So the modern soldiers brought untold amounts of ammo and mortars and weaponry yet didn’t think to bring a map? I also think small recon drones which are carried by modern soldiers would help them keep ahead of their pursuers. If the French decide to take off marching 20 miles a day let them where are they heading? How does their forced march help them out. It gets them no closer to their goal of defeating the coalition army.
The OP specified no vehicles. A troop of tankers would still be trying to unwrap their M-4s by the time the Frenchies got within bayonet range.
-former scout
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Simply because the modern soldiers aren’t going to be pinned down and allow that encirclement to happen without constantly attritting the French trying to do the encirclement. I left it up to the reader/poster to determine the load out of their modern troops, so the answer is going to vary, but you seem to be assuming the only weapon the troops would have is machine guns (and there are various types of these from SAR to crew served). They would also have rifles, mortars, grendade launchers and even portable howitzers…plus more exotic stuff if that’s what the poster wants. Looking at the terrain around Waterloo it’s going to be pretty tough for the French to encircle a modern force of company to brigade size who has good radio communications and at least a day to prepare. Any movement to encircle (as opposed to ones directly away) they make is going to be under fire, and machine guns wouldn’t be the big killers during this phase…riflemen probably would, with modern assault rifles being fired by trained troops into large masses and columns of men moving to position.
You wouldn’t have to kill that many…a few thousand…to demoralize those troops, especially since there would be very little the French could do to retailate. I’m guessing they would try to move cavalry up, but a smart commander would be prepared for that with those machine guns, and the French would quickly learn that cavalry isn’t going to be able to strike home against machine gun positions backed by riflemen and firing from even rudimentary fixed positions using grenade launchers, mortars, etc.
A heavy US Army company would have 250+ soldiers. Every one of those soldiers are going to be armed with a weapon, several with weapons that fire with rates in the hundreds of rounds per minute. And that was the minimum formation I said…my own preference was a batallion, so up to 800 or even a 1000 soldiers there. That probably sounds like a small number compared to the 10’s of thousands in Napoleons armies, but their weapons, training and equipment are huge force multipliers.
And Napoleanic armes also don’t kill from a long distance. And these guys won’t be armed with just machine guns and mortars. By the nature of how Napoleanic armies operated, however, they are going to be extremely vulnerable to the kinds of long range fire a modern army can deal out. I think you are thinking of this like it’s WWI and the modern troops are going to just hunker down in their hastily prepared entrenchments and have to wait for the French to do stuff. The French are going to simply charge with everyone after encircling the modern troops who will get a few shots off then be overwhelmed. But in reality none of this is going to happen because there is nothing to pin the modern troops down at ranges they can’t engage, so no reason for them to hunker in the bunkers and wait for the charge. The modern troops would be out in platoon strength or more, using fire teams to hit the French as they moved (unless they were moving directly away, in which case it would be a bit different). The French troops, marching in formation would be under constant attack. Yeah, a platoon of modern troops isn’t going to kill thousands per second…but they are going to have an effect on moral, and they will be killing dozens and without the French having the ability to do much about it.
Again, this might be true if the modern troops tried to do a WWI and just entrench on the ridge line and wait for the French. But they are going to be attriting the French all through the encirclement phase, as the French move their troops into position…which is going to take a long time. As to a mass attack, yes, there are examples of such attacks winning through…but there are examples of a small well armed force fending off and breaking a much larger and more primitively equipped force as well, and in this case the disparity between what a modern force can do and what the French could do in 1815 is huge.
I agree with you that some of the answers where people were talking about 12 guys with machine guns wouldn’t work and they would be overwhelmed, but I don’t think you realize what aimed fire from modern assault rifles, machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers, etc would do to the formations of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Yes, those guys were certainly up for taking losses, but they were used to losses where perhaps an entire line of infantry would fire on an approaching column and, perhaps, 1 in 100 fired shots would hit, at least until both lines closed to point blank range. Where there was something like a 1 in 5 chances that a musket would misfire. The sorts of casualities these guys would be taking constantly and far outside of their range is something none of these folks would be prepared for psychologically. If we had shifted things so that our modern army was going up against WWI veterans then THEY might have been more psychologically prepared, but no way would Napoleonic era troops be able to handle the shock.
