Volley fire – or more correctly in archery – volley shooting, is something that many
of us are familiar with: the synchronised nocking and shooting of arrows together in
a massed formation.
We see this in games and movies all the time, and it has become as synonymous with archery
as Robin Hood.
This has become one of those things that are simply assumed and stated as fact.
But is it?
The main problem that we have today is that we have very few records of exactly how archery
was done historically.
We have some small gems – illustrations, fragments of chronicles – but not much resembling
a manual of arms that precisely depicts how an archer fought in battle.
Without being able to visualise the battle, we have to fill in the gaps, and that typically
results in what we see in film.
In this video, we’ll discuss how volley shooting might have worked, reasons why it
might not have been utilised, and why it might have been.
I want to start with the “how” because in our modern perspective, we tend to overlook
the basic logistics of how armies and battles work.
Battles were not like a strategy game where you can click on units and they respond to
the god-general in the sky.
“Yes m’lord!”
“Zub zub!”
So given that a person on the ground can’t see the other ten thousand troops on the battlefield,
how was it possible to even coordinate a volley?
You can’t exactly shout at your men to aim and shoot together when your voice can only
reach John in the front rank.
For a lord or general to command the army, there would be several things that need to
be in place.
Perhaps a system of flags or banners were used to signal certain actions.
Runners and messengers were definitely used, and instruments such as trumpets and drums
would have been used to set the rhythm for marching and, likely, shooting arrows.
That said, a lord or captain in charge of a wing or a smaller unit would be expected
to have a degree of autonomy.
You can’t wait for orders.
This autonomy would trickle down to the individual.
Many battles were won and lost on the back of a few men who charged in at the right – or
wrong – moment.
This would apply to archers as well, as a single archer would be expected to mark and
shoot a target without being told what to do, and without a flashing green marker somewhere
above.
That said, even with the signalling methods used at the time, it would not be hard to
imagine how a group of archers could be synchronised.
So, it is possible to shoot in massed volleys.
But did they?
There are many reasons to assume that volley shooting was not used.
Some of the common ones are that a formation of archers would have to shoot at the speed
of the slowest man.
It would have been impractical to have archers hold at full draw for a single loose command.
Long range arcing arrows are less effective from that angle than direct shooting.
A steady stream of arrows would be more effective than predictable volleys.
Some have also pointed out the lack of historical sources and illustrations that show bows being
aimed upward.
Historian Mike Loades, in his book “The Longbow”, raises some interesting evaluations
of the use of the English longbow.
He point out that the term “volley” is ambiguous.
Historic accounts often describe volleys of arrows or depict arrows as a rain.
However, rain is…constant.
When you have thousands of archers on the battlefield, there is going to be thousands
of arrows in the air.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that they were shot in massed volleys.
There’s also the argument that shooting long-ranged volleys was ineffective and a
waste of resources.
While the English longbow had an effective range of around 250 yards, historical descriptions
of battles seem to indicate that most of the shooting was done under 80 yards.
One thing we need to remember that an English war bow had a rather flat trajectory, so in
this role the archers were using direct shooting, again implying that they were not shooting
in volleys.
Arab Archery also makes a similar comment, with the range of approximately 80 yards also
being the distance where the arrow will not go higher or lower than the point of aim,
and that an archer who engages beyond the distance is committing a mistake.
At these distances and closer, direct shooting is more effective if archers were to shoot
at their own speed rather than await a command.
Individual shooting also allows an archer to spot their own arrow, and engage targets
more accurately when the fighting reaches close quarters.
So if direct shooting was more effective, were long-range volleys used at all?
Yes.
The accounts of the Battle of Agincourt describe the English archers opening the battle with
long-range volleys to entice the French into battle.
Generals in the Tang dynasty of China used a formation in which crossbows would shoot
in volleys and rotate to reload.
We should also consider that there are prescribed aiming methods for long-range shooting, using
“underhand” with the target below the arm, as taught in English archery and similarly
described in Arab Archery.
Long-range shooting would have been used in many battles out of necessity, especially
with enemy archers shooting at you.
Given that archers generally load and shoot with similar speed, they would effectively
be shooting in what we consider to be volleys with some staggered effect, even though they
might not have been specifically commanded to do so.
What do we need to consider when saying yay or nay?
Firstly, our audience tends to be biased towards English longbows and its historical record
in war.
Remember that not everyone used 150lb war bow.
We also have to consider other kinds of bows, some of which have a short direct fire distance
and probably would have been used for skirmishing.
Of course, when we think about horse archery, completely different tactics were used.
Volley shooting would be far more difficult and far less effective on horseback and with
the bows used.
Horse archery techniques tend to favour hit and run, such as the Parthian tactics and
those used by the Scythian tribes, or the Cantabrian circle, in which the riders would
continually shoot arrows at an enemy formation as they rode past.
I’d also question whether our interpretation of how volley shooting was commanded is too
rigid.
The argument that an archer could not hold at full draw would not be valid if the archer
was never required to hold at full draw.
In our minds, we have the “ready-aim-fire” process, which in archery might be “Nock!”
“Draw!” and “Loose!”
And while it’s true that you can’t stop and wait, it’s not inconceivable that a
command might be something like “Archers, nock!” and “Archers, loose!”
You can still execute a volley without holding onto the shot for the length of a Dragonball
Z episode.
Finally, what can we conclude about volley shooting?
I think that sufficient evidence exists to show that volley shooting was something that
was practiced and used in warfare.
Even today, the archery discipline of clout shooting has its roots in this style of archery.
I think that a volley, whether intended or not, is likely to be something done to open
a battle.
The mistake that we make in looking back is that we think of archers only shooting in
volleys.
It would be a reasonable assumption that as the battle progressed and the distance closed,
archers would shoot on their own accord.
In fairness, we shouldn’t say that archers always shot in volleys or never shot in volleys.
Volley shooting was something that was historically likely to have been done, but unlikely to
be the dominant method of using a bow in battle.
This is NUSensei.
I hope you found this interesting, and I’ll see you next time.