We’re probably talking about a small ditch, a dirt ramp, and an obstacle of stakes of wood for the Romans here. Yes, they could build much more impressive fortifications but I don’t think they have time for such things in this scenario.
Sure, but if they are now with 50 or 100 yards, we have cut the range the Romans have to cross under fire by 2 to 4 times.
My plan would be this: dig a trench of either a line or a circle depending on the terrain. Let the enemy realize that shooting at 200 yards isn’t doing anything. They move in to 150. Still not doing anything worthwhile. They move into 100 yards, maybe a few casualties, but nothing significant. They move in even closer. Hopefully within 50 yards. Once the enemy fire a volley, call a charge for the first line. Once they are out, the next line comes up and the first line is within pila distance. Now it becomes a melee with only 1, or at most 2 volleys being fired when the Romans can’t attack. Its not perfect, but its a heck of lot better than running 300 yards without being able to respond.
Sure. The Germans weren’t good enough chaps to line up in large blocks and march up and down the battlefield for us. The Romans are going to form a parade and come at the British as a cohesive unit. A much easier target than the Hun, I mean German, would present to us in 1943.
It’s going to take them time to go over the top of their own fortifications and they’ll be vulnerable to gunfire. And at 50-100 yards, I doubt their armor and shields will prove an effective defense against a .69 caliber lead ball traveling at 4-500 meters per second.
In this scenario I don’t feel that entrenching accrues much if any benefit to the Romans and may actually worsen their position. Their advantage is in a 500 v 500 battle with line infantry they only have to survive one volley, which they certainly will, and once they commence melee the line infantry is horrifically overmatched. The play is to get into melee with the musketeers ASAP. The only real risk the Romans have of losing in this very contrived situation is the frankly very realistic idea that having never encountered gunpowder before they will experience a panic and general rout (which we do have instances in history in which such occurred when armies encountered gunpowder for the first time.)
Not a sniper weapon. In perfect conditions against a fixed target of known range the size of an infantry line only 50% of the shots hit at 100 yards. Now try it when tired, against a moving enemy, with smoke clouds all around and adrenaline pumping.
Muskets were not great weapons. 100 musketmen with typical training would lose to 50 Roman archers every time. They might lose to 20 of them. Early firearms had one main advantage: you didn’t need much training to use them, so you could mass produce them and raise huge armies on short notice. Bows require strength and years of training. But put a bowman up against a musketman, and the bowman has a large advantage.
Also, the Romans were not stupid. They could adapt their tactics, and would. If the legion had light archers with them, they had a more accurate, more rapid fire and just as deadly a weapon. A good Roman era archer could put 15 arrows inside a man-sized target in one minute at 100 yards. Five times the rate of fire of the musket.
By Vespasian’s time, archers were often embedded with legions. They were used in several ways. One was to stay back and fire volleys of arrows into massed formations from a distance of as much as 200 yards. From 100 yards and closer they could target individual commanders or fire directly into charging soldiers. They could also be used as loose fighters running around harassing the enemy and forcing them to focus on multiple threats.
The key question to me is how many volleys the redcoats will be able to manage before they are overrun. Even without archers, by the time the Romans get within 40:yards of the redcoats they will begin raining Plumbata, stones, and javelins on the redcoats. These don’t have to be particularly lethal - they just have to disrupt the loading process while the Romans close the distance.
But why would the Romans fight like they would against an enemy without ranged weapons? Lets say they get within 100 yards and a musket volley takes out 20% of their number. Why wouldn’t they just retreat and try something else?
In the late 1800’s, the Zulus beat the British, despite an even larger disparity in weaponry. The Zulus were largely equipped with spears and leather shields (with a very few guns), while the British had breech-loading rifles that were faster to load and way more accurate than muskets. The Zulus won by not being stupid enough to fight in a way that gave Britain the advantage of their weaponry. Instead they flanked them, split them up, got behind their lines, closed in and chewed them up.
My problem with your analysis is that I don’t think there would only be one volley the Romans have to survive. Assuming the Brits were already loaded when the Romans begin their charge, the Brits would probably fire their first volley at 200 yards. They would almost certainly have time to reload at least once, and fire at very close range before the Romans get into melee range. If they can somehow close that gap fast enough for the British to only fire once, I agree with you that the Romans would likely win.
The British at Isandlwana were also borderline criminally mislead by incompetent officers. Of course the technology the British had in the 1870s was a lot more advanced than in 1780. At the decisive battle of Ulundi where the British formed a proper square and had gatling guns and artillery firing cannister the Zulu tried several charges and simply never had a chance. The British would open fire at 2000 yards and the Zulu had to rush through gatling fire, cannister shot and endless rifle fire. It’s reported no one in the Zulu army got closer than 30 yards to the British formation.
Advocates of the fortifications have yet to answer a key question: How the hell do the Romans get over it? Romans dig a trench. So what? The Brits weren’t going to close with the Romans anyway. Romans build a mound. Again, how do they get over it? Any action by the Romans would expose troops to massed fire without doing anything for the Romans. No organized charge under fire, no nothing. 100 Redcoats 50 yards away. Massive damage to the first group over and the Brits just evolve, moving a fresh 100 into place while the first group reloads.
What is the best strategy for each army? For the British clearly the best strategy is to get in the open, wait for the enemy to come to you, then cut them to pieces with as many volleys as you can get off before the enemy gets to you. For the Romans, get close to the enemy before they can fire too many volleys at you. A trench forces the British to get closer, if they want to have any chance of doing damage. For the Romans, getting the British to move from 200 yards away to 50 yards away is a victory. What other way is there to do this, short of a mad dash?
