There's no evidence of it in contexts where we would expect something like this to be mentioned. So the absence is a strong indication that it didn't happen.
> You wait until the enemy starts charging with infantry and cavalry so they're not huddling under shields, the general makes a visible signal, and all the archers immediately draw at the same time and let forth a single volley at the ideal moment for the volley to meet the enemy.
Yeah, pretty much nothing of that is actually reasonable.
First off, pre-modern military command at a tactical level is almost completely nonexistent. The only command that can be reliably given is "go", and even then, unless you're decently well drilled, that's still as likely to come from following what your neighbors are doing than being able to pay attention to your battlefield commander who might be a half-mile away. And archers are the least trained portion of the pre-modern battlefield!
Second, actually trying to hold everybody for a single coordinated volley seems incredibly counterproductive. The primary purpose of volley fire, as explained in the article, is to mitigate slow reload times. Archers have the opposite problem; they're going to exhaust their ammunition supply in a few minutes. Staggering the start time of the archer attack over, say, 30 seconds is actually a very significant percentage increase in the amount of time the attacking army is going to be harried by the archers.
> And I buy that the initial volley wouldn't have archers holding the bow taut for 30 seconds until a dramatic command to shoot -- rather, upon command, they would draw and fire in a single motion.
Already by this point, that means you don't have a single, solid pulse of arrows, but rather a continuous stream that's going to take--at least--2 or 3 seconds before everyone has loosed their first arrow. And quite probably, your slowest archers are loosing their first arrows after the fastest archers have loosed their second arrow. It doesn't make sense to me to call that a "volley", since it's not going to look anything like what we would think of as a mass volley of arrows.
Given that you're already stretching the definition of "volley" quite hard to match what you think is happening, and given that there is absolutely no sign that anyone ever thought trying to achieve a more cohesive initial volley was worth striving for, I think it does more harm than good to argue that volley fire existed in some form with regards to regular bows.
> pre-modern military command at a tactical level is almost completely nonexistent
I think you mean strategic level. Tactically, they were able to hold formation, rotate, do all kinds of maneuver. Just look at how many "NCOs" are in a Roman legion. But it was difficult to control the units strategically, e.g. taking several units and moving them across battlefield in an organized fashion.
I think the most obvious context is visual art. There are thousands of depictions of medieval battles. Would really nobody think of depicting a volley of arrows in any of them? That would be a pretty spectacular sight with supposedly devastating effect.
> You wait until the enemy starts charging with infantry and cavalry so they're not huddling under shields, the general makes a visible signal, and all the archers immediately draw at the same time and let forth a single volley at the ideal moment for the volley to meet the enemy.
Yeah, pretty much nothing of that is actually reasonable.
First off, pre-modern military command at a tactical level is almost completely nonexistent. The only command that can be reliably given is "go", and even then, unless you're decently well drilled, that's still as likely to come from following what your neighbors are doing than being able to pay attention to your battlefield commander who might be a half-mile away. And archers are the least trained portion of the pre-modern battlefield!
Second, actually trying to hold everybody for a single coordinated volley seems incredibly counterproductive. The primary purpose of volley fire, as explained in the article, is to mitigate slow reload times. Archers have the opposite problem; they're going to exhaust their ammunition supply in a few minutes. Staggering the start time of the archer attack over, say, 30 seconds is actually a very significant percentage increase in the amount of time the attacking army is going to be harried by the archers.
> And I buy that the initial volley wouldn't have archers holding the bow taut for 30 seconds until a dramatic command to shoot -- rather, upon command, they would draw and fire in a single motion.
Already by this point, that means you don't have a single, solid pulse of arrows, but rather a continuous stream that's going to take--at least--2 or 3 seconds before everyone has loosed their first arrow. And quite probably, your slowest archers are loosing their first arrows after the fastest archers have loosed their second arrow. It doesn't make sense to me to call that a "volley", since it's not going to look anything like what we would think of as a mass volley of arrows.
Given that you're already stretching the definition of "volley" quite hard to match what you think is happening, and given that there is absolutely no sign that anyone ever thought trying to achieve a more cohesive initial volley was worth striving for, I think it does more harm than good to argue that volley fire existed in some form with regards to regular bows.