As I understand it, that's still not very historically accurate. It was not really a thing for archers to nock and loose together like they do in the movies.
Never really made sense to me, loose all the arrows at once and then give a break between volleys? Gives everyone a chance to hide behind their shield, and then advance when it's clear. Unless volleys are perfectly timed between multiple rows of archers.
Random arrows flying constantly never gives the enemy a chance to feel safe since it's a constant barrage, and there's no wasted time for the archers needing to wait for the command to fire.
Archers were strategic weapons, not the main crux of killilng. They were used to do things like keeping an enemy division pinned down so that your cavalry can move around them or one of your own divisions can reach a more advantageous position. A well placed concentrated barrage could force an enemy to move in a direction that is more advantageous to you, etc...
They weren't the primary means of killing people. They were the means of steering the battle where the general wanted it to go.
Or think of horse archers. The mongols used them to great effect, and the Romans lost 7 legions against them, despite their testudo supposedly being next to invincible against projectiles
Volleys do have their place, but mostly as a way to open the battle, and at long range. You are correct that that can often be used to provide breathing room for troop movement. However, once the fighting starts, archers usually start picking individual targets and fire at will
Yes. There's no doubt that the English longbows were a force to themselves. They were lethal in piercing armour but they were still used in generally the same manner. To open up the battle by forcing the enemy to take a defensive stance and "thinning the herd" (so to speak) before your own infantry engages their forces.
Once the infantry engaged however, you didn't want to be raining down arrows on your own men and so the purpose of the archers largely changes to a completely different purpose; controlling the flow of battle with strategic use of volleys.
And yes...the Mongols changed everything with their horse archers. There's a reason a good part of the population is descended from Genghis Khan...
Maybe, but each archer will only be able to have so many arrows. What good is an archer if he only had 20 arrows and fired them all, already? If command thinks they'll need archer support for more strategic things, they may not want them firing off as many as they can quickly, even if the archer believes each arrow will hit its mark.
I have shot a longbow, you can be pretty accurate given the target is a large group of people. Sure, I can't realistically hit that guy there with the red hat. But I can probably got one of the guys near him.
Yeah, real warfare isn't a good spectator sport. It's chaotic, difficult to understand what's going on, things take way longer or way shorter to happen than would make sense for a film, and it's nothing like the orderly battles shown to us by Hollywood. The fog of war is a real thing. But that's why they do it, because if they did it realistically it wouldn't be very fun to watch.
Yes indeed. Generation Kill is the only thing I've seen that got close to reality. I was in a unit that did exactly what was shown in that show, and for the most part they nailed it. They showed the confusion, stupid orders, lack of proper communication, the constant fatigue, and the crazy shit that just happens out of nowhere when you have a bunch of 18-20 year old testosterone rage machines running around with serious hardware.
Actually, it worked pretty much exactly this way in the first stages of battle.
In the opening moves of a medieval battle, archers were essentially like the "creeping fire" that they used in World War 1; it's purpose is to keep the enemy immobile behind their shields and unable to advance as fast as they would like. Your army can't rush to take an advantageous position if they're constantly having to stop and hide under their shields.
In WW1, in the Somme especially, the artillery would lay down what they called "creeping fire" to keep the enemy huddled in their trenches while their own soldiers advance behind the wall of firepower. Archers basically played the same role.
I'm imagining a teenage Henry Horne reading about longbow tactics and thinking "damn that's pretty sweet" and then suddenly remembering it at the Somme and being like "awww yiss I'm about to blow these motherfuckers minds"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_fire
Y'all really just make stuff up without even checking wikipedia huh? It wasn't typically used in medieval Europe for bows beyond the initial volley, though of course initial volleys were still a thing. You didn't just have elements of archer formations fire whenever they decided the range seemed right.
I followed the cited source for the wikipedia claim, and it's just a guy writing a paper and saying his opinion. He's not citing anything deeper to cover his claim about an initial volley followed by targetting individual solders. Just because it's in a paper doesn't mean it's right, or even well-researched.
Sure, it FEELS right, and that does have weight with living history and experimental archeology, but I worry that "feeling" is the only thing anyone is actually citing in this whole conversation, including Wikipedia.
You're misunderstanding. War bows can't be held, the bow is way too heavy to allow you to hold an arrow and loose it at will; drawing and loosing are two actions of a singular movement.
Volleys were used, but the similarity with the way they're used with firearms only exists in the use of crossbows, which were invented specifically because they allow to draw and shoot in two motions (and also they require virtually no training compared to war bows)
I "fire" traditional recurve bows and honestly it ends up being a lot of core, back, and your front side shoulder, but this image is funnier.
I guess also another thing that gets me is when they are fire from the hip, with no anchor point. You draw back the bow to the same spot every time, then move your bow hand to aim. Radically changing how you draw, while hitting precision shots at varying range is like John Whicking archery, but nearly everyone with a bow in movies can do it. And they almost never wear gloves on a bow that has to be hundreds of pounds of draw to go through armor. How are your fingers not worn to bone?
Also arrows are pretty custom depending on draw weight, tip weight, draw length, and there are various types. Where do these perfect arrows you need all come from, hrmmm Legolas?
I am now realizing I took this meme way too seriously, but I've already typed it up, so here we are.
I never blamed the archer on the walls of Helms Deep. Waiting for the enemy to get all the way up to your walls was dumb enough, but waiting while having drawn your bow for what must've felt like ages for a human archer, is fucking rediculous. Terrible leadership.
