Talk:Volley fire

How useful is the section "depictions"?
Doesn't seem to add anything to the article's topic and the examples are weirdly arbitrarily chosen... Why not Napoleon with the aerial footage of large infantry squares repelling a cavalry attack of THOUSANDS? Why not the SHARPE TV series where drilling to fire in volley is an essential theme throughout the series? And yet both still do not really do the topic a favor and do not really broaden the explanation and illustration of the historical development or tactical value of volley fire... Seems like one of the topics that does not need any trivia section whatsoever, especially not one so poorly chosen. --176.199.184.48 (talk) 15:06, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:51, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Crossbow countermarch.gif

"... requires lines of soldiers to fire on command and march back into a column to reload while the next row ..."
I think I understand some of the logic of this fragment, but can't accept it as user-friendly:
 * The volley fire, specifically the musketry volley technique, also known as the countermarch, requires lines of soldiers to fire on command and march back into a column to reload while the next row shoots and, hence, repeat fire.

To wit, that logic reflects
 * [V]olley fire...[, a] technique ... requires lines ... to fire  and [to]] march back [in order] to reload [while] the next row shoots] and, hence, [they, the two rows,] repeat fire.

Or else, that's the first of multiple, variously justifying or contradicting, ways one can either explain an excessively complex (and as a result, intolerably demanding) exercise of half consciously winnowing out the absurd but nevertheless grammatically meaningful ways of construing what would be immediately clear, if only stated in two clearly demarcated sentences (or maybe two semicolon-delimited clauses, each easy to correctly construe, without simulanously having the other in mind as an aid to judge whether a different parsing would stretch credibility. Thus, perhaps, instead
 * The volley fire in general, and specifically the musketry volley-technique (also known as the countermarch), requires a line of soldiers to fire on command; that accomplished, they march [to the] back [of the perhaps three- or 15-row formation],] and commence reload while those in the next row emulate those just completed steps.

You can't write worth a damn, without concentrating on the fact you're handicapped from explaining clearly what the reader doesn't know, by the fact that -- unlike you -- they don't yet know what it is that you're explaining, and you face the metaphorical handicap of stepping on your own feet -- or on your own hands, or on theirfeet perhaps -- bcz the explainer has to hold their attention on both their own knowledge and the listener's more than likely ignorance.
 * T'was thus that Socrates spake, "There is no royal road to wisdom." Jerzy•t 13:39, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Arrow volley source
The Source cited for volley use in Agincourt cites several original document that use the french word "volley" as evidence for volley fire, but in the context that only says "flight of shots" and the latin one only means "dense area". In no way does it imply simultaneous fire.

https://books.google.de/books?id=rcJW7hyV_e0C&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q=volley&f=false

Is that enough to state the claim as fact?

Atanar (talk) 16:57, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:41, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * 1044 Song dynasty volley fire crossbow formation.jpg
 * 1621 Ming crossbow volley fire formation.jpg
 * 1639 Ming crossbow volley formation.jpg
 * 1639 Ming musketry volley formation.jpg
 * 1649 Korean musketry volley formation -.jpg

Ottoman and European Volley Fire
I've read both Andrade and Agoston, I think this article misrepresents their position a bit. To quote Andrade "There is perhaps some evidence—very scanty— indicating that some type of volley fire may have been used in Europe in a battle of 1522.13 And some historians have suggested that volley fire might have been deployed by the Ottomans at the famous Battle of Mohács in 1526, although not, it seems, with arquebuses." Gabor Agoston in his latest book The Last Muslim Conquest says the following "The proportion of arquebusiers in the Spanish infantry was about a quarter already in 1500. Just like the Ottoman janissaries at Mohács in 1526, they too discharged their weapons row after row in 1522 at Bicocca and in 1525 at Pavia, routing the famous Swiss infantry in both battles along with the French cavalry in the second. The maneuver by which these Spanish foot soldiers maintained a steady rate of fire in 1522 and 1525 is among the earliest known examples of the countermarch". The question seems to be whether firing row after row count as true volley tactics anticipating the Dutch. Again Agoston in his book says "The question of whether these accounts refer to volleys known from western European examples from the latter part of the sixteenth century, and presented by historians 164 chapter 5 as one of the hallmarks of the “European military revolution,” requires further study". He says pretty much the same in his The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450-1800(page 98). I think I am gonna rewrite this article a bit DMKR2005 (talk) 21:28, 13 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I've restored the previous material and included Agoston's as well. These seem to be contradicting claims which don't address each other directly. Andrade doesn't say anything about the countermarch but that volley fire may have been used in 1522, but the evidence is meager. Qiushufang (talk) 23:59, 20 August 2023 (UTC)