Submitted by Environmental_Point3 t3_z4hnkj in explainlikeimfive
Are they just for the initial long range combat? (If they fought alongside short hand combat how did they not friendly fire?)
Did they carry heaps of arrows? How was ammo not an issue? Did they forge hundreds of arrows in advance?
Were they that accurate they didn’t need to fight for long?
Were they not that efficient?
Well, historical archers weren't exactly looking for accuracy. Bows have draw weights, it dictates how hard it is to pull the string and what force will be applied to the arrow.
Historical bows have absurd draw weights. They are incredibly hard to shoot accurately, but the arrows will travel a long distance. They were rarely shooting in a straight line, but were rather facing the sky such that the arrow will draw a curve through the air.
They used to create archer groups and shoot arrow barrages, that is a rain of arrows falling on the enemy troops.
There are exceptions. Some asian archers, especially, used to shoot arrows from horseback. They had the height and advantage and engaged in mid range combat that way.
What's funny, though, is how movies/games depict archers as some skinny guys. That's certainly not true. You had to be really fit to shoot such heavy bows.
Not all battles came to melee fighting. You had sieges against castles/towns/fortifications. In these, archers are obviously very efficient because close-quarter combat wouldn't happen until the fortifications were broken. You had ambushes or skirmishes where combat was only shooting a few arrows and then retreating. There are plenty of instances where archers are the best or even only option available.
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If it came to close-quarters combat and frontlines engaged, archers would usually stop firing into the melee to avoid friendly fire. But there might be still targets available to shoot at. Infantry rows would be several men deep, sometimes they were so deep that archers could safely shoot at men at the back. There was movement, battalions would move during a fight and this gave the option for archers to target units not engaged in melee with friendlies. And in some cultures, like Japan, archers were also trained with close quarter weapons. Many Samurai used bows and swords or spears. So your archers would just engage in melee fights with their melee weapon.
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Archers carried around 20-100 arrows with them. The standard depends on the exact time and location. But there usually were more arrows available at the supply camp. So if archers ran out of arrows they could just retreat back and get more arrows. Or they would pick up arrows shot by enemy archers. They did not forge hundreds of arrows in advance but thousands of arrows in advance. Historians estimate that the English shot 125,000 to 500,000 arrows at the French at the Battle of Agincourt. So that battle potentially had 1 million arrows in use.
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Accuracy varied a lot from individual to individual. But archers were usually very well trained. In England, someone who couldn't shoot 10 arrows per minute was considered not fit for war. They weren't just peasants with a stick like some pike infantry lines. So their accuracy was rather good. The length of battles varied a lot, some lasted less than an hour, and others lasted the entire day or would even continue over several days.
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Efficient is a difficult word to use in warfare. Archers were expensive but also effective. So a lot depends on the situation at hand. For example, when defending a multi-billion-dollar castle, the cost of individual arrows is irrelevant and you shoot as many as you have. But shooting unarmed peasants probably wasn't efficient. But using archers would also mean fewer casualties on your side. Replacing men tends to be more expensive than arrows, so even against peasants, it could be more efficient to use arrows.
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What’s a multibillion dollar medieval castle?
Back then, for every one guy on the front, there were 20+ people behind him carrying supplies or otherwise acting in a support role.
Nowadays it's more like 8 to 1.
Having better ranged capabilities allows you to better control the engagement. Combined with good positioning, they can force an enemy to begin an attack earlier than they are prepared for, on unfavorable terrain, or to retreat and give up strategic field positioning.
Archery has been used in combat since prior to written history up until firearms started to get really good in the 1600s. This is a really long time and the bows, the archers that fired them, and the tactics are quite varied. So, it’s difficult to totally generalize.
Ammunition is always a concern, and the amount of mobility the archers needed affected how many they could carry.
Range and accuracy varies a lot. Sometimes archers shot big inaccurate volleys over long range, like longbows. Sometimes they were shorter range and individual accuracy mattered.
The effectiveness of archers also varies over history. Better shields and armor, or swift movements like cavalry could be a hard counter to archers of their day, only for better bows and tactics to bring them back to the fore.
Another part of the 'efficiency' is that yeoman with the longbow just put a hole in a French knight that required up to 300 peasants to support.
Yeah adjusted for inflation the cost is more in the low tens of millions.
Longbowmen would have been the biggest guys around due to the draw weight. No way is legolas pulling that
Forget video game logic where one man has to kill a hundred enemies while they keep swarming. In a "fair" fight where both sides have the same number of troops, each soldier only has to kill one enemy, ever, to "pay" for himself in efficiency terms. If you shoot 20 arrows with a 5% accuracy rate, that's fine, you've done your job. If you shoot more arrows or have higher accuracy then you profit.
