How many modern soldiers do you need to fend off the French!

In My Humble Opinion
61

Napoleonic-era armies suffered pretty heavy losses among mid-level officers – the actual leaders in combat – but not so much among the generals and colonels, the “strategic officers.” On the other hand, those guys tended to have staff officers about them who could pretty much take over. Ten minutes of chaos in the command tent isn’t going to change too much…

…Unless it’s Napoleon himself that you scrag. That would lead to a breakdown of command. Without him, what is the strategic purpose of the battle? I can easily see the Marshals calling a cease-fire. The new strategic goal would be preservation of France and its privileges, and having a large army still existing would be conducive to this.

So you shoot one (1) tip-top leader, or maybe a hundred generals and colonels, or maybe a thousand majors and captains, or maybe 15,000 front-line soldiers. Any of those would probably do the job.

(If you shoot Marshal D’Erlon, you may actually be doing Napoleon a big favor…)

62

Put me down with the “Gas 'em!” group. Check the prevailing winds and dump a shitload of mustard gas on their asses. Between mortars lobbing yellow death and machine guns cutting down cavalry, you can have troops pumping 40mm grenades up and down thee French lines. Call it 3000 modern soldiers. Anything less will be flanked, swamped or bypassed.

63

I think some of the responses here overestimate the capabilities of French artillery. The people of the age constantly argued over whether the proper use artillery was counterbattery fire or attacking infantry formations, because it was extremely difficult and time consuming for them to attack an enemy cannon. They just didn’t have the accuracy required to hit a small target consistently.

If the Marine dug even a shallow fighting position, they would be well protected against French artillery.

64

Completely forgot:

Drones as spotters for the snipers. Let Nappy figure out what those things are.

And large speaker array playing whatever would do the most trauma - how about GOD: “Your Napoleon is a fraud - he killed the real one. Kill him or France will be destroyed”.
Or heavy metal at 150 db.

65

Besides the point someone made above about how biological weapons are not tactical weapons, smallpox was a known disease at the time and they even had a vaccination against it. Don’t know how widespread those vaccinations were in 1815, though. But note that people who’d survived it were then immune to it. Nowadays., that number is essentially zero, but wasn’t then.

I suppose it would be cheating to suggest a single soldier armed with a nuclear handgrenade…

66

Cannons didn’t work like that back then. The crew had to move it into place, secure it in position, and then load it before they could fire it. This was an operation that took several minutes and many of the steps had to be performed from in front of the cannon. All a modern infantryman has to do is point his rifle at the crew while they’re doing this and pull the trigger a few times - he doesn’t even have to stand up.

67

This opens up a lot of questions.

The biggest what if of this is how do the French under Napoleon respond to what, would effectively, be an “alien invasion force” that dropped in from the sky? If Napoleon reacts belligerently, a modern infantry battalion (stripped of any mechanized elements–which makes it unrealistic, but anyway) would likely, given time to prepare a defensive position and with enough ammo to have essentially unlimited, would be able to outright kill and destroy such a large number of the French they would absolutely break and retreat. So for the purposes of the OP, which was actually restricted to “how much would it take to beat back the French at Waterloo”, my answer is a battalion, assuming the French attack in force.

Now, I do think given the technology disparity, there is a potential for a Cajamarca type situation, and a group as small as a company could say, prepare some mines, utilize launched grenades, heavy automatic weapons fire, small mortars etc and the insane firepower might be enough to make the Napoleonic soldiers simply break in abject fear and mad panic, even though they might, if they to a man were unbreakable, have been able to straight up charge the position and break it apart, the human factor makes this scenario at least fairly plausible. If it was my men, I wouldn’t want to have to rely on human weakness to come back alive, so I’d still want maybe a full battalion with lots of machine guns and unlimited ammo.

A more interesting scenario is what happens if Napoleon doesn’t like what he sees and just runs away? How big a force would be required to take Napleonic era France?

