Thread 64352164

Ain't no way this was the best way to fight wars for like 2 centuries.

It was, you just have a poor understanding of it.

Smoke and gay accuracy necessitated it

>>64352164 (OP)
What would you have done differently?

>>64352164 (OP)
The silly hats were kino, though.

Lanchester's laws, it also applies to animals too. If you're big enough, but still organized, then everyone smaller will be destroyed without causing much harm because they're overkilled.
The only way to win a battle against those armies was creating something equivalent, be a pair.
Asymmetrical warfare wasn't a thing because if you lost your quarters you lost your rights to govern that territory and you're still being haunted by your pedigree and you need your territory and power to gain allies and collaborators for your war (Europe was far more divided).

>Conquers half the world
Sorry, we didn't know it was a silly way to fight wars.

>>64352164 (OP)
You have a musket that shoots twice a minute, with no rifling or sights. The enemy has cavalrymen with swords, wearing steel breastplates that can resist a musket shot at all but the closest ranges.

A lone man running around firing at targets of opportunity the way we fight today would be cut down in moments, likely without scoring a single hit. But if you fight in formation, giving ordered volleys on command, your combined firepower can halt a charge, while the ranks behind you can keep up a steady rate of fire while you reload. And if the enemy closes in to fight in melee, the bayonets of a massed infantry formation function like a phalanx of old, far more effectively repelling the enemy than the same number of men fighting individually could.

>>64352246
He's just a seething indian who's salty that white bois were able to conquer the world with wooden ships. They should do it again.

>>64352246
The Spaniards didn't believe it at first either.

>>64352164 (OP)
It kinda was, mostly because of the strengths and limitations of their weapons. There was short period in the 1600s where it was somewhat fashionable to have guys in full armor run up to the enemy line on horseback, pepper them with their single shot pistols, and run away. They'd get fucked up by the firing line all the time so this trend died quick. Eventually the armor mostly goes away and it evolves into guys with rifles using horses to get to strategic vantage points to lay down volleys. Given the guns at the time, it just looks like formations and volleys are a result of every army minmaxing for attack.

>>64352399
Broken order combat, both with muskets and rifles, was also attempted. The problems with that are that the rifle was slow-loading and broken order does not bring as many guns to bear as a line formation. Hence these attempts were useful in wasting ammunition and harrassing at range, but couldn't bring decisive results. And a unit of skirmishers could not stand up to line infantry when the latter advanced on the former. Let alone, it was stated before, to cavalry.

>>64352164 (OP)
Linear warfare made sense; it only seems otherwise because an average person's understanding of it comes from pop history media made by equally uninformed people, and because they don't consider the limitations of period technology (in particular the absence of radios and smokeless powder)
>why lines?
first of all, that wall of bayonets is your only defense against getting steamrolled by enemy cavalry (or the enemy's wall of bayonets)
secondly, good luck coordinating five hundred dudes in any other way without radios
>why fire in volleys?
"accuracy" is probably the standard explanation, but that's not the full picture: it's more about effective range
an individual trained soldier with a smoothbore musket can reliably hit a dude up to about 100 yards, or maybe a bit further if he's really good; for context, this just happens to be about the same range a bayonet charge becomes viable at
put a bunch of dudes together, and collectively they can more effectively engage at significantly greater distances
>why brightly colored uniforms and banners?
because black powder: camo is largely irrelevant because the moment you take a shot, the big cloud of smoke gives your position away
a battlefield will get pretty smokey, so with that and the lack of radios, this is the only way anyone on either side will be able to tell what the fuck is going on
development of smokeless powder in the late 19th c. was very quickly followed by armies switching to more drab colors
>why musicians?
pre-radio comms relaying orders and signals
>did they just never think to try fighting like we do?
As it happens, they actually did: skirmishers/light infantry like in pic fought in a dispersed manner much more familiar to someone in current year, but due to already specified reasons, this was only viable in niche applications (e.g. harrassing the enemy, screening for the main body of infantry, or fighting in mountainous/densely forested terrain where cavalry is less dangerous)

>>64352265
>with no [...] sights
ackshyually they did, kinda like the bead sights on shotguns in current year
>inb4 "but it is le bayonet lug"
tell it to the period writers who explicitly called it a sight

>>64352597
>that wall of bayonets is your only defense against getting steamrolled by enemy cavalry
Big mistake.
Its was salvo fire from dense ranks that stopped cavalry not bayonets. You ain't gonna stop horse with bayonet
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5iva_jAbzJY

>>64352164 (OP)

Why no bows or slings? I get that a crossbow is in its function a less effective musket, but bows and slings fire faster and in the age of muskets there is basically no infantry armor anymore.

>>64353164
Skill, logistics, range

>>64353164
Require much more training and physical ability than a guy with a musket. It's why despite there being repeating rifles in the 17th century, people used smooth-boore muskets for a long time. Easier to maintain, cheaper to make, easier to train with.

>>64353100
depends on the definition of "stopped"

bayonets were needed to literally stop the cavalry charge, i.e. physically prevent horses from just crashing through the square, because musketry was not accurate or fast enough to wipe out a cavalry charge on its own. as any dressage rider knows, horses will balk at a fence of blades and cannot be made to deliberately impale itself.

however, if the infantry were armed with bayonets alone - spears, in other words - without muskets and ammo, they would be sitting ducks obviously for the cavalry's own firearms. they would be picked off at leisure from outside of bayonet reach.
hence, to figuratively stop the cavalry charge i.e. defeat it decisively, musketry was necessary.

TL;DR in anti-cavalry square tactics, both musket fire and bayonet play complementary and necessary roles.

>>64352164 (OP)
It's mainly about density.
If you were fighting on an infinite battlefield and your soldiers can be trusted to fight in small groups and you want to get the best KTD ratio possible, it would make sense to disperse as much as you could within shooting range and take prone potshots and slowly whittle down the enemy standing in their dense lines.
Even against cavalry you'd likely get a better KTD ratio by scattering for cover and hiding a guy behind every tree and rock, because even as their dense cavalry charge steamrolls the few guys in their path they'll be constantly shot to shit from all sides.

The problem is that it's not a team deathmatch server. It's a control point server and when everyone on your team picks the sniper class and runs to a corner of the map to camp, you lose.
You've arrived at this massive field battle because the enemy is marching down the road to Paris and you have to prevent that because the country falls if Paris does.
If you give the order 'everyone scatter and whittle them down' you're not playing the objective.
Maybe your skirmishers will kill a bunch of them at a really favorable ratio before they loot all the supplies in your camp, cross the next river, set up a small rearguard on the bridge and occupy Paris uncontested.
The way wars tend to be fought that is you end up really wanting to have a dense, decisive force that can punch through to the objective you're fighting for. And if maximum concentrated firepower comes from stacking your guys 3 ranks deep in a line and telling them to follow the guy with the giant hat and all shoot at once that's what you do.

There are other considerations like command and control and morale problems, but they could all have been worked around if they were the only thing standing in the way of a fundamentally better way of fighting.

>>64352164 (OP)
>europeans driving the cutting edge of warfare technology and tactics for 2500 years
>noo this one period seems dumb to me

Odd considering it’s during this time Europe was at it most expansionist, conquering or making vassal the rest of the world

>>64352164 (OP)
I'm sure I sound like a broken record at this point, but I will continue to recommend the excellent "The Art of War in the Western World" by Archer Jones. It goes into quite some detail how and why military formations evolved over the centuries. There are tactical, operational, and strategic reasons why lines of muskets dominated for so long.

>>64352164 (OP)
You're a fucking stupid nigger

>>64352164 (OP)
>>64353402
>It's mainly about density
One thing I've always wondered is why line infantry didn't evolve a front row of men just carrying bulletproof pavisses? Musketeer's immediate predecessors were crossbowman who used them for cover. Why not extend that to heavier shields for cover for musktmen?
I'm sure there's some several reasons but am unaware of why.

>>64353738
Because that shit would be heavy as fuck and maneuver is king

>>64352164 (OP)
people fight in ways that win.

shitting on musket meta is more retarded than most metas because European armies went out of their way to stress test their approach to war against everybody else on their own home turf, and won far more often than not.

>>64353738
>Have to carry a heavy ass slab of metal around
>Can't maneuver as fast in case of calavry or just to plug up any gaps that open.
>Lose a whole line of men when you can just give those same men guns so you have more firepower.
If you just use 10% of logic then you can see why that is a retarded idea. The pavises worked for crossbow men because crossbow men weren't used as line infantry and their job was just to sit down in one spot and pepper the enemy with bolts. The musket armed troops replaced pike men and like pike men they had to move around and engage with the enemy.