You don't want your archers to be excausted before the battle even starts, just so you can look really unbothered on top of your wall.
I agree, but it’s obviously done for the tension in the movie. It wouldn’t be as exciting, if the archers were just chillin’ while the Uruk-hai were charging. 😄
Fiction only really works when it takes itself seriously. If they just don't follow any rules or logic then you know there's no reason to care about what's happening, because the author didn't. In LotR the archery follows the logic from out world. Yes, there's also magic and stuff, which all follows consistent rules in the universe. The magic does not effect the rules of archery. Maybe elves can be more agile with their bows, but it should still be grounded in the rules of their universe.
Versimilitude is important. Self consistency. Just because you introduce one unrealistic element doesn't mean everything else that is unrelated to it should be thrown out the window, too. The existence of a magical evil spirit entity doesn't change how nonmagical humans would interact with everyday physics.
I mean, this depends heavily on the type of bow used (which is also largely the source of confusion) it's common for archers who aren't medieval war longbow archers to draw then aim because it's a lot easier to do. And lower draw weight bows certainly did see use in war until plate armor became common enough to make them nearly useless in warfare.
Short answer: no, they don't.
Modern compound bows use that cam to lessen the power needed to hold.
Older bows are like holding a spring extended, the further back, the greater the force needed.
By modern I take it you mean compound bows. No other types of bow have that. The force you need to pull back is at its maximum when at full draw. The exact scale of 0-100% through the draw varies with different bow designs, material and even age as it can permanently deform with repeated use.
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.
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
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 don't get people to wait with a shitload of pounds of force trying to wriggle out and launch an extremely heavy arrow.
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'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?
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.
i usually complain to the wife when horrible tactics are used in medieval battles.
like... why is everyone always doing a full frontal assault, have the wrong weapons, not use fire appropriately, never flank, use cavalry inappropriately.....
Given the fact that any language used in such a movie is going to be wildly unlike the language spoken in the time and place of the movie, I think that's a mild anachronism
Old English / Norman French etc would be practically incomprehensible to anybody.
There was an interesting TV show called Barbarians a few years ago where all the Romans spoke Latin but with Italian accents but they had the Germanic barbarians speaking modern German. Not sure if that would please anybody.
The Persians army employed volleys of arrows, slingshots, and javelins against the Greeks in Gaugalema[21] and Thermopylae.[22][23] Ancient Greeks and Romans used arrow volleys.[24][20][19] The goddess Artemis was called "‘of the showering arrows".[25][26]
In medieval Europe, after the initial volley, archers would fire single shots at individual enemies.[27] Examples include the Battle of Hastings in 1066,[28] Battle of Crécy in 1346[19] and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.[29]
I'd imagine it's possible that a volley meant that they started drawing at the same time rather than drawing and waiting.
I understood that English archers trained to hit certain distances. So as the enemy advanced they would get a volley at x, y, and xy, and so on. Not aim at individuals at that distance.
More likely they didn't shoot in volleys at all. When you can only hold the bow for a second or two even with lifelong training you can't really have volleys.
They wouldn't shoot arrows up into the air, like in movies, because then you lose all the power of the arrow. They would be fired as direct as possible to give the arrow the most speed and thus the highest chance of piercing armour.
You'd be shooting around 40-50 degrees for a 250yd shot. You want the best ballistic trajectory you can without sacrificing distance. Arrows, like bullets, travel in an arc so while they wouldn't shoot directly up they would shoot at a fairly high angle for anything past 50 yds or so.
Depends how far away the target is. Done some long range shooting before and sometimes you really do shoot up in the air because unless you aim up at 30-45° the arrow isn't going to go far enough.
Speaking of English longbow, the draw force could be a lot higher too, going upwardsof 130lb, and they were expected to shoot up to 70 arrows a battle at a rate of 6 per minute (at best).
I don't think they'd struggle to hold an arrow for the initial volley, although I don't expect they'd be drawn for as long as shown in movies to increase tension.
Often times, I think of movies or stories as the story teller as translating for the audience. You don't watch Troy and think it's odd the characters are speaking English.
It's acceptable to complain if the work is nonfiction and meant to be for education.
You don’t watch Troy and think it’s odd the characters are speaking English.
I get it. But movies that try to be realistic get extra points from me. Props to Apocalypto for having the actors speak in Yucatec Maya. (even though the movie and director have problems in other ways.)
Something I dislike in movies is when a movie is set in a non-English-speaking country, but all the characters are speaking English. I would rather have the characters speak the proper language for the country, with English subtitles. But I guess the movie execs have calculated that subtitles will make the movie less profitable.
Even worse in my opinion is when they use a generic British accent as a stand-in for literally any time and place in history. Ancient Rome? British accent. Ancient Greece? Also British accent. Ancient Persia? British accent again! Ancient Egypt? You guessed it! British accent! Even when the actors aren't even British, the accent is. It makes no sense. It's lazy and arrogant.
If I had a billion dollars, I'd make the most painstakingly realistic movie about Samurai in feudal Japan, and have all Japanese actors using a SoCal Chicano accent. Or maybe a hyper realistic Viking epic with a full Nordic cast, but they all talk like surfer bros.
The audience needs to be forced to see how insulting that shit is.
"Duuuuude… King Ælla’s a total boner. We gotta roll up on Northumbria and fully hack these posers to bits, brah. Then maybe, y’know, hit the mead hall and get wasted with some totally rad shield maidens."
