speed shooting = horseback archery?

[Adam Karpowicz]

Yes, I understand the need to learn nocking and shooting skillfuly. If I recall this correctly, Taybugha (Saracen Archery) writes about nocking an arrow while urging the horse forward, but not about nocking the next arrow fast. Given all the information from so many manuals, one could at least expect to find it somewhere. This is a surprise for me.

It seems, the accuracy and good cast were the most important. Also the mastery in riding a horse. The rest: maybe.

Thanks Bede for the reference.

Adam

[Bede]

Adam,
It may be a mistake to argue a point from the absence of evidence in this case. The writers of these old books, Taybugha included, were not writing modern "How to..." instruction manuals. They assumed that their readers would be in the same milieu as themselves and would have access to teachers.

Even in Saracen Archery, which is the most practical of the texts in my view, many things are left out. There is evidence that in qighaj shooting that up to three targets were used in a similar way to the horizontal shooting seen in China and Japan. However, despite the practical aspects of archery described, very few details of the tactical approach in battle are presented. I get the impression that archery manuals taught you how to shoot and you learnt tactics in the army that built on the exisiting skills of the individuals.

[Adam Karpowicz]

Bede:

My point is the lack of evidence, not that speed-shooting was never practiced. In books, where you can find detailed instructions how to string a bow in the field and under attack, you can expect at least a mention about shooting fast, if this was indeed so important. Perhaps they learned to do it, but maybe it was not needed at all. Maybe one well aimed shot was good enough, multiplied by many, it becomes a deadly shower.

Somehow I do not see combat as the fast-draw-from-the-hip western movie style encounter, as some seem to imply. I see a mass of archers, galloping along the enemy flank, each aiming as well as they can, and executing the "Parthian shot", if pursued, and coming back to finish the job.

Adam

[jack farrell]

Adam; What if your target is faster and more accurate? How can you prevail by taking your time?

I enjoy reading Musashi, Japan's greatest sword fighter (and archer). He claimed that he who attacks first holds a small advantage. And to attact one second before you are expected is also a surprise attack.

[Russ Mitchell]

You are correct: I mixed up my sources.

Adam, I think it's quite fair to posit regional and tactical variation. To an extent, it's really situation-dependent. If I'm a Cuman fighting crusading contingents at 1205 Adrianople, good chance that when the signal comes, I'm going to dump as many arrows as I can into the formation of horsemen who are chasing me, because every time I damage one of their horses, I help to disorder their formations.. and just like the Byzantine reference posted, I'm going to hit them up close and personal as soon as the shower's over. If I'm skirmishing, otoh (which would be one of the things that horse archers found themselves doing much more often than taking part in set-piece battles), then it's probably well worth it to take an extra moment to really try to hit my target.

fwiw, I suspect that "shaking it loose" refers directly to getting the arrows out of the quiver.

[Adam Karpowicz]

Well, my imagination is limited - if I do not see the evidence, I try hard to explain the lack of it, bearing in mind these people were no less clever than us. If they did not see the need to write about speed-shooting, then there was no need for it. This may lead us to more interesting conclusions.

Adam

[Stephen Selby]

Is it right to look for any consitency in battlefield practice? It is generally accepted that the best military tactic is not to have any one consistent military tactic.

[Russ Mitchell]

Adam, one of THE basic axioms for scholarly research is "absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence." Otherwise, ymmv.

[MJuingong]

Is it possible that an unhurried, but smoothly reflexive ability to perform the act repeatedly may lead to speed?

Perhaps the lack of specific mention of speed results from an assumption like the above.

[Bede]

I think I can see Adam's point. With what has been presented so far, how can anyone say definitively that people trained for speed shooting? So far what we have been doing is mainly deduction.

• Ammianus Marcellinus wrote of the high rate of Sassanian shooting in relation to Late Roman shooting more slowly with stiffer bows (see Coulston).
  
  The Emperor Maurice wrote of putting the archers behind the heavy cavalry so that they could shoot over the heads of the front lines and disrupt the enemy horse with large numbers of arrows that were not aimed at individual targets.
  
  William of Tyre wrote of Saracen horse archers shooting extremely fast.
  
  Taybugha wrote of the expected rate of shooting of a military archer being the equivalent of 3 arrows in 1.5 seconds.
  
  Several of the defined horse archery target ranges in later literature specified shooting from a galloping horse at targets at fixed intervals. From the intervals between the targets and the average speed of galloping horses with riders you can calculate the rate of shooting.

It is correct to conclude that from the absence of evidence that we cannot prove the absence of the practice. Equally we cannot prove the existence of a practice only its possibility.

[jiao]

sorrow. so more word i can not translate them

i am perplex what advantage the horsebackarcher than foot archer, one vs one , 10000 vs 10000?

[Russ Mitchell]

Strategic advantages, not tactical advantages. Foot archers are usually deployed as a defense against horse archers, not the reverse. But horse archers have strategic mobility that foot archers cannot match. Even the English, who shot on foot, mounted their archers whenever possible.

As to speed... I have to really work to get a consistent 3 shots in 8 seconds. (And even that puts my rate of fire twice as high as friends of mine who shoot longbow.) If 3 shots in 1.5 seconds doesn't constitute speed-shooting, then what does, or how is speed-shooting being defined?

[Adam Karpowicz]

I submit the 3 shots in 1.5sec is either trick shooting on foot or in error. It is not physically possible to discharge arrows at this rate on a horse, if at all.

In a section about training on a horse, Taybugha clearly wrote that only one arrow is shot within a min. 60 yard track.

Anyway, thanks for the refs. It definitely proves the proficiency of archers.

Adam

[Bede]

I mentioned earlier that I had problems with that 1.5 second figure in another post. The arguments revolve around the meanings of long and short ulki and I think the translators make a logical, but unlikely, conclusion.

Personally, I have problems imagining horse archers riding parallel to the front of their enemies. Despite their firepower, they are exposing their flank to a prepared formation. A sudden forward movement by their target formation would cause them to rapidly change direction by 90 degrees. This presupposes that there is no one on their right, they all turn at the same time and the enemy is not too close. I feel that too much of our predictions about horse archery tactics are based on watching Hollywood Indians in movies riding around wagon trains drawn into circles.

If horse archers did not always attack in long head-to-tail lines, then the ones farthest from the enemy must have aimed indirectly or not aimed at all. Perhaps they only concentrated on angle and direction.

[Redhorse]

I find this a little amusing as a professional horse trainer.
Just mount a horse and you will know.