>>64353738
>why line infantry didn't evolve a front row of men just carrying bulletproof pavisses
artillery. fucking artillery existed, retard.

why do you retards always forget that every army in this period deployed with dozens to hundreds of field guns and typically had a greater number of cavalry squadrons than infantry battalions (force mixes of 30-50% cavalry were quite typical in terms of man counts)

>>64353738
Sounds expensive. Economics of war are a thing. Campaigning is expensive. Laying siege very expensive. Can the coffers afford it?

>>64353779
>>64353738
also, the enemy infantry would just rush you with bayonets.

>>64353402
>Even against cavalry you'd likely get a better KTD ratio by scattering for cover and hiding a guy behind every tree and rock
You really, really won't. Even if your guys were freakin' robots with unbreakable morale.

>>64353402
How could you be so wrong
For thousands of years scattering against cavalry charges has been the way you get absolutely massacred

>>64353164
because basic armor would hard counter your tactics and get you even more fucked than the sods who got massacred by firearms even without any armor in every engagement

bow fire rate was never a meaningful factor even during the time when it was a viable battlefield weapon, they still shot like once per minute to not get stammed out and preserve ammo over the course of battles.

>>64352246
>half

>>64353402
>Even against cavalry you'd likely get a better KTD ratio by scattering for cover and hiding a guy behind every tree and rock
no, you would get fucking massacred because that's what always happens when cavalry runs into scattered infantry. they'd need to be in ground where cavalry can't really operate like thick forest, boulders or a town to have any chance. in the open you close ranks and present bayonets, or you die immediately

it wasn't until repeating rifles and machine guns that infantry gained enough mass of fire to actually stand a chance of repulsing cavalry without cold steel and forming a physical barrier

>>64352164 (OP)
>it can't be
>it's not possible
>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!1!
if you think about it, the refusal of the common public to understand line and column infantry tactics is exactly why they were necessary, and why so many men were killed when they fell out of formation

>>64352164 (OP)
But it was.

>>64352265
Cavalry costs many times to train, equip and supply than an infantryman. Cavalry also cannot fight all day. Frequently you get one orderly charge and that's it. Cavalry reforming more than once was extraordinarily rare. Cavalry in 95% of battles simply nullified their counterparts.

>>64352164 (OP)
You're right: it was the best way to fight wars for 6000 years.

>>64355825
>Cavalry reforming more than once was extraordinarily rare.
if you only read about Roman cavalry in the Punic wars, maybe.

history is full of cavalry forces that doctrinally fought by repeatedly engaging and disengaging, all day every day. from Parthian horse archers to medieval knights to 18th century cavalry squadrons, disengaging and reforming wasn't just a thing that could be done but the default approach to fighting. illiterate faggot.

>>64353272
>bayonets were needed to literally stop the cavalry charge, i.e. physically prevent horses from just crashing through the square,
Bayonets cant do that. Horses weights 1000 pounds you aren't stopping them with bayonets, they just tear through formation like bowling ball through pins. Horse may (or not) die after but your formation would trampled and broken and broken.
Pikes were compatible different matter with at least 6 pikes hitting one horse (with 2 pikes braced against ground), combined mass behind these pikes was comparable to horse weight.

>because musketry was not accurate or fast enough to wipe out a cavalry charge on its own
This is why infantry had such dense formations, they achieved about 6 bullets per charging front horse and this is what was stopping charges.

>>64355988
>they just tear through formation like bowling ball through pins
as any dressage rider knows, horses will balk at a fence of blades and cannot be made to deliberately impale itself.
it HAS happened before, both in the Napoleonic Wars and in sport, that horses will bash themselves into an obstacle, but it's rare and unpredictable enough that nobody formed any tactical doctrine around this behaviour

>this is what was stopping charges
if bullets alone were sufficient then in theory fast musketry from a line formation could have seen off any cavalry charge easy peasy, but instances of that happening are even rarer than the above, vanishingly rare; in fact I think it only happened once.

you need both. the bayonet hedge to scare off the horses, and musketry to kill them.

>>64356003
Dressage horses are not war horses
You should look into the industry of rearing and training war horses for the last few thousand years
A horse will absolutely charge head first into certain death, and did so for millenia
Go look up the footage for the film The King, and then understand that those aren't war horses

>>64352164 (OP)
Every battle back in the day was like a giant chess game where victory was (to a certain extent) determined by the competency of the commander.
Besides reforms, Frederick the Great was 'great' because he understood the essence of warfare and was very creative during battle; he used the central position for both strategical and tactical scenarios, took advantage of the terrain and he was very good with early implementation of combat arms, and the Prussians basically perfected the oblique order. However over time people discover tactics are not a deciding factor in a peer war, if both sides are equally competent. Superior training, and smart CO & NCOs are the deciding factor

>>64352230
>Asymmetrical warfare wasn't a thing
Yes it was, plenty of times

>>64353164
Well, samurai fought with bows until they've discovered guns.

>>64356003
>if bullets alone were sufficient then in theory fast musketry from a line formation could have seen off any cavalry charge easy peasy,
If you read about well documented Napoleonic wars history you will find countless cases of infantry squares successfully defending from cavalry attacks
As well as countless cases of cavalry crushing such squares.
Key was cold blooded disciplined fire. Delivering rolling salvo just before impact. It was easy to lose nerves and unload salvo prematurely from long range say 200 yards and after musketeers have no time to reload and are left defenseless against cavalry charge.

>>64356008
Yet cavalry never seemed to be able to break squares by charging them

>>64356071
>As well as countless cases of cavalry crushing such squares.
I'm calling absolute bullshit here, no way there's more than a handful of cases
If there are countless then where did you see this?

I would go so far as to say that there are not even 10 cases in all of the Napoleonic wars in which a formed infantry square was broken by a cavalry charge, just a few freak examples or infantry caught out of formation

>>64356003
Well I'm not going to deny that the psychological impact of bayonets are an integral part of the defense and one part of the equation, but
>if bullets alone were sufficient then in theory fast musketry from a line formation could have seen off any cavalry charge easy peasy
You don't see it happening because the muskets only have one chance to fire, and they're going to wait until the very last moment when the charge is fully committed. The cavalry know this and they're not going to charge. So you get a game of chicken where the cavalry make fake charges trying to bait out an early fire, and the muskets stand firm and don't fire. If the cavalry actually charges, then the muskets fire and the first rank goes down and halts the charge, at which point the cavalry are easy pickings.

>>64356008
>Dressage horses are not war horses
indeed, because it's already stressful enough to a war horse to get it to ignore yelling and musketry and the rest of its natural instincts
but the ultimate test of horsemanship has long been the ability to get the horse to deal with an obstacle, usually by leaping it, and often horses balk even without the stress of battle and the gleam of bayonets as opposed to hedges

>>64356071
>If you read about well documented Napoleonic wars history you will find countless cases of infantry squares successfully defending from cavalry attacks
that's not in question
the question being debated here is, precisely how
>As well as countless cases of cavalry crushing such squares
for many reasons

>>64356165
>You don't see it happening because the muskets only have one chance to fire
Yes, we know
again, that's not the question here
>the first rank goes down and halts the charge, at which point the cavalry are easy pickings
once again, if this was true, an infantry battalion can pull off the exact same thing. in fact they would slaughter even more cavalry because they can fire more bullets per attacking cavalry than if they were formed in square

>>64352301
>read cliff notes
Looked like they fell victim to a classic foible: lost the Calvary battle. The infantry seemed to be cutting through their French counterpart till they got slammed on every side by charges (and subsequently everyone not apart of the veteran core routing: namely the mercs and Calvary)
Apparently they even managed to repel a good number of them but just got pinned and pummeled with the help of uncontested enemy artillery.

What I always wonder is how the tactics and technology of the era were influenced by the societies that produced them. Would a society like ours sent back in time fight the same way or would our way of war reflect how our society is structured.

Not to copy Foucault too hard but it's an awful coincidence that massed formations led by a cadre of largely hereditary middle-class managers and upper-class generals started to develop and refine with societies beginning to industrialise. Whereas I imagine a much more post-industrial society would lean harder on individual units understanding strategic context (commander's intent) rather than ruthless discipline to work like cogs. Similar to how Revolutionary France ROFLstomped the rest of Europe with mass mobilisation.

>hurr durr no

Massed formations of infantry, uniformly equipped and paid by the central government, served the purpose of centralised monarchy. They were a tool of state centralisation. An army that drilled and moved as one body was a physical manifestation of a unified state.

The officer corps was drawn from the aristocracy and gentry, while the rank-and-file were peasants, urban poor, or mercenaries. The tactics reflected this divide. Individual initiative from a common soldier was neither expected nor trusted. Discipline, enforced through brutal punishment and relentless drill, was paramount. The soldier was a cog in a human machine, and the tactics were designed around this principle. They were not seen as individual citizens with agency, but as interchangeable parts of a state-owned weapon.

