5 ms·

> 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 e

• 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.
      • Jensson 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. 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.
        • throwup238 2y ago
          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.
          • vlovich123 2y ago
            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.
            • Jensson 2y ago
              Musket volleys are much closer to javelin volleys than archer volleys though.
              • 2y ago
    • bluGill 2y ago
      If archers were effecive thy would win battels and b the hero and in turn the nobels.
      • throwup238 2y ago
        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.
        • aetherson 2y ago
          You only went to that effort to support cavalry because it won battles.
          • jltsiren 2y ago
            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.
            • philwelch 2y ago
              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.
  • pessimizer 2y ago
    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.
    • Jensson 2y ago
      > 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?
    • philwelch 2y ago
      > 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.
      • t-3 2y ago
        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.
        • philwelch 2y ago
          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.
          • 2y ago
  • Mbwagava 2y ago
    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".
  • scott_w 2y ago
    We do have written records of how to fight battles: Maurice’s Strategikon, for example. You think he may have mentioned it somewhere.
• nkrisc 2y ago
  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.
  • giraffe_lady 2y ago
    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.
  • bluGill 2y ago
    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.
    • p_ing 2y ago
      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.