In movies featuring medieval combat, you’ll often see archers fire in volleys, carefully timed to be in synchrony. Obviously it makes sense for them to begin firing at the same time; when the enemy is in range. However, besides the intimidation factor, is there anything to be gained by having repeated them fire all together, rather than as fast as each individual archer can draw?
One obvious reason is that it would be harder for the enemy to dodge 100 arrows than just one. One would have time to duck a single arrow if one were paying attention, but 100 or more? Sort of a shotgun vs. rifle concept.
If all the arrows come at the same time, it’s harder to get out of their way than if only a few come each second. (Arrows fly much more slowly than bullets, and at a much greater angle, so you can see them coming).
I expect there’s an element of discipline involved - i.e. having your archers wait for your command every time reinforces the notion that you are actually in command, also, it means there’s no “Ceasefire, I SAID, CEASEFIRE!” thing (that, admittedly, I’ve only seen in the movies when the bad guy is holed up and surrounded by armed police)
Arrows are fired in high arcing volleys because a pointy thing come down on someone’s head almost always leaves a mark. But, firing in such a way is not too accurate. (Hunters shoot at shorter ranges in a more direct trajectory.) So to get around the inaccuracy of the long-range loopty-loop trajectory archers fired in volley.
Also of course there are lots of psychological issues here. A whole bunch of guys working together to do something (like shoot arrows) at the same time are a lot less likely to run away than lots of separate people scattered hither and yon doing the same task.
I think the purpose of the first massed volley is to try to slow or break the shock of the enemys’ charge. If through either intimidation or stumbling over one’s fallen comrades the attackers hit slowly and raggedly rather than as a single tsunami, that makes it easier for the defense.
At Agincourt there was 5000 English archers w. 400000 arrows. “The air was darkened by an intolerable number of piercing arrows flying across the sky to pour upon the enemy like a cloud laden with rain.” Before one arrow hit the target, the archer already fired the other. This is off topic, I know, but it’s fascinating. Not even in the most epic films have we seen anything like it.
I once got into a debate about the practice of volley firing muskets vs firing them at will. My contention was that the practice of volley firing was initiated because commanders had little faith in their troopers and treated them as much as possible like unthinking machines. I felt that firing at will offered two clear advantages: because shots were arriving at a constant rate, the targeted troops couldn’t assume defensive postions as they could against volleys; and firing at will increased your overall rate of fire because your faster shooters didn’t have to limits themselves to the pace of your slowest shooters.
If you’re firing at will, you can’t manoeuver. E.g. first rank fires, retreats behind third rank and reloads, second rank fires, retreats behind first rank, and reloads etc
Generally I concur. I’d guess three reasons actually:
- Breaking a charge
- Command and Control
- Effect
The first you’ve described.
The second was touched on by Mangetout. Mediaeval battle was usually very close to being out of control most of the time it wasn’t totally out of control; it’s important to minimize the risk of friendly fire casualties (much greater with arrows than with swords), and you can’t control the knights anyway. Feudal knights were notoriously unwilling to take orders, glory hounds, and generally juvenile in their judgment. The archers at least you had some hope would listen to you. Firing all at once in a structured way helped maintain some focus and tenuous control even in the chaos of battle.
For my third point, I read (but can’t find a cite) that post-WWII artillery analysis by the US Army showed that artillery shelling was less effective if either prolonged or sporadic or brief and localized, and most effective if a whole lot of shells arrived in a heavy volume all at once for a short time. In terms of the perception of the threat among the targeted soldiers, the key was number of bangs per time unit – the more intense the better – and then stopping fire. Sustained fire creates the feeling of “oh well, I’m still alive, it’s not that bad” but heavy intense bursts create the “lie down RIGHT NOW!” instinct. I think a flight of arrows landing all at once might have worked on the same principle, making it much more effective at breaking morale than a continuous light drizzle of arrows. I wouldn’t be surprised if mediaeval warriors deduced or intuited this effect, and used volley fire deliberately for greater shock effect.
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Besides Wakinyan’s unattributed quote does anyone have citations that they actually fought this way?
I get the “easier to dodge” speculation, but can you really see an arrow come at you well enough to dodge it?
Wouldn’t there be problems with arrows hitting each other in midflight if the volley was too dense. . .indicating the need for another strategy?
Will who? 
If your targets had shields they could raise them above their heads and create an arrow-resistant roof. How do you get around that? Send another volley at a much lower angle. You send the first one up nearly vertical, the second more direct. By the time the first has finished its long, lazy arc and is striking the roof, the second is ripping through the front guys who ALL have their shields over their heads. Very demoralising I should think.
Actually, it has more to do with the inherant inaccuracy of the musket more than anything else. Firing in volley maximizes your chances of actually getting some lead on target. Free-fire renders this advantage moot. The only peole who should be firing individually should be trained soldiers with rifles instead of muskets, and they should be targeting officers.