Pike and shot tactics along with the very slow development of professional (non-mercenary) armies was a reflection of cost. Muskets were extremely expensive weapons at the start and maintaining a standing army was ruinous to the degree if you tried everyone would view you as a threat. Similarly rifling existed for centuries before its viable deployment on the battlefield due to the cost and fouling.

>>64356233
good question
well with the greater intelligence of today you could field better quality infantry in general and probably lots more riflemen
but you will still need to adopt lines and squares to overcome the hard tech limitations of not having radios and shitty infantry weapons

>>64356233
So if you wanted a smarter way to fight you might see a modern force:

1. Adapt modern knowledge like sanitation and mathematics
2. Lean harder into asymmetries - control/disrupt supplies of saltpetre, use commando units to assassinate leaders
3. Go for obvious tech early that maximise individual effectiveness like the socket bayonet and lighter, faster-firing and more mobile cannons

Basically fight the Gulf War without the crushing advantage in tech and material.

>>64356183
>an infantry battalion can pull off the exact same thing
Historically they indeed did: during the seven years' war in the mid 18th century, it was apparently quite common to not bother with forming a square and just staying in line (it still happened of course, just not as much).
A regular line does indeed have more fire going towards the front, but the square is going to be more flexible in dealing with flanking: the line can obviously just about face if there's an attack from behind, but the sides are still more vulnerable.
This last bit's just my personal speculation, but I imagine that the advantage might have been psychological too, with the infantry not having any exposed flanks to be concerned about (and if anyone does break through, then the rest of the square can just about face and suddenly they're surrounded).

>>64356112
Because of the weight of spear and men behind them.
From a glance it’s obvious a horse would be more likely to crash and subsequently crush a sparse or failing “line”
It’s more likely to be impaled hopelessly at a stand off point and cause problems for its fellows when there is a hedge of seemingly countless spears aiming for it with men behind them
The threat then solves the problem, since a horse and the man riding it is normally much more valuable then the few dozen mercs they would have mortally failed to trample.

>>64353100
Wellington is turning in his grave

>>64356031
And resulting in ending with urban centers destroyed, genocide, slavery and emigration.
All ancient wars were deep-penetration expeditions that if you couldn't stop them then the result depended more on the weather, disease, plain stupidity and maybe an opportunistic poisoning of a water source. They didn't even have supply chain.
Even federations (like Germania) or mongols that used all the tricks in the book relied on large concentration of forces to achieve results. The main tactic of the mongols was divide their enemies and destroy them with a large force.

>>64356247
I think terrain is the big factor in favour of squares and probably goes back to how Rome defeated hoplite formations. Even assuming fairly open ground you won't be able to march in a proper line for line before people start to fall out of formation, people will fall behind or get ahead, dudes will spread out to avoid a bush or clump closer together due to the power of friendship. You could likely only deploy it in a very short advance or defence.

You see this happening even today with patrols where infantry need to be watched to avoid people bunching or losing contact. I remember back in the day marching up a wooded hill to a battle, losing contact with the guy in front due to the twisting turns, panicking (a little) and just trampling my way through hedges to lead everyone behind me to the top.

>>64356240
I'm wondering if light infantry - engineers - artillery might just be the combo we go for. We're certainly not going to be putting together anything approaching cavalry force due to the amount of people who know how to ride and maintain a horse these days so we'd have to fight very differently.

>>64353550
Can second, that's an excellent book.

>>64356247
there was a brief moment somewhere between 1700 and 1750 when pikes were discarded for all musket infantry, but the cavalry corps responded by developing better charge tactics and it was in part the cavalry massacres of the Seven Years War that so firmly impressed the importance of the bayonet and the infantry square

>>64356165
>The cavalry know this and they're not going to charge. So you get a game of chicken where the cavalry make fake charges trying to bait out an early fire, and the muskets stand firm and don't fire
You are right.
This cavalry tactic was called "bait out fire".
And to counter some musketeers were nominated as designed shooters (generally best shooters in company) who were allowed to fire at will to harass cavalry lingering in range. When rest of the musketeers were commanded to hold fire and were only allowed to shoulder muskets and fire at officers command.

>>64356183
>in fact they would slaughter even more cavalry because they can fire more bullets per attacking cavalry than if they were formed in square
If its line cavalry can maneuver to a flank and attack from there. Line cant shoot to the side.
This is why it was square, square can fire with large amount of fire to any direction.

>>64356330
so just place all regiments in line shoulder to shoulder, and anchor the flanks with terrain or infantry squares. voila, impenetrable army.

the reason why this was not done is because it didn't work.

>>64356112
>"It is an awful thing for infantry to see a body of cavalry riding at them at full gallop. The men in the square frequently begin to shuffle, and so create some unsteadiness. This causes them to neglect their fire. The cavalry seeing them waver, have an inducement for riding close up, and in all probability succeed in getting into the square, when it is all over."
Yes, they could and did.

>>64356183
I don't disagree about the temperament of horses, but did you look up the clip? Read the quote above? Horses absolutely charged into formations, and war horses were conditioned for exactly that temperament which is why for much of history they cost absolutely insane sums of money

>>64356728
>Horses absolutely charged into formations and war horses were conditioned for exactly that temperament
Refer picrel
99% of the time, war horses could not be made to charge a spear or bayonet wall. period.
if they could, it would have been easy for the French described here to ride down the infantry rather than attempt to fence with the infantry with swords. (in this paragraph, the soldiers were likely holding their fire until they absolutely needed to shoot, as in the case of a close-range mass charge or if some Frenchman actually leaped their horse into the square, which has been done before)

>bbbbut what about squares breaking huh
they break because they shrink back and open up gaps for enough cavalry troopers to break into the middle of the square. if only a few troopers make it in, the cavalry might not succeed; enough holes have to be opened up for enough horsemen to get in and kill. much of the time the infantry break because they have taken heavy casualties and can't be induced to reform a contiguous line of bayonets, or because of sheer panic.

>which is why for much of history they cost absolutely insane sums of money
War horses cost a lot of money because they were bred, selected, and trained, which means that many horses were unsuitable. In effect, the premium was paid for the cost of supporting so many horses so that a small number of the very best could be used. Regardless of their expense however, it does not follow that a horse must therefore be capable of superequine feats.

>>64356935
Except they did, my quote quite clearly stated so. Its not easy, it's not the norm, and against a square it is likely suicidal, but it was possible and did happen more than 1% of the time you double nigger faggot.
Cavalry absolutely broke infantry formations with cohesion for hundreds of years, it happened all the fucking time even if it was against the odds and infantry held the advantage in their formation, it categorically happened and you'd be an idiot to deny it.
>bred selected and trained
Yes, to ignore the stench of blood, the screaming and ear splitting noises surrounding battle, the smoke of powder and yes, for the temperament to ignore the overriding instinct of
>this will probably kill me
And to charge a packed formation
Go and watch the clip from the filming of The King, and then contemplate that they are not war horses in breed or training that are doing that charge.

>>64356966
>my quote quite clearly stated so
>The cavalry seeing them waver, have an inducement for riding close up, and in all probability succeed in getting into the square...
>"succeed in getting into the square" is supposed to mean "quite clearly" that "the horses crashed through a firm line of bayonets"
which are you, disingenuous or ESL?

>watch the clip from the filming of The King
that's fucking Hollywood, you utter nigger; they use specially-trained horses who know how to fall for the camera, and they crash into stuntmen in soft padded suits so the horses don't get spooked you fucking idiot

>>64357012
>Hollywood horses are better trained than legitimate war horses with war horse pedigrees and training
>full plate and armaments are padded suits
Jej

>>64356008
>You should look into the industry of rearing and training war horses for the last few thousand years
I did, and I found no compelling evidence that it was ever common practice for cavalry to crash into infantry formations. That seems to be a movie thing, not how they were actually used.

>>64357461
Holy shit you must be fucking joking

>>64356270
>I'm wondering if light infantry - engineers - artillery might just be the combo we go for. We're certainly not going to be putting together anything approaching cavalry force due to the amount of people who know how to ride and maintain a horse these days so we'd have to fight very differently.

I can't stop thinking about this now. The lack of cavalry would be an Achilles heel meaning no scouts, no screening, no chance to rout a broken army and no hard hitting unit to break lines.

A modern society in pike and shot technology would be almost Roman in doctrine, relying on engineering as the backbone to set up mobile forts (and bridges) as it goes and facing the same issues as the Battle of Alesia. Only this time we'd no doubt go absolutely nuts for artillery using the superior knowledge of mathematics, chemistry and sanitation to do devastating flying cannonades and star-forts.

Smokeless powder would be an issue (assuming we don't develop black powder in which case gg) but fire an manoeuvrer could work and communication could be handled using a mixture of modern cartography, flag semaphore or heliographs combined with flares/rockets. For anything else there's mission command where local commanders can make decisions. Maybe if we get more horses we'll eventually get dragoons too for basic mounted infantry scouting.

