Not true. See my example of the battle of Killiecrankie above.
Armoured legionaries would be less susceptible to musket fire, and more effective at close quarters, than Highlanders with only shields.
You’re not talking about Star Wars or Star Trek type shields here are you? 
I said " a fraction" rather than specifying because I had seen your example of Killiekrankie and knew that 30% might still be effective. But there’s some fraction (50%? 60%?) that they can’t afford to lose. That’s also not taking into account that at Killiekrankie the musketeers didn’t have bayonets and the redcoats would, so it’s not a direct equivalence.
No. See the tests I linked to above. Running with a 10kg shield held at chest height is an enormously draining physical activity that people are going to struggle to manage for any length of time and the toll this takes will have a negative effect on fighting fitness. Highlanders’ light shields offered less protection, but also mean they could run quicker and could swing a sword when they got there.
Why would you assume that legionaries would suffer more casualties than Highlanders?
Roman shields didn’t weigh 10kg, or anywhere near. Your cite says 6.8kg, including ‘all combat equipment’.
We’re talking about a 100 yard run (< 20 sec in armour, keeping formation?), which is about what the Romans did normally and routinely going into battle.
Roman shields had a horizontal handle in the middle, and were held with a straight arm, slightly forward, when running.
The Fayum scutum definitely does, but it’s the oval Republican kind, not the lighter semi-cylindrical Imperial one. The only example of that, found in Syria, weighed 15 pounds, so 7.5 kg. Don’t know if that’s “anywhere near” 10 or not. I know I would feel a difference between the two. I just checked, my heater shield is ~7kg, but it’s strapped not held.
Because it depends on the tactics employed by the redcoats. At Killiekrankie, the musketeers stood still to receive the charge and fired one (1) volley. If our redcoats fire two volleys, we’re presumably looking at closer to 50-60% casualties. If they fall back firing by company or platoon, which is presumably an option open to them, the Romans might not ever close to melee distance.
Hence my original statement, that the problem the Romans have to solve is how to get the maximum number of legionaries into contact with the redcoats while they’ve still got the muscle and lungpower to do damage. And the problem the redcoats have to solve is how to maximum damage to the Romans at distance.
That cite is for hoplite equipment - 10kg is the figure given from wikipedia in the OP. But I’m happy to accept @MrDibble’s 7.5kg shield.
Are you absolutely sure about the 100yd run - not 50 or 20? (This cite gives an unreferenced 35m distance for the pila throw and charge, for example). My understanding was that they wouldn’t start to charge until quite close up. A 100yd with 7.5kg held on a straight arm is tough.
(This disconcertingly detailed site works out charging distance based on foot speed and javelin throw distance and settles on 65ft)
We’ve already covered that they can only possibly fire one volley.
In fact, at Killiecrankie they did fire by platoons, but whatever way they fire, none of them have time to reload before the enemy closes, so only one shot per soldier.
The thing is, you’re not holding the shield in a raised position, only away from your body when running. When standing or walking, the arm can hang straight down holding the shield. When fighting – often for long periods – the shield would be moved around.
We are not even sure whether it is Roman or Ptolemaic. Do you have a cite for the weight?
Edited: Sorry, I was thinking 15kg not pounds.
This replica weighs 4.7kg.
I don’t think it matters much either way, in the sense that it does tell us what a contemporary shield of that size and shape made with those materials weighs. Unless you’re arguing that Roman shields weren’t constructed the way writings say they were, they match that style of shield.
Only what’s all over the internet, like Wiki and that.
The exact weight isn’t really that important. They would only have to run 100 yards, because that was effective musket range, and would certainly be able to fight effectively at the end of it.
The OP asked about British redcoats circa 1780 so let’s take a look at how they were armed versus soldiers from the 1680s. The Brown Bess musket was in use from about 1720-1850 and when fired into an area it had an effective range of about 300 meters. According to Wikipedia, in 1811 they conducted a firing test in London using the Brown Bess against a target the size of an infantry of cavalry line and these were the results.
100 yards: 53% hits
200 yards: 30% hits
300 yards: 23% hits
There’s no reason to wait until the Romans are close to 100 yards away before opening fire. Lucius Vorenus’ cohort is going start taking fire and casualties long before they’re in a position to mount an effective charge. The British redcoats have a huge advantage and are unlikely to lose.
That’s the effective range for single target shooting. It’s more like 300 for massed fire.
While the info on fire accuracy is nice to know, I dont think it answers the question of whether musket fire is actually going to be effective against Roman soldiers armed with shields + armour.
Success against 1" of wood (referenced above) is not the same as success against curved laminated wood+canvas+leather & iron/steel/bronze & padded cloth.
How, other than by bare assertion, have we established that?
The redcoats are firing three shots a minute. Their muskets are loaded before the Romans get within firing distance (because they didn’t just magically appear 100yds away). So one shot, 20 second reload, second shot. Can the Romans, running in formation over even mildly uneven ground in armour beat 20 seconds? Have the redcoats had their feet nailed to the ground or are they allowed to move too? Because if the Romans are a yard short of the redcoat line then they’re in a lot of trouble.
You are if you’re using it to stop people shooting you in the face or chest.
I’m on your side. Remember what hyperbole was being responded to:
If all the guys in human history who could run a legal and officially timed 10sec flat for the 100m (only about 150 have run faster with or without PEDs) were current US collegiate athletes, they’d be less than 2% of the current 28k US collegiate athletes . Which, to my thinking, falls a bit below the “most” threshold.
