Was there a single military tactic in history more wasteful and stupid than walking head on into line infantry?

Not OP, but the only thing I can think of is by using cavalry of their own. Not sure if the benefits of being in open order would be enough to outweigh the risks of your cavalry screen failing though.

...

There are also a lot of records where people say a man an unarmoured person can be killed at 200 yards and an ill armoured one at 100. People who shoot with blackpowder weapons today report that they have 100% accuracy at 100 yards.

black powder weapon is a pretty broad term spanning hundreds of years - it could be a matchlock or a Sharps rifle

There were multiple reasons why line infantry tactics made a lot of sense.

1. Muskets were relatively inaccurate and you could achieve greater effectiveness by lining up lots of men to fire at the same target.

2. Cavalry was still a relevant threat and sticking together allowed people to defend more easily against cavalry attacks.

3. Muskets had to be reloaded while standing upright so you couldn't really operate them like modern firearms, where you can lay low while reloading. Sticking together in multiple lines of fire-ready men provided a better defence than trying to run around on your own.

4. The armies of the day were mercenary armies with bad morale, that recruited from the dregs of society. Having them stick together made them easier to manage and actually hold the line due to peer pressure.

These reasons combined made line infantry a very reasonable tactic.

Infantry charges were still regularly used and not getting fucked by cavalry.

That it can be lethal at 200 yards says nothing about its accuracy.

>Modern tests under laboratory conditions on actual eighteenth-century muskets have shown 60 percent hits on target at 75 yards, 50 percent hits on target at 100 yards. - Bert S. Hall 'Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe'

Modern powder is also considerably better quality.

>The hydroscopic nature of gunpowder was obviously a major contributory factor, and flint wear also played a part, with each flint being good for about sixty firings. As many as one in four discharge attempts were unsuccessful. - Colonel Arcadi Gluckman, 'United States Muskets, Rifles and Carbines'

>The armies of the day were mercenary armies with bad morale, that recruited from the dregs of society. Having them stick together made them easier to manage and actually hold the line due to peer pressure.

That's really a thing before and during 30-years war. 18th century has seen rise of standing armies in Swedish and Prussian model. Even as far back as in 16th century there were disciplined soldiers such as tercios.

The examples were mainly flintlock muskets. Arquebus were much more inaccurate due shorter and wider barrels.

They weren't innacurate. But even if they were and the bullet goes astray, it'd surely still hit someone in that tightly packed mass of cucks standing in the open. It's the perfect target.

I would hit them in bushy or rocky terrain with dispersed soldiers covering behind trees or rocks and shooting at them from multiple flanks. No intention of gaining the field, but to decimate them.

I would also love to use set up tactics on them, like oiling the field where the packed mass of cucks is meant to walk upon, then light it up on fire and watch them burn while hitting at them with dispersed troops from all flanks, snipers and hidden catapults launching massive grenades at those tight pussy ranks. It'd be like one big grenade hit = 50 cucks rekt. Would be awesome.

I wonder if anyone ever did something like this.

Sure, if they were operating own, which they almost never did.

In real life their skirmishers (who, like you, would be dressed in earthy colors and moving stealthily) would spot you beforehand, report to those tightly packed cuck's camp, and their cavalry would then run you and your spread out riflemen down, since you can't group well enough to repel cavalry and your rate of fire wouldn't be enough to stop them.

Or, alternately, they walk around your carefully set up ambush and attack whatever encampment/town they were en route to, because irregulars/skirmishers can't hold ground for shit.

You have a 12 year old child's understanding of how battles in the post bayonet pre rifling era were fought

Fancy traps and irregular ambushes = getting rekt by cavalry and having your forces bypassed as laughable nuciances

Another thing not mentioned is that elaborately distributed large-scale ambushes are even less flexible than packed infantry.

In a line formation, you'd have a standard bearer holding up your unit's flag, an officer and a drummer/fifer to coordinate your troops. If you need order sent to that formation, a rider can easily find that standard and expect to find an officer there, who can give orders that are communicated by the unit musician.

