Lmao guys i have an idea why don't we all just stand in a straight line and shoot all those other guys standing in a...

they can stand up if they see cavalry approaching

you definitely can

It takes a considerable amount of time for troops to form into a formation that can actually take a cavalry charge. Your guys have to stand up, orient themselves, form multiple straight lines normal to the axis of attack. You need exceptionally well drilled troops for that to work, and for the time it took to train them, you can train 3 times as many "drones" that only know how to march in a line and kneel when told to.

Skirmish lines also have really poor firepower concentration, and that's a problem when even line infantry sometimes don't have enough firepower to break a charge before the impact.

Skirmishers only make sense when

1 - Your guys can run faster an retreat from any charge (good luck against cavalry)
2- The ground they are standing on is not important and can be ceded without too much difficulty
3- It's more important to keep your casualties low than to cause casualties to the enemy

Please, show me how you reload a muzzle loaded musket several feet long while laying prone.

>falling for the musket meme
welcome to Veeky Forums, new friend :)

What the fuck are you even trying to say? Are you somehow denying that muskets were the main, in fact almost universal weapon of infantry in the 18th century?

if you'd ever even opened a history book you would know soldiers always carried several spare loaded muskets, sometimes as many as five.or more, to use in case of a cavalry charge.

>if you'd ever even opened a history book you would know soldiers always carried several spare loaded muskets
Bullshit, given how something like a Brown Bess weighed a bit over 10 pounds and was 149 cm long. Where the hell are they carrying these things? With the extra 5 hands that mutants forming the armies of the day had?

Multiple muskets to one dude was something that only happened defending fortifications, and was abnormal even then.

>sometimes as many as five.or more
the absolute state of Veeky Forums

>why were people living in olden times so dumb

Before the mid-19th century, rifles were still very innacurate. The only way they could realistically achieve maximum lethality is by firing large amounts of them at a target 80-90 yards away. The reason the "line and fire" tactic persisted so long was because it was extremely effective until the technology changed.

The whole volley fire theory was a bunch utter BS in practice. In reality troop lines could only pull off one or 2 volleys before getting disorganized, scared and exhausted, at which point after that the line shot individually. Once they shot individually, line infantry became panicked retarded useless meatshields for jagers, bayonet charges, artillery and cavalry to kill.

Sergeant: Ok guys, disperse into the bushes where I can't see you so you're harder to shoot

Half his troops head for the hills while he's not looking.

If a formation was dispersed by 1-2 meters between each man it could still do a volley fire. Also,as I said, its not like tight line formations could fire volleys any more effectively.

>getting baited then being this mad
silly boy :^}

It's pathetic how many times you cunts fall for this shitpost instead of simply letting it fall off the board

Even if that is true (Which it isn't), volley fire would still be the best method.
Volley fire was the prevailing method for line infantry up until the invention of breechloaders.

Why would you know better than the best military minds of the ages?

Why didn't they just spread out their line in a forest? That way a cuck army approching wouldn't be able to charge them with cavalry due to all the trees and branches while the skirmishers are in cover and spread out so they kill the cucks marching in formation.

Not him, but if the formation has on average 1.5 meters between each man, and is say, 50 men long, then assuming on average each man is half a meter wide, we have a 50 man formation extending 100 meters.

The effective firing range of most line battle muskets was at around the 100 meter range. If your formation is really dispersed, and you want everyone to shoot at the same point in the enemy line, in order to clear away a patch for follow up attacks, either with cavalry or bayonet, it's going to be hard for the guys at the edges of the formation to accurately shoot. It would NOT be able to do effective volley fire, and tighter line formations could in fact do it more effectively.

t. Empire Total War

>march past forest
>occupy towns, farms and strategic points
>wait for forest niggers to starve to death

...

Yeah, muskets were totally cheap, and so easy to carry.

There are many first hand accounts from the napoleonic wars that line infantry could only shoot individually after the first 1-2 volleys and became completely undusciplined and innaccurate. There were frequent situations where line infantry formations were shooting at 15m at each other due to the cover of gunpowder smoke and even then they still couldnt hit eachother due to fatigue and panic. This begs the question why didnt line infantry immediately make bayonet charges after coming less than 50m from the enemy if they couldnt shoot jack shit.

>I know what I'm talking about, ive seen plenty of movies about this.

Even doing a bayonet charge requires a lot of discipline and elan.