I swear to Odin, I would make this movie and only release a few short trailers with no dialog in them. Just brilliant cinematic shots of action, scenery, all the super authentic costumes and customs, and get some historians to endorse it (I know a few who would love the joke and the chaos). Then BAM, hit the audience with the most ridiculous shit ever.
I would partner with a historian friend of mine to write it. I'm good with dialog, and he could keep it authentic. Write a rough draft like a normal script, then go back and fine tune all the dialog to surfer bro without changing anything else.
I'll take a stab at it but I don't remember that movie well so I had to re-watch the clip.
I'll start by reiterating that the above stuff is generalizations. Some authors ignore them and some intentionally break them. I thin Kingsmen falls into the latter category.
The movie is full of class shibboleths and makes a point of dissociating etiquette from kindness or morality.
To start with, it's rude of Valentine to offer McCdonalds. There's an expectation of generosity towards guests and McDonalds certainly doesn't meet that expectation in that sort of setting.
Sir Galahad's response is that of a perfect guest. He doesn't argue with his host or call him out. Instead he accepts what is offered and humbly supports Valentines implication that it's the height of epicurean delight.
The larger context is to set up a contrast between Valentine and Eggsy. While booth violate high-class etiquette rules, Valentine does it out of aggression and selfishness and Eggsy does it to save the world.
Or just vaguely Eastern European. Basically, do your hammiest Bela Lugosi impression, and you'll have a bright future as Human Trafficker #1 in all the best shaky-cam action schlock Hollywood has to offer.
I liked the solution used in Inglorious Bastards, all the Germans and the French spoke English because all the Americans were so bad at speaking German and French.
I don't mind this. I also don't mind watching a movie in a non-English language so long as there are subtitles (Pan's Labyrinth was awesome).
What I dislike are movies/series that decide to include a conversation in a different language without providing subtitles.
I hate this. Spending the next 5-10 minutes searching the internet to find a complete script of a show just so I have a complete understanding of what's going on is annoying, not fun.
Or even worse, having to dub a movie, and the lip flaps are not matching up with the mouths. CinemaSins will give an infinite amount of dings for that.
I disagree. I think that sometimes it is good to have a language that is correct to the setting of the movie but also it does make it harder to follow if you don't speak that language and it does reduce from the visual aspect if you have to focus your eyes on the subtitles so it's not always the best option.
I would say that for slow-paced movies or documentaries it makes sense use the correct local language
German in US movies has a wild array of quality levels.
The best ones are all from native German speaking actors. Movie actors don't need native proficiency since the script is written out for them. The accents are really hard to nail down though and native speakers often have some regional dialect that second language learners almost never pick up.
Mac Steinmeir nails it in Saving Private Ryan and he's Bavarian.
Christopher Walz speaks flawless German. His French and Italian sound perfect to me but native speakers consider him "pretty good for a foreigner". He's Austrian.
Christian Slater has a very clear accent in Heathers but he's not supposed to be a native German speaker.
Archers also didn't usually shoot upwards to arc their shots. It loses power, reduces accuracy, and makes it more likely for them to hit armor, not less.
It's not that it never happened, but generally speaking it was a bad idea. You'd only get archers using indirect fire at long ranges.
There are however accounts of infantry kneeling so the archers can fire over them. Otherwise archers would be employed in skirmish lines in front of the main formations and then fall back into the main body as the lines approached.
It's recorded use in the 16th century I don't believe had anything to do with maritime use though. The one I'm aware of was literally someone writing that they will "touch on one topic briefly then move onto other topics"
We might never know, but they probably didn't even do these commands anyway, it doesn't make sense when you think about it. There would likely have just be a command to begin the attack and then each archer would loose arrows repeatedly at any target they thought they could hit.
Archers weren't always on top of a wall. There might have been friendly infantry in front of them, and the archers firing above them into an advancing foe. You'd want someone who can see the range giving the order to 'loose' when the range was right, and then you'll want to make sure they stop shooting so they don't hit your own side. Can't have the archers firing at everything that moves all the time.
You can aim your own bow, don't need a spotter to range for you. I would assume it's situational, start/stop shooting while individual volley commands may have existed they wouldn't have been used as often.
Using modern english phrases to convey meaning to modern audiences is usually fine to me, as long as they don't reference modern history or events. but what really pisses me off is movies like "The Great Gatsby" that take place during the 1920s and have JayZ and Lana del ray playing at a rich person's party
WoT can have anachronistic words since the 3rd Age, which the series is set in, is a regression from a high tech age. They could have carried the word over from having some form of ter'angreal gun.
Yea that absolutely makes sense, but if I remember right Robert Jordan did stick to loose in his battles. Idk, how much you have read but I believe that is what the "shocklances" are supposed to be in the scenes we get from the third age
First season is very rough, especially in the second half. They had a number of extremely bad production issues introduced by COVID. For instance shooting and lodging on opposite sides of a border, and one of the actors just not returning after a recess. The second season was solid and won back my interest and the third is just excellent. There are some changes introduced to rearrange the appearance of settings that will seem a bit odd to a book reader at first but will gradually make sense when you see the plots connected to those places interspersed elsewhere. Definitely worth giving a go if you were on the fence
We also don't say trigger when you shoot a gun. Imagine someone yelling fire in a period piece and someone lighting fuse on a cannon and it going off seconds later. Or lighting a firework/bomb and waiting like 20 seconds per foot of length. Not nearly as climactic I'm guessing when it comes to immersion.
We do say trigger for bombs though, but that is because the trigger initiates the action as opposed to the person being the one who pulls the trigger for a gun when they fire it.