Further, you don't even have to wipe out all the enemies. If they lose morale and flee after half their troops are dead then you only need half the accuracy or fire amount to pay for yourself.
A human life is kind of a big deal, firing a couple dozen arrows to kill one man can easily be efficient regardless of accuracy.
Battle of Agincourt is probably the best example of archers used right. The rain may have helped some...
Well legolas does not sink in snow either.
i always imagine the aftermath of a medieval battlefield like a giant Lazarett without any personell or staff, like people without limbs, cut open people etc bleeding out
Not really.
When Hervy II build up Dover castle to basically it's current state (of course minus the gun batteries added centuries later) the cost was ~6500 pounds - with total yearly income being ~10000.
Total tax intake in GB today is ~720 billion pounds - so a fortification equally expensive (65% of yearly tax income) wouldn't merely be "multi-billion" but much more.
On the scale of a full army, half is extremely heavy even; my understanding is that somewhere around a quarter or so is what it takes to defeat an army.
Imagine being in a group of say 10 men, marching towards an enemy position. You get halfway there, but two of your friends are hit by arrows and go down screaming. Sure, you might reason that by the time you make it all the way you'll only lose another two men, but one of those two might be you. At what point do you think "Well heck, the next one arrow's going to hit me!" and decide that you're not walking into that?
elves were abnormally strong as I recall.
Isn't the draw weight on a longbow like 270lbs,
200 lb draw weight was quite common. Skeletons of archers were are deformed from pulling a heavy bow back over and over again. When the arrow hits an apple it explodes.
Archers definitely shot for accuracy and power, at relatively close range, and not in volleys. Volley fire was done in the age of gunpowder, and on TV and movies for dramatic effect. Having archers who would use different strength bows hold arrows is useless. That would just slow down and exhaust your archers. It's not like after years of practice they don't know how to shoot accurately. Combat with archers involved them firing at will, when in range, and covered by other troops, or in a defended position. They pretty much always fired straight at their target, as seen in nearly every contemporary depiction of archers.
So these archers would fire arrows at a target maybe 50ft away, as fast as they could. The targets would need to move up fairly slowly under shield cover, since it was a) terrifying and loud, and b) you needed to stay in formation or you'd get hit.
Ammo was definitely an issue. Armies would prepare tens of thousands of arrows before campaign.
"When Henry V succeeded the throne, he immediately began restocking the royal armoury in the Tower of London for a foray into France. He set the fletchers of England to begin making arrows, and we have a record of a contract for 12,000 arrows that cost the Crown £37, 10s, which translates to about $25,000. Arrows were produced in sheaves of 24, and archers carried between 60-75 with them into battle. They were expected to be able to shoot about 12-20 arrows per minute (An archer who could shoot no more than 10 arrows per minute was considered to be unfit for military service. Each archer carried two sheaves of arrows in his quiver and the rest stuck in his belt for quick and easy access, though he may have stuck them in the ground when he was entrenched in a position (say, Agincourt.) Each archer could therefore only shoot for about 3.5-7 minutes with the arrows he had (which is NOTHING in a battle. Seriously, 5 minutes of shooting and you're outta ammo? That's crazy.), so there were wagons that were also filled with arrows, and young boys provided a constant transport of arrows from those wagons to the front lines."
That 12,000 was just one contract. He probably had many more contracts to supply his archers.
Battles in real life are nothing like on TV. Battles often lasted many hours, mostly involving small battles fought in short bursts. You'd have two lines of troops mostly marching or standing around trying to outmaneuver the other army, and a few small battles involving a few dozen men would pop up every now and then. One or two might die, one or two might get injured. Eventually one side would create a small gap, the other side might fill the gap stuff reinforcements. This goes on and on for a few hours until one side is too scared, tired, or injured to reform the line, the enemy will seize the gap, cohesion and order breaks down, and then you'd lose the battle.
In such a fight having skilled archers is very powerful. If you are standing 50ft from the enemy and getting shot at, you are stuck in that position, allowing your enemy to maneuver. It's very hard to advance under fire. If that's not enough, the archers might kill, injure, or terrify that part of the army and they may break and flee. Such a gap can be easily exploited for victory.
I'm just a random dude reading this and have absolutely zero expertise other than fucking around with a compound bow once, but I'll just say, anecdotally, there is no fucking way in hell the draw weight of a longbow was that high. I just googled a bit and the highest I could find was a chinese Qing Dynasty bow that was supposedly 150 pounds max.
You'd need to be like a professional strongman (think The Mountain) to draw a 270 pound bow, and even then I doubt they could do it more than a dozen times.
I'm 6 foot 4 and weigh about 300 pounds, I'm large. Ive been a brickworker and an iron worker. So I feel like I'm not weak. Two of me could not draw a 270 pound bow, with both hands.
