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Immersion-breaking (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/historymemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 86 points 1 year ago (4 children)

As I understand it, that's still not very historically accurate. It was not really a thing for archers to nock and loose together like they do in the movies.

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  • [–] 127 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Never really made sense to me, loose all the arrows at once and then give a break between volleys? Gives everyone a chance to hide behind their shield, and then advance when it's clear. Unless volleys are perfectly timed between multiple rows of archers.

    Random arrows flying constantly never gives the enemy a chance to feel safe since it's a constant barrage, and there's no wasted time for the archers needing to wait for the command to fire.

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  • [–] 101 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Archers were strategic weapons, not the main crux of killilng. They were used to do things like keeping an enemy division pinned down so that your cavalry can move around them or one of your own divisions can reach a more advantageous position. A well placed concentrated barrage could force an enemy to move in a direction that is more advantageous to you, etc...

    They weren't the primary means of killing people. They were the means of steering the battle where the general wanted it to go.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    That's an oversimplification. Skilled archers, especially in numbers, are a force to be reckoned with. For example:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt

    Or think of horse archers. The mongols used them to great effect, and the Romans lost 7 legions against them, despite their testudo supposedly being next to invincible against projectiles

    Volleys do have their place, but mostly as a way to open the battle, and at long range. You are correct that that can often be used to provide breathing room for troop movement. However, once the fighting starts, archers usually start picking individual targets and fire at will

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Yes. There's no doubt that the English longbows were a force to themselves. They were lethal in piercing armour but they were still used in generally the same manner. To open up the battle by forcing the enemy to take a defensive stance and "thinning the herd" (so to speak) before your own infantry engages their forces.

    Once the infantry engaged however, you didn't want to be raining down arrows on your own men and so the purpose of the archers largely changes to a completely different purpose; controlling the flow of battle with strategic use of volleys.

    And yes...the Mongols changed everything with their horse archers. There's a reason a good part of the population is descended from Genghis Khan...

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  • [+] 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    That's what a hammer is for, nerd.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Quite right and why make your fastest, best archers wait for your slowest ones?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Maybe, but each archer will only be able to have so many arrows. What good is an archer if he only had 20 arrows and fired them all, already? If command thinks they'll need archer support for more strategic things, they may not want them firing off as many as they can quickly, even if the archer believes each arrow will hit its mark.

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  • [+] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have shot a longbow, you can be pretty accurate given the target is a large group of people. Sure, I can't realistically hit that guy there with the red hat. But I can probably got one of the guys near him.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah, real warfare isn't a good spectator sport. It's chaotic, difficult to understand what's going on, things take way longer or way shorter to happen than would make sense for a film, and it's nothing like the orderly battles shown to us by Hollywood. The fog of war is a real thing. But that's why they do it, because if they did it realistically it wouldn't be very fun to watch.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Except if the movie is an anti-war one.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Yes indeed. Generation Kill is the only thing I've seen that got close to reality. I was in a unit that did exactly what was shown in that show, and for the most part they nailed it. They showed the confusion, stupid orders, lack of proper communication, the constant fatigue, and the crazy shit that just happens out of nowhere when you have a bunch of 18-20 year old testosterone rage machines running around with serious hardware.

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  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Actually, it worked pretty much exactly this way in the first stages of battle.

    In the opening moves of a medieval battle, archers were essentially like the "creeping fire" that they used in World War 1; it's purpose is to keep the enemy immobile behind their shields and unable to advance as fast as they would like. Your army can't rush to take an advantageous position if they're constantly having to stop and hide under their shields.

    In WW1, in the Somme especially, the artillery would lay down what they called "creeping fire" to keep the enemy huddled in their trenches while their own soldiers advance behind the wall of firepower. Archers basically played the same role.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm imagining a teenage Henry Horne reading about longbow tactics and thinking "damn that's pretty sweet" and then suddenly remembering it at the Somme and being like "awww yiss I'm about to blow these motherfuckers minds"

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_fire Y'all really just make stuff up without even checking wikipedia huh? It wasn't typically used in medieval Europe for bows beyond the initial volley, though of course initial volleys were still a thing. You didn't just have elements of archer formations fire whenever they decided the range seemed right.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I followed the cited source for the wikipedia claim, and it's just a guy writing a paper and saying his opinion. He's not citing anything deeper to cover his claim about an initial volley followed by targetting individual solders. Just because it's in a paper doesn't mean it's right, or even well-researched.

    Sure, it FEELS right, and that does have weight with living history and experimental archeology, but I worry that "feeling" is the only thing anyone is actually citing in this whole conversation, including Wikipedia.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    You're misunderstanding. War bows can't be held, the bow is way too heavy to allow you to hold an arrow and loose it at will; drawing and loosing are two actions of a singular movement.

    Volleys were used, but the similarity with the way they're used with firearms only exists in the use of crossbows, which were invented specifically because they allow to draw and shoot in two motions (and also they require virtually no training compared to war bows)

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