Why did Napoleon never adopt the rifle? Surely it's a better weapon for light foot?
Why did Napoleon never adopt the rifle? Surely it's a better weapon for light foot?
Carter Gomez
Isaiah Russell
It was a better weapon for elite light infantry. Line infantry : not so much.
The problem with rifles is that they are slower to reload than smoothbores when fouled : you have to hammer the bullet and patch with what's called a 'bullet starter', then drive the patched bullet along the grooves. A rifle could only make one or two shots per minute when a smoothbore made at least 3. And since Napoleon relied heavily on offensive tactics, he didn't want his men to spend too much of their time aiming and reloading, so he preferred the superior firepower of smoothbores to the extent that I think he forbidden the making of rifles during the war.
Brody King
he did?
Hunter Watson
because French "light foot" had hooves...
Gabriel Foster
He had a microdick.
Gabriel Scott
> Why did Donald Trump never adopt the plasma rifle?
> Why did Ludendorff never adopt the assault rifle?
> Why did the ancient Romans never adopt the halberd?
Elijah Kelly
being this stupid.
Tyler Gonzalez
You're retarded if you think rifles didn't exist in the time of Napoleon
Henry Morris
Napoopan's light infantry/skirmishers were just trained in excellent marksmanship with a regular ass musket.
But Napoopan's light infantry can also join the main line and fight as line infantry.
Basically French Skirmishers occupied this weird twilight zone between regular-ass infantry and specialists.
Jaxson Martinez
>Barrel rifling was invented in Augsburg, Germany in 1498.[5] In 1520 August Kotter, an armourer of Nuremberg, Germany improved upon this work.
firearmshistory.bl*gsp*t.fr
Liam Sullivan
Getting BTFO this hard.
Parker Watson
youtube.com
This video answers your questions
Logan Phillips
Art Alphin is god
Andrew Brooks
The rifle used a much smaller bullet than the musket. For long-range shooting most of the power of the already small bullet would be lost to drag.
Another reason- soldiers are very poor shots under combat conditions and their hit rate is actually worse than the random spread of a cannon firing cannister. The increased potential accuracy of a rifle would go to waste unless it was in the hands of the rare man who actually aims in combat.
Mason Diaz
Low rate of fire until invention of breech loading rifles.
Wyatt Green
The Austrians had the Girandoni air rifle, which was way more advanced than anything back then and had a very high rate of fire, but they gave up on using them because of logistics.
youtube.com
youtube.com
Carter Wright
It also had about 1/8th of the power of a musket. The bullets are so slow you can see them flying out the barrel.
Brayden Wood
In Napoleon's typical big battalion assaults, I can understand why he didn't wan rifles, but surely, he could've at least trained a corps of specialists to use for unconventional battles. Especially in places like Spain, Tyrol, and Italy where there was guerrilla attacks.
Daniel Murphy
see
Ryder Russell
because the Minie Ball was not adopted until the 1850s. all the predecessors to the minie ball were never adopted or as effective. which made using rifles more difficult than smoothbore guns.
Robert James
Keep in mind that Napoleon also turned down an opportunity to create steamships. Not all of Napoleon's decisions are extremely "brilliant".
William Torres
>Expecting conscripts to benefit from increased accuracy
Remember, this is a guy that bragged about 30,000 of his own soldiers dying each month.
David Campbell
This. Remember that firearms of the time used black powder and unjacketed lead bullets. After a few shots, barrels would be full of residue. This is part of the reason why firearms of the time had such windages: there needed to be a greater gap between the projectile and bore to make it easier to shove the thing down the barrel after repeated firings. With a rifled weapon, you'd encounter problems with the barrel getting clogged with residue more easily than a smoothbore.
Moreover, rifles were very much a specialist weapon, requiring skill in both production and use. As I recall, they could not be mass-produced: the grooves had to be manually cut by hand, and this was a demanding and time-consuming process. This problem would be alleviated by the adaptation of the same techniques used to make screws, although the latter was very much a cutting-edge technology by the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
Bentley Sanchez
Good watch. Bizarre the french didn't learn these lessons by WW1.
Adrian Rivera
/ourguy/
Jack Martin
>minie ball
>not a ball