Anyway OP is wrong because of the technology AND the society. We'd smash those wig wearing poofs but we have the secret sauce of universal education and centuries of societal development. A different kind of army from the era however was a tool of state power in a brutally underdeveloped (by our standards) world but if we nuked ourselves into oblivion we wouldn't immediately fall to the level of the 30 Years War.

>>64356728
>Horses absolutely charged into formations
Modern riot police charge their horses into hordes of unruly demonstrators all the time. Granted, it's been a while since I've seen Hooligans form a phalanx of pikes or indeed muskets. Black powder weapons generally being legal everywhere, I am not saying it couldn't happen.

>>64357012
>it's impossible to train horses to crash into infantry
>hollywood movies where they do just that don't count because the horses were trained to do that
Huh?

>>64356233
Mesoamericans never had wheels and they had the same ideas about cyclical time.
The idea of Logos existed long after written language became a thing, and long before books were actually invented
The gear thing is kind of accurate
the simulation hypothesis is as old as the concept of mind-body dualism and can debatedly be dated back to the formation of Indo-Aryan religions.
This image is for midwits

>>64356233
intelligent question but your picrel is egregious midwittery

>>64352164 (OP)

War is to fought for the state.

The state needs to bleed off excess males or else they will cause "problems" (to the state) at home.

Now a days, we have gaming and anime to keep the males from being an issue. Why execute when you can just self imprison.

>>64352164 (OP)
Every army used skirmishers to a limited extent, and cover whenever it was available. Some focused on it more or less, but lines were necessary to concentrate foreword firepower while minimizing casualties from cannon fire.

>>64358437
What's funny is if you skim off a relatively small amount of men over generations with certain traits (soldiers were not ever a neutral cross section) you can have extremely dramatic effects on those traits over time.

Which is more than half the reason the average euro man has the testosterone of a teenage girl.

>>64356935
Your pic says nothing to support your point.

>>64358437
>shit I just pulled out of my ass

>>64357171
>full plate and armaments
laughs in Weta

>>64357675
unruly demonstrators are a perfect example of the perfect target for cavalry. unled, undisciplined, untrained, nor even equipped with even a 2m long bayonet.

>>64357753
first day on the set?
also,
>it's impossible to train horses to crash into infantry
is NOT what I said
READ carefully
what I said was
>war horses could not be made to charge a spear or bayonet wall
>horses will balk at a fence of blades and cannot be made to deliberately impale itself

>>64358548
French cavalry were forced to duel British infantry squares with swords to try and break the formation. now if it was possible to force horses to crash through a bristling barrier of bayonets, why couldn't they do that?
>hurr durr muskets
as the passage says, the infantry were conserving their loaded muskets, because they knew that if all the infantry on one side fire, they will not have the time to reload their muskets and will be attrited away by cavalry taking turns to ride up, shoot into them at point blank range, ride off and reload (the caracole)

>>64352164 (OP)
Much, much longer than two centuries, actually: the core concept of
>advance until your ranged weapons can reach the enemy
>dump your ranged weapons into the enemy formation
>charge in before they can recover cohesion
goes back to antiquity, not being any fundamentally different from Roman legionary tactics (though obviously with very different weapons, using muskets and bayonets instead of javelins and swords).
It remained very effective, and only ceased to be viable around the latter half of the 19th century, as longer ranged and faster firing guns made the "charge in" part increasingly less feasible.

>>64352399
This was the greatest aesthetic in military history, and it's a shame it lasted for the shortest time.

>>64352164 (OP)
>marching in formation with spears
>"This is fine"
>marching in formation with arrows
>"This too is fine."
>marching in formation with muskets
>"WTF WHO WOULD DO SOMETHING SO SUICIDAL?!?!"

>>64352399
Yeah the cuirassiers in the early days of the 30 year war would fuck up untrained infantry formations and break them and ride them down. That changed when the swedes and their accurate and disciplined musketmen set the new norm in germany and that tactic just became obsolete especially since they integrated regimental artillery.

>>64356240
>with the greater intelligence of today
We're not smarter, we just know more.

>>64364222
I'd argue that we also have better problem-solving heuristics, but fine, greater knowledge works too.

>>64362150
Arguably still relevant.
>Advance until you're in grenade range
>Blast enemy positions to hell
>Breach and clear before they recover.
Obviously not as common but it's still standard for professional infantry.

>>64358437
Yeah, that backfire spectacularly. The problem with giving your problem kids guns is that they'll turn those guns against you if you give them cause. The musket ushered in a lot of republics and reform as monarchs couldn't rely on small groups of nobles to keep order.

>>64353738
>bulletproof pavisses
Didn't exist. At medium to close range a musket could punch through any armor you could carry. Curaissiers wore armor but that was only good for bayonets and sabers. They might stop a round at long range but generally speaking a bullet would punch right through steel plate.

This was one of the reasons Infantry Squares were so effective. Even if you managed to get into melee with one side the other sides could just turn around and had a perfect shot at any man on a horse. Didn't matter if they were armored, nobody could carry enough armor to block a bullet.

>>64366900
I suppose one also could make a case that artillery now serves as the javelin (and/or suppressive fire from an LMG), and the rifle as the blade

>>64352211
Laid down

>>64367977
Great so you can no longer reload and your enemy just aims slightly downwards.

>>64364659
>have better problem-solving heuristics
no amount of heuristics by a single person will do what centuries of brutal survival of the fittest on the battlefield cannot

if they fought a certain way, it's because that's what worked given the physical, technological, economic and political constraints of the time and place. millions of people put their minds to finding even the tiniest edge over their enemy time and time again, you think you can do better because you watched some pop sci youtubers a bit?

>>64367977
You would occasionally see skirmishers who would kneel or lie down and try to pick off targets with rifles, but they obviously had an extremely low rate of fire and had to flee in the face of any approaching force, including slightly more packed together, standing skirmishers.

Compare it to what came before

>>64367181
>At medium to close range a musket could punch through any armor you could carry
Any armor that was cost effective to arm large bodies of men with you mean. You could still have made armor to cover the chest that was both able to be worn in terms of weight and proof against muskets. A musket ball would not penetrate a quarter inch of steel, even contemporary steel, for example.

>>64356071
Cavalry breaking (good) squares was rare and remarked upon because of it

>>64356071
>infantry squares successfully defending from cavalry attacks
and they did this with bayonets, not bullets. fucking illiterate retard. kill yourself.

>>64353598
you cant say that here

>>64368490
They did with fire not bayonets see
>>64368328
Bayonet can't stop horse from trampling you formation.

>>64357491
I'd check out the 1632 series by Eric Flint, it goes into this with a 90's West Virginia mining town getting sent back to the 30 Years War.

>>64368010
you don't know what heuristics are

>>64352211
I would have fired three rounds a minute in any weather.

>>64357675
>seen Hooligans form a phalanx of pikes or indeed muskets
That's because they're coward and lack a real ganbarre spirit.

>>64352211
trenches

>>64352164 (OP)
its more about getting the other guy next to you to have the balls to go near the enemy and kill them

>>64352164 (OP)
Depends on the terrain. But yeah a lot of battles took place where this worked.

>>64352172
fpbp
>>64352164 (OP)
War strategy largely depends on the limitations of your weapons, which are constrained by technological development. During the period you reference, technology was developing comparatively slowly with how it's developing today, so it's no real surprise that tactics and strategy remained relatively static.
Just compare this to the eras before that type of rifle, when a person (with some sharp tools) was basically the weapon that you fought with. War strategy then was even more static.

>>64355988
>Bayonets cant do that. Horses weights 1000 pounds you aren't stopping them with bayonets, they just tear through formation like bowling ball through pins. Horse may (or not) die after but your formation would trampled and broken and broken.
It wasn't about stopping the enemy at the front but rather breaking their momentum so the cavalry was trapped inside the square. Even if you routed one side of the box you'd be so busy tripping over horses that the other sides would swarm you with bayonets.

>>64372393
>Even if you routed one side of the box
Then slaughter of infantry begins >>64368328

>>64368490
If you did not manage a close volley into the charging cavalry you did not stop it with the "just as good" cope spear.
Bayonets stopped cavalry that had just eaten a volley.

>>64364222
I think knowing mathematics and basic hygiene is pretty smart on the battlefield.

>>64366946
>The musket ushered in a lot of republics and reform as monarchs couldn't rely on small groups of nobles to keep order.

You mean absolute monarchies. It was the nobles that were a historic problem whereas the peasants generally worshipped the king and blamed all their ills on their local masters.

All the ruling nobles were cousins, they did this for fun before Pokemon or Beyblades were invented

>>64372630
That's only a quarter of the formation.

>>64355988
>>64355988
Horses are living, thinking creatures who can make their own decisions. Literally all the hard parts about horsemanship come down to getting an animal that weighs five times more than you and has the intelligence of a preschooler to do what you want it to. They are particularly reluctant to get stabbed in the chest.