That’s a lot more difficult. In that scenario, I think even a full brigade would struggle, especially given the parameters of no mechanized units. But even if you allowed them mechanized units, everything is based on logistics. You run out of gas and then transport vehicles are just interesting (to the locals) immobile curiosities. Even if you bring a mountain of ammo, how do you move it around? Soldiers can’t carry more than around a hundred pounds in an extended march, and you want them down to around 70 lb in a fight and no more. You can’t rule France from a tiny speck of land, and a brigade cannot carry mountains of ammo without a logistics chain (reliant on gas and vehicles) to move it. Food becomes a quick concern, again, even if you bring a mountain of food, you can’t just sit in one spot, you have to be able to move around in force to rule an area.

Eventually the brigade will find itself needing to live off the land. Given the fact it’s not feasible for a brigade of modern soldiers to hunt and forage itself to sufficiency this means raiding French farms and taking food. This means, most likely, necessarily splitting the brigade up a lot, in strange and hostile times. You’re going to lose guys to attrition, fuckery, misadventure etc. You can’t replace your men, the French of course, can replace theirs.

I mean to be frank, in some ways the Afghanistan the Soviets invaded was pretty damn technologically unsophisticated, and the Soviets couldn’t hold it (we helped out by sneaking more modern weapons in to them.)

Long term I think the only way to win would be to get a brigade size force to some sort of fortification and use it to lord over the local countryside. Try to convert the locals to your cause, implement feudalism if they aren’t interested. But you need a base of operations and support. Then you need to navigate the political climate of the time and try to build a base of allies and support. Get to where you can recruit men. With the typical knowledge base of a few thousand modern people, likely working with 19th century black smiths and gun smiths you can actually teach them what would be necessary to start manufacture of say, a version of a Maxim gun or etc (I am skeptical of how easy it’d be to make more modern weapons in large numbers without more precise manufacturing techniques), but if you start building up an army and can crank out a few Maxim type guns a week and train crews in their use you’ll quickly build up enough fire power to likely destroy any army sent against you, and then build up enough force projection to start building further fortresses around the country. Eventually you might be able to essentially conquer it, and remove Napoleon from power.

68

Why? Again, the effective range of a modern machine gun is apparently a bit more than 1 km. If you encircle them at this distance, that’s a 3 km circle, less than what was needed to besiege a town at the time. Some soldiers are going to get killed, and so? And not that many since your small unit has few support weapons. Machine guns and mortars don’t magically kill thousands at long distance. They’re not going to stay standing in nicely packed regiments so that you can kill as much of them as possible. And then, once they’re dug out, what? You attack and come within firing distance of a vastly larger force? You engage them in close combat to cross the line? You sustain mortar fire day and night until you die of thirst? What?

And anyway your small force isn’t going to survive a mass assault. There are tons of examples of soldiers attacking through heavy fire despite heavy losses (and I suspect that soldiers of that time were much better at this than modern soldiers would be), and they typically weren’t able to attack from all sides such a ludicrously smaller force. And after looking at a map of the battlefield, there were plenty of ridges, woods, buildings, etc… to advance under cover. So, the situation would be even worst than my first concept of people charging through 1 km of open terrain. The Napoleonic soldiers would show up from the front, behind, left and right from behind the hill, the barn, the wood, the hedge, etc… leaving the modern force few time to open fire before being overwhelmed.

FTR, Napoleon-era guns and mortars had a maximum range of around 1500 meters, and an effective range of about half that, apparently (depending of course of the specific gun). I don’t know how many mortars Napoleon had at Waterloo, but presumably much more than a modern company has. Put them behind any kind of cover and your modern company is the one that is going to be in a world of hurt.

It seems to me that people are both overestimating the capabilities of a modern small force and underestimating the capabilities, discipline and plainly ability to not act in a completely idiotic way of 19th century soldiers. We’re talking 200/1 odds, here. Lacking really overwhelmingly superior equipment, like armored carriers, your modern small unit will get trounced in no time.

69

I beg to disagree, when I was in the army I had plenty of experience huffing it without motorized transport and the Infantry and SF guys had far more than I. Also the French soldiers would need to deal with animals and carts getting stuck in the mud and other issues relating to the transport of their goods.