By the time that communication and order breaks down enough that volley fire is no longer possible, then how is the officer going to communicate the order to charge as a unit?

One dude is not going to decide "fuck this" and bayonet charge by himself. To conduct a coherent charge is one of the most demanding things to do in warfare. An incoherent charge is also one of the most useless things in warfare.

Fuck you, 18th century warfare is cozy and civilized.

sometimes something is just so retarded you can't help but respond.

Why not have lines of cannons in front of every line of troops?

Why wouldn't that work?

More elan than discipline. Not anyone is going to decide to fight at bayonet range, but when you get there it's chaos in general, there's little use for the precise organisation necessary for firing in line. It's a great reason why the french early in the revolutionary wars preferred bayonet range: they could not trust conscripts with firing in any orderly fashion, but they could more or less trust them to be eager to stab a motherfucker.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, of course.

Why reply to the same bait thread over and over, with the same goddamn answers only to be given the same responses only to reply again? It's like Groundhog Day for crayon eaters like you that think they are so smert for having basic bitch fucking historical knowledge, when really you are just a pack of shit painters performing in front of OP's broken record bait that's been rerun almost as much as MASH. I'm suspecting that you fat tongued fucks replying to this rehashed bait that might as well be a massive neon billboard declaring its intent are actually in on the act and are playing dumb and bumping in order to be a troll within a troll to piss off the ordinary punter that just wants to see some decent discussion on this open sewer of a board from time to time. Kill yourself.

Thats how suvorov won his battles thriugh bayonet charges. If you have a line of panicked retards facing another line of panicked retards, if you force your panicked retards to charge with bayonets theres a high chance that the other side will lose its nerve and retreat. In other words, line infantry was only useful the first few minutes of battle, after that they became a disorganized rabble incapable of hitting anyone, and only useful for bayonet charges and meatshields.

Still I proved that line infantry was useless rabble after the first few volleys.

...

> In other words, line infantry was only useful the first few minutes of battle, after that they became a disorganized rabble incapable of hitting anyone, and only useful for bayonet charges and meatshields.

That completely depends on the quality of the infantry. Good infantry like Napoleon's Imperial guards are known for being able to deliver repeated volley fire while under fire themselves. Certain British regiments are also known for being able to do the same. If your troops are still in good order when the enemy charges, then their charge is doomed to fail.

But once the Napoleonic wars kicked into full swing, nobody had the time or resources to drill and train soldiers to the high standard required to stay calm while taking fire. You had small groups of veterans that could do it, and a large rabble of poorly trained conscripts who couldn't.

The American civil war was the last war where line infantry was dominant, and they relied very much on shooting to do the killing. The Model 1861 was capable of 5 MOA accuracy, which is good enough to hit a man out to 400 meters pretty consistently. The casualty numbers from ACW battles from just shooting alone is staggering.

>dude I am so much smarter than all those officers and generals that trained for years to reach the peak of strategy with the available armaments and technology

No, no you didnt.

infantry is supposed to hold positions, and die if needed. artillery is supposed to break through, cavalry to flank. they worked as designed.

What are condensed flanks with cavalry support

Implying we dont do the same thing now but better

>underrated

And lines of horses in front of the lines of cannons

Pretty good, post it on /pol/ for 15+ replies.

Please give 3.

Why are you sucking some school-bred officer's dick so hard? Lining up and firing at each other is pretty fucking stupid. Even troops specialized in melee would've been better than just shooting back and forth, my god.

Dude, you need to read more. Gunpower warfare from 1450 - 1800ish fascinating.

100 hundred dudes all firing at once beats 100 people dispersed. People seriously underestimate the psychological effect of massed musketry too

The whole point of line infantry is to put as much lead down range at once as possible. By cramming troops together you can take out swathes of the enemy with each volley. This is terrifying to be on the buisnes end of. The same amount of men in a loose formation would be easily pushed aside by an infantry formation or run down by cavalry. If there was a more effective way, someone would have used it.

But "panicked retard" isn't necessarily an undisciplined one. A british line infantrymen is a cowardly dreg, but he'll stand his place, reload, fire, and he'll repeat for as long as you tell him to, and that's not a quality one can knock. It can be a scary quality in an army. But he's not particularly useful at bayonet range, where the brit simply lacks the elan and morale to stand his place at the end of a steel blade.
>only useful for bayonet charges and meatshields
And neither is that a quality to knock, really. There's the french quality: they knew that their soldiers, disorganized as they were, could very well absorb bullets while still closing to bayonet range. They weren't going to have much order to a charge, but they'd charge all the same.

