Musket Warfare (Napolean style)

[Del Arroyo]

I'll try and help you a little. I'm not an expert but I think I can provide some answers.

Dense formations tended to work well for a variety of reasons. Among them:

- the native inaccuracy of the weapons
- lack of widespread marksmanship training
- the benefits of concentrated firepower
- vulnerability to infantry charges
- vulnerability to cavalry charges

Cavalry was a big concern during this period and the infantry would form massive squares to protect themselves. The only problem was that squares were extremely vulnerable to artillery fire.

It is interesting that you should mention armor. The armor of the day pretty much couldn't stop musketballs. Also, armor is pretty flocking expensive.

Cuirassiers-- elite cavalry-- did wear breastplates and helmets, but this was probably less to stop musketballs than to protect from bayonets and sabers, and give the men a certain *cavalier* sort of extra confidence. And they were a small percentage of most calvary forces.

As far as anti-musket armor, in theory I suppose they could have filled lots of small bags with gravel and fitted them like mail onto a leather jerkin-- but do you have any idea how heavy that would be? The sons of bitches would barely be able to waddle up to the line! And a cannonball would kill them anyway. And they would probably be too encumbered to fight off even a simple bayonet charge!

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Based on accounts I've read, cavalry charges were indeed effective, but the cavalry of the day tended to be expensive and not very numerous. They also tended to die very quickly if directly subjected to musket or cannon fire, and had near zero chance of defeating a properly-formed square.

The success of a charge also seemed to depend very heavily on three intangible elements-- a fearless, ferocious leader; high ferocity and courage among the men; and timing, timing, timing, also heavily dependent on the leader and the swift obedience of his men. The cavalry had to be the best or they were next to worthless. If the aim of the defending musketry was true and they did not panic and they presented a steady wall of bayonets and bodies, losses would be high for the attackers. Cavalry charges depended heavily on their opponents tendency to panic and run.

For that matter, so did bayonet charges. Pitched melee was not common.

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With the widespread introduction of improved rifles, cavalry became much less effective and was mostly limited to scout duty and guerilla raids. Cavalry charges continued to be viable even through the initial years of WW2, but much much less so and in much more limited circumstances.
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But to sum up, with regards to your initial questions about infantry-- musketry was not terribly accurate or deadly until improvement in rifle technology. If the men stuck together, formed a straight, orderly line, marched where they were told and fired straight ahead; they were basically safe. Unless they came under massed artillery fire. Or were the object of a sudden cavalry charge. Or were confronted with a massed column of charging infantry.

DA

[Ironside]

I've always wondered at the logic in some of the tactics used in musket warfare. One thing I never got was that lines of armies just march up to one another and shoot each other until someone routs. What about cover and formations(aside from rotating lines)?

The musket age army did use cover, mostly inform of terrain and trenches though. Due to the musket inaccuracy you'll need plenty of muskets to compensate. Formations did change, for example the Spanish tactic (were slow moving, constant fireing squares) were outshoot by the Swedish/Dutch tactic (three rows, all fire at the same time= line infantery) during the 30-years war (1631). The problem is firepower, lines did have maximum firepower and to deploy into any other formation facing a line is going to cost you more men.
Think of this, person A is deploying his 100 men in a square with 10 men in each row. Person B got his 100 men in a line. Say you got in one volley with 20% accuraccy. Person A fires a volley, 2 dead, at the same Person B got his volley, 20 dead. Now person B can use the rest of the men, but now they can only kill 1,6*9= 14.4 men (because he only got 80 men left) with the rest of the unit, thus killing 16.4 men altogether. So now does person A have the most men and is gaining more and more for each volley. And this is without the morale effect that is greater for person A. And a line is better against cannons too.
And don't forget it was a lot of other things to consider. You could deploy dragoons and light cannons in your cav for nasty surprices, your cannons needed good deployment and were preferbly movable during the battle and things like that.
And ofcourse the fact that you as a general had severe problem of controling your army for really complicated movements, made things harder to control.

And I almost forgot, the commanders DIDN'T want a long shootout between two units, it caused too much losses, but tried to get another advantage to change the situation.

I also noticed the complete lack of armor or protection on the average soldier (unless you count several layers of wool or cotten protection.) This may just be because there was nothing available at the time that could stop bullets and let you move around, but come on! Atleast wear a breastplate or helmet or something!

To expensive for the relative small gain. You could stop a musket bullet with armour, but it needed to have slow down quite a bit. Only cav would need it and as Del Arroyo said, they already had units with armour for use in melee.

Taking the above into consideration, wouldn't Cavalry completely dominate the battle field? Infantry wore no armor and their only weapons were short bayonets and maybe a saber. If you equip some cavalry with heavy armor and lances they should they be able to shred infantry, no?

Considering that the musket units had men with pikes until the bayonet, cavalry had to fight pikewalls with support of musket fire if the enemy was well prepared. The bayonet is worse than the pike, but as the replacing of pikes with muskets shows is that improved muskets gave enough fire to kill of the cav thus making the bayonet more of a ok weapon to take out the few remaining cavs than the cav killing weapon. Catching the enemy unprepared with cav is a massacre though.
And the cav importance changed during the musket period, to get very important during the 30-years war to slowly reduce in importance as time passed, so it wasn't stagnant there either.

[English assassin]

just to add a bit more to this:

Some cavalry were armed with pistols as well as swords/lances. Pistol balls had much less power than muskets. Therefore in a cav on cav action there would be some advantage in a breastplate (as there would in hand to hand cav actions of course). Most likely though cavalrymen were simply richer and could afford it.

