Why Did They Fight So Stupid in Revolutionary War?

Factual Questions
1

I know you can tell this came from “The Patriot”. But I am wondering who thought of that dumb way to fight you know standing line waiting to be shot and why? There is no I would fight like that. I mean I would fight for my country but I am not going to pointlessly die for my country. Not when I could shoot at red coats hiding behind a tree or a rock or something. :wink:

So any way I was wondering why they fought this way back then and did the higher ups get alot of flaq from the men for wanting the them(the front lines) to fight this way.

2

I always wondered that myself.

I figured that it has something to do with honor. You never shot people in the back and stuff, so you faced your enemies head on. The guys in the front line probably wanted to be there to die with the most honor. I’ll never understand, but that’s all I could come up with.

3

It has something to do with honor. Back then, they wanted to fight as gentlemen (so I hear, I could be wrong.) Although I don’t see bloody battles very gentlemenly like, they figured to make it as civil as possible, and so svoided tactics like the hide-behind-said-tree. Not that it didn’t happen. Both the Bristish and American forces used tactics like that, but not in large enough amounts to make a difference in the whole scheme of things.

4

At the time, that style of fighting actually made a lot of sense.

The weapons they were using were not rifles in the sense we use the term today; they were muskets, and were by today’s standards absurdly low-ranged and inaccurate. It was difficult for even a decent shot to hit a human-sized target more than fifty yards away. When you combine that with the very slow reload time of a musket, you realize that the volume of firepower available was very small by today’s standards. Bear in mind also that one of those muskets was hard enough to reload standing up; lying down it would have been especially difficult.

Consequently, the only way to mass firepower was to have all your troops together and firing together. This DID work, as opposed to the alternative of just having guys running willy-nilly all around. Massed firepower was the most effective way of bringing effective force to bear and was very demoralizing for opposing troops. Napoleonic-era battles were often decided by which side maneuvered into position the quickest and got off two or three solid volleys of fire first.

You also have to bear in mind that keeping soldiers closely grouped makes it easier to control them. It cannot be stressed enough that battle is REALLY confusing, and any loss of organization can result in a total catastrophe. If your troops are all over the damn place on a battlefield clouded in smoke and yelling and blood and mud, you can quickly lose control of your army and an organized enemy will roll over you like a steamroller over a troupe of circus midgets. In an era with no radios, that reason alone was good enough to keep your troops together.

Today’s soldier can produce a tremendous amount of fire by himself from a concealed position because a modern weapon can let you shoot off 20-30 rounds or more with relative ease and tremendous power and accuracy; an M-16 will hose off thirty rounds in five seconds or can be used to pick guys off at 500 yards. Consequently, a single man can hold a position against entire platoons of men, at least for a little while. A musket cannot do that; a single man with a musket just isn’t very useful.

5

It also has something to do with the fact thay your average musket, at the time, was pretty useless when you were actually trying to aim at something. Hence, the wall of lead approach, which acted essetially as a giant human shotgun. Properly trained soldiers would fire all at once, mowing down everything in their path.

6

Rick: I bow down before your faster typing skills.

7

The rate of fire of the common musket was not very high. The accuracy of the common musket (especially among troops who did not spend a lot of time practicing marksmanship because of the expense of ball and powder) was not very high, either. The actual method of battle up until that century was rather similar to the methods of the Roman infantry, upgraded from spears to muskets.

Thus: Hurl spears at the enemy line, hoping to hit some and disable the shields of others by having the soft-pointed spear embed itself in the shield and make the shield too unwieldy to use in combat. Repeat with two more spears, then take out the sword and go face the enemy man-to-man.

Then: Fire a round in the general direction of the enemy, hoping to hit some and demoralize others, repeat with another two or three rounds while advancing on the line. Then advance with your bayonet (or, if you were in the second line and not carrying a musket, your pike) and go face the enemy man-to-man.

Most of the fighting was done with the pointed and edged weapons, with the firearms being used only as a method to break up the line.

It was not as dangerous as it would seem. (It was not safe, of course.) However, consider the 1777 battle of Saratoga. At one point, the two sides faced each other across a clearing that was little more than three acres and fired on each other continuously for almost three hours. They each suffered “horrifying” losses–that amounted to less than 10% of either force. The fire was fierce enough to prevent either side from making the bayonet charge that could have decided the issue, but they could not hit each other well enough to actually eliminate the opposition.

Note that the sharpshooting that went on after the battle of Concord was actually an anomaly for successful battles. (Even in that battle, whenever the colonials would gather several men in a sheltered position to fire on the retreating British, the Brits generally detached a squad to rout them out–and they were always routed out.)