>>64372630
That's only going to work if the infantry aren't well disciplined, else the other dudes can just turn inwards and suddenly you're eating a volley from all angles
>>64372912
>basic hygiene
people weren't just casually wallowing in shit all day you retard
they had noses, and they didn't like bad smells or being filthy any more than you
off the top of my head the britbongs for one held their soldiers to hygiene standards, because even without germ theory people could still put two and two together and notice that people with poor hygiene are more likely to get shit like typhus
in fact before germ theory (which was only a rational thing to come up with well into industrialization because it requires optics powerful enough to actually identify microorganisms), the dominant understanding of how diseases were transmitted since antiquity was miasma theory, according to which bad smells were the vector (i.e. smelling bad is a severe health hazard)
contrary to the pop-his imagination of the middle ages, you can find all manner of rules and regulations from the period regarding prevention and containment of foul odors for this same reason

>>64372907
>Pointer
>longer range than a spear
They absolutely were better than standard spear

>>64367977
Laying down has hampered your troops ability to reload. You are now outgunned. Secondly, your troops are now slow to react to a bayonet charge, and are disorganized to respond to it, and get routed.

>>64373256
anon's point is that germ theory would be a lot more effective than miasma theory
take water for instance. even the bongs, who spent a lot of money ensuring their troops had a decent food and water supply, made booboos such as the assumption that "if the water is a little bit smelly, it's not so bad, still bearable, they'll only get a tiny bit sick, so we'll only reject water that's really dank" whereas we know now that not only is ANY kind of odour in the water already bad, all kinds of bad shit in the water doesn't smell of anything at all, so water should at the very least be boiled, much preferably strained also

this one point of understanding would save thousands of lives

>>64372912
>You mean absolute monarchies. It was the nobles that were a historic problem whereas the peasants generally worshipped the king and blamed all their ills on their local masters.
Not entirely true. The French Revolution was blatantly against the King as France was operating under Absolute Monarchy with the Nobility being essentially neutered. More or less the same thing happened in Prussia although the Prussian King more or less embraced the revolution in order to modernize the country. Violent rebellion was also more common in colonies that didn't even have local nobility to be angry with.

>>64360443
>French cavalry were forced to duel British infantry squares with swords to try and break the formation. now if it was possible to force horses to crash through a bristling barrier of bayonets, why couldn't they do that?
Because that's suicide for most of the cavalrymen. Troops in general don't willingly get themselves killed, and will try to survive. This is the basis of morale considerations.

>>64374442
READ the passage
the cavalrymen exposed themselves to fence with the infantry trying to break in. if it's possible to urge a horse suicidally onto blades, of course it would have been the better option. they risked their own bodies because they could not use the horses'.

>>64374524
>if it's possible to urge a horse suicidally onto blades, of course it would have been the better option.
No it's not. The horse dies, the rider is thrown onto the ground and run through, the horses coming after stumble on the dead and repeat this, until eventually the cavalry breaks inside the square and finds themselves surrounded by enemy infantry on all sides, having accomplished nothing except certain death for a bunch of them so far. If the square doesn't break even then, they all die. It's completely pointless and suicidal, which is why they don't do it.
>they risked their own bodies because they could not use the horses'.
They were on horseback, anon. They rode up to the square and started fighting the British infantry with their blades. The horses were right there with them.

>>64363748
Yeah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhNUtqTqpSE

>>64374533
>They were on horseback, anon. They rode up to the square and started fighting the British infantry with their blades. The horses were right there with them
I know that. I am saying they could not urge the horses further, unto the very point of the bayonets.
That's been MY point all this while.
>until eventually the cavalry breaks inside the square and finds themselves surrounded by enemy infantry on all sides, having accomplished nothing except certain death for a bunch of them so far
Actually, this is how by happenchance a French square was broken, if I'm not mistaken by a KGL squadron. If it was possible to do it consistently all the time, all cavalrymen would do it all the time. The loss of a few horses and troopers is well worth the breaking and almost certain routing of an entire battalion, if a squadron or two can break into the hollow square over the bodies of the fallen. In that particular case, it's theorised that a couple of horses were shot, and in falling, bowled over several infantrymen and they could not reform the line in time before a decisive troop of horsemen rode through the breach, and then all the infantrymen ran rather than stand firm.

But once again, this cannot be done. Horses will balk at a fence of gleaming jabbing bayonets and refuse to crash into the infantrymen, either throwing their riders or as in this passage, stopping short and forcing the cavalry riders to attempt to fence or shoot through.

And if you think a horse can't recognise a blade just you try grabbing a ktichen knife and approaching one. Make sure to do it from behind, and with your testicles well in hoof range, and make sure to post the webm, I could do with a laugh.

>>64372907
before the socket bayonet, musketeers relied on pikemen to guard them against cavalry. pikemen disappeared as the bayonet was introduced.

muskets with bayonets are not the best spears but together with the ability to shoot occasionally they are good enough.

infantry defending against cavalry through fire alone wasn't a thing until rifled muskets became a thing, letting infantry battalions shoot up cavalry formations from hundreds of yards away such as at Inkerman

>>64352211
I would have invented this immediately.

>>64374635
NTA but it's possible to train a horse to charge bayonets. It involves having them charge against fake bayonets and the enemy just moving aside or being knocked over again and again. Eventually the horse believes that it can survive charging the enemy.

>>64375138
Immediately gets smashed by a 3-pounder simply because the enemy field artillery figured there'd be a ton of soldiers behind it.

>>64374533
>They rode up to the square and started fighting the British infantry with their blades.
lmao, if you're saying this because you read "sword in hand" and interpreted it to mean actual melee combat you must be an incredible smoothbrain.

>>64352211
drone swarms

>>64376320
Actually, it was pretty common for Napoleonic cavalry to engage with swords. They were easier to use than spears and you didn't need to reload like a carbine or pistol. The mass and speed of horses also tended to panic the enemy, causing them to dodge out of the way rather than risk being trampled.

Thus, cavalry charges were a contest of nerves. Would the cavalry turn away first and take fire on their way out or would the infantry break and suffer marauding cavalry inside their formation? Sure, the infantry had the advantage in range but things like terrain and weather could negate this.

>>64357753
Do you think they're actually having fully grown horses colliding with their actors, retard? They use camera trickery.

>>64374533
>The horse dies, the rider is thrown onto the ground and run through,
This is not how reincarnation and impulse works.
Stabbing horse's chest with bayonet.
1. Doesn't kill it instantly.
2. Doesn't stops horse body from breaking through infantry formation.

>>64374726
>pikemen disappeared as the bayonet was introduced.
It was more complex than that.
In tersio formation there were 1 arquebusiers/musketeers (terms shit) per 4 Pikeman
Later (during reign of the Sun King who developed counter to tersio during 17th century)
1. Pikemen were eliminated
2. Troops numbers tripled at least.
So versus "standart tersio" Sun King deployed 12 times more arquebusiers/musketeers . For every bullet fired by tersrio they fired 12! and this was new turn of the gunpowder revolution
Instead of a complex combined warfare
>lel just spam more musketeers, what are you gonna do about that? cry?!

>infantry defending against cavalry through fire alone
This is what literally happened during introduction of linear warfare.
>your ass shot by 10 musketeers salvo what are you gonna do about it? cry?

Pay attention to musketeers formation (square with thin ranks and empty middle maximized for firepower) vs pikemen square (maximized for melee resilience filled with ranks inside to get extra toughness against horse charge.)

>>64377476
>In tersio formation there were 1 arquebusiers/musketeers (terms shit) per 4 Pikeman
>Later (during reign of the Sun King who developed counter to tersio during 17th century)
You're not wrong but you're skipping a bunch of steps.

>>64356233
Has nothing to do with society and everything to with horse huge fast musket slow fire. Not today marx man, not today.

>>64357491
It's not just the logistical and engineering side, we have the benefit of already knowing about the Minie ball. We're talking a 350 year advantage in long-range precision shooting.

>>64376320
What an idiot.

>>64377476
NTA but TL;DR,
>pikemen disappeared as the bayonet was introduced.
By early 18th century nobody was using pikes.

>>64372168
First use of trenches across the entirety of the front was in the Crimean War of England/France/Sardinia-Peidmonte/Ottoman Empire against Russia. Roughly a few years later trenches would be used extensively in the defence of northern viriginia in the US Civil War.

>they worked really well unless the enemy kept marching their forces into you on repeat
Hence why America's first complete alcoholic president was Grant, he slaughtered some 50k men a battle force marching his army through trenches down a penninsula

>>64352399
I would have never thought drive bying was a European custom.

>>64379681
Technically it's mongolian but by the early Medieval period everyone was doing it.

>>64379556
>Hence why America's first complete alcoholic president was Grant, he slaughtered some 50k men a battle force marching his army through trenches down a penninsula
How else, without the power of hindsight to know how OP trench warfare was in the post-industrial age, was Grant in the 1860s supposed to win the war?

