Back in the day, could a person riding on horseback load a muzzle loading musket or rifle? Say someone in the cavalry?
Yes, though it wasn’t necessarilly quick or easy. Ball and powder came packaged together as a paper cartridge. Some weapons had hinged ramrods to prevent loss. Even though it could be done, it wasn’t something that could be done effectively in the midst of combat, so the lance and sabre were still considered cavalry’s primary arms. When revolvers came along, they gave horse mounted soldiers some real firepower. Some units in the American Civil War were known to have dispensed with the saber entirely in favor of multiple revolvers per trooper.
I’ve seen mixed answers on this. Some sources say it was possible if the horse was stationary. FWIW, I cannot conceive of how this would be practical. Asking a cavalryman to stop the horse so he can reload (and risk dropping the weapon) seems to negate the purpose and advantages of having cavalry in the first place. Better to retreat to safe place, take your time reloading, and then launch another attack.
As an example, the early Texas Rangers mastered the skill of firing from horseback but even they never overcame the problem of reloading. Also why they were enthusiastic early adopters of the first Colt revolver.
Back in the flintlock days (which was most of the muzzle-loading era, from the 1600s up through the early 1800s), people didn’t use flintlocks like they use modern rifles. A lot of folks look at a flintlock and think that it looks a lot like a modern rifle, just with a different firing mechanism, but the tactics were very different. Sure, soldiers back then shot at each other, but then they would close and fight with bayonets. If you tried to use them more like a modern rifle and keep your distance, you got your ass kicked, as George Washington learned the hard way. George got his army some training in proper military discipline and bayonet fighting while they were at Valley Forge (when they weren’t busy starving to death). Only after that could his army really go toe to toe with the British.
Cavalry was the same way. Yeah, they carried a gun, but they didn’t use it like a cowboy on a horse in a western movie. Infantry muskets were long, so that they could fire in ranks and also so that they could be used very effectively with long bayonets. Cavalry muskets were short, so that they could be reloaded while on horseback, and also so that they could be more easily controlled while on horseback. You are going to have a hard time reloading the musket while the horse is galloping through the battlefield, but if you get to a quick break in the action you can load the musket fairly quickly. Remember, back in the day, men drilled over and over on how to reload quickly.
In addition to being short, cavalry muskets also tended to have sword bayonets instead of spike bayonets. Just like with the infantry guys, the bayonet was very important to the cavalry. They probably spent more time swinging the sword around than they did shooting.
In the 1840-ish time frame, things changed rather dramatically. Muskets went from smooth bore flintlocks to rifled percussion locks. Shorter carbines were still made, both for cavalry and navy use, but cap and ball revolvers also came on the scene. As Scumpup already said, many cavalry men carried multiple pistols, which they often had to purchase themselves.
The Civil War is where you start to see muskets and pistols used more like modern weapons. The bayonet went from causing roughly a third of all battlefield casualties (the rate they had during the Napoleonic and U.S. Revolutionary wars) to causing less than 1 percent of battlefield casualties. And now that they were armed with pistols, the cavalry did a lot more shooting and a lot less sabering. Many of those cavalry men still carried sabers though, just in case. But they tended to rely on their pistols a lot more. Cartridge repeating rifles like the Spencer also tended to end up in the hands of the cavalry, and those can be reloaded fairly easily while on horseback.
There happened to be a cavalry unit armed with cartridge repeating rifles at Gettysburg, and this ended up being important. Because of the higher rate of fire of the cavalry rifles, the Confederates thought that they were facing a much larger force than they actually were on the first day, which made them a little reluctant to charge at the lines. This delay allowed the Union to get reinforcements. If the Confederates had realized that they were facing a much smaller force, they might have tried to overrun the Union troops, and might have been successful. It could have been a much different battle.
To follow up on my earlier post, I took the time to review some late 18th to early 19th century cavalry manuals, which can be downloaded at: http://www.storymindmedia.com/angryalien/military_manuals.htm I saw very few mentions of shooting carbines from the saddle (only under exceptional circumstances) and nothing discussing reloading in the saddle.
I also noticed many manuals that gave instruction for use of the pistol but made no mention whatsoever of the long guns. A representative example is Captain George Behn’s 1842 US cavalry manual. It gives extremely detailed instructions as to how to reload the pistol while mounted (page 55) but devotes exactly zero pages to the manual of arms for the carbine (even though the author acknowledges that the carbine is a common cavalry weapon). This suggests to me that the author found the notion so improbable that it was not even worth mentioning.
It also fits with my understanding that the carbines were primarily used while dismounted, and would have been fired while mounted only in the most exceptional circumstances.