But their accuracy and ability to kill at those ranges or even half those ranges was pretty slight unless they were firing at mass formations. Look at the counter battery duals that happened…it took hours for one side to beat down the opposition batteries, and when it came to the troops those things were best employed in either stationary formations or when the enemy was closing. Modern troops aren’t just going to sit there waiting…and modern counter battery fire will take a few volleys, with correction by the fire teams, to take out a French battery. They will have fire teams well out in front moving about and supported by other teams with machine guns and grenade launchers in case the French use their cavalry. They also have a variety of weapons besides their own mortars…which have ranges with HE or WP of up to 3000 meters and down to around 80 meters. Man mobile howitzers (well, light towed :p) like the Marine Corps use have ranges up to 24 kilometers (these wouldn’t be useful if Napoleon did the smart thing and turned around and left at best speed).
I think some are overestimating them, yes. It would take more than 12 guys to fend off the French, unless those 12 guys were firing tube based nukes or something. But I think you are really not seeing the differences between a modern military and their equipment and training and what effects they would have on formations of men marching around. Probably the biggest killer in this scenario isn’t the machine gun, or the rifle or even the mortar or howitzer…it’s the radio.
It can be immunized against.
Actually, we might have a “War of the Worlds” type situation where the modern troops get disabled by 19th-century disease. I’m not sure how many modern vaccinations would be as effective against pathogens from back then.
XT some things to mind, is a typical modern Army battalion is more like 400-500 men, not 800-1000. Additionally, I disagree with your claim that Napoleon’s forces would be suffering constant fire as they encircled. Modern weapons have ranges as well, and it’s not that hard to figure out what the range is even in real time.
Plus, modern Army battalions have exactly no experience in the kind of field movements we’re talking about here. Even in World War II Army units were not engaging 70,000 man German armies. Tactics was managed at a much smaller level, these huge field armies largely went away in the latter 19th century and you didn’t see them in WWI at all.
When you mention “hundreds of rounds per minute” you’re also talking the cyclic rate, which is largely theoretical. The rapid fire rate which is usually maybe a third of the cyclic rate is sometimes possible in battle but not always, it certainly isn’t possible from units on the move. The cyclic rate for assault rifles in particular is highly theoretical, remember you’re talking 30 round magazines, no one is firing 600 rounds a minute from an M4 even though its mechanism would technically be capable of that sort of fire rate.
Like I said, a Napoleonic Army following Napoleon’s preferred columnar charge would suffer such grave casualties it’d break and retreat, but if we shift the scenario to what clairobscur is talking about where for some reason Napoleon has a better understanding of what is going on, I think the ability for a modern battalion to defeat a 70,000 man trained Army, is pretty damn low. We actually have fought and lost battles like this (we being the West), in Zululand, in the Boxer rebellion etc.
If you actually look at the British at the battle of Rorke’s Drift (which they won, with ~140 men versus 4,000) they won largely because they had semi-prepared defenses and rifles with more modern performance (the British Martini-Henry’s used in the Zulu war were sighted out to 1,800 yards and were devastatingly effective at 400 yards, largely on part with the best you can expect from a modern assault or battle rifle–the Martini-Henry Mk2 of course did have a lower rate of fire than a modern rifle) and were able to repel massed assaults. If you compare it to the immediately preceding Battle of Isandlwana, which the British lost in the open field, the advantages for armies with a technological advantage but inferior numbers utilizing defensive positions is pretty obvious. Most modern tacticians back to Patton and earlier dismiss defensive positions because they are talking about military forces with equally modern weaponry. In that scenario hunkering down defensively is usually not ideal. But against a force with vastly inferior, pre-modern weaponry, your best bet of massing the most modern firepower to inflict maximum casualties is with a fixed defensive position and an enemy foolish enough to charge.
So that’s why you avoided the Pelennor Fields!
And Helm’s Deep!, they had to drag me kicking and screaming to the Scouring of the Shire…
If your only goal is to assassinate Napoleon I’d probably agree a concealed force with long range rifles and trained snipers would obviously be easy mode (albeit the discussion/interest value in such a scenario is lesser since it mostly compares 19th century security practices to modern concepts instead of actually comparing 19th and 21st century martial prowess.)