>>64378119
This isn't true. Pikes were a key part of Asian and African warfare throughout the 19th century. Stop trying to push a Eurocentric timmy worldview.

>>64380912
trenches weren't some new invention and it stands to reason that as small arms firepower increased so would the power of static defences
plus you could try rethink after the first 20k or so

>>64380918
>Pikes
>Asian and African warfare
Gonna need some source here my man. Of pikes, not spears, mind you.

They had trenches and field fortifications all throughout history. However, you can't plan a battle around the enemy marching into the teeth your static fortifications, because the enemy wouldn't give battle - they'll just go somewhere else, or they'll lay siege and starve you out. So the way battles primarily happened were through meeting engagement where both armies were on the march and elements came into contact with one another, and both sides kept reinforcing and it turned into a big battle.

The actual problem is logistics and supply lines. A pre-industrial field army is like a shark - the moment it stops moving, it dies. A marching army simply can't carry enough food to feed itself for more than a few weeks, and animal-drawn carts on supply lines can't actually sustain an army of any real size either, because the animals need to be fed as well. You can supply an army through ships if it's marching directly along the sea, but that's not useful except for limited circumstances. So the way an army feeds itself was through "foraging." Foraging is a polite euphemism for "robbing the local peasants of all their food." But once your army has stolen all the food there is to be had where they're at, it needs to move on to the next place, and the next, and the next.

It wasn't until the invention of the railroad in the mid-1800s that it became possible to supply a static field army.

>>64381081
True, even water was a problem too. It would have sucked being wounded with no food or water

>>64380982
NTA but what is the minium height requirment for a spear to become a pike? The Japs used very long spears during the warring states period and had pike and shot like tactics when the matchlock musket got introduced by the Portuguese.

>>64381124

A pike is a spear that is too large to wield with one hand.

>>64381081
>It wasn't until the invention of the railroad in the mid-1800s that it became possible to supply a static field army.
If that was true sieges longer than a week wouldn't happen.

>>64352164 (OP)
If you have ever shot black powder you would know how endlessly fucking frustrating it is. Having to shoot and reload a 6ft long musket with a 1 ft bayonet while thousands of enemies are coming at you? May as well line up with the lads and take turns shooting.

>>64381155

Sieges rarely lasted for longer than a few weeks to a month or two at most for precisely this reason. The exceptions were when both the attacker and the defender's armies could be resupplied by sea.

Most successful sieges also involved significant manpower disparities. Often the besieging army had 5-10 times as many troops. Huge chunks of the army laying siege were not actually waiting outside the city, they were patrolling the countryside gathering food.

>>64380918
Post your gun with timestamp

>>64379556
Casualties suffered by men commanded by Grant were not particularly higher than under the average commander

>>64381155
Sieges typically involve the attacks building their own fortifications and circumvallating walls, and then dispersing most of their troops to nearby camps to reduce the burden on logistics. They can do this because the force being besieged is typically much weaker than the attacking force and can't just easily interrupt the fortification building or storm the fortifications while guarded by the main army (prior to dispersion). There are of course many exceptions to the norm, and being located near major river ways significantly improves the logistic issue. Part of the reason why China could have so many 100,000 combatants, 40,000 eaten battles (apart from exaggerated history) is the sheer number of amazing river networks the geography has.

>>64381126
And at what length does a spear become unwieldy for one hand? 3 meters? 2.5 meters? 2 meters?

>>64382000
8 inches

>>64367368
one difference from ancient warfare is the dominance of artillery. Starting in the napoleonic era, ranged fire killed vastly more than melee. Javelins were essentially a weapon of harassment in Roman times, they would not be the main cause of destruction.

>>64380944
>plus you could try rethink after the first 20k or so
But Grant was constantly advancing and outmaneuvering Lee during his campaigns. It's not like he was Luigi Cadorna, launching offensive after offensive in the same general vicinity for 3 years, hoping the enemy would break. Grant marched roughly as many miles long as Italy while fighting Lee, and Lee genuinely failed to stop him from going where he wanted most of the time. It's a strange case in military history where one guy was constantly getting tactical victories and strategic defeats while the other guy was constantly getting strategic victories and tactical defeats.

>>64382608
Archers are niche harrassment troops lmao.

>>64380918
>Asian and African
irrelevant

>>64362150
>>64366900
now that I think about it we've essentially just taken this pattern and expanded it in scale to create
>enemy is suppressed with long range strike of some kind
>ground elements move in to finish off the defenders and hold the ground
this applies to everything from the individual section firefight scale all the way up to the invading a giant fuck off country scale. The only stuff that's changed is the technology we use to achieve these results and the complexity of our methods.

>>64352164 (OP)
How would you fight with the technology of the time?
Let's consider the threats:
>integrated field artillery
will mulch dense formations. You want to spread your soldiers out as much as possible
>cavalry
will mulch squad-sized formations on the field. You'll want to keep your soldiers as close together as possible
>your enemy has both, cavalry and artillery
Well, shit. Guess we'll have to compromise.
>make an army consisting entirely of sharpshooters with rifled muskets
Those guys were recruited exclusively from middle class hunters and were rare enough that you actually had to recruit them by offering a shitload of money and post-service benefits. No conscipting those guys. They also came pre-trained from being, y'know, hunters.
Gunpowder is expensive. Continental armies will let their recruits fire 6- 12 rounds per year (half that for Russia, twice that for Britain). They literally cannot afford to let their recruits train marksmanship more than that, tetering on the brink of bankruptcy basically as a matter of course, anyway. An army of sharpshooters is both, a social and a financial impossibility.
Thus you're stuck with line infantry, close enough together to be able to withstand a cavalry charge the majority of the time, spread out far enough to be able to tank artillery for a little bit, cheap enough to be able to field it in reasonable numbers.
But, of course, they're hardly alone on the battlefield. They do have that integrated regimental artillery, they are flanked by cavalry, somewhere in a little forest over there there are half a dozen sharpshooters waiting to take potshots at the other side's officers and cannoniers...

>>64352164 (OP)
>Ain't no way this was the best way to fight wars for like 2 centuries.
if they had time they fought from prepared fortified positions

>>64356008
>Dressage horses are not war horses

yes they are, Dressage horses are taken from the same warm-blood breeds that were used for war.

>>64353550
Thanks, just ordered it on abebooks

>>64383825
When you realize an armored knight with a leveled lance, mounted on a charging destrier is creating the same tactical effect (allowing for differences in technology) as a Main Battle Tank firing sabot rounds.

>>64375138
That's just a glorified pavise.

>>64382040
>one difference from ancient warfare is the dominance of artillery. Starting in the napoleonic era, ranged fire killed vastly more than melee.
Only it was musket not artillery.

"At Malplaquet, for example, the best evidence indicates that 2/3 of the wounds received by French troops came from the enemy's fusils, with only about 2 % were inflicted by bayonets.

Of the men wounded by gunfire, 60 % had been struck in the left side, the side facing the enemy as a soldier stood in line to fire himself.

Looking at a larger sample of veterans admitted to the Invalides in 1715, Corvisier arrived at the following breakdown of wounds:

71.4 % from firearms

15.8 % from swords

10.0 % from artillery

2.8 % from the bayonet

According to another sample taken (in 1762) in Invalides;

69 % of the wounded were wounded by musket balls

14 % by sabers

13 % by artillery

2 % by bayonets

In 1807 during the war between France and Russia and Prussia, chirurgeon Dominique Jean Larrey studied wounded on one battlefield and found most were caused by artillery and muskets. Only 2 % of all wounds were caused by bayonets.

The damage inflicted during "bayonet assault" was most often executed by bullets. Larrey studied one particularly vicious close combat between the Russians and the French and found:

119 wounds from musketballs

5 wounds from bayonets

>>64382040
>Javelins were essentially a weapon of harassment in Roman times, they would not be the main cause of destruction.
Funny thing is that Roman armor was designed first for protection against missiles not for melee, open arms and legs.
Roman specific javelins themselves (Pilum, plumbata) had no equals.

Breech loading cartridges with primers that led to machine guns.
Rifling for much better accuracy.
Man portable radio communication capability.

There, line formations are obsolete now.

>>64387353
>larger sample of veterans admitted to the Invalides
If the studies are done exclusively on wounded soldiers and not the dead, then statistics might not be entirely reliable due to survivorship bias: as harmful as a musket ball may be, a soldier is far more likely to survive it than a bigass cannonball slamming into them
>The damage inflicted during "bayonet assault" was most often executed by bullets.
While I'm at it I'll also make sure to specify that this shouldn't be interpreted as bayonet charges not being decisive (the ultimate goal is forcing the enemy to give up ground rather than inflicting injury upon them, after all), but that the outcome would typically be decided before the charge connects: if done well, the defenders should decide it won't end favorably and withdraw; if not, the attackers might for similar reasons cut their losses and break off the attack.

