioned. What are those contexts?
jjk166 2y ago
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.
jltsiren 2y ago
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.
msla 2y ago
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.
bell-cot 2y ago
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.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
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.
int_19h 2y ago
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.
FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
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.
hoseja 2y ago
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.
INTPenis 2y ago
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.
lukan 2y ago
"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.
usrusr 2y ago
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.
mkehrt 2y ago
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.

kayodelycaon 2y ago

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.

treis 2y ago
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.
maxerickson 2y ago
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.
ropable 2y ago
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.
IAmBroom 2y ago
> 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.

ergsef 2y ago

> 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.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

kergonath 2y ago

> 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).

onlypassingthru 2y ago
>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_Architectural_and_biomechanical_alterations_in_medieval_humeri_is_there_a_pre-adaptive_relationship_to_humeral_form https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285885888_Architect...
- kergonath 2y ago
  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.

Ferret7446 2y ago

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.

onlypassingthru 2y ago
>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?
- haiku2077 2y ago
  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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutum) which weighs around 22 lbs- "light enough to be carried with one hand"
  - onlypassingthru 2y ago
    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...
    - haiku2077 2y ago
      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 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation

haiku2077 2y ago

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?

p_ing 2y ago
Nock time can be drilled, just like any other skill.

gary_0 2y ago

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.

MBCook 2y ago
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.

enaaem 2y ago

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.

bluGill 2y ago
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.
- p_ing 2y ago
  60 seconds?! No way. A few at war bow #s, at most. Even 30-40# is often <10 seconds.
  - Balgair 2y ago
    Yeah, these bowmen weighed about 1.3X this draw weight. Imagine holding a one handed pull up, with 3 fingers, for a full minute.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    That would be extensive training in holding a drawn bow. Which isn't training anyone would have had.
    - p_ing 2y ago
      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.

orthoxerox 2y ago

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.

throwup238 2y ago
The blog author has a great multi-part series on just this topic: https://acoup.blog/2022/06/03/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-ii-commands/ 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.
- paleotrope 2y ago

mmooss 2y ago

> 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.

throwup238 2y ago
> 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.
- Sniffnoy 2y ago
  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!
  - throwup238 2y ago
    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.

jcranmer 2y ago

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.

Jap2-0 2y ago
> There's no evidence of it in contexts where we would expect something like this to be mentioned. What are those contexts?

jjk166 2y ago

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.

jltsiren 2y ago

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.

msla 2y ago

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.

bell-cot 2y ago

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.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

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.

int_19h 2y ago

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.

FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago

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.

hoseja 2y ago

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.

INTPenis 2y ago

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.

lukan 2y ago

"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.

usrusr 2y ago

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.

mkehrt 2y ago

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.