Fire (flaming) arrows never existed in most battles, having to put a large fuel source on the end to try and prevent them just blowing out when airborne meant the arrows would have a much shorter reach. It was also pointless because it wouldn't just light people on fire anyway, they were wearing metal plates, not straw. Fire arrows are another thing movies greatly exaggerated. In reality they were only used in very specific situations where a fire could potentially be started against some siege equipment or by firing them into a village with thatch roofs etc.
I am talking about arrows which are lit on fire, not gunpowder arrows. Which even then, only handful of situations are listed out the how many thousands upon thousands of battles bow and arrows were a part of throughout history?
From the Wikipedia entry for "flaming" arrows:
Flaming arrows required the shooter to get quite close to their desired target and most will have extinguished themselves before reaching the target
I will add flaming to my original reply, but I have seen both used interchangably for the same thing.
Props to the movies that shout the "Loose!" command
As I understand it, that's still not very historically accurate. It was not really a thing for archers to nock and loose together like they do in the movies.
Never really made sense to me, loose all the arrows at once and then give a break between volleys? Gives everyone a chance to hide behind their shield, and then advance when it's clear. Unless volleys are perfectly timed between multiple rows of archers.
Random arrows flying constantly never gives the enemy a chance to feel safe since it's a constant barrage, and there's no wasted time for the archers needing to wait for the command to fire.
Archers were strategic weapons, not the main crux of killilng. They were used to do things like keeping an enemy division pinned down so that your cavalry can move around them or one of your own divisions can reach a more advantageous position. A well placed concentrated barrage could force an enemy to move in a direction that is more advantageous to you, etc...
They weren't the primary means of killing people. They were the means of steering the battle where the general wanted it to go.
That's an oversimplification. Skilled archers, especially in numbers, are a force to be reckoned with. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt
Or think of horse archers. The mongols used them to great effect, and the Romans lost 7 legions against them, despite their testudo supposedly being next to invincible against projectiles
Volleys do have their place, but mostly as a way to open the battle, and at long range. You are correct that that can often be used to provide breathing room for troop movement. However, once the fighting starts, archers usually start picking individual targets and fire at will
Yes. There's no doubt that the English longbows were a force to themselves. They were lethal in piercing armour but they were still used in generally the same manner. To open up the battle by forcing the enemy to take a defensive stance and "thinning the herd" (so to speak) before your own infantry engages their forces.
Once the infantry engaged however, you didn't want to be raining down arrows on your own men and so the purpose of the archers largely changes to a completely different purpose; controlling the flow of battle with strategic use of volleys.
And yes...the Mongols changed everything with their horse archers. There's a reason a good part of the population is descended from Genghis Khan...
That's what a hammer is for, nerd.
I prefer a spear and magic helmet.
Always a classic as well.
Why not both?
Quite right and why make your fastest, best archers wait for your slowest ones?
Maybe, but each archer will only be able to have so many arrows. What good is an archer if he only had 20 arrows and fired them all, already? If command thinks they'll need archer support for more strategic things, they may not want them firing off as many as they can quickly, even if the archer believes each arrow will hit its mark.
Armies relying on archers often had a continuous resupply running towards archers in position.
I have shot a longbow, you can be pretty accurate given the target is a large group of people. Sure, I can't realistically hit that guy there with the red hat. But I can probably got one of the guys near him.
If all the guys have armor and shields, the chances of hitting anyone in a spot that matters is a lot snaller
Well yeah, this is why you shoot more than 1 arrow.
Yeah, real warfare isn't a good spectator sport. It's chaotic, difficult to understand what's going on, things take way longer or way shorter to happen than would make sense for a film, and it's nothing like the orderly battles shown to us by Hollywood. The fog of war is a real thing. But that's why they do it, because if they did it realistically it wouldn't be very fun to watch.
This makes me want a chaotic locked wide shot of a old battle for at least a minute, to take it in
Except if the movie is an anti-war one.
Yes indeed. Generation Kill is the only thing I've seen that got close to reality. I was in a unit that did exactly what was shown in that show, and for the most part they nailed it. They showed the confusion, stupid orders, lack of proper communication, the constant fatigue, and the crazy shit that just happens out of nowhere when you have a bunch of 18-20 year old testosterone rage machines running around with serious hardware.
Actually, it worked pretty much exactly this way in the first stages of battle.
In the opening moves of a medieval battle, archers were essentially like the "creeping fire" that they used in World War 1; it's purpose is to keep the enemy immobile behind their shields and unable to advance as fast as they would like. Your army can't rush to take an advantageous position if they're constantly having to stop and hide under their shields.
In WW1, in the Somme especially, the artillery would lay down what they called "creeping fire" to keep the enemy huddled in their trenches while their own soldiers advance behind the wall of firepower. Archers basically played the same role.
I'm imagining a teenage Henry Horne reading about longbow tactics and thinking "damn that's pretty sweet" and then suddenly remembering it at the Somme and being like "awww yiss I'm about to blow these motherfuckers minds"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_fire Y'all really just make stuff up without even checking wikipedia huh? It wasn't typically used in medieval Europe for bows beyond the initial volley, though of course initial volleys were still a thing. You didn't just have elements of archer formations fire whenever they decided the range seemed right.
I made this comment in passing and prefaced with "as I understand it." Always happy to be corrected.
I followed the cited source for the wikipedia claim, and it's just a guy writing a paper and saying his opinion. He's not citing anything deeper to cover his claim about an initial volley followed by targetting individual solders. Just because it's in a paper doesn't mean it's right, or even well-researched.
