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.
> 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.
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.
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.
When was the last recorded javelin volley? I think there is a suggestion of a historical transmission from the late Classic era to the early modern era and it was possibly archery. Not to mention crossbows.
One thing that I don't enjoy from COUP is he often demolishes ideas that approach strawman territory (is a barely coordinated order to start shooting a volley? or does it have to be something else), but I understand that from his perspective as a teacher, he has to disabuse his students of all the nonsense tropes they pick up from tv shows and movies.
> I think there is a suggestion of a historical transmission from the late Classic era to the early modern era and it was possibly archery. Not to mention crossbows.
The most obvious reason they practiced volley firing for muskets is the large amount of smoke they produce, once one person shoots the rest can't see where they would fire so you want everyone firing at once so they don't block each other.
So there is no reason to believe the practice evolved from anywhere, they is no world where they didn't volley fire with muskets that produce a lot of smoke since its the obvious thing to do.
Well, you aren't really aiming with early firearms. You are just shooting in the general direction of the enemy. So I don't think smoke really explains it.
Javelins continued to be used around the Mediterranean until the gunpowder era, so there's no reason volley tactics could not have been transmitted directly.
> 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.
While obviously it's impossible to be sure, I think you're making the wrong comparison. What you're saying is that a hypothetical archer-commander might be less likely to be mentioned than cavalry due to being lower status. Potentially, yes, but what matters here is that they're more likely to be mentioned than archers, who are even lower-status. Wherever archers are mentioned, this archer-commander ought to be mentioned too.
An analogous example might be comparing chariot-riders to the actual charioteers, or elephant-riders to the actual mahouts. Generally speaking, it's the noble riding in the chariot or on the elephant who gets mentioned or depicted; the charioteers and mahouts remain anonymous, if they're mentioned or depicted at all.
So if you came across some hitherto undiscovered civilization in whose writings and artwork charioteers were mentioned and depicted, but the nobles you'd expect to be riding in the chariots never were, you might reasonably infer that in this unusual hypothetical civilization there were no nobles in the chariots, otherwise they'd be the ones mentioned or depicted preferentially over the charioteers!
Similarly, if these archer-commanders existed, they'd be preferentially mentioned or depicted over archers. So given that we have plenty of mentions and depictions of archers, but not of these archer-commanders, I think it's reasonable to infer from that alone that they didn't exist.
How they compare in status against cavalry would only be potentially informative if we had no depictions or mentions of archers at all. In that case, your argument that they might not be depicted or mentioned due to being lower-status could make sense. However, when there's someone obviously even lower on the totem pole who we do have plenty of mention of, that's the informative comparison, not a comparison against cavalry.
> What you're saying is that a hypothetical archer-commander might be less likely to be mentioned than cavalry due to being lower status. Potentially, yes, but what matters here is that they're more likely to be mentioned than archers, who are even lower-status. Wherever archers are mentioned, this archer-commander ought to be mentioned too.
I don't think this follows in practice, particularly since what's missing here is not names of archer captains but descriptions of the mechanics of volley firing (which may have been routine in certain circumstances, or not). Seems like attribution of the outcome to the excellence of the calvalry captains' flank attacks and valor of the Lord's retinue in holding the centre whilst merely noting that a grouping of archers were present without attributing anything to any decisions made by any individual archers at any level is pretty consistent with their low prestige (apart from Agincourt and a possibly apocryphal story about Harold Godwinson, archers don't seem to get much credit at all for being decisive, despite archery being important enough for peasants who wielded blunt instruments and blades in their day job to get compulsory longbow training).
Brett's argument that longbow volley firing would be difficult to time and probably not beneficial (especially compared with musket volleys) is compelling, but the argument that battle narratives don't really describe volleys, except in translations of words that may not have meant volley, isn't really in a context where archers rarely get much credit for anything .
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.