But in terms of actually waging war, with a small modern force I’d be loathe to separate my men–we have so few men and when you start breaking a battalion into companies and given the fact we aren’t going to have a command center to work with who can help us coordinate our position, I’d have grave fears a 100ish man company stumbles at close range into something like a 1,000 man cavalry division and without time to prepare a defense their charge is going to be a massacre of my men (Napoleon’s armies often functioned operationally at the Corps level, with Corps commanders over seeing several divisions and upward of 10-15,000 men–so if you run into a Cavalry Division you’re likely to find they have a lot of friends with them.) Now I’m down to 3 or so companies of infantry instead of 4.
Basically the “split up, try to ambush and etc” stuff scares me as a general because your strategy is predicated on no one fucking up. My experience from military history is planning for perfect operational performance is of questionable wisdom.
A typical battalion, according to Wiki is 300 to 800 soldiers:
And I’m not talking about a ‘typical’ one…I’m over strengthing it because I’m adding organic artillery that they wouldn’t normally have. Plus a few extra warm bodies. Just as I over strengthed the company that I said was a minimum.
As for your disagreement, I’m not sure why you feel that way. How would Napoleon pin down a modern battalion so they wouldn’t have fire teams out in the field? Why, if they weren’t pinned down, would they not be out in the field?
They would have to improvise. But the mission wouldn’t be that much of a stretch. Send out fire teams, spotters and heavy platoons to back them up. Spot for the mortars and artillery. Use rifle companies to engage large blocks of men at maximum range (say 300 meters) with grenades and rifle fire.
No, they aren’t trained in how to fight against late 18th and 19th century armies…why would they be? But they are trained, and they know their own weapons. Also, in my experience anyway, at least some of the NCOs and almost all of the officers will actually be pretty knowledgeable about the tactics and battles of the time period. Some of them will almost certainly be VERY knowledgeable about it.
I was referring to the machine guns at that point. Rifle fire is going to be 1 to 3 round burst aimed fire…so maybe 60 to 90 rounds down range per minute, max. A platoon will certainly put out hundreds of rounds per minute as a team, however…and it will be hundreds of rounds of aimed fire using modern bullets that are likely to have high probabilities of a hit (they are firing at French columns after all) and are likely to actually hit and wound more than one person per shot, even at 300 meters.
He’s talking about encircling the position. But to get to that encirclement means they would need to march, in column, to those positions (it means a lot more than that, since troop movements back then were pretty vague things). They will be doing so under fire. Unless you are going to have Napoleon move his troops several kilometers out and then march them around to their positions outside of mortar range (they won’t be outside of howitzer range unless they are going to be like 30 kilometers out). Again, you have to look at this not only from the modern military guys perspective but from the French one, where they can’t magically position their guys to encircle the modern guys but ,actually have to get from where they are starting on June 15th to where they want to be to do your Zulu charge. And those charges didn’t always work, even when the Brits were outnumbered hundreds or even thousands to 1. Also, the disparity between what the Zulu’s had (for instance) and what the British did wrt rate of fire is nowhere near the disparity between an 18th/19th-century army and a modern one.
And the modern army would have whatever you wanted them to have…and a day to prepare. Also, the difference between the Zulu warriors abilities, training, tactics and weapons and the British is, IMHO, less than the difference between a modern, well trained, supplied and equipped army and a Napoleonic era army. I don’t believe that such an army would be willing to take the sorts of losses from the sorts of ranges for the sorts of duration and without any ability to retaliate as teh Zulu’s were willing to take, knowing they would close with the British (or thinking they would). In my scenario, the French would be almost constantly under fire, either from fire teams in the field or from mortars and howitzers that could range them far beyond their ability to counter, using clairobscur encirclement premise.
BTW, that is exactly the battle I was thinking of when I said that mass attacks weren’t always successful. There is a really good video of it on YouTube on the HistoryBuffs channel that discusses the battle and a movie made about it and how historically accurate the movie was.
I mean, I agree that in reality Napoleon wouldn’t know how to address modern forces. So we’re in agreement Napoleon would lose. But there’s a secondary question being talked about, as to whether Napoleon could win if he had knowledge of modern capabilities–and I think with 70k versus 500 men (or 800–a typical battalion in the U.S. Army has 3 or 4 infantry companies, 2 support companies and an HQ, and 500 actual fighting men is a reasonable estimate), and I think you’re wrong that 70,000 men couldn’t beat 500.
