So I am a fan of the total war series and something which always boggled my mind was, is that archers who, doesn't matter on which said, are able to fire over the wall which seperates them from the enemy and hit them.
They have to do that pretty much blindly or get guided by sound or have someone who can see the enemy guide their shots.
So do you guys know anything about this?
Occasionally archers would roughly estimate the range of an enemy they couldn't see directly, but for the most part archers struggled to shoot over the heads of other soldiers in front of them, much less solid walls. According to Sir John Smythe this was exactly the reason the medieval English always placed their archers either at the front or the wings of the formation. He blamed the declining effectiveness of the longbow during the 16th century in part on the fact that contemporary officers would place firearms at the front and wings of the formation and relegated archers to the rear, where their sight was taken away by the guns' smoke, and they were unable to shoot through the dense forest of pikes.
During the Napoleonic Wars, French general Baron de Marbot, described his encounters with horse archers levied by the Russians and noted that their inability to form ranks seemed to put them at a significant disadvantage.
With much shouting, these barbarians rapidly surrounded our squadrons, against which they launched thousands of arrows, which did very little damage because the Baskirs, being entirely irregulars, do not know how to form up in ranks and they go about in a mob like a flock of sheep, with the result that the riders cannot shoot horizontally without wounding or killing their comrades who are in front of them, but shoot their arrows into the air to describe an arc which will allow them to descend on the enemy. But as this system does not permit any accurate aim, nine-tenths of the arrows miss their target, and those that do arrive have used up in their ascent the impulse given to them by the bow, and fall only under their own weight, which is very small, so that they do not as a rule inflict any serious injuries.
While he recalled one man who had an arrow pass though his torso, killing him outright, for the most part it seems that the arrows either missed or caused only minor wounds despite the french being completely unarmored. The general himself had an arrow strike his thigh and penetrate "about an inch" but it did not affect his ability to command.
Follow up or related question: How well was ballistics understood at the time, and how well did your average soldier understand it?
Follow up #2: Was the concept of covering fire viable and/or widely employed in archery tactics?