>>64377097
Is that Norm McDonald?

>>64352211
Curved metal plates in front of the line to stop bullets

>>64355825
Maybe your gay US cavalry.

XVII cavalry in Eastern Europe fought for hours, multiple charges and pursuit for miles.

>>64352164 (OP)
2?

>>64387651
>your soldiers already have to carry their muskets around, so you need an entire additional front rank of unarmed people to carry the shields (which means having to recruit 25% or 33% more infantrymen, depending on whether this is three or two rank era, and procure supplies for just as many)
>shields that big but also thick enough to offer worthwhile protection will be very heavy, which is why suits of armor had already fallen out of use; in battle your dudes won't be able to move as quickly or as far without the shieldbearers getting too tired to keep up (gimping your offensive capabilities), and on campaign it's going to burden your baggage train with more shit to haul around in wagons (if you expect the infantry to lug them around everywhere for you, then they'll all desert and sell their shield for its metal before you ever see a battlefield)
>the shields will have to be set down before your dudes can prepare to shoot, and picked back up again before they can move, thus making your infantry less mobile and less able to react to developments on the field (this is why infantry switched from fighting in three ranks to two during the 18th century, because the front rank not needing to kneel before firing was worth the reduced density of fire)
>still useless against cavalry and cannons

>>64387639
>a soldier is far more likely to survive it than a bigass cannonball slamming into them
First of all most used round for field artillery was a shot (pack of bullets). Cannon balls were used for extreme ranges where naturally hit probability is low and overall numbers of hits is low.
Also its very possible to survive canon ball if it hits arm or leg. Wounded discharged from service decapitated by canon balls were very common. For standing man area of legs and arms is 50% of frontal area. Even more if you add radius of canon ball. So survivorship bias for artillery is much smaller then you think.

Even more musket wounds have their won anti survivorship bias. Because musket wounds that were delivered by assaulting enemy tend to turn into dead because assaulting forces didn't like to care of wounded and often just finished wounded with bayonets and only took healthy prisoners. Artillery doesn't assault, whatever wounded they produce have much more chance to fall back.

>While I'm at it I'll also make sure to specify that this shouldn't be interpreted as bayonet charges not being decisive
Its just musket outranges bayonet. Imagine that you try to stab someone with bayonet but he just shoots you with musket point blank. What you gonna do? Cry?

>>64387878
Meanwhile Zaporozhian cossacks used wagons to hide from cavalry and they had small canons on top of them. Borrowed tactics from Czech XV c. Hussite war.

>>64387878
Replace metal plates by wooden panels that can be produced from wood in the battlefield, reinforce them with hemp or burlap layers that can be reused for making tents or repair clothing to stop the bullet velocity and put handles to transport the panels easily, better option than facing bullets like beefs in a slaughterhouse.

>>64352164 (OP)
So, pinnacle matchlock shogunate samauri vs maybe some third rate napoleonic line infantry army. Which one wins?

>>64389314
Pyrrhic samurai victory if they carry swords and the battle turns into a melee. The samurai would have ridiculous levels of resolve and would sooner die to a man than break, though they would suffer terrible casualties. They could squeeze out a win through intense shock, similar to the Japs in WW2 in a lot of their battles. Otherwise, the 200+ year technology gap is too strong.

I remember a story of American troops, in the mid 1800s, when Perry forced the Japanese to open up a port to him at gunpoint, being in shock at how shit Japanese guns were. Even the older shit from Napoleonic wars were way better, more reliable, more accurate, had better range, etc.

>>64352164 (OP)
What are some good blackpowder era strategy games? I only know Empire Total War and thats okay but the sieges are meh. Anyone have recommendations?

>>64356240
>well with the greater intelligence of today you could field better quality infantry
Doubtful. The 420th Reddit Brigade that can work out the odds is going to break WAAAY before the King's Own Gutter Rapists fighting for God, King, country, and anything shiny in your pockets.
>and probably lots more riflemen
Thus ensuring they get overrun faster and are even more likely to leg it.

>>64389240
You are now very slow. The enemy will not give battle and have bypassed you to occupy the next down down the road.

>>64389464
*town down

>>64389049
https://www.charlestonfootprints.com/charleston-blog/chevaux-de-frise/2011/02/24/

>>64389464
>down the road

Just build more fortification and make it rain.

For the speed thing, just make a few cavalrymen or logistic staff transport the panels from one position to another, just making sure the panels can stack to each other.

Parthians used to have "cargoes" of camels transporting arrows made behind the battlefield so the archers never run out of projectiles.

>>64389619
>Just build more fortification and make it rain.
You have now invented WW1 style trench warfare, except its 1720 and no one has the population base, industrial base, or logistical ability to keep an entrenched front of several thousand miles going.

>>64389655
He's trying to invent Napoleonic Desert Storm. Any minute now the scorched earth and terrorism "ideas" are going to pop up.

>>64389655
Im talking about alesia style fortifications, build some wooden mirador, place canons and shoot the town from the highground position.

>>64352180
So, things to consider:

The accuracy for the cost/ease of use/easy of maintenance was great for the time. A British Land Pattern "Brown bess" threw a .69 ball of lead at 1200 fps, and could hit a 9" target at 90 meters away. Because of the size and speed of the ball, even if you didn't hit that 9-in pan, and you hit a man sized target pretty much anywhere in his body, he is a casualty due to injury and morale.

And I also keep in mind, they're not doing this as an individual. They're doing this in volley fire, with a minimum of 20 men at a time, leapfrogging each other as they advance. This makes a constant, very mobile wall of bullets going in a direction, and is most certainly not standing there and waiting to receive fire. They're also doing this every 12 to 15 seconds, because 15 seconds is the required time of all regular infantry to be able to load and fire, and veterans are doing so in 12. This isn't conjecture, this is quite achievable with just regular drill.

And the cost of all of this? Less than the uniform on the man's back.

>>64352655
That's just the British being cheap bastards in every way, as usual. Pick related, my 1777 Charleville, what you'll note has both a dedicated sight separate from the lug.

>>64353164
While everyone else already noted the important notes about logistics, cost, training, etc, there was a short time where the English especially were trying to capitalize on the idea of national identity within the longbow to help carry a combined arms known as the "double arm'd man" With the thought specifically towards colonial logistics. In theory, Bose could be maintained and arrows could be produced with less overseas logistics than powder and gunsmithy. This went as far as to send longbows along to Virginia during the Virginia companies establishment of Jamestown.

That said, in 1622 the governor of Virginia had all of those longbows sent for storage in Bermuda, because the Powhatan natives were insanely good archers, and there was a legitimate fear of them being able to reverse engineer English bowyering. Muskets were less reliable, and required greater overseas infrastructure to provide the powder and shot, but there was also no way that the natives would be able to supply themselves with captured weapons.

>>64389728
If you can make your sight and your bayonet lug the same thing I'd call that smart myself.

>>64389716
People think of the private soldier as the smallest independent component of an army, go back 200 years and that's not the case. They're a weapons system for the sergeants and officers, adding intelligence is going to do exactly as much good as gaffer taping an Amazon Alexa to your rifle.

>>64387889
>Wounded discharged from service decapitated by canon balls were very common.
Lots of headless men walking around yeah? Idiot.

>>64389681
Yeah thats what everyone was doing during sieges at the time. Hell they were doing that in the middle ages whenever they had enough men. You were suggesting doing it for field battles.

>>64389772
Having professionally shot the British shortland pattern musket daily for almost a decade, they stripped that thing down to be as cheap as possible, and if I had to pick a musket to go into the field for a long period of time with, it wouldn't be the one.

As for your second point, you don't need smart soldiers, you need competent, trained soldiers. Intelligence is a bonus, but the unit is acting as a single organism, and each soldier and officer is a cell

>>64389791
>they stripped that thing down to be as cheap as possible
Just like every issue weapon throughout history.
I would argue that intelligence is not a bonus and past a certain point it's only going to cause trouble, just like with cops.

>>64389822
You'd be factually wrong. I'd bet you're wrong about cops too, but I haven't studied them so I can't say for sure.

>>64389846
If you were intelligent you wouldn't have joined the fucking army in the first place anon.

>>64389866
>projecting this hard
Good thing I don't have to be in the military to read books, anon. You should try it out for yourself.

>>64389875
My dude if you were being handed a Brown Bess you really fucked up somewhere.

>>64389884
Read about musket age partisan warfare. Johann Ewald is a good starting point.