Let’s put it this way, 70,000 Iranian human wave attackers in the 1980s, who damn well knew what modern weaponry was, could absolutely overrun a U.S. Army battalion, I have no doubt of that. Particularly one that in your scenario lacks air support (I didn’t know we were allowed howitzers, as I thought they would violate your initial rule set) or heavy machinery.
I still don’t really understand why you seem to think Napoleon’s forces would be operating under fire during maneuvers. I think you’re overestimating effecting modern weaponry range sans the sort of heavy artillery that would violate your machinery rule, and underestimating the typical scale of large strategic maneuvering in the Napoleonic era. You’re also assuming with these maneuvering columns moving through hills, behind copses and woodlands etc that infantry fire mortars are going to be able to hit them at will from what would likely be a couple miles away.
Napoleon wouldn’t know about the modern troops…they only arrived the day before. Even if we make that a week and, say, some of his scouts run into them he wouldn’t know what to make of them in that compressed a time frame.
The main body of Napoleon’s army group were coming up from Beaumont towards Marchienne (I think…I’m no expert on this battle by any means) on June 17th when our modern army arrives (the actual battle doesn’t happen in reality until the 18th). They would have been spread out and in column of march. Their effective range would be less than 10 meters…probably more like 5 for the infantry. The modern military guys would have an effective range of over a 100 meters, and in these conditions more like 200-300 (grenade launchers are 400 meters max effective). They can effectively bring those guys under fire with just rifle and grenade fire from many times their own effective (or even non-effective) range. As the entire battle-field is well within the 27 kilometers range of those portable howitzers they can range pretty much any formation anywhere the French already were by June 17th. The US 122mm mortars effective range is 7200 meters, and, again, can pretty much range anywhere the French already were by June 17th (I think…again, not something I know a lot of detail about).
So, yeah, I think they would be under fire once the modern guys put teams out to spot and to engage. I don’t see a lot the French could do save retreat. If they tried to form for your charge they wouldn’t be in position…they would have to march to encircle or march to position. If they tried to bring up their artillery they would be engaged while moving into battery by ground forces and targeted by mortar and artillery fire. If they brought up cavalry…well, that’s more tricky and, honestly, one of the few things the French could do to really hurt the modern guys, if they could get it into position and catch the modern guys out of position, and if they were willing to take the losses. I think even the fire of a heavy platoon would almost certainly break a charge by anything the French could put together in a hurry once they started getting hammered, but it might work if the platoon was unsupported by machine guns or other heavier weapons.
Well, I mean the reality is we could actually cheese this quite a bit with the unlimited ammo and non-real life load out scenario.
One battalion, four companies of men, each armed with an Mk19 automatic grenade launcher with unlimited ammunition belts. Napoleon could’ve had the 225k men he commanded at Leipzig and he’d never get within 500m of the modern forces. These are actually a lot better than a mortar due to their rate of fire (and they’re much easier to aim accurately, each round is smaller than a typical mortar but that’s irrelevant when you can shoot 20x as many.) A whole battalion with unlimited ammunition Mk16s could basically create a non-stop “wall of death” through which no force could pass.
I think though the more interesting scenario is the one that the famous reddit thread on a Marine brigade going back to Ancient Rome is predicated on–a “standard load out”, so not unlimited ammunition, and just the typical equipment such a unit would actually have.
One company fully loaded with Mk19s probably would present an impossible to defeat force on the open field, even, you wouldn’t need a battalion. Each Mk19 is essentially as good as many hundreds of period-guns (guns meaning field artillery in the Napoleonic sense), due to their range, accuracy, etc.
This raises a good point. We’re focusing on what we see as the more interesting question of how a small modern unit would fare against a much larger old unit. But realistically, that wouldn’t be the question on Napoleon’s mind.
Napoleon wouldn’t know about the time travel. He wouldn’t much care about scouting reports that a couple hundred soldiers with strange uniforms and equipment are stationed as a crossroads up ahead. Napoleon’s big concern is where are Wellington and Blucher? The fact that his scouts have suddenly lost contact with the two opposing armies is more important than reports of a small skirmishing party. Our modern army unit might find its biggest challenge is getting the French to notice them.