Sure, it FEELS right, and that does have weight with living history and experimental archeology, but I worry that "feeling" is the only thing anyone is actually citing in this whole conversation, including Wikipedia.
You're misunderstanding. War bows can't be held, the bow is way too heavy to allow you to hold an arrow and loose it at will; drawing and loosing are two actions of a singular movement.
Volleys were used, but the similarity with the way they're used with firearms only exists in the use of crossbows, which were invented specifically because they allow to draw and shoot in two motions (and also they require virtually no training compared to war bows)
Strike?
"But I came here to win :("
Or that they're holding the bow drawn for a long period of time, waiting for the order to "fire".
Long bows averaged a 200lb draw weight. Try holding that for 5 minutes.
Archers of the day:
Literally - you can pick out English longbowman bodies from the shape of their skeletons
Now I'm imagining a swole skeleton with buff bones
It's mostly their twisted spine, as far as I'm aware.
You just have to ruin everything, don't you?
I believe there are spurs to one side and right sided increases in density. But that article was a decade ago.
I "fire" traditional recurve bows and honestly it ends up being a lot of core, back, and your front side shoulder, but this image is funnier.
I guess also another thing that gets me is when they are fire from the hip, with no anchor point. You draw back the bow to the same spot every time, then move your bow hand to aim. Radically changing how you draw, while hitting precision shots at varying range is like John Whicking archery, but nearly everyone with a bow in movies can do it. And they almost never wear gloves on a bow that has to be hundreds of pounds of draw to go through armor. How are your fingers not worn to bone?
Also arrows are pretty custom depending on draw weight, tip weight, draw length, and there are various types. Where do these perfect arrows you need all come from, hrmmm Legolas?
I am now realizing I took this meme way too seriously, but I've already typed it up, so here we are.
Keep going I'm almost there.
I’m very into it
I never blamed the archer on the walls of Helms Deep. Waiting for the enemy to get all the way up to your walls was dumb enough, but waiting while having drawn your bow for what must've felt like ages for a human archer, is fucking rediculous. Terrible leadership.
You don't want your archers to be excausted before the battle even starts, just so you can look really unbothered on top of your wall.
I agree, but it’s obviously done for the tension in the movie. It wouldn’t be as exciting, if the archers were just chillin’ while the Uruk-hai were charging. 😄
I admire you for holding the archery in LOTR to a high standard of realism even when the films feature a giant flying and levitating eye.
It's a fantasy world, but archery there still works just like in real life.
Fiction only really works when it takes itself seriously. If they just don't follow any rules or logic then you know there's no reason to care about what's happening, because the author didn't. In LotR the archery follows the logic from out world. Yes, there's also magic and stuff, which all follows consistent rules in the universe. The magic does not effect the rules of archery. Maybe elves can be more agile with their bows, but it should still be grounded in the rules of their universe.
Versimilitude is important. Self consistency. Just because you introduce one unrealistic element doesn't mean everything else that is unrelated to it should be thrown out the window, too. The existence of a magical evil spirit entity doesn't change how nonmagical humans would interact with everyday physics.
I mean, this depends heavily on the type of bow used (which is also largely the source of confusion) it's common for archers who aren't medieval war longbow archers to draw then aim because it's a lot easier to do. And lower draw weight bows certainly did see use in war until plate armor became common enough to make them nearly useless in warfare.
I know that modern bows with the radial cam thing have different hold vs draw requirements.
Not being a bow-knower, do the other sorts (long, recurve, etc.) Not have a similar thing that can happen?
Short answer: no, they don't.
Modern compound bows use that cam to lessen the power needed to hold.
Older bows are like holding a spring extended, the further back, the greater the force needed.
By modern I take it you mean compound bows. No other types of bow have that. The force you need to pull back is at its maximum when at full draw. The exact scale of 0-100% through the draw varies with different bow designs, material and even age as it can permanently deform with repeated use.
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!
i usually complain to the wife when horrible tactics are used in medieval battles.
like... why is everyone always doing a full frontal assault, have the wrong weapons, not use fire appropriately, never flank, use cavalry inappropriately.....
miltary tactics in movies is usually abhorrent.
I loved the battle of Winterfell, where everyone took up defensive positions OUTSIDE THE CASTLE WALLS.
And then charged in to total darkness
Against monsters that turn corpses into monsters
That battle caused a mass-extinction event among the Total War community.
Frontal cavalry charge without any follow up
Siege engines positioned outside the fortifications against a mobile enemy
Projectile forces unsupported outside the fortifications
Melee infantry inside the castle, watching and picking their noses
My wife told me to shut up multiple times during that episode as I was screeching like a monkey. The wrong side won that battle that night.
I was so mad about those catapults. I’m still mad. That battle was just completely unforgivable.
It’s not like they didn’t HAVE consultants on retainer for this series already. Give me a break!
I need to go lie down now.
There there. We will recover, brother. 😔
I guess they kinda forgot to give a shit about the show they were producing.
I mean by that point they had made so many other stupid decisions, I think it was just in character for them to do that.
Terrible line discipline too, they broke formation immediately.
Did they at least have chicken?
I take it you are a Total War player?
i really want to like total war, but it just isnt for me :(
i do play a lot of tactics and strategy games tho <3
I've really enjoyed Total War: Three Kingdoms. It's one of the best imho
Given the fact that any language used in such a movie is going to be wildly unlike the language spoken in the time and place of the movie, I think that's a mild anachronism
Old English / Norman French etc would be practically incomprehensible to anybody.