So let's say your ambush is going well, you've got these cucks pinned down. But an outlying town is now under attack, or you're being flanked. How will the messenger find you, among your spread-out infantry formation? You clearly don't have your standard hoisted if you don't want to give these cucks an obvious target to march towards. So, among all these camouflaged riflemen, how is the messenger going to find you? Even when he finds you, how are you going to communicate new orders to your spread-out riflemen over the sound of battle, on the other side of the woods? If a flank of your ambush is being overrun, there's a possibility you won't find out until the messenger runs all the way through the woods to where he thinks you are.

Line formations aren't just about efficiency, it was also about command and control. A spread-out, camouflages ambush is particularly vulnerable to unexpected changes, because you may not be able to communicate or coordinate an effective response to the entire formation.

So it all boils down to cucking their scouts and there you have the decissive advantage.

Like I said, I wouldn't have the intention of holding/gaining any ground whatsoever but to rekt the enemy. Thus there's no need to communicate anything to any particular detachment of soldiers once they understand this and are capable of acting of their own initiative as per requested in the flow of events. I.e if one specific flank is being attacked by an important fraction of the cuck army, they don't HAVE to hold the ground but simply move back or to a different position. Also, the rest of the troops would see that the cucks are weakening one of their flanks in a desperate attempt to outnumber and engage in cuck warfare one of our flanks,so they too can read the situation and act accordingly of their own initiative if an advantageous occasion is blatantly present.

They won didn't they?

And then that tightly packed mass of men will run at you screaming for blood.

You, being armed with fucking muskets, get two additional shots at them.. if they're marching and not charging. They will charge skirmishers. Most of your men would start running immediately.

They then hit your retarded ass skirmish line and EVERYONE who didn't flee either dies in the volley they give you at close range, or dies when several men with bayonets catch them.

>Like I said, I wouldn't have the intention of holding/gaining any ground whatsoever but to rekt the enemy.
That isn't how war works you stupid fucking faggot.

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't something like this get raped by dragoons?

You're assuming superiority of initiative among your own troops, which is facile. Always assume parity of troops if you want to talk about tactics in the bayonet/scum era

>Like I said, I wouldn't have the intention of holding/gaining any ground whatsoever but to rekt the enemy
If you're not holding ground, and you're not going out to meet the enemy, couldn't they just bypass you?

it was needed at the time to be sure men wouldn't flee at the first shots, to protect themselves from cavalry attacks and to be better coordenated with the rest of the army in terms of positioning

now if you want stupidy, you can go back to WWI where people stood in pools mud, feces, blood, puke and gore day and night as sitting ducks for artillery attacks... you'll die just like some sorry bloke in a line but without ever seeing the face of the one who killed you and without any honor or glory if those even exist in war.

>So it all boils down to cucking their scouts and there you have the decissive advantage.
I assume you must be fighting an enemy commander with down's syndrome if the disappearance of their scouts doesn't arouse any sort of suspicion.

>Thus there's no need to communicate anything to any particular detachment of soldiers once they understand this and are capable of acting of their own initiative as per requested in the flow of events.
>I.e if one specific flank is being attacked by an important fraction of the cuck army, they don't HAVE to hold the ground but simply move back or to a different position.
In real life, when divisions on the flanks retreat without command knowing, disaster tends to ensue. Say the two flanks move back to fallback positions, and it's just you. But let's freeze frame for a second and move onto the next little piece of stupidity you said.

>Also, the rest of the troops would see that the cucks are weakening one of their flanks
Do you have any idea how warfare in the age of black powder worked? Neither you or they WOULDN'T be able to see it. Firstly, you're all blending in with the trees for your fancy ambush, so you're not easy to spot to begin with if you don't have a standard flying. Secondly, your whole field of fire is filled with smoke. This is one of the advantages of firing in volleys; smoke dissipates around the same time, so your forces have a clear line of sight on their next volley. If your men are firing at will from the treeline, all you and they are going to see is one big cloud of smoke.

So, you in command at the center are shooting at these guys. You hear shouting and running, but you can't see through the clouds of smoke while everyone is busy shooting. When the smoke clears, it's just you and the center, while your flanks have moved to fallback positions. They couldn't contact you because they couldn't even find you in the cloud of smoke and trees. Now you're dead. Good job.