Getting over the trench or mound? Will it take time, sure, but less than closing 150 yards. For a mound, leave a man sized gap at regular intervals. For a trench, usually there are lots of rocks you dig up when digging a hole. Otherwise a 5 foot hole needs a 3 rung ladder, at most. These are not insurmountable obstacles.
Yes, a 100 redcoats at 50 yards away causes a lot of damage. So do 500 redcoats 200 yards away, and 500 redcoats when they fire a 2nd time at 50 yards away. The hope is to reduce the volleys to 1. If you have another way to do it, I’m all ears.
This is why I think the Redcoats would win. The only thing that the Romans have going for them is mobility. It would be silly to give that up.
I think most of us have gotten into a box pattern here. The OP gave no dimensions to this battle. Maneuver is the thing for the Romans. Hell, let them scatter and attack from wherever they can get a squad together. Make the Brits spread out their fire. That’s about their only chance, IMO.
How does the trench force the British closer? If the Romans are content to just sit there in their trench, then the Brits can be content to just sit there outside of the trench, 200 yards away. With both armies just sitting there in their respective places, the Brits can do little to the Romans, but the Romans can do nothing at all to the Brits. This is a losing recipe for the Romans.
Or the Brits could take advantage of the time the Romans are spending in their hole, and build their own fortifications. Like, say, a wooden tower: That’d give a huge advantage to the side with the better ranged weaponry. Or they might not even need the tower, if there are already tall trees nearby that they could climb. Get up high, and shoot down into the trench.
But if we have armies that are stalling and actively avoiding contact, then I think we need to establish a goal for this battle. Very, very few battles in history consist of each side having their goal as killing the other. Usually, it’s more like one side wants to get somewhere, while the other wants to stop them from getting there. And if the Romans are the ones trying to stop the Brits, then the fortifications are worse than useless: The Brits just go around.
I don’t agree that in this contrived scenario (again 500 legionnaires vs 500 musketeers with no supporting forces) the best bet for the red coats is an open field battle, their actual best bet is building ramparts or fortifications, atop elevation if possible, this would make it difficult for the Romans to close with them and would let them open lots of volleys on to them. It would also force the Romans as they got closer to fight up hill in armor which would mitigate at least some of the advantages they have as the battle gets closer in. Open field battle if it starts at maximum effective musket range I think it’s still only likely they get off maybe two volleys, not enough to cut off more than what I would guess would be 5-8% of the Roman forces.
The word “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that question. Making an orderly retreat under fire is one of the most difficult maneuvers in warfare. And if the Romans start retreating, the Redcoats just start advancing - while still firing. The Romans get just get shot in the back.
I definitely think the Redcoats would win, regardless of tactics the Romans try. This scenario is only interesting because the legion was just so effective. I can’t think of another set of armies that are 1500 plus years apart where it would even be close. Imagine a Justinian army against WWI soldiers, for example. I just don’t think that mobility is much of an advantage where your enemy has a 200 yard advantage where you can’t do damage. Any battle where the two sides line up and the Romans go on a trot to the other side is suicide. An ambush or night attack might work.
I think the Romans would lose as well unless the situation involves them being specifically educated about gunpowder, I’m highly skeptical of any ancient army being able to mentally withstand a musket volley without breaking in a panic. I’m a decent student of Roman history and have a lot of respect for their system of military organization and discipline, but there’s limits to humanity.
Based on my personal experience (and again, if you want a cite, there’s a picture of my Brown Bess upthread), I wouldn’t try sniping an individual man at 100 yards. 50 yards? Sure. 75 yards? That’s pushing it. 100 yards? That’s a little far for sniping. You’re not guaranteed to miss, but you’re odds of hitting him aren’t that great either. Maybe 50/50-ish. Sniping implies a lot more accuracy than that.
I intentionally bought a reproduction model 1756 long land pattern since the barrel is longer than the much more commonly available India pattern reproductions, which helps a bit with accuracy. I have two different sized musket balls, .715 and .735. I don’t know what the tolerance is, but I seriously doubt that they are accurate to the thousandth of an inch in diameter. But that’s the size they are advertised as. The .735 is more accurate, but also harder to load after the barrel starts to get fouled. It’s no biggie if you run a cleaning patch down the barrel after every few shots, but soldiers didn’t have that luxury.
IIRC, the standard ball used by the actual Redcoats back in the day was about .69 - easier to load down a fouled barrel, but less accurate at range. Accuracy wasn’t considered to be that important at the time.
The sights on a Brown Bess aren’t really designed for 100 yard shots either, because there aren’t any. You can kinda use the tang screw (the screw that holds the rear end of the barrel to the stock) and the bayonet lug as sights of sorts, but they weren’t designed to be sights and they don’t exactly give you a great sight picture.
This is really helpful. The numbers I saw said 50% accuracy at 100 yards, hitting a still target the size of an infantry line. Would you say you could hit a moving target at 100 yards, the size of a man’s head at 50% accuracy? I just have no point of reference, except that with modern guns I hit moving woodchucks at about 50% accuracy at 100 yards. (I know this isn’t very good).
Playing with this a bit - what if the Brits don’t try to get repeated volleys in? Just stand in formation like pikemen until the Romans get about 40 yards away. Then half the men fire a volley. Wait a couple of seconds for all the meat to hit the ground, then the rest fire at the Romans still standing. By the time the Romans climb over all their dead, the first rank will have reloaded and can add their fire. Don’t waste ammo on distance firing. Wait until they get close then whammo.