There was an interesting TV show called Barbarians a few years ago where all the Romans spoke Latin but with Italian accents but they had the Germanic barbarians speaking modern German. Not sure if that would please anybody.
If you were commanding a mass of archers "Spaff!" was the correct command.
The best part was when they said "ITS SPAFFFIN' TIME" and spaffed all over those guys.
"So I started spaffing"
"Ready your bows!"
"Nock!"
"Mark!"
"Draw!"
"Loose!"
"Nock! Nock!"
"Who's there?"
"Mark!"
"Mark who?"
Mark Oni, inventor of the wireless telegraph!
Guy named Mark: "What?" *gets shot*
Whoever decided to call it "Draw" instead of "Tighten" should be loosed out of a cannon. Into the sun.
Volley fire wasn't a thing with bows. You ever try holding a 90lb war bow at full draw waiting for someone to yell "Loose"? Never happened.
Wikipedia seems to disagree:
I'd imagine it's possible that a volley meant that they started drawing at the same time rather than drawing and waiting.
I understood that English archers trained to hit certain distances. So as the enemy advanced they would get a volley at x, y, and xy, and so on. Not aim at individuals at that distance.
Yeah they would just spaff all over the enemy, multiple times.
Step enemy, help I'm stuck in the dryer...
I don't like this.
wow I'm glad that changed
Well, this is going to bug me for the rest of my life.
Thanks.
for the haters :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_fire#Bows
The co-ordination and timing could probably be resolved with musical instruments, which were used to relay orders, messages etc.
EDIT : Also, what did OP expect, for all the characters to speak Old English?
"Loose" works. As in "Draw!" ... "Loose!".
Release?
What a macabre rhythm game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snare_drum#History
Always has been
Beat (the) Saber?
Yeah, or a sequence of "nock, draw, fire/loose/shoot" commands. Warbows cannot be held that long ffs.
More likely they didn't shoot in volleys at all. When you can only hold the bow for a second or two even with lifelong training you can't really have volleys.
Longbow maybe not but shortbow, recurve, etc can be held for a while if you're willing to sacrifice accuracy.
How far apart does a group shot of arrows have to be before it's considered separate shots v a volley?
Yeah, that's a point I tried to make, sorry for not being precise enough.
Here's a great video of a well-trained longbowman shooting 160 and 210lb longbows (jump to 8 minutes). There is zero chance he's "holding" the draw.
https://youtu.be/MjY2QrU4sm4
Why not? It just won't be as tight as in movies
We can have a rain of arrows then, right?
They wouldn't shoot arrows up into the air, like in movies, because then you lose all the power of the arrow. They would be fired as direct as possible to give the arrow the most speed and thus the highest chance of piercing armour.
You'd be shooting around 40-50 degrees for a 250yd shot. You want the best ballistic trajectory you can without sacrificing distance. Arrows, like bullets, travel in an arc so while they wouldn't shoot directly up they would shoot at a fairly high angle for anything past 50 yds or so.
Depends how far away the target is. Done some long range shooting before and sometimes you really do shoot up in the air because unless you aim up at 30-45° the arrow isn't going to go far enough.
Yes, hence the "as possible". I just mean, they wouldn't fire into the air like they do in movies at like 70+ degrees.
So, it wpuld be a drizzle of arrows then
Last time I checked, rain drops didn't come in volleys.
But, well, that was weeks ago, maybe it changed.
Yesterday they certainly did
Storm bands go brrrr
Correct term was probably "loose!"
Nobody was holding a ~90lb war bow at full draw waiting to hear "Loose". Not possible.
Speaking of English longbow, the draw force could be a lot higher too, going upwardsof 130lb, and they were expected to shoot up to 70 arrows a battle at a rate of 6 per minute (at best).
I don't think they'd struggle to hold an arrow for the initial volley, although I don't expect they'd be drawn for as long as shown in movies to increase tension.
The slang term was "Fart in their general direction!"
I never gave it a single thought. But now I have been cursed with this knowledge and will fly into a fury every time I hear it now.
But thanks anyway.
Often times, I think of movies or stories as the story teller as translating for the audience. You don't watch Troy and think it's odd the characters are speaking English.
It's acceptable to complain if the work is nonfiction and meant to be for education.
I get it. But movies that try to be realistic get extra points from me. Props to Apocalypto for having the actors speak in Yucatec Maya. (even though the movie and director have problems in other ways.)
Nothing I love more than multilingual movies where different groups speak different languages.
Language barriers (and overcoming them) is such a huge part of everyday life for much of the world's population.
pfew pfew!
Something I dislike in movies is when a movie is set in a non-English-speaking country, but all the characters are speaking English. I would rather have the characters speak the proper language for the country, with English subtitles. But I guess the movie execs have calculated that subtitles will make the movie less profitable.
Even worse in my opinion is when they use a generic British accent as a stand-in for literally any time and place in history. Ancient Rome? British accent. Ancient Greece? Also British accent. Ancient Persia? British accent again! Ancient Egypt? You guessed it! British accent! Even when the actors aren't even British, the accent is. It makes no sense. It's lazy and arrogant.
If I had a billion dollars, I'd make the most painstakingly realistic movie about Samurai in feudal Japan, and have all Japanese actors using a SoCal Chicano accent. Or maybe a hyper realistic Viking epic with a full Nordic cast, but they all talk like surfer bros.
The audience needs to be forced to see how insulting that shit is.
Jarl! My dude! We totally viking'd the shit out of that Irish monastery! It was fucking rad!