Simple answer: If Roman equipment and tactics were effective against muskets, then militaries would still have been using those equipment and tactics. They stopped using that equipment and those tactics for a reason.
One monkey wrench is that, regardless of equipment, organized, disciplined troops are going to have a big advantage over disorganized, undisciplined opposition. And both the Legion and the Redcoats were used to fighting opponents less-trained than themselves. Put two such organized forces up against each other, and the result will be interesting, at the least. Sure, the Romans will lose the first battle, when they don’t know what to expect. But how will the Roman generals respond, once they see the capabilities of muskets?
(most likely answer: They find a way to get their own muskets)
Yeah, this is the big question. Google shows it’s been asked before: here’s Quora’s take on it:
For a British Long or Short Land Pattern Musket, the service charge was 6–8 drams, with 6 being recommended for accuracy, which is 10.6g of powder, with maybe 2/3g going to the priming. The typical musket ball was not pure lead, but rather a slightly harder lead alloy with a density of around 10.7–10.9. For an 18mm ball of density 10.7, and so, 31.3g, we get a muzzle velocity of 435m/s from a Short Land Pattern Musket, and at 150m, which is about the maximum you are likely to hit a person, you should still have around 266m/s.
That should let us penetrate around 3.2mm of mild steel, or 2mm of BHN 300 armour steel at the muzzle, and 1.6mm mild steel, or 1mm armour steel at 150m.
The best armour legionaries had was the lorica segmentata. Quenching was relatively poorly understood in Roman times, and performed on less than half of recovered weapons and armour, slag content was fairly high, often 2–4%, and the one extent lorica segmentata that has been examined has a 0.6% carbon content, so a medium carbon steel. Looking at the data given in The Knight and the Blast Furnace, we can assume that such steel had around 81% of the effective thickness of modern mild steel, and was rarely above 1.8mm thick, averaging more like 1.3–1.5 or so. Also, due to thinks like Free Edge Effect, the multiple plates of the lorica segmentata will not resist as well as a single plate, like a medieval cuirass. We can expect it have at best 90% of the effective thickness of a solid plate. 0.9 * 0.81 = 0.729. That means that we get the equivalence of 1.3mm of mild steel plate at best, with more like 1mm being typical. The armour will have a mild degree of curving to it, imparting slope, but probably at best 16 degrees of composite sloping. Against a ball such as this, that will increase our effective thickness by 8% (dividing by Cosine of angle squared), so 1.4 to 1.1mm of mild steel equivalent.
The Brown Bess’s ball, with 3.2mm of penetration, will go through such armour easily. Even at 150m, it has maybe a 2% chance of being deflected by the heaviest specimens of such armour, but against most, penetration is certain
The scutum isn’t even metal. It’s resistance is inferior to either type of armour. Our muskets balls will scarcely notice on their way to the legionary behind it.
I’m no judge but that looks reasonably comprehensive. It still comes down to the big point: if muskets could be defeated by laminate shields and body armour used by charging infantry, they would have been.
I figure it would work out like this:
Opposing sides square off at say… 600 meters. British in the typical 3-4 line formation of the day (the famous 2-line formation didn’t come about until the Napoleonic wars), and the Romans in their formation.
We’re assuming that the British realize that the Romans are armed with melee weapons and sit back, allowing the Romans to advance.
Romans advance. At roughly 300 meters, the British start firing. Romans are still advancing in step- let’s say a 100 steps per minute pace, for 2.7 mph. That means that they’re covering 79.2 yards per minute, or 1.26 minutes per 100 yards.
So it’ll take them a tad more than 2.5 minutes to advance from 300 yards to 100 yards, where they’ll ostensibly charge the British.
The British infantrymen could probably fire at about 2-3 rounds a minute, so we’re looking at somewhere between 5 and 7 volleys before the Romans get into charging range. If the charge range is even less- let’s say 50 meters, it’ll take them another 38 seconds, and another volley or two from the British at murderous range before they charge.
Let’s say the Romans triple their speed in their charge by sprinting. That means they’re going roughly 10 mph, and can cover that 100 meters in 20 seconds. The British can potentially get ANOTHER volley in as they charge.
So in the best case, the Romans absorb maybe 5-6 volleys at increasingly short range before charging, and worst-case more like 9 volleys.
I’m not so sure that the vaunted Roman discipline would let them absorb that many volleys and the associated casualties without breaking. And even if they did, they’d probably be charging into a much greater number of Redcoats armed with bayonets.
As for the shield question, it’s been answered:
Additionally they were able to penetrate 5" into an oak tree at 30 yds. To me, that translates into being able to penetrate a 1" shield at a much greater range.
Some observations
Nobody was using that combo at the time, so why would they have thought to employ it? Muskets defeated pike squares, so they replaced pikemen with their own musketeers. That’s the kind of calculus done at the time, not “let me research combos of armour+weapons we haven’t used in more than a millennium”
live wood =/= dry wood laminated with canvas+leather
Put another way… the brown bess is VERY simlar to a modern day 12 gauge shotgun firing a 1 oz slug at 1500 fps. (.69 vs .73 bore, 1.14 oz slug vs. 1 oz slug, same velocity).
Are you seriously arguing that the shotgun round wouldn’t go right through a Roman shield at any reasonable distance? It’s completely absurd.