Is this guy's use of cucks really bothering anybody else?

Yes but this is /pol/ lite, what were you expecting.

>I wonder if anyone ever did something like this.

yes, read up on the Indian Wars in Eastern North America. it worked in terms of winning some pretty major victories, but was strategically terrible because holding ground is required to defend stuff.

I love how these threads always start with the assumption that the leaders of yore didn't know what they were doing and some faggot on a Cambodian throat yodeling bulletin-board does.

this guy.

plus before the wireless you're going to at most be able to organize a few hundred fighters in such an asymmetrical fashion.

I know I'm used to it. But there's something about this strain of autism that's rustling me

That or too much of The Patriot (which, mind you, still made clear that it was Continental Regulars and the French that won the war, even if skirmishers and irregulars helped).

Throughout primary school Americans were taught how stupid the British were for wearing bright clothing and standing in lines and how terrible Bunker Hill was on the British (the fact that they won non-withstanding). It's understandably shocking when they subsequently find out that the reason the Americans won was because Germans and Frenchmen fought and taught them to fight as men standing in line formation and brightly colored uniforms.

To be fair a decent portion of officers pre or during the napoleonic wars didn't know what they were doing. I forgot who it was, but I know during the Pennisular campaign Wesley begged one of the spanish commanders to bring his troops behind the fortified British position behind a river when the commander insisted on putting his troops on the same side of the river as the attacking French

The morons who ran head first into a pike phalanx?

It wasn't the rifle that was inaccurate it was the soldiers. They were never trained in marksmanship but just taught to level and fire ahead, plus in combat every soldier becomes much less accurate, when combined with less accurate muskets and men not trained for accuracy you get a package that cant hit a barn door.

It's just the meme of the day, most of the time the overuse of the word is helpful at choosing wich opinions to disregard, and the rest of the time I just tend to tune it out as white noise.

It's both.

>they were never trained in marksmanship but just taught to level and fire ahead,
Training marksmanship is rather difficult with guns that do not have sights.

>cuck cuck cuckity cuck

.... you just watched Braveheart and the Patriot and used those to form this brilliant battlefield tactic, didn't you?

I'm spread out all over the bushes in what can be called an impromptu entrench terrain with no intention of holding it anyway, but to have 300 cucks dead while we have 2 or 3 casualties. Go on killing cucks for as long as we have the tactic advantage/leave the field if no longer the case.

Assuming the cucks throw their cavalry at me in some place, like I said we're spread out in the bushes behind logs and stuff so I doubt they'd be able to charge in formation. They'd also have to spread out and each one of them cucks on horse presents a much clear target than we do.

Your use of the word cuck makes you sound retarded. The fact that you don't understand that irregulars were a niche unit and that hydroplane tacts were tactics used out of desperation (not to win wars) confirms your idiocy.

I'm impressed with the patience and sincerity these other anons have been answering you.

Because you're fucking autistic

Guerilla* not hydroplane tactics

>how terrible Bunker Hill was on the British (the fact that they won non-withstanding)
Maybe it's because I was a Special Child©, but I was always taught that Bunker Hill was a pyrrhic British victory.

Like I said earlier, wouldn't this get rekt by dragoons? They're just as good at skirmishing, but are better at the maneuver.

Don't quote me on this but I read somewhere that soldiers didn't even have that many live practice shots to begin with.

>You can't see anything in the field because le smoke

So that also applies to them as well or is it only us the ones that cannot into see?

Furthermore, lack of visibility in the action would, if anything, be to our advantage as we just need to aim at & follow the big cuck mass, while each one of us is it's in own unit and target.

Keywords are firepower and mobility. I have superiority in both. By the time you make up for that with your cuck formation maneuvres we're already out and you have 500 cucks dead/wounded on the ground.

Congratulations for conquering the ground though. Kek.

>Like I said earlier, wouldn't this get rekt by dragoons? They're just as good at skirmishing, but are better at the maneuver.

Didn't you read what he wrote? He's got guys behind bushes. Behind the fucking bushes! That's game over man.

