For reasons we won’t get into here the entire allied armies have disappeared and the French are moving on Waterloo in strength. It’s June 17th, 1815 and there is nothing standing between the French and regaining their empire except you…and a minimum number of modern trained and equipped soldiers. The question is, what would the minimum number of modern trained and equipped soldiers would you need to beat back the French at Waterloo and send them packing for home, and what equipment would you need to do it? Oh, sorry, you can’t have any mechanized forces, just soldiers and whatever they can pack in on their own two legs. So, no tanks, trucks, jeeps, troop carriers or any sort of aircraft. Any sort of mortars or artillery that is man-portable, or man-portable/crew served weapons, however, are fine. They will have to pack in and distribute all their logistics as well with whatever man power you have, so need to really think about the weapons and equipment as well as the ammo and other expendables.
What do you think is the minimum needed to successfully hold the battlefield assuming the initial French deployments were similar in this scenario to what actually happened? Just an interesting thought experiment for anyone who likes this sort of thing.
IMO, you’d need some line-stiffening troops too. The immense French formations would lap around the machine-gun positions. They might even bypass them entirely and just keep marching toward Brussels.
This reminds me of that Reddit thread about the Marine battalion vs. the entire Roman Empire.
But yeah, what XT said. Even one M249 or M240B could virtually annihilate a regiment. Given that the French had about 73,000 soldiers, I suppose they could outlast them just based on the number of bullets the modern soldiers would be carrying.
The most likely outcome would be that the French would use some of their 14,000 cavalry to charge the modern soldiers. They would be able to cover the ground fast enough to attack before the machine gunner could reload. The question, then, boils down to how many squadrons the French would be able to put into action at one time, and how many of them have to die before the rest decide to flee.
Also, saying “At Waterloo” leaves a lot of room to quibble. If the modern soldiers occupied the opposite hillside against all 73,000 Frenchmen, they are going to have a rough go of it. But if the modern soldiers are in a defensive position (such as the sand quarry or one of the buildings), or if they move forward and ambush the French while they are still marching up the road, then a small group could hold them off indefinitely.
Just as a ballpark figure… Twelve. Six to shoot the M240s, and six to act as AG / reloader. And hope they rout before you run out of ammo.
Yeah, being able to efficiently kill swathes of French grenadiers isn’t enough. You need a way to compel them to engage. Napoleon actually has better overall maneuverability in this scenario.
Fire mortar rounds over the French units and drop them behind the French lines. The explosions behind them will channel the French soldiers forward into the gunfire.
Arguably one would do. He would just have to have the some balls and the wherewithal to get to demonstrate to Napoleon the awesome firepower of 21st century soldiery.
<demonstration of teh awesome>
Voila! Cédez ou on va vous écraser facilement, non?
I bet the relatively feeble firepower of a WWI rifle would be enough to convince.
I think you’d need more warm bodies, to be honest. 12 guys just wouldn’t be able to hold the front lines, even with the panic effect. Myself, I was thinking of at least a heavy company with machine gun positions, riflemen, mortars to engage artillery and maybe snipers. You could position them basically where the British were positioned, maybe with some teams in those fortified farm houses who’s name escapes me atm. Assuming the French didn’t just march around your positions and leave you scrambling I figure you could route them with minimal losses. If they DO try and just march around I think a heavy company could probably get them to rethink that using the mortars and some platoons of light, fast infantry to hit them when they are in column of march and probably force them to engage.
No, they had howitzers & mortars then. A mortar round would not shock them. (the size of the modern mortar would be surprising, but hardly cause panic).
German Machine guns in WWI mowed down hundreds and thousands of charging French.
Like the rate of fire from the machine guns, it would be the range and power of the mortars that would shock them. And the German (and English and French) machine guns in WWI were able to do that because they had other fortifications in place, like barbed wire and entrenchments, as well as riflemen to support the machine guns. Your 12 guys getting there the night before wouldn’t have much time to do more than light entrenchments with maybe a few spotters and fire teams in those farm houses. That’s why I think you’d need more guys, even for a minimal defense against 70k+ French infantry and over 12k cavalry with artillery support, even if it’s the rather anemic field artillery of the 18th century.
Squaddies on their own are going to get obliterated. Remember that the French had artillery. Your squaddies are going to need a Davy Crockett or three to survive, let alone win against so many.
And the range of French cannons was far from anaemic - 1600 metres maximum, 825 metres effective.
All the allied armies have disappeared? You’re trying to prevent Napoleon be enshrined again as emperor of France? You have no mobility other than leg-power?
Then that heavy company is probably going to be a minimum. Napoleon is not going to fight Waterloo to the death in such circumstances unless you get really lucky. He’ll get mauled, but once he sees his troops being savaged he is going to beat a hasty retreat with at least a large chunk of his army. He might be panicking, but he will panic right away from you faster than you can follow because he has horses and you don’t.
You’re going to have go get him. And without any support at all from the rest of Europe and lacking in mobility, that is not going to be an easy task. Especially after the French get over panicking and start trying to analyze how to deal with these alien intruders. A dozen guys isn’t going to do the job.
Now a lone assassination would be much, much easier to do.
Even assuming that such a firepower would be sufficient to hold back Napoleon’s army, it couldn’t possibly work. Facing an heavily fortified position, there’s no reason to attack it. You march on, leaving behind a sufficiently large force to besiege it. When your modern company begins to starve, they have to either surrender or leave their prepared position to attack the besieger own fortified positions. I think you could even just bypass the company and ignore them. What are they going to do? You can’t keep control of territory with a company, regardless how well armed, so why should you care about them when you’re engaged in a continent-scale war?
You need a force sufficient to win a battle on open ground for your modern force to be of any use. In fact able to win many battles, bacause routing Napoleon at Waterloo with a small force won’t have the result the actual battle had since once again you can’t invade and control France with your small force, so Napoleon would just regroup and raise more soldiers as needed. On top of which, your force will soon run out of ammunitions, and a Napoleonic gun with ammunitions is vastly superior to a modern gun without.
I didn’t say it was going to panic them or reduce them to primitive awe of our godlike powers. But if there are explosions going off behind you, you’re going to tend to move forward away from them.