If you’ve ever watched movies such as ‘The Patriot’, with Mel Gibson, or any movies made about battles of the American Revolutionary War or the Napoleonic wars, you may have noticed that 200 years ago, army officers didn’t seem to have many brains. How could they expect to win a battle if all they did was line up their men in rows, facing the enemy, creating nothing but a big, fat target for enemy soldiers to shoot at?

On the surface, watching a reenactment of an 18th or 19th century battle, such as those which would’ve been fought during the American War of Independence, the War of 1812 or the Napoleonic wars of the 1810s, looks like a bloody waste of time. All they’re doing is shooting at each other until everyone’s dead. How the hell did one side ever expect to win against another?

The Weapons.

To understand how and why battles back then were fought the way they were, you had to understand the types of weapons that these battles were fought with. Back in the 1700s and the early 1800s, the main infantry weapon was a firearm known as the flintlock musket. The musket is easy to use, but it’s slow to reload and is generally inaccurate beyond a few dozen yards. At 100 yards, you had a 50/50 chance of hitting the target which you were aiming at. One rather telling quote about the inaccuracy of muskets goes:

“I do maintain and will prove, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards, by a common musket, by the person who aimed at him.”

– Col. George Hanger (1814).

Flintlock musket, the type of infantry firearm that predominated wars from the mid 1600s until the mid 1800s.

How a Musket was Loaded.

The flintlock musket is a ridiculously simple weapon to use. A child of ten could do it. The flintlock musket was loaded in the following manner:

1. Hammer to Half-Cock.

You pulled the hammer (containing the flint-stone which gives the weapon its name), to half-cock.

2. Open Frizzen.

The frizzen is the lid and steel plate which closes over the flash-pan. Opening the frizzen gave you access to the pan.

3. Prime.

You ‘primed’ or filled the flash-pan with powder.

4. Close Frizzen.

You closed the frizzen to stop the powder falling out.

5. Cast About.

You cast the musket about, that is, you swung it around so that the muzzle was nice and close to you. Having cast it about, you poured more powder down the muzzle, followed by the musket-ball and a scrunched up piece of paper, known as the wad. The wad was there to stop the musket-ball rolling out (remember, these guns are smoothbore. Things fall out just as easily as they go in).

6. Draw Ramrod.

You drew out the ramrod from the sling underneath your musket. You rammed the wadding, bullet and gunpowder right down to the back of the barrel, so that it was next to the flashpan and frizzen. You then removed the ramrod and replaced it under the musket.

7. Hammer to Full Cock.

You pulled the hammer to full cock. You were now ready to fire. At your own will, or on command, you lowered the musket, took aim, and fired. This seven-step loading process seems like a lot of work, but it could actually be done pretty quickly. In the 1700s, a well-trained British redcoat was expected to be able to do this entire operation four times in a minute, purely by feel. Usually the rate of fire was three shots a minute, but especially well-trained armies, such as the Russian and British Armies, could get off four, or even five shots a minute, which means doing that entire loading procedure in just twelve seconds.

Musket or Rifle?

While the rifle was more accurate, the musket remained the weapon of choice for infantry for several decades. In the opening years of the American Civil War, some soldiers still preferred muskets over rifles. Why?

1. Muskets are quicker to load.

A musket is a smoothbore weapon. This means that the inside of the gun-barrel is as smooth as the outside of the barrel. This means that when you shoot the gun, the ball doesn’t always come out straight. It bounces and zings and ricochets around inside the barrel due to the windage (gap between bullet & barrel), before spitting out the end and heading off into only God-knows-where. The fact that muskets were muzzle-loading weapons, however, meant that if they were smoothbore, bullets and other important components (like wadding and gunpowder), went down the barrel quicker. By comparison, a rifle, with its rifling (spirals carved into the inside of the barrel), was slower to load. The ball had a very snug fit inside a rifle-barrel, and this made the rifle slower to load. When a split second in battle can mean the difference between life and death, you don’t wanna be caught up loading your gun in an inopportune moment.

2. Muskets can be mass-produced.

Because muskets were such simple weapons, they were easy to mass-produce. Calibres and sizes varied, but the basic design never changed. Because of this, it was possible for a gunsmith to turn out dozens, hundreds, thousands of muskets at once. Rifles, on the other hand, were usually custom-made pieces, and no two rifles back in the 18th century were the same. Because rifles were so much harder to make than muskets, muskets again, won out over their more accurate opponent.

3. Bayonets.

A bayonet is a long, thin, sharp, steel knife which fits onto the end of a gun-barrel. In modern combat of the 21st century, the bayonet is a last-ditch, close-quarters combat-weapon. 200 years ago, the bayonet was used in what were called ‘bayonet charges’. During battle, an army officer would shout out the order: ‘level bayonets!’ or words to that effect, and then bellow out, ‘charge!’, upon which, probably 2000 soldiers would charge at the enemy with two thousand long, sharp, pointy things in front of them. Being sliced or spiked by a bayonet was not pretty, and a bayonet charge was a magnificent form of psychological warfare on the enemy.

Bayonets are detatchable knives. They can be pulled off the gun, or they can be put back on. In the 1700s, bayonets were called ‘socket-bayonets’. Meaning that the end closest to the musket-barrel had a loop of metal (the socket), which fitted around the musket-barrel and slid into place, nice and securely. Because muskets were mass-produced, fashioning a similarly-sized bayonet was pretty easy. Rifles, being custom-made, meant that they all had to have custom-made bayonets, which took up too much time and money.

So, despite their inaccuracy, muskets were the desired weapon of the day.

The Tactics.

Although they were faster loading, easier to produce and came with nice, shiny accessories which could turn the enemy into a kebab, muskets were still…inaccurate. To compensate for this, tacticians in battle sent out their troops en-masse, in rows (ranks), to maximise firepower, when shooting at the enemy. Before the invention of the machine-gun, this was really the only way to ensure accurate, high rates of intense firepower.

The most common tactical formation during wars involving muskets was the ‘Line’. It’s exactly what it sounds like; soldiers formed lines (ranks), one behind the other, and marched off into battle. The line allowed as many soldiers as possible to fire at once, inflicting the most injuries as possible upon the enemy. Sometimes, the front rank of soliders would kneel, with the rear rank standing over them. This way, they could deliver double the amount of firepower from the same amount of space.

Another common infantry formation was the ‘Square’, also called the Infantry Square. This formation was commonly utilised against cavalry charges. Once a square had been formed, it meant that several ranks of soldiers could deliver devastating fire in four directions, capable of destroying enemy cavalry as it came galloping towards them. Usually, the soldiers would wait until the cavalry was very close (within a few yards), before opening fire. When horses and their riders crashed to the ground, they started forming a wall of dead bodies which other riders would either have to leap over (exposing themselves to fire), or which they would crash into, again, exposing themselves to fire.

This article is continued in Part II, below.