I'd like to see a couple sources for that. If it was so common.
Yes archers were deformed but 200 pound draw is just insane to me. No fucking way.
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What does deformed mean here? I thought bones were pretty rigid and arrow shooters would only gain more muscle? I could imagine the muscle being unequal when comparing both halves of the body.
In ELI5 terms, does a draw weight of 50 lbs mean I need to be able to lift up a 50 lbs bag of sand with one hand?
Your bones are constantly being broken down and built up! For an archer, that’s a lot of force on the skeleton in a very asymmetric way, meaning there’s tell tale differences in their bones.
I looked it up I had the 270 right but it's 270 newton's which is about a 90 pound draw weight
Thanks so much for the link - TIL!
And I just realised the modern equivalent would be people carrying shoulder bags or single strap bags. There's a difference in their gait, muscle structure and bones too.
90 pounds seems pretty much around (even sometimes low) what I saw referenced in my 2 mins of googling. So yeah.I cannot imagine how fucking strong you gotta be to do that even. 70 pounds is rough to me, muscular wise...but then I got like a lil trigger apparatus that connects to my wrist so I don't have to use my actual fingers.
Just think about how much pressure is gonna be on their fingers. with a cord of fabric of some type putting 90 pounds of pressure on your fingers as you draw the string back. That's hell. What badasses.
No. Not in the way you're probably thinking. Drawing a bow (correctly) is almost all in the back muscles. Or really they ARE muscles that control your arm, but they are located in your back. In theory. But unless you're an Olympian or have impeccable technique or something like that, your arm is gonna be involved.
Kinda like how a pull-up isn't an arm exercise, it's really your back muscles moving your arms.
If you're using a modern bow and don't know what you're doing, it's gonna be difficult now matter how strong you are, or what the weight is. 50 pound draw and your first time? Its gonna suck. But 12 year olds can hand a 50 pound draw on aodrrnn bow if they know what they're doing.
They are not. Snipers can shoot faster, more precisely, with more force and with less personal effort. On shorter ranges, handguns, machine guns and other rifles still outclass bow and arrow in those aspects. There is a reason archery isn't an important part of modern warfare.
Thanks for the insight - TIL!
Drawing a bow sounds pretty impressive! And now I realise why I wasn't able to do pull-ups as a kid.
Professional archer here; no 12 year old can pull a 50lb draw, especially any recurve or longbow format. Re. compound bows, maybe if they were abnormally strong they could get to the let off point just once where the cams drop the weight down to 8lbs, but I doubt it. They’d have to pull 50lbs many inches to get there. Most 12 year olds will start on 14-18lb bows and by the time they’re full adults age they’d be pulling 54lbs ish if they were really fit, had great technique and a decent enough amount of muscle. I shoot every day and pull 56lbs, by the end of sessions I’m absolutely shattered.
Apart from that nitpick, really good explanation of the muscle use.
I'm an amateur historian and archer. You're right, 200 was not all that common. 100-150 was typical.
It comes down to tactics.
One simple one was to have the archers at the back of your ranks. When the enemy was at a distance, the archers could fire volleys in a high arc over the heads of your soldiers to rain down on the enemy soldiers. Then, when the armies got close enough for hand-to-hand combat the archers would be taking pot shots here and there.
Another one was to put your archers on high ground like a hilltop or castle tower. That way they could fire over the heads of your soldiers and into enemy ranks even at closer ranges.
Archers were also considered "efficient" in terms of speed, for a little while. In Europe, from the 14th to 16th century, crossbows became the ranged weapon of choice in some armies, because soldiers could fire a crossbow more accurately with less training. However, that particular "efficiency" of the crossbow came at the expense of speed and quantity. In the time it took a crossbowman to fire a shot, reload, aim and fire a second shot, a bowman could fire 4 or 5 shots. And, provided you had a good supply of the right kind of wood, you could build a lot of bows for cheaper than crossbows. Meaning, you would have more men firing more arrows.
And yes, it was typical for an army to have hundreds or even thousands of arrows made in advance, with each archer typically carrying about 2 dozen at a time. And at the end of a battle they could retrieve shot arrows from the battlefield.
That’s a really good analogy that I’ll have to steal! Like a 65kg shoulder bag on only one shoulder for a few hours every day
Thanks! And yeah, please do share it around! I've seen so many students office workers whose gait have been affected by heavy schoolbags (also because single strap looks cool).
MummyPanda t1_ixqwj6c wrote
Long bows could be effective over a very long distance (comparatively) and even if you don't hit death blows arrows are still annoying if the stick in you.
Sort range you would have swords or knives.
They would have many arrows but you could also scavenge from your enemies arrows