Most of the guns fired from horseback were pistols. Gustavus Adolphus made great use of massed pistol fire from horseback. The idea was you charge in close, unleash a few volleys of pistol fire (from multiple pistols carried by each cavalryman) then on in with the lance and sabre. It wasn’t until the invention of the Spencer and Sharps repeating rifles that horsemen got reliable, multishot long arms.
Depends on what ‘riding’ means. If the horse is standing still or just walking an experienced rider should be able to most anything he could do standing on the ground.
I have heard accounts of early revolvers being reloaded with bullet, powder, and a percussion cap while on horseback. I kind of doubt the stories that say it could be done at a gallop, it’s hard to do anything but hang on while riding a horse at full gallop.
Historically, there were really 2 types of cavalry- the more “traditional” ones who fought with lances, sabres and single-shot pistols (lancers, hussars, cuirassiers, etc…) and you had mounted infantry (dragoons, etc…)
The traditional cavalry tended to fire volleys of pistol fire and then charge in with their melee weapons, while the mounted infantry would dismount and then line up and fight just like a regular infantry unit.
Civil War cavalry was more along the lines of dragoons- they were typically used as scouting and screening forces, and only occasionally fought as infantry (Buford’s fight at Gettysburg is the most famous), or directly against other cavalry (Brandy Station).
But yeah, reloading on horseback is tough, so I imagine they just fired what they had and closed with melee weapons if on horseback.
Yet these words are not used consistently. I’ve often heard that dragoons are intended to be mounted infantry in that they ride to position and then dismount to skirmish. Accounts from mid-to-late 19th century warfare (for example, wars against the Plains Indians) support this. Yet in reading memoirs from the Iberian Peninsula, the British “Dragoon” was a light cavalryman who fought from horseback and only dismounted by exception.
Nitrated paper cartridges with attached bullets were common in the cap and ball revolver era. They could be rammed home in the chamber in one piece. This is a lot less fiddly than loading with loose powder from a flask and separate bullets. The individual chambers still required capping, though. There were, and are, tools for this purpose called cappers that are a whole lot less fiddly than trying to handle the individual caps with your fingers. Even with nitrated paper cartridges and a capper, reloading a cap and ball revolver on horseback , especially in combat, isn’t practical. Thus, those who could afford it carried multiple revolvers. For the Remington pattern revolvers, it isn’t too difficult to pop out the cylinder and replace it with a spare loaded cylinder. Enthusiasts often do this today. Clint Eastwood was shown doing it in Pale Rider but I have never heard of anybody commonly doing it in the 19th century. Another gun was the “quick reload” of the day.
Wanted to expand a bit on the last part. Bill Hickock and other gunmen of the era who were known to carry a brace of pistols didn’t dual wield as often seen in movies. The second gun was in case the first gun ran out of ammo or malfed. Cavalry were sometimes known to carry four or more revolvers with some of them holstered on the saddle. They were fired one at a time while the other hand gripped the reins.
I have wondered why the earlier revolver weren’t sold with an extra cylinder for that purpose. I think perhaps with two guns having 10-12 shots ready to fire probably seemed like a wonderful improvement over muzzle loading at the time and didn’t leave many people wanting more than that.
Am I not recalling correctly, or were some of those ‘cap guns’ capable of upgrading to cartridge cylinders later on?
Cartridge conversions were common. Guns were expensive back then, too. Funnily enough, today you can buy newly manufactured replicas of period cartridge conversions.
IIRC, Clint Eastwood had extra cylinders in one or more of his movies. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume some people carried extra charged cylinders 150 years ago, but I don’t have a cite. (It would have been dangerous to carry them capped, IMO.)
Many cap-and-ball revolvers were converted to fire metal cartridges.
ETA: Scooped by Scumpup.
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Each cylinder would have to be timed to that particular gun. You’re looking at special order for the set from the factory or some skilled gunsmithing to have a gun with multiple cylinders. It’s still that way today.
Not if you carried them in a covered belt pouch. The thing with a spare cylinder is that when you need it, you need it now. Having to stop to cap the sucker defeats the whole purpose of carrying the spare.
Wild Bill also usually didn’t use holsters, as he is usually depicted as wearing in movies. He typically carried his guns in a sash.
Early cavalry tactics included the “caracole”, in which horsemen, in formation, rode up to the enemy, fired their pistols, and then rode to the rear to reload, then returned to fire again:
It seems likely that this maneuver required re-loading one’s pistols while mounted.
Note that this always involved pistols. Full length arms were not typically used from horseback. Rather, shorter versions of full-length arms were provided - “carbines” - but they were shorter only so that they would not incumber a rider while actually fighting - they were intended for use while dismounted.
Thanks guys.
The horse pistols of that time were big, smooth bore flintlocks. Like a musket of the time, they would have been loaded with an undersized ball and powder from a paper cartridge. Accuracy and velocity were not great, but that would have been of no concern as ease and speed of loading were more important.