Quote:
Originally Posted by JimMorrison
Again, the theory behind the use of archers seemed to be "sheer # of pointy sticks flying through the air". Perhaps hastily crafted arrows are not suitable for target archery, or even for hunting. But they are just fine for firing at thousands of screaming soldiers. Most of them. You shrug off the bad arrows, because you have highly trained your archers to fire quickly and tirelessly, to saturate your field with projectiles.
|
Interesting side note.
Common knowledge (hence often wrong) - looking at the number of bullets produced in WWII, and the number of causalties inflicted, dividing the former by the latter.. arrives at the figure of 10,000 bullets per casualty.
Which, to my mind gives hope - we really don't *like* to kill people. But the point in this context is filling the skies with sharp pointy things seems as valid today as it was hundreds of years ago.
Second point: I have upon occassion gotten to metal detect for civil war bullets et.al
I have found far more instances of unfired shells than fired ones.
Point? Beats me? Perhaps the fired ones disintegrated or were carried off in bodies. Or perhaps, under the pressure of firing they dropped a lot more slugs than they fired. Just interesting.