70

Yes but the Modern soldiers would all be vaccinated against it. I know I was.

71

Most of you seem to be under the impression that the Modern soldiers will find a position they like, dig in and let the French slaughter themselves against their machine gun fire. Although that would be a good idea, modern soldiers like to be mobile and wouldn’t just stick around in one spot to be overwhelmed by a French bayonet charge. Not to mention the fact that the French would likely just go around and avoid this death squad entirely.
The French forces would be grouped into armies which the modern soldiers would work to separate from the rest of the army and then ambush while they slept. Radios and night vision would give them an unstoppable advantage against the French as they were encamped. Snipers would take out the night guard and with any luck the rest of the camp will be caught napping. Even if they’re not the French would be hard pressed to see 5 feet in front of them and if they tried to fire at their attackers they would likely hit each other rather than the enemy. This would make them resort to bayonets and swords but even then their ability to see their enemy would be near non-existent.
There is a saying in the army “We own the night” which would be doubly true against an army without electrical lights.

72

I agree with some of your thinking–but remember that charges in Napoleonic times were predicated on putting a lot of bodies in tight formation and tearing into shit. This is very bad for facing say, a battalion of men armed with machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers, grenades etc. Historically most forces don’t require 50-60% losses to break, most break long before that. Add in the “scare factor” of modern weapons, and I don’t think there’s a realistic chance that Napoleon’s Waterloo force beats a modern, prepared (as per OP) battalion.

Now, if Napoleon on the other hand is prepared and knows what he’s facing, I think he’d devise a solution. He wouldn’t charge in column formation (typical of Napoleonic era warfare) because that would be disastrous. Instead you’d see more of a charge akin to the one by Pickett’s forces at Gettysburg (a line more than a mile long), and he’d send successive waves. The first wave will take monstrous casualties, but if they’re in a thin and wide line, circling the position, some of them will likely get through against a battalion. The ones that do will at least interfere with some of the machine guns, possible kill some of the gunners. So the next wave is facing a slightly easier task, and disrupts some more. After a few waves enough machine gun positions are going to be engaged in hand-to-hand (at which they will fare terribly versus French bayonets) that it’ll get exponentially bad very quickly.

My thought is that a battalion would easily repel, and essentially “break” an outright, typical frontal assault you’d see by Napoleon’s armies of the era (especially against what would be a hilarious small unit, a battalion of 400-500 men.)

But yeah, if the French had a greater understanding of what was going on, there’s no way a battalion without some access to more than just “infantry equipment” is defeating a 70k man army. Now, if they had a couple A-130s, Napoleon’s guys would be in a world of pain. Or a large bomber that can drop some MOABs.

In terms of “beating” the battalion with line-based successive charges, something doubters would have to mind, is the cyclic rate of fire of a machine gun is really high (hundreds of rounds per minute.) But the military instructional manuals list out a sustained rate of fire, for weapons like the M2 Browning heavy machine gun, of around 40 rounds a minute. This is because it takes time to reload these, and the belts can be emptied very, very quickly if you’re truly just firing as quick as possible, so you’re going to be reloading a lot. Like you said, given terrain there’s going to be times when the charge isn’t directly subject to fire.

Also, keep in mind that automatic weapons suffer a lot of “wasted” discharged rounds. Lot of extra rounds going into guys who are already dead, it’s not like it’s a magic wand that just “erases” vast lines of men. There have been plenty of cases of guys with a lot of heavy machine guns being overran by a simply overwhelming human charge (and 70,000 vs 500 would be that.) You saw it in some battles in WWI, WWII, Americans against the Chinese in Korea, Iraqis against the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War.

The main reason a battalion of 21st century soldiers could conceivably beat Napoleon’s Waterloo Army is because doctrine of the time, they’d charge in columns and be torn to shreds and likely the army breaks due to the alien/scary nature of modern weapons to a 19th century soldier. If you take away those advantages there’s really no way 500 infantry beat 70,000 infantry. You simply can’t given the parameters. Now, if we open up the tech door to air craft or armored vehicles, it’s a different thing.