Inigo - You mean like this? 
The problem with the testudo was that the unit couldn’t maneuver very quickly and was vulnerable to cavalry attack.
There might be other strategic reasons why firing in volley with muskets makes sense, but increasing your chances of getting lead on target isn’t one.
I’ll grant you that 10 guys shooting at a row of troops are more likely to hit meat than one guy shooting at a row of troops.
But, it’s not at all obvious why 10 guys shooting and waiting a minute to reload before shooting again should hit more meat in a minute than one guy shooting every 6 seconds for a minute. And, it’s easy to come up with scenarios why it would be even worse to have 10 guys shooting at once than having single shots going off.
If you could really see arrows coming, and dodge single ones, it makes sense, but not with muskets.
I can’t address the first point, but as for the others:
Yes, you can see a single arrow coming at you well enough to dodge it – assuming conditions are right or you’re lucky. An arrow in a high trajectory is remarkably slow. Don’t trust movies on this – go out and see it for yourself. The one time this happened to me – and I hope it never happens again! – was at a Renfaire event; someone wasn’t paying attention and a young kid got ahold of the bow and let fly, while I was behind the bales looking for spent arrows. I heard my name yelled, looked up, had plenty of time to see the arrow coming, and dived out of the way. Granted, it probably wouldn’t have hit me anyway, but the point is, there’s plenty of time to react for a single arrow plunging down out of the sky.
A single arrow on a flatter trajectory? I would think that’d be a LOT harder to dodge. Multiple arrows from the sky? You’re probably a pincushion, but you’d have time to get a shield in place, for sure. Multiple arrows, flat trajectory = pincushion, send for the next of kin.
As for the density of the volley… I dunno. The largest arrow volley I’ve ever seen had maybe twenty arrows in it, and thus is hardly indicative of the massed volleys old-time armies could have used. But, if you think about it, it’s probably not a problem anyway. An arrow is a self-stabilizing object; the vanes (feathers, fins, whatever you want to call 'em) will cause the back end to drag (and spin), while the front end with the heavy tip will drop towards the ground. So even if two arrows hit in midair, if they’re high enough up they’ll still end up plunging point-down into the ground. And it doesn’t take much force at all to make them ‘stick’ – the entire mass of the arrow is concentrated behind the point, after all.
History has shown that when relatively untrained and undisciplined troops fire at will, they have an annoying tendency to do nothing of the sort. All sorts of weapons are found after battle with 3, 4, up to 7 bullets in them. The soldier never fired a shot, just kept reloading! If the unit works in unison, one rank firing while the rear ranks are reloading, you keep this sort of thing to a minimum and can still maintain a tremendous rate of fire, which is all that counts when your weapon is as inaccurate as a musket. Plus, one guy firing every 6 seconds (not possible with a musket, trust me on this one!) isn’t going to do a thing if that one bullet doesn’t hit anything, which it won’t because of the basic flaw in the weapon. You either have to kick out a ton of lead and hope some connects, or use rifles instead of muskets.
Okay, I’m a geek.
Average reaction time to visual stimulus: 239 milliseconds (cite; yes, these are pro baseball players but I’d assume that medieval archers were in about as good of shape, if not better)
Average speed of an arrow in flight: 61 m/s (cite)
Now, I can’t remember the formula for calculating time spent traveling a parabolic arc (and let’s not even go into air resistance, etc); I set it up as follows:
Distance from archer to target: 100m (seems reasonable; they’d be firing high arcs as soon as it would have been possible to hit). At 100 m, an arrow traveling 61 m/s on a flat trajectory (impossible) with no drag or drop in speed (also impossible) still gives the target 1.63 seconds to react (1630 milliseconds). If the average reaction time is 239 ms, then I’d say they have PLENTY of time to react to a single arrow on a high arc. If they’re REALLY good, they’d have time to react to a single arrow on a flat arc, since these numbers depend on a magic arrow anyway.
</geekmode>
That’s quite different than the original thing you said, that it has to do with the “inherant inaccuracy of the musket”.
I was talking about a row of say 10 soldiers, one of them firing every 6 seconds for a minute (for a total of 10 shots) as opposed to 10 guys firing at one, then all firing again a minute later.
If each person has a fixed probability of hitting a target, there should be just as many hits in a minute either way – and that’s if the successive gunmen don’t make alterations to their aim based on what the guys before them have done.
Still, I could see strategic aims for firing in volley. . .psychological effects, perhaps increased efficiency, etc. But, the inaccuracy of muskets shouldn’t be one of them.
Well, there was that scene in 300–Persian boast:“Our arrows will blot out the sun!” Spartan reply: “Well, then we shall fight you in the shade!” It turned out neither was a boast, when the battle started.