Exactly, but as the light infantry who did focus on aiming proved, it was possible.
Yes depending on the army, French soldiers fired like 3 shots in training, it was the British who were lucky enough to have about 30 rounds to fire during training.

You can't maneuver as well because they have standards, musicians and easy to see uniforms. Your ragged formation would have to disperse to avoid a counter strike, rendering it extremely vulnerable to cavalry (yes even in a forest).

...

You DO realize that if everything is obscured by smoke, that means you lost the ONE thing where you had an advantage? The enemy infantry just charged your disorganized skirmishers. Since you have prevented any organized structure through autistic insistence on skirmishing, you cannot retreat in order. Your army is broken and subsequently massacred.

GG.

>no way of stopping large masses of infantry due to low fire concentration
>can be outmaneuvered by cavalry of the light & heavy varieties, with light dragoons being able to dismount and engage in skirmish formation
>no way of quick communication due to dispersion
>can be easily surrounded on a strategic level
So this is the doctrine of a """""military genius"""".

Jesus Christ man it's the fucking bushes holy hell.

>le cuck le xdd
Instead of basing your knowledge off of the bullshit you were taught in High School and what little you surmised from watching the Patriot, why dont you read a book on the subject instead of acting like an autistic armchair general?

I love how this idiot thinks they will just run ahead. Youre ambushing them, and they would find this out since theyll use scouts which will see your preparations and "hidden catapults". What exactly are you planning to do when the enemy army just turns and only attacks your left flank? Or when they cavalry just runs around your retarded ambush and attacks you in the rear, rendering your skirmishers useless and oushing them towards their main army and easily shooting them down?
Also, your skirmishers simply wouldnt be able to kill enough men before they reach your formation, even when theyd just charge head on which you seem to believe theyd do for some reason

I see no meme here .
Wellington told his men to "aim at their shoelaces" for a reason.

Master troll? Or master autist? Cause I'm mad

kek

Is it wrong that I find pike formations extremely arousing?

Hi Freud

>cavalry men with sword/pistol charging through a deep forest against an unknown enemy that doesn't keep a formation or concentrates on an specific location
>me and my highly mobile mates spread out, cowering behind trees with our muskets ready to fire

Bet on us, lad. Even if they were on tanks.

t. Finland's Winter War.

I'm glad he was dumb enough to post his genius battle plan so I could actually learn something about why Napoleon-era battles were fought the way they were

Finland lost the winter war, irregular tactics were tactics of desperation. The revolutionary, napoleonic, peninsular, Indian, and eastern wars of the bayonet-musket era were won by conventional line tactics.

What makes you think that your ideas are anything but one trick niche tactics

Those tactics were god-tier for the time though.

you maek me sad
pls no bully

lol i chuckled

>having superior firepower
how do you rationalize that? Also why would a "cuck" formation be attacking a forest in the first place instead of just taking the road?

They "lost" they winter war because they couldn't fall back anymore as the russians were throwing hordes at them through the entire front.

So yes, it was a Russian victory with 200k ruskis dead in the process. Nice victory.

>guys all of those generals for the past 5,000 years who spent thousands of hours studying strategy and commanding armies were retards and I'm not

So in this theoretical battle where the cuck army HAS to go through the forest, why not just bombard with artillery? Its not like skirmishers had any to counter with.

>hiw do you rationalize that?

Because I'm in an under cover position and the cuck is standing grouped in the open, therefore I hit x10 cucks for each hit I get.

>why would they attack the forest

Because they're standing grouped in the open and getting hit x10 for each hit I got. At best. They could also pull back out of range and disengage though. But so can I.

It doesn't work that way. You have to come out of cover in order to fire, at which point 10 men fire at you, killing you. In fact you're being hit x10 for each hit you do to someone.

For the same reason there were duels between gentlemen and officers were supposed not be shot. Because le honorability and shit.

These whole thing started off as Royal Armies commanded by stupendous aristocrats. So posing > efficiency, and as the opposite aristocrat also plays by the same rules with his own mass of sheeple cucks... why change? Just have our cucks form in lines and shoot at each other in the open lol

How do you counter light cannon you dumbass

>cavalry men with sword/pistol
Do you know what a dragoon is?