Even smallpox takes two weeks or more to kill. Biologics are a non-starter.
Well, yes but at Battle of Isandlwana you also had bumbling overconfident incompetents in charge.
Maybe so, maybe no. I think you are right…Napoleon and his generals will be worried by the lack of reports about the allied armies that he KNOWS should be there. He was moving to engage them by this time because, again, he knows they are there. So, my own WAG is that he will continue the engagement he plans, or at least send out scouts and march to contact. The allies might have retreated or might be doing something else, but you simply can’t hide that many folks, and Napoleon isn’t going to bypass the hills around Waterloo when that might leave the British in his rear. So, I think he’s still going to move in similar ways to how he actually did, though he most likely won’t finish his deployments for battle, and instead have his guys still in march formation and moving towards where our modern military guys are.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Well, I mean the reality is we could actually cheese this quite a bit with the unlimited ammo and non-real life load out scenario.
[/QUOTE]
\
But we don’t need to. I’m not positing unlimited ammo and guns that never reload. You don’t need them. I’m unsure why you think that what I laid out requires any fanciful stuff like that. My guess is you believe that you would have to kill a large percentage of a column to break it, and with a platoon or even a company firing on them that this would necessitate unlimited ammo and guns that never need to reload. The reality, however, is that you wouldn’t need to kill everyone in a column to break them. If you are a French soldier, marching in ordered ranks and knowing…KNOWING…that you are outside of the engagement range of anyone, and you are engaged by a couple dozen guys who are hitting you with aimed rifle fire, grenades and machine guns you are going to be demoralized in the extreme…especially when you realize that there is no way you can get at the guys doing this stuff. Consider what it would take for a French column to move out of march formation, into battle formation (tighter column with the French instead of a battle line like the Brits), reorient, then march to engage, and all the while under fire. 12 guys firing at 60 rounds per minute, say, with grenade support and possibly called in mortar and artillery support. It will take the column 10 minutes or so to get it’s shit together, reorient and march the 300 yards in formation to engage these guys…all the while taking losses. You don’t need magic Hollywood guns for this scenario to play out as a broken French column routing from the field. And if the French bring up calvalry and artillery, it’s going to take them a while to orient, get in position, unlimber and bring to battery or prepare for a charge…again, all the while they would be under fire, even more so than the infantry.
It’s only more interesting because you are making it have to be a fantasy scenario with Hollywood guns, when it doesn’t have to be.
Napoleon doesn’t have to defeat them; they need to stop him.
Like I said–in a scenario where the French are ignorant they’re going to break in the face of modern firepower–I’m unsure how I could be more clear on that. But what are we defining as success here? Your OP says “fend off the French” that suggests a defensive engagement and survival of a French assault. I think a battalion would be able to do that given proper positioning and the French assault as they’d be expected to for 19th century Napoleonic War era soldiers.
If it’s “remove Napoleon from power”, I’m not sure a battalion would be enough unless they were able to get to Napoleon personally. (Similar to how the Spanish got to the Sepa Inca Atahualpa at Cajamarca.) Considering the likelihood of actually confronting modern weaponry would be mass panic and flight (much of the leadership would be fleeing on horse–which modern infantry are never going to catch on foot) obviously the modern forces “win the day”, but do we then call the scenario over or do we have to consider what happens next? The earlier/quicker the French break, the more men actually survive the battle to fight again another day. Given the historical situation, we also have to question other moves by the rest of the Coalition, while they’d be confused at the disappearance of their army, the Russians/British/anti-Napoleon German Kingdoms aren’t likely to just allow Napoleon to remain in charge uncontested.
I never said anything about fantasy guns. I said unlimited ammunition (which is something your OP allowed), not guns that don’t need reloaded. With a standard load out I seriously doubt a battalion has enough ammunition to kill 70,000 people. They might have enough to kill 10,000 and that would likely be enough to “break the French”, but what that actually means is unclear to me since we seem to have no agreement on what the scenario is.
Are we discussing modern forces in a set-piece battle with Napoleon? Defending against a French attack? Or is it a free for all where they’re doing “whatever”?
The further we get away from a decision clash of forces the more I have to question the logistics side of it–and there’s no easy answer for that. I think you guys who wave it off don’t understand how connected and how supported modern soldiers are and what would happen if that all went away.