>>64352164 (OP)
It was, economy is the primary need for warfare as it supports your logistics. If you have men training with bows all their lives then they aren't contributing to the economy and you will be too poor to fight wars. They will be as effective with a musket when shooting in volley and are easy to train with a musket. A musket is also more useful than many of the rifles at the time as the rifles took to long to load as the balls were too hard to push through the rifling (the brunswick rifle was somewhat of an exception to this , pic related). You could shoot 3 times faster with a musket than with a rifle and volley fire made up for inaccurate fire. Most battalions would only get 2-3 volleys off before a charge anyway and at that point your sharp stick was better off shooting at people for a little while before it went back to being a sharp stick again.

It's also just a morale booster, it was the future of warfare, everyone knew that at the time and so if you had a musket... you were doing better than the guy with a pike.

>>64389822
When I mean that they strip them down, I mean that if you look at the surviving land pattern muskets, so many of them have been hastily repaired in the field with stop gap measures, in comparison to their contemporaries from the French, Spanish, etc.

Cost versus quality.

>>64389822
Uh... Ok, bro.

>>64389884
It would imply that your British (derogatory).

>>64387170
I hope you enjoy it! I really think you will; it's awesome, both as reference material and in the way it makes military history readable almost to the level of a novel.

>>64352164 (OP)
i regret that i both cant participate or witness a Revolutionary War era battle.
>t. Rev war reenactor.

>>64353550
That sounds a lot like the one Chandler who also wrote The Campaigns of Napoleon wrote. I also recommend the Chandler version, has choice examples of everything from Phalanx to the Japanese in New Guinea.

>>64389981
This.

The first time anybody really managed to achieve the amount of firepower to stop a determined charge was when the Prussians got their Dreyse needle rifles.
They could load fast enough (10 to 12 seconds) and while prone or kneeling so they could fire from three ranks.
But that was in 1841.
Which is not too far removed from the last use of pikes in Europe, which was in 1794. By the Poles, against the Russians.
The Poles won and captured 12 Rusians cannon. You can't make this shit up.

Also
>One attempt to resurrect the pike as a primary infantry weapon occurred during the American Civil War (1861–1865) when the Confederate States of America planned to recruit twenty regiments of pikemen in 1862. In April 1862 it was authorised that every Confederate infantry regiment would include two companies of pikemen
What the fuck, man.

>>64391354
British issued pikes as late as WW2.

>>64391381
>some autist in government can't understand hyperbole, and takes their instruction to arm the home guard with anything possible a bit too literally
>fixes bayonets to steel poles
>literally everyone thinks it's retarded
>promptly gets canned
not really the same as using them in battle

I would fucking make my army somewhat like the Roman army, able to dig in and use mobile fortifications at every battle(if possible) in order to provide my troops with sufficient cover and outmaneuvre my enemy with capable cavalry while they are busy with my infantry lines. Also invest in mortars and artillery.

>>64391394
They came closer to combat use than the American rebels.
Should the Germans had invaded then the guardsmen would have been glad when they had a pike or mace to silently kill.

>>64391465
I'm pretty sure that the Home Guards had things like a quarterstaff with a bayonet, not a pike.

>>64390061
Dying of dysentery, infected wounds, or the New England winter isn't as romantic as it sounds.

>>64377097
Sharpe-posting, as is your style I presume?

>>64391565
We're cutting hairs here fellas. They made the bayonets to make sticks points, not rifles and so did the Japanese who were based enough to do this in battle

>>64352164 (OP)
it only worked because everyone was a gentlemen as these wars were gentlemen wars. Just look at Rome vs Macedonian Pikes and the Greek Phalanx. They literally engaged in a shield wall battle only to turn it into a knife fight once they touched shields.

>>64352265
>A lone man running around firing at targets of opportunity the way we fight today
If you thinks this is how we fight tkday you're retarded.

>>64393541
It's still very much on the stupid side of desperate measures.

>>64393607
>it only worked because everyone was a gentlemen as these wars were gentlemen wars
there was nothing gentlemanly about it
also consider the fact that they basically conquered the entire world doing it

>>64393704
Yeah, well, they got there in the end. And boy did they get it right.

>>64391465
>Should the Germans had invaded then the guardsmen would have been glad when they had a pike or mace to silently kill.
Short melee weapons dominate for the purpose of close urban ambush for reasons I hope are obvious.

ideally, you'd have a small elite mobile army composed of horse artillery, mounted riflemen, light cavalry with carbines and sabers. They'd do be supported by a larger slower reserve/militia army that'd focus on forming a solid line of defense and consolidate gains.
The beginning of the Napoleonic Wars was like this where maneuver was more important.
But by the end of the Napoleonic Wars things changed and got really gay.

Everyone starting using more and more foot artillery and even bigger artillery pieces, massive infantry line blocks were the mainstay, and cavalry took a backseat.
Nobody maneuvered anymore, it was a slow ass bloody meatgrinder where nobody could gain a decisive victory over the other.
It started to resemble aspects of WW1 before France surrendered. I'd even wager that if the French refused to surrender and kept going, we could've seen actual WW1 tactics and mass trench warfare.

Truly awful shit that could've been avoided.

>>64399425
>There seems to be a feeling abroad that the rifle is essential as a weapon for all the Home Guard, and I should like to remind your Lordships that in the event of invasion in a great part of this country we shall be engaged in fighting of a close character. For instance, in the actual cities, towns and villages the opportunities for using hand grenades against enemy motor cyclists and infantry, and incendiary and high explosive grenades against vehicles of all descriptions will be immense. If every platoon had its trained sections of grenade throwers or bombers there is no doubt that operating from trenches or from windows or doorways, or suddenly emerging round houses and cottages, they would he able to inflict great casualties upon an advancing enemy. If I were organizing an attack—I am afraid this sounds rather absurd from one so aged as myself, but my noble friend Lord Mottistone, who I always feel is so much younger than many of us, would probably bear me out in this—I would rather have trained bombers for fighting in urban areas, and if a bombing attack could be swiftly followed up by cold steel, it would be most effective. If I were a bomber in such a formation—and I think I have thrown most types of bombs that have been used in the Army—I should like to have a pike in order to follow up my bombing attack, especially at night. It is a most effective and silent weapon.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1942/feb/04/the-home-guard

>>64399544
>Everyone starting using more and more foot artillery and even bigger artillery pieces, massive infantry line blocks were the mainstay, and cavalry took a backseat.

that's because all the skilled soldiers and expensive horses were all killed as the war progressed.
It was simply cheaper to use dumb conscripts and compensate with a shit ton of large artillery.

>>64352211
Independent platoons fighting independent wars. Preferably mounted, or with wagons that can outrun infantry and defend against cavalry on the move. Could also mount light cannon on them. Outgun a small section of the enemy army locally and then flee before they can organize to defeat you. Mongols with muskets, I guess.

>>64399961
Very clever as long as you never have to hold any territory ever.

>>64352211
Fixed the bayonet to the other end of the musket so it can be swung like a sword instead of poked like a gay little short spear.

>>64357991
>Mesoamericans never had wheels
ayktshuwally...

(But the main issue wasn't even the absense of draft animals - suck it, Diamond - it was the terrain itself. No massive steppes for a culture to evolve around chariots/horses. No Amazons in the Amazon, ironically)

>>64404231
that's today, show me the map from 500 AD

>>64353785
Gold is FLOWING into the treasury sire!

>>64404432
The Pampas or Great Plains didn't exist in 500?

>>64368303
this is the first post i see relevant to daisy chain off from, but if you had sufficient planning and money, i was thinking that for the start of the fight, having all your front line dudes wearing nearly ned kelly tier shit would be pretty good, and as soon as the charge started just drop that stuff.
obviously the reason they never did this is "cost" and "holy shit carrying this stuff around fucking sucks". still, would of been cool. your just basically marching at a brisk pace for that first bit, sorta. so wear a huge ass plate of steel in a way you can just drop it at a moments notice.

>>64399961
Platoons end up losing contact with each other in all the smoke. They end up getting isolated and eliminated in detail. The horses also become a limitation as you just can't breed horses fast enough to keep up with the size of armies.

>>64399961
So basically...Napoleon's corps system?

>>64409121
That's more of a strategic plan not a tactic.

>>64357491
>>64356270
Cavalry is incredibly easy for a well organize state with a functioning bureaucracy to raise as long as it can afford horses. The ERE literally created their horse archers in response to the avars by training city dwelling people to ride and shoot- they didn't fight the exact same way, as they simply couldn't ever move in a giant cloud of horsemen like steppe nomads, but were absolutely able to move, shoot, maintain formations, charge, and crush those same nomads in shootouts and melees BECAUSE they were professionally trained and equipped troops.

Something like the modern US would produce a lot of very, very good cavalry very quickly.

>>64352164 (OP)
Your long range comms are your fastest horse. Your primary weapon can get 3 rounds out in a minute at the very fastest, depending on weather. Leaders of entire nations are typically on the field and not far away, so honor still plays a huge part. The battle is a symphony and it revolves entirely sround ensuring the best possible conditions for the charge that decides the battle.

>>64399961
So... dragoons.