Mounted Archery

Last time we discussed the age of the great warbow. As important as the warbow was to late medieval warfare in Western Europe, the bow really achieved its most brilliant deployment as a military technology among the horseback archers of Central Asia. 

Mounted archers in the east deployed different tactics than the longbow and crossbow archers of Europe who tended to dismount and fight in organized ranks. They were used in rapidly moving lines that shot volleys into the enemy’s ranks. A common tactic for light “suicide” archers was to engage the enemy and then feign a retreat to draw the enemy out and make them break ranks to pursue the archers. The horseback archers could still loose volleys while retreating by using the Parthian shot (i.e. turning in the saddle and shooting directly behind them), and then they would whirl and swing around the flanks of the now disorganized ranks and cut them to ribbons. It was an effective tactic that worked on Romans, Russians, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans. Combined light and heavy archers often swept in a crescent formation toward the enemy and attempted to flank and encircle them.

The crusaders discovered that the lightly armored Turkish archers simply dispersed before the European heavy cavalry could come to grips with them. The crusaders would eventually halt as their ranks became disordered and their horses exhausted, and the Turks would reengage at a distance with bows and arrows. Marching columns were always vulnerable to mobile horseback archers, as were enemy flanks.

Archers deployed in naval engagements and in sieges served a similar function. Their role was to lay down a suppressing “fire” of arrows to clear ship decks or castle walls of defenders and to snipe at individual warriors. Their job was to soften the enemy ranks by inflicting casualties and to cover frontal assaults or boarding operations.

Prior to the advent of the repeating firearms of the mid-nineteenth century, the bow and arrow and/or the crossbow remained the most important long-distance missile system in the Afro-Eurasian world and in the many areas of the Americas.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Book 7 Rook the final book in the Archer of the Heathland series is now available in paperback and ebook for preorder.