this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Loose!
Nocked em
Who said anything about holding the bow nocked all the time?
Generally they would yell “DRAW!” And the soldiers would nock their arrows and take aim, then they’d yell “LOOSE” to release the arrows in one big salvo.
Yeah I believe this as well, since a coordinated firing of arrows would be more effective, and because still today military commands largely consist of a prepatory phase and an executing phrase.
Like
"Company... ATTENTION"
"EEEEEYEEEEES..... RIGHT.
"Preseeeent... ARMS"
etc
So it'd make sense. The commander just basically gives the tempo, but the commander knows what it feels like to do it, so you don't get shit like "draw"... [extender pieces of dramatic faces and dialogue which symbolises a loaded gun held to someones face] and then "loose" /relax, because drawing a war bow takes some serious fucking muscle. So the "draw, loose", would almost be in the same breath. Almost. But one breath apart. But so the voice synchronises them all. Just like it does with steps in modern militaries.
One still needs a person besides the form goin "left, left, left right left" to achieve the uniformity. Well from a well experienced group, less so,, but you still need the starting "company.... march" command to sync the starting step at least.
You wouldn't do that because why would you need it to be all at the same time? This is musket logic being applied to bows. Pulling a warbow isn't something anyone can do. People who did that trained all their lives for it. They literally had a different bone structure and musculature because of it. You don't get people to wait with a shitload of pounds of force trying to wriggle out and launch an extremely heavy arrow. Hollywood bows are shitty props with loose strings that resemble a child's toy more than an actual bow.
What do you think the command would have been, then?
There are so many people in the fediverse who are just typing words because they like to see their name on a screen.
Can confirm, sigh.. but at what cost.
Fire! Wait-
Why would you think there'd be a command at all, other than "when they are in range, kill them"? Why would you wait till people are closer when you start shooting them when you can shoot them when they are further away just fine. It's not like someone would say "oh fuck these dudes in the front got taken out by archers, time to take out my shield". They'd just walk with their shield out already. They'd use siege engines to hide from the arrows. They'd have barricades to hide behind. You wouldn't simply go for the Futurama killbot limit, why would you give your opponent more time to walk towards you
They're not aiming at individual targets. They're shooting volleys. That would require coordination.
If you can't come up with any answers to those questions on your own then I don't think it's worth my time responding to this.
I think you're strawmanning here a bit. Just because they saying "ready - fire" doesn't mean they'd always have a huge pause in the middle. It could just be to get a nice synchronus volley. Plus, even if someone's arms got too tired during it they could just wait until fire was called and shoot a little late. Plus, the person telling the archers when to pull and when to release could easily be an archer themselves or someone familiar with the process and not do that dramatic "pull! ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Loose!"
That said, I have no knowledge about how it actually happened. I'm just saying your arguing against the dumbest version of it.
Look at how actual warbow archers fire their bows. This isn't the modern block bow that gets easier when you pull it back because of the pulleys. Some longbows had 240 pound draw weights. If your arms were to tire, you would be useless as an archer, so why the heck would they even try to do it. You let the arrow go immediately. And you would do that immediately when enemies got in range to prevent them from comming closer. Again, don't apply musket logic to bows. You can shoot a bow much faster than a musket, but you had to train people all their lives, so when they were lost, you lost a lot. Crossbows changed all that, with basically anyone being able to draw them and aim them. Muskets then slowly replaced the bow and crossbow because they were able to go through armor better. So they beefed up the armor too. So to prove the armor stops bullets, a smith would use a pistol and shoot it. You'd look for the dent and see it works. Some bad smiths would then hit it with a hammer and punch to simulate it, and then people got hurt.
You're contradicting yourself or just strawmanning my post as well. I wasn't talking about tiring from a "fire when you want" scenario. I was clearly talking about tiring from "volley" fire. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, don't archers use straw men as their targets typically?
Learn what strawmanning is, read up on how longbow archery worked. I'm done here.
Where did you hear this? There's so little information on archers through history.
I can’t cite a specific source since I was researching the subject for a fantasy novel I was writing at the time, and I’m not even sure the material I was reading was in English, but I remember the author was making a comparison to Roman legionnaires throwing their Pila synchronously to maximise their impact/psychological effect. And it made sense to me since every soldier only had two to carry.
Apparently shooting them in single massive salvos would force their enemies to crowd into one another (they’d have to push someone else into the path of a Pila to avoid one that’s coming at them) which devastated their morale.
They were talking about ur mum
Loose!
Begin!
Later…Stop!
Loose!