"Duuuuude… King Ælla’s a total boner. We gotta roll up on Northumbria and fully hack these posers to bits, brah. Then maybe, y’know, hit the mead hall and get wasted with some totally rad shield maidens."
I swear to Odin, I would make this movie and only release a few short trailers with no dialog in them. Just brilliant cinematic shots of action, scenery, all the super authentic costumes and customs, and get some historians to endorse it (I know a few who would love the joke and the chaos). Then BAM, hit the audience with the most ridiculous shit ever.
Yeah! You gotta lull them into suspension of disbelief.
I'd invest some money into this. Someone has to be brave enough to write the script.
I would partner with a historian friend of mine to write it. I'm good with dialog, and he could keep it authentic. Write a rough draft like a normal script, then go back and fine tune all the dialog to surfer bro without changing anything else.
All the Nordic women would speak in Valley Girl.
Yeah I can understand speaking English and avoiding subtitles, but there are basically three options for accent:
The English accent is often used for evil empires too, eg Star Wars.
Also lots of evil mastermind types in spy movies and whatnot. They also like to eat while being evil, which I have a whole theory about.
There are a lot of interesting discussions around the use of food in movies. Even ones that aren't directly about food.
Regular food intake is critical for our survival so it makes sense that it takes a large social role.
As a general rule, making and sharing food is considered "good".
Taking and consuming food is "bad".
The exception is when food is offered. In that case, graciously accepting the food is also good.
How does Valentine serving Sir Galahad McDonalds on a silver platter in Kingman Secret Service fit into that?
I'll take a stab at it but I don't remember that movie well so I had to re-watch the clip.
I'll start by reiterating that the above stuff is generalizations. Some authors ignore them and some intentionally break them. I thin Kingsmen falls into the latter category.
The movie is full of class shibboleths and makes a point of dissociating etiquette from kindness or morality.
To start with, it's rude of Valentine to offer McCdonalds. There's an expectation of generosity towards guests and McDonalds certainly doesn't meet that expectation in that sort of setting.
Sir Galahad's response is that of a perfect guest. He doesn't argue with his host or call him out. Instead he accepts what is offered and humbly supports Valentines implication that it's the height of epicurean delight.
The larger context is to set up a contrast between Valentine and Eggsy. While booth violate high-class etiquette rules, Valentine does it out of aggression and selfishness and Eggsy does it to save the world.
Or just vaguely Eastern European. Basically, do your hammiest Bela Lugosi impression, and you'll have a bright future as Human Trafficker #1 in all the best shaky-cam action schlock Hollywood has to offer.
Where does Australian English fit in?
I would pay to see both of those.
No joke I'd watch that Viking epic for the lolz
Now I just need to secure about a hundred million dollars.
It doesn't fit a lot of movies, but some movies start in the foreign language and then switch to English
I liked the solution used in Inglorious Bastards, all the Germans and the French spoke English because all the Americans were so bad at speaking German and French.
This was great to watch in The 13th Warrior.
I don't mind this. I also don't mind watching a movie in a non-English language so long as there are subtitles (Pan's Labyrinth was awesome).
What I dislike are movies/series that decide to include a conversation in a different language without providing subtitles.
I hate this. Spending the next 5-10 minutes searching the internet to find a complete script of a show just so I have a complete understanding of what's going on is annoying, not fun.
Yeah. What's the point of this exactly?
"Hang on, lemme exclude you from this bit of the story real quick..."
?!
oh man youd hate the star wars holiday special. wookiee is spoken for a good chunk of the film and there are no subtitles
Everyone hates the Star Wars holiday special
I think it is OK if the foreign language is just spoken for a few seconds and the protagonists are not supposed to understand the language.
They're made for an American audience, who are generally afraid of non-English languages
Also generally terrified of reading
It's true. I'm terrified of reading this thread right now.
WHY ARE THERE WORDS ON MY SCREEN?!
Or even worse, having to dub a movie, and the lip flaps are not matching up with the mouths. CinemaSins will give an infinite amount of dings for that.
Is CinemaSins even part of the conversation anymore? They had 1-2 good critiques and then been shoveling garbage for years.
I disagree. I think that sometimes it is good to have a language that is correct to the setting of the movie but also it does make it harder to follow if you don't speak that language and it does reduce from the visual aspect if you have to focus your eyes on the subtitles so it's not always the best option.
I would say that for slow-paced movies or documentaries it makes sense use the correct local language
When I was a kid I saw The Longest Day and loved that all the Germans spoke German.
German in US movies has a wild array of quality levels.
The best ones are all from native German speaking actors. Movie actors don't need native proficiency since the script is written out for them. The accents are really hard to nail down though and native speakers often have some regional dialect that second language learners almost never pick up.
Mac Steinmeir nails it in Saving Private Ryan and he's Bavarian. Christopher Walz speaks flawless German. His French and Italian sound perfect to me but native speakers consider him "pretty good for a foreigner". He's Austrian.
Christian Slater has a very clear accent in Heathers but he's not supposed to be a native German speaker.
The movie execs know about poor literacy rates :(
One of a few movies that could've used a "Fire!" was the intro of Robin Hood: Men in Tights (fire arrows, get it?), AND THEY DON'T EVEN DO IT!
Archers also didn't usually shoot upwards to arc their shots. It loses power, reduces accuracy, and makes it more likely for them to hit armor, not less.
If they're using indirect fire they certainly would. Such as shooting over friendly formations.
Guess what you also didn't usually do?