Infantrymen could afford to laugh at most cavalry IF they were in (square) formation, and kept their nerve. Few horses will charge a wall of bayonets (the musket and bayonet are reasonably long). I've read cavalry fans claiming this is not so, but all I say to them is, Waterloo. If cavalry could take out infantry in square Wellington would have lost the battle.

As noted above, armies did use cover, or at least the lie of the land. Wellington habitually drew up his infantry on the reverse slope of a ridge in the Peninsular campaign so that it could not be fired on by artillery. Eventually the French learnt to treat apparently empty ridge lines with appropriate caution.

Finally, I think inf tactics were more varied than you suggest. The French were fans of attacks in column, for instance.

[TinCow]

Depending on what period of time you are talking about, the tactics were indeed obsolete. This may not have been true for the Napoleonic Wars, but it was certainly true in the US Civil War. The original 'musket lines' were essentially designed for concentration of firepower due to a lack of accuracy. Before rifling, you couldn't really aim and hit anything that wasn't directly in front of your face. Large lines allowed the attackers to throw a wall of bullets forward, thus guaranteeing that something would be hit.

The invention of rifling changed this though. By the US Civil War, the guns that both sides used were relatively accurate and individual targets could be accurately hit from a reasonable distance. The fact that they kept lining up and volleying away at each other was simply a lack of tactical evolution. At that point in time, the technology had outpaced the school of military thought. The exact same mistake was made during the first few years of WWI.

[Del Arroyo]

While it's evident that there was some anachronism in ACW tactics-- what exactly would you have had them do? The Springfield muzzle-loader could still only fire 3 shots per minute-- a thin line would have left them outgunned and vulnerable to a strong enemy advance.

There was a regular application of a thin line in combat-- otherwise known as a skirmish line-- but it had very little staying power, as all the enemy had to do was advance. While it is certainly true that Battle Lines would have been more effective if they would have trained to take cover (as they surprisingly often learned to do!), a full and true evolution in tactics was not feasible until further advances in both range and rate of fire-- and the amorphous lines of today were not even concievable until the introduction of the light machine gun as the Main Fire weapon.

DA

[CBR]

Just adding a bit to the discussion..

Firepower is all about how much lead you can throw at the enemy and how much is needed to defeat him or keep him away so he doesnt just charge in and rout you.

As muzzle loaded muskets are not that quick firing (2-4 shots/minute IIRC) and dont have that long effective range (100 yeards or less) you need soldiers to stand in very close formation and 2-3 ranks in order to produce the firepower needed.

Compare that to a modern day infantryman who can have an aimed rate of fire 5+ times higher and with an effective range of 400+ meters (especially against massed formations) and of course the ability to shoot even faster at short ranges. Having machineguns to support him just makes it even worse for an enemy that tries to charge in big massed formations.

If we then go back to the later Renaissance where muskets were even slower to load as well is soldiers standing in looser formation (the matchlock used required a safety distance) we see 10 ranks and later 6 ranks used to produce enough firepower (compared to 18th-early 19th infantry that only used 2-3 ranks). They used revolving ranks as not all could fire at the same time.

Skirmishers were used but that was more for harassment. They couldnt produce the firepower to stop any infantry or cavalry attack and always needed formed up infantry in the rear to fall back to. But they could be very effective and was an essential part of infantry tactics.

So for us it might look strange and suicidal how they stood in close formation but it was the only way to stop an enemy with firepower.

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Cavalry could indeed rout big numbers of infantry but doing a frontal attack against an infantry line (that didnt panic) was not the best way of doing it as a musket salvo could stop it.

The square formation meant that most infantry could hold, as a line formation could be routed very quickly if cavalry came in from a flank.

It takes a determined cavalryman to charge into a square and a lot of cavalry was not up to it but the heavy cavalry was definitely a threat.

Waterloo might not be the best example of the true power of cavalry as they charged forward expecting to face a retreating English infantry line. Instead they encountered prepared squares and that was a bit of a surprise.

Large cavalry attacks like at Eylau did AFAIK destroy squares. Here is a link about the French cavalry doctrine: http://www.napoleon-series.org/milit...n/c_eylau.html

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In the US Civil War the infantry line cant really be seen as obsolete. The rifle gave infantry better range and accuracy so overall the firepower was improved but in the end you still needed a lot of soldiers to stop a determined enemy attack.

But the rifle did cause problems for both cavalry and artillery. The typical cavalry shock attack that could win a battle in Napoleonic times were not as likely to succeed and artillery couldnt use the devastating tactic of moving into grapeshot range. So infantry overall became much stronger compared to the two other arms.


CBR

[TinCow]

I agree that the lines were needed due to the heavy use of single-shot muskets during the US Civil War. However, these weapons were only used because the two sides refused to accept technological advances of the time. The Henry Repeating Rifle was available in 1860, but was not used by the Union until 1862, and even then in only small numbers. The Gatling Gun was also available at the time, and the only thing that kept the US Civil War from being the first 'machinegun' war was the refusal of the North to adapt to the new technology. One General (Burnside I believe) even bought 12 of the things out of his own pocket because he saw the value in them, even if the government did not.

Civil War battle lines were just as obsolete a tactic as trench warfare & "going over the top" was in WWI. Just because you ignore the technology that could have solved the problem for you doesn't mean your methods aren't obsolete. If the US military destroyed all of its equipment and went back to single-shot rifles and Civil War lines, would they be using obsolete tactics?