73

We’re getting into different scenarios here though. The Battle of Waterloo took place over about 12 hours, and the OP actually posited a scenario in which modern forces are “put in the place” of the allies, so they’d be given Wellington’s position.

You’re positing something different–modern soldiers in an extended guerrilla campaign against Napoleon’s forces.

74

Under those conditions, I would have to say, roughly…one.

75

Why would they care about winning at Waterloo? Their goal is destroying napoleon’s army, and napoleon as well, not keeping the history books from changing. One advantage the small modern force would have is mobility, they would de-ass the area and choose the battlefield rather than letting Napoleon do so.

76

Did you read the OP? That was the premise, re-fighting Waterloo.

But your scenario about conducting a guerrilla campaign is actually questionably laid out. You’d actually likely need more men to win that way, than you would if Napoleon was fighting you in a mass attack.

Napoleon’s forces could (and did) move 20 miles a day. You’re correct that in some contexts a small force has greater mobility, but not in this context. If you’re splitting up your force to engage in raids and other shenanigans, you can’t have them caught out in the open by say, a regiment of dragoons (who will almost certainly close on you fast enough to kill guys, which increases the total number you need to bring from the future to be successful.) So your small force is going to be moving by sticking to woodlands, moving at night etc. Napoleon’s Army is going to march in huge columns over roads and plains, to make the quickest progress possible. A force trying to move with concealment in small numbers will be left behind and never catch up.

Nobody with 75-100 pounds of gear (since you need to carry everything, especially as you get away from your drop zone where all the future supplies were inserted) is going to average 20 mi a day by slinking through the woods and doing so with a mind to not be caught.

A major reason modern armies are so mobile is because of mechanized units that can transport infantry very quickly over varying terrain, but it’s been stipulated they are disallowed from this scenario.

77

Also you don’t know where you’re going in the local countryside. Now, it doesn’t take any great talent to track a 70,000 man army, but in terms of shadowing it until it breaks for camp so you can attack on a nightly basis, imagine trying to keep up with guys who are marching 20 miles a day over open fields and roads when you’re not only confined to places like woodlands but also doing so with no knowledge of the local topography. You could easily have guys get lost, end up in deep hollows, or areas with impassable vegetation they have to go around etc–it’s really a clusterfuck scenario.

78

Can the modern army scrounge? Okay, they don’t have trucks to haul their gear. Once they kill a bunch of Cuirassiers, can they grab their horses and use them for lugging?

If the modern force were magically transported (like William R. Forstchen’s “Lost Regiment” novels) they would, over time, have to assimilate in this way, and a lot. They could probably manage some reloading of ammunition, but ultimately, they’d have to rely on period manufacturing as their equipment wore out, broke down, and got lost.

They’d still have an advantage, because they have better tactical integration. Especially as long as their radios held out!

They wouldn’t conquer France by themselves, but they would establish the nucleus of a new kind of army, forging alliances, and spearheading drastic historical changes. Just by giving wise advice, they’d make immense changes in the prosecution of, say, the Crimean War.

Somebody, quick, start writing the series!

79

Man-Portable nuke -

80

Napoleon attacked Waterloo to prevent the ability of the 7 nation coalition from materializing an Army that could stop him. The defenders weren’t there trying to stop Waterloo from being taken by Napoleon and Napoleon doesn’t win by capturing the city.

There are no reinforcements coming, so why try to hold the city? The battle isn’t till tomorrow and when Napoleon arrives he will see no defenders and will assume the contemporary troops had out maneuvered him somehow and seek to follow. This will require him to send scouts to try and discover their location since 118,000 soldiers don’t just disappear. Such a small force however can and they hide out in the houses in the area. After scouting the area and finding nothing he will call his generals into one place for a war council to determine his next step. The planning goes late into the night. The French soldiers celebrating the fact that they “won” the battle and are drunk on wine. That evening the soldiers attack Napoleons camp, slaughtering as many as they can and setting fire to their encampments. The entire French leadership including Napoleon is killed in the mayhem.