It's not that it never happened, but generally speaking it was a bad idea. You'd only get archers using indirect fire at long ranges.
There are however accounts of infantry kneeling so the archers can fire over them. Otherwise archers would be employed in skirmish lines in front of the main formations and then fall back into the main body as the lines approached.
There's only one way to solve this, you both need to shoot arrows at each other.
Yeah, but raining thousands of arrows on to an approaching army is intimidating as fuck
That’s a pretty expensive war you got there
Just need to fill a boat with straw figures.
Just need a supply train of camels to keep your archers stocked
::: spoiler context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae :::
Valid
“Let fly!”
LOOSE!!!!!
Leave my mother out of this
Same. Also hate when character says “touch and go” in pieces before airplanes
Why? Touch and go is a maritime term recorded back in the 16th century, for the keel touching the seabed briefly without running aground.
I have been lied to?!?
Immersion restored.
Thanks !
This is known as the Tiffany problem.
soulsLikeScreenshotImmersionRestored.meme
It's recorded use in the 16th century I don't believe had anything to do with maritime use though. The one I'm aware of was literally someone writing that they will "touch on one topic briefly then move onto other topics"
They also aren't speaking Gaelic.
wait actually?
What would the order (in the language of the day) have been, something as simple as “archers” or “archers, release”? “Release arrows?”
“Archers make ready” meaning they place the arrow in the bow but do draw, and possibly aim, might make sense.
No clue how accurate it is but I have heard some films use something like. Archers, Loose. In place as in let the bow string loose.
Nock, aim, loose
We might never know, but they probably didn't even do these commands anyway, it doesn't make sense when you think about it. There would likely have just be a command to begin the attack and then each archer would loose arrows repeatedly at any target they thought they could hit.
It would be silly to make your fastest archers wait for the slowest ones.
Archers weren't always on top of a wall. There might have been friendly infantry in front of them, and the archers firing above them into an advancing foe. You'd want someone who can see the range giving the order to 'loose' when the range was right, and then you'll want to make sure they stop shooting so they don't hit your own side. Can't have the archers firing at everything that moves all the time.
You can aim your own bow, don't need a spotter to range for you. I would assume it's situational, start/stop shooting while individual volley commands may have existed they wouldn't have been used as often.
I've heard release used in films so it is probably wrong too :P
Using modern english phrases to convey meaning to modern audiences is usually fine to me, as long as they don't reference modern history or events. but what really pisses me off is movies like "The Great Gatsby" that take place during the 1920s and have JayZ and Lana del ray playing at a rich person's party
Yeah, We Will Rock you wouldn't have even been written during A Knights Tale, so unrealistic.
They owned it though in Knight's Tale...
u rn
They messed this up in the first season of wheel of time, but they got better in the latest
WoT can have anachronistic words since the 3rd Age, which the series is set in, is a regression from a high tech age. They could have carried the word over from having some form of ter'angreal gun.
Yea that absolutely makes sense, but if I remember right Robert Jordan did stick to loose in his battles. Idk, how much you have read but I believe that is what the "shocklances" are supposed to be in the scenes we get from the third age
I've read that the TV show was an abomination. Is it any good?
First season is very rough, especially in the second half. They had a number of extremely bad production issues introduced by COVID. For instance shooting and lodging on opposite sides of a border, and one of the actors just not returning after a recess. The second season was solid and won back my interest and the third is just excellent. There are some changes introduced to rearrange the appearance of settings that will seem a bit odd to a book reader at first but will gradually make sense when you see the plots connected to those places interspersed elsewhere. Definitely worth giving a go if you were on the fence
Except for all those night scenes where they dip the arrows in fire so you can see them better on the screen
Yeah this will never not make me angry. It's beyond pet peeve at this point.
What term would have been used for archery?
I believe it was usually "loose"
Leithio i philinn!
Sure, but you have to keep modern audiences in mind when making these films.
Yeah, hearing "release" on screen might sound even more wrong...
Are we saying they never lit their arrows on fire before the invention of gunpowder?
Using 'fired' for launching them at the enemy doesn't really make sense. It isn't like they said 'arrowed' for when they launch a regular arrow.
Homestar Runner is not historically accurate.
You take that back!
We also don't say trigger when you shoot a gun. Imagine someone yelling fire in a period piece and someone lighting fuse on a cannon and it going off seconds later. Or lighting a firework/bomb and waiting like 20 seconds per foot of length. Not nearly as climactic I'm guessing when it comes to immersion.
We do say trigger for bombs though, but that is because the trigger initiates the action as opposed to the person being the one who pulls the trigger for a gun when they fire it.
Fire (flaming) arrows never existed in most battles, having to put a large fuel source on the end to try and prevent them just blowing out when airborne meant the arrows would have a much shorter reach. It was also pointless because it wouldn't just light people on fire anyway, they were wearing metal plates, not straw. Fire arrows are another thing movies greatly exaggerated. In reality they were only used in very specific situations where a fire could potentially be started against some siege equipment or by firing them into a village with thatch roofs etc.
This says otherwise
I am talking about arrows which are lit on fire, not gunpowder arrows. Which even then, only handful of situations are listed out the how many thousands upon thousands of battles bow and arrows were a part of throughout history?
From the Wikipedia entry for "flaming" arrows:
I will add flaming to my original reply, but I have seen both used interchangably for the same thing.
Sure, just adding some sourced context. I was curious about your statement and when looking into it, found more details to add to the convo
Then "fire" would be the first step into shooting the arrows.