This guy is right, but he also implies that skirmishers, bayonet charges, (field)artillery (which were relatively late additions to decisive battlefield killing power compared to the handgun) and cavalry would fare better in general, which is false. The great benefit of formation in early modern warfare is precisely that it allows troops to uphold the weak musket fire for longer in times of extreme stress. Cavalry is excellent for slaughtering running infantry or breaking their will to fight, but horses are reluctant to charge into a solid mass of people, even when theyre well trained, and so a organized formation facing cavalry will almost always come out on top - people imagine theyre some kind of ancient monster truck, able to mow down anything in their path, which is simply not true. As for skirmishers, theres the perpetual problem of maneuver, and of course the aforementioned proneness to breaking instantly upon facing counterfire. Melee combat tends to be risky since it requires a gap to be closed in good order and any panic in the line will inevitably result in disaster.

This strategy was for example used in the battle of Waterloo. If the enemy cant break your line after your artillerymen have retreated into safety, and if they dont plug your cannons when they in turn retreat, youre at liberty to return to your cannon and keep up the bombardment in safety.

Battle of Poltava.

What if they built trenches or deep foxholes?

>enemy marches around your army that's busy digging holes in one place and burns down your house
What now?

then they walk around you like the trench-niggers you are.
See

Fine. What if they dug holes and put grass/dirt covers over the holes, then waited for the enemy to advance and pop out from the holes and shoot/stab them? The enemy doesn't realise that they're there btw so they don't think to go straight for the town.

>what if they dug holes
While they're digging the holes, the enemy either comes in and buttfucks the disorganized troops, or just walks around and buttfucks the town behind them. Trenchniggers foiled again.

Is there a certain name for this style of combat, where formations of soldiers just line up and fire rifles and cannons at each other? I've always wondered if it had a specific term for it, the closest I've ever thought of to describe it would be like "Napoleonic Warfare" or something but that can't be right as its far too specific.

Ok, what if they dispersed themselves into the surrounding area and snuck towards the enemy one-by-one, but then attacked all at once. Assuming they can can kill one enemy soldier before getting killed themselves, if they have more soldiers, this would be successful.

>snuck towards the enemy one-by-one
most of them would probably desert when they realized that nobody's watching them. The rest would be discovered by a sentry and then their disorganized asses would get fucked, considering the enemy could probably form up from camp pretty quickly and the attacking troops officers don't even know where all there men are.

It's napoleonic warfare.

People who suggest things like this have never had to organize anything

Basically, user, whenever you ask a question "why didn't they just do this", it's not because they didn't think of it. It was because doing anything other than what was normal was a logistical nightmare that probably wouldn't work anyways.

>it's yet another "I'm a 15 year old neckbeard weeb and I know napoleonic warfare better than all the most experienced officers who actually fought in the wars of the 18-19th century" thread

why would a weeb be interested in the napoleonic era

>amercians

...

kek
i'll do that desu

what if i'm legit retarded tho?

war is stupid, faggot

>several spare loaded muskets
You're confusing muskets with pistols.

...actual question here.
Many important events in battles are caused by mistakes on the commanders' end, but I remember only a couple at the moment. Could you make some examples?

>this is the OVER 9000th time we have created this thread
>we are becoming exceedingly efficient at it

memes aside, cossacks sometimes did carry 2 muskets for example

The shots wouldnt connect if they didn't user-kun

Volley fire wasnt the best method and one of the best miltiary thinkers of the time agrees with that, Maurice De Saxe. Also in the Napoleonic wars volley fire was mostly abandonned in favour of fire at will because as Maurice de Saxe said the volley fire idea was only good for delivirng devestating volleys(The swedish caroleans for example) but for prolonged fighting fire at will should be used because with an already inaccurate musket its not a good idea to have to make the soldier wait and lose his aim and oppertunity to fire simply because he must wait for the others in the regiment to be ready to fire.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Also if anyone wants to read about Maurice the Saxes ideas either read his own work Mes Rêveries or Great Captains unveiled by B. H. Liddell Hart.

>it's a "user thinks he knows better than countless incredibly talented military generals" episode
There's enough of these on /k/, I don't want them here too.