I take it that in Medieval times, the preferred method of using arrows on the battlefield emphasized quantity, not quality. The idea was to get massive waves of arrows flying towards the enemy, and like, fast.
But did any armies employ a “precision archer” - someone whose role was to take out a specific man?
In terms of a specialized unit? No, I don’t think so. Or at least I’ve never seen such a reference.
That particularly skilled archers were occasionally singled out to snipe at prominent enemies, I have no doubt ( I imagine I could probably find examples if I wracked my brain a bit more or dug around enough ).
I’m pretty sure they also employed scouts - lightly-armored men armed with bows, who performed at least some of the duties of a modern sniper.
Important to realise the large difference in ranges involved.
Robin hood stories notwithstanding, longer range precision shots with bows arent exactly easy, even when the target isnt moving.
And depending on the period, archery would be particularly bad in taking out high value targets, because armour for the elite was pretty good at defeating it.
Otara
No. I mean - like Tamerlane noted - occasionally some warlord took that guy who was known as good archer and said “try take out that captain” or something, but such examples are few. Bows simply aren’t that accurate at long ranges, and you need to stand to shoot arrow so all that ‘sneak into enemy position and take out their high ranks without being noticed’ thing is impossible.
Also culturally many of bow-using armies were used rather to sparing lives of nobility (and thus officers) and archers were usually commoner. In some times and cultures killing enemy officer was capital offense for common soldier.
There were scouts, who fought as skirmishers - more of ambush and guerrilla tactic than sniping as we know it.
On a History Channel programme about the Long Bow it related an event in Medievil England where a knight in effect took over one of a great lords manors and defied him to take it back.
The lord was furious and agreed to meet the knight and his men with only a tiny proportion of his own retinue so that he couldn’t be accused of winning the fight by numbers.
The skirmishing started and after a while the knight raised his helm for fresh air and immediatly received a fatal arrow in the face thus ending the fight.
It wa obvious that the lord had planned this from the start with one of his best archers.
This was an actual historical event not a story but I cant remember the participants names so would be glad for some help on this.
Before we start making decisions about bullying lords and David and Goliath etc. the knight was in the wrong,knew he was in the wrong and was guilty of theft on a large scale.
You’re also less likely to want to take a high value target out when there’s a nice juicy ransom involved in his capture and safe return. That was typical in Europe in the Middle Ages. So not only less likely, but less desirable.
If you saw this on the History Channel, the odds are good that it wasn’t an actual historical event.
Anecdote: This definitely happened to me when I was in the Society for Creative Anachronism.
When a bridge battle (a fight on a narrow front usually decided by momentum) stalled and the two sides were stalemated, a war captain sought me out: “Archer! Come here.” He asked me to take out a particular swordsman who was sweeping a great two-handed sword (a taped-up piece of rattan actually) and holding half the frontage by himself.
Bridge battles in the SCA are usually crowded with spearmen. I couldn’t get to the front rank and I was shorter than most of the warriors to boot. So I squirmed as far forward as possible, hooked my left elbow through the right elbow of a cooperative spearmen, and leaned out over the deep rushing water hay bales defining the edge of the “bridge”. I drew my bow as I swung out into view. The swordsman looked startled for a moment as I placed a padded arrow into his ribs at short range.
He ignored it. You’re on an honor system to “register” a blow in the SCA, and that was supposed to count as a kill, and everyone saw it…but it’s considered discourteous to argue, so I shrugged it off. The war captain thanked me and clapped me on the shoulder, dismissing me.
I later pegged someone in that line with a javelin – I have no idea who, since I just leaped up and flung it into the seething mass. But a knight came over afterward to compliment me on the javelin cast, so I must have hit someone. 
Sailboat
Probably not the same event, but King Harold of England may have been killed by an arrow in the eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. (The main evidence for this is his picture in the Bayeux Tapestry).
Well, Richard I (Lionheart) of England was killed by an arrow or two. But it wasn’t a sniper per se, it was a kid trying to take revenge and Richard’s own hubris, or so it’s said.
Again, captains in general did not order snipers to kill off opposing captains, because they could get fat ransoms for keeping them alive. War was not just glory for these guys. It was a way to make money. Loot for the men at arms, ransoms for the knights, political power for the nobility. Everybody wins!
I suspect that medieval armies used crossbowmen as snipers-because the crossbow (though slow in firing) was capable of being aimed better than the longbow.
Curiously, most crossbowmen were hired mercenaries (Genoese and Lombards), and they must have been pretty wary, because at Crecy, the french knights RODE over them!
Not good for morale!
My understanding is that crossbows were less accurate than good bows. However, they had the distinct advantage of requiring much less skill to fire.
To the OP, I don’t think bows were accurate enough at long range for anyone to expect a sniper shot to work. It would be interesting to see the accuracy of the Olympic archers at 70 meters and try to determine if they could be used as snipers.
There’s also the fairly slow speed of arrows, which makes it harder to do precision sniping from any distance. stortford-archers.org.uk says a very very powerful shot would start at 60 meters/second, with a max range of 240 m. Even a 100 m shot would be more than 2 seconds in flight. So if you tried to take out that knight just as he took off his helmet, even if you could put your arrow on target, he’d probably have moved by the time the arrow landed.
That, and I suppose also the political value of a high-ranking captive used to be higher under the feudal system.
If you capture a high-ranking officer today, he will be replaced in his post by someone else. His former command would not be in your power.
If you captured a feudal lord in the MA, he would remain lord of his fief. Under the right circumstances (his fief not being surrounded by territories of your enemies) you had even a chance for your captive (and his followers) to go over to your side.
All that having been said, my understanding is that archers did indeed focus on specific targets rather than merely firing into the crowd. An expert on the subject (SCA member? Historian? Crazy dude with a bow?) was quite certain that it made a huge difference in whether one actually hit anyone.
Shortly before this happened he was heard to say “Stop fucking about with that, you’ll have someones eye out”
Right, but in Anglo-Saxon, of course. Since the Norman archers only spoke French, they thought he said, “Over here, boys! I’ll take on the lot of you.”
I read some years ago that that’s supposedly WHY the French used crossbowmen, instead of longbowmen like the English. Crossbowmen were easier to train, and thus more expendable, so the knights could AFFORD to just run them down. Longbowmen were trained from childhood, harder to replace, and were therefore not as expendable, and expendable people they could casually ride down were what the French nobility wanted.
Slightly off-topic, but ancient artwork from the Middle East show that the regular order of battle placed the slingers (think David) BEHIND the archers, because they had better range and accuracy. Those guys may have been the “snipers”.
(So, in essence, David brought a gun to Goliath’s knife fight.)