>it's an uneducated American NEET doesn't understand history nor military science thread

>leave the field if no longer the case
So your infantry will just walk away from a cavalry charge?

>The armies of the day were mercenary armies with bad morale
Lolno. Hardly anyone was ever mercenary in 18th Century European armies

They're either professional standing armies or conscripts.

...

t. 14 year old COD player

Many people like to think they know better than others.

smoothbore muskets were accurate enough to hit a 7 ft by 100 ft target at 200 yards - i.e., the size of a line of enemy infantry. Hitting a specific person would have been almost impossible. Smoothbore muskets were relatively quick to reload (compared to rifled muskets), so they did have an advantage in that respect.

>because they couldn't fall back anymore

So they lost.

hindsight is 20/20. after WWI the failure of trench warfare and 'bleeding out' the enemy was acknowledged.

Why do wholly inexperienced, unqualified teenagers on a Vietnamese cave painting forum think that they have better knowledge on how to wage 18th century warfare than the actual generals of that time? Why do people assume that everyone in the past must have all just been retarded?

This is one of the reasons why Napoleon favored muskets despite advances in Rifle-making.

Except the trench warfare in WW1 was the first and last instance of its kind, and it lasted less than 5 years. Line Infantry was utilized from the 17th century all the way to the 19th century. To think that the people of the time were too stupid to recognize the inefficiency of a military tactic over the course of 200 years of warfare is really retarded.

what about doing a cavalry charge with sabers.

"On 12 August 1914 at Halen (in the province of Limburg) Uhlans of the German cavalry (light cavalry armed with lances) attempted to charge a strong Belgian position with naked swords."

The next day, one of the most terrible slaughters of German cavalry occurred at Haelen, a town lying directly on the path between Brussels and Liege. In an attempt to outflank the Belgian army by by-passing Tirlemont, a German force, mainly consisting of cavalry, horse artillery and infantry support, wheeled against the town. Under heavy Belgian artillery fire, German Uhlans, Dragoons, Hussars and Kurassiers tried to force their way down the Steevorn-Haelen road but met with only shrapnel and shell fire. Undaunted, they tried again, this time actually reaching the Belgian barricades, only to be beaten back at the last breath by sustained infantry rifle fire. Having regrouped, the massed German cavalry then charged the Belgian defences even more forcibly. This prompted an equally brutal counter-charge by the Belgian cavalry (notably the Lancers and Chasseurs a Cheval) which resulted in a savage hand-to-hand combat. Again, the Germans were forced to retire. However, they resolved to make a final, all or nothing charge against what they, presumably, believed was the weakest point in the Belgian defences. It turned out to be the costliest decision yet in the battle for Haelen, as the point they chose was bristling with Belgian machine-gunners. The inevitable conclusion was a pitiful carnage of horses and men and was as courageous as it was disastrous. Their casualty figures at Haelen amounted to almost a thousand. One German cavalry officer, in a letter to his wife, recalled that '...our retreat was ...paralysed by the number of riderless horses roaming about, and by the stragglers of the 2nd Kurassiers and 9th Uhlans who had been cut up by machine-guns.' [ Attr.letter, p.146, N. Flower, History of the Great War, 1917]

Thanks to the theoretical fight between the Bush Bros. and the Cuck Army, I have earned a metric shit ton of stuff about tactics, weapons, and warfare in general from the Infantry Square time period.

Thanks a lot, dumbass. You made the smart ones on Veeky Forums to teach me stuff. Great job, everyone!

Any book to study this formations or tactics?

that's ridiculous. trench warfare didn't "fail." What do you think it would have looked like if the central powers decided not to do trench warfare anymore?

for more position warfare, see the Normandy and Italian campaigns in ww2 and most of the Korean War.

yes, the French continued to you smoothbores even for their light infantry - they were quite effective.

Not really a book, but the website Napolun is an amazing resource on the armies and tactics of the Napoleonic era.

For earlier stuff (Seven Years War, War of the Austrian Succession) I don't rightly know. Maybe The Army of Frederick the Great, by Christopher Duffy?

For the Napoleonic era, there's Paddy Griffith's Forward into Battle.

Mount and Blade : Napoleonic Wars