Major battles were decided by putting the most men in the face of the enemy and overwhelming them in hand-to-hand combat. The Pennsylvania long rifle that was so much more accurate than the musket, took most men 7 times as much time to load and shoot. For every round that a man fired, the attacking enemy could cover a third to a half of the range of the weapon. If you only get two shots before you are chewing on a bayonet, you’ll be pretty lucky to avoid eating steel.

I do not recommend that method of combat and I share your views that I would prefer a “better” way to fight, but those tactics were dveloped to make use of the equipment at hand, and they were very successful until the equipment improved.

8

The big trouble is the weapons these people were using. The most important thing about a musket is its extremely low rate of fire and the fact that it can only be loaded standing up. A low rate of fire means that musketeers try to stay very close together so the group as a whole can maintain a high rate of fire. A compact group can wipe out isolated stragglers in detail while suffering comparitively few losses. That is why they all march in line.

Also, you have to remain standing in order to load the damn things. So you have to stand there reloading while the other side fires at you. And you march shoulder to shoulder in order to maintain fire superiority. You march in a line because otherwise the guys in back wouldn’t be able to fire. A line gives you the best shot at the enemy, and it also means that a bullet that goes through one guy won’t hit the guy in back of him.

In certain situations lines would double up or triple up…one line shooting then moving back and reloading while the next line shoots and moves back, etc. The trouble with this is that the men have to spend time moving around rather than loading their weapons. Usually a single line is more efficient.

Also, you had to have compact groups/lines so the men wouldn’t run away. If everyone is spread out, it is much easier to bail for the rear than it is if you are standing right next to your buddies and your officers are right behind you watching you. And of course, you need this discipline because you have to stand their reloading while the enemy is shooting at you…

You can overcome the low rate of fire by having several loaded weapons and pulling out each one…but this is only good for however many weapons you have. For armies it is better to give each soldier a rifle. Sometimes a soldier might have two rifles and an assistant who was supposed to load his rifle for him while he was shooting with one. But it would make more sense to just let the loader shoot the rifle rather than hand it back.

And then you would put a bayonet at the end of your rifle, because you cannot reload when you are very close to the enemy…you charge, fire when you have a good shot, and then spear until either you or the enemy run away.

So we can see that early gunpowder armies relied heavily on morale and discipline…a well disciplined army would stand and fight, while an undisciplined one would run away once they started getting shot at. Running away is a good way to get killed, since you can’t fire at the bad guys, you can’t stop to reload, you don’t have local fire superiority like the disciplined pursuers. And thus you get all this business about honor and courage. If your unit has honor and courage they will usually win since they stick together. Without that they will lose, since they’ll try to save their own skin rather than stand in line while everyone around them is getting shot. A courageous unit was many many times more effective militarily than a cowardly one.

Now, modern weapons are different…your modern soldier is supposed to keep out of sight and blast the hell out of anything that moves. Since you can fire from concealment, modern infantry are much more effective on the defense…it is usually suicide to charge a dug-in defender unless you have heavy weapon support. But back then they would get one shot, then the attackers would be on them. Also you were using black powder back then…any gunfire gives off a bright flash and a large puff of smoke…giving away the position of a sniper.

9

originally posted by Wildest Bill

Back then too, the higher ups were usually on the front lines themselves. Two hundred years prior to the Revolution, this would include kings and emperors.

10

It is perhaps worth pointing out that, whilst charges with the bayonet were ordered, and even occasionally worked (Suvarov in particular loved them – “Bullets are folly, bayonets wisdom”, he said), they were generally
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[li]a way getting a shaken enemy to break and run thirty seconds before he would have anyway[/li][li]a good way of getting routed if the opposing infantry or field artillery had shot and powder remaining to them.[/li][/list=1]
A bayonet is an anti-cavalry weapon; a cavalry regiment can charge an infantry line and roll it up in the interval between firing and reloading a musket, but even the best-trained cavalry mount is reluctant to impale itself on two feet of pointy steel.

The bayonet is a substitute for the pike; pikemen were used until the invention of the socket bayonet about 1700 (the plug bayonet, which you stick in the muzzle, was in use earlier, but proved unsatisfactory; you couldn’t fire a musket with a plug bayonet deployed – not twice, at least).

11

The best way to understand is to remember that they hadn’t invented police departments in those days.

Consider the Redcoats as the Thin Blue Line, and you’ll see the similarities to modern police tactics: Everyone visible and waiting.
Why don’t police hide in trees and wear camouflage?
Because they represent the ligitimate forces.
Would you trust your city police if they hid in trees and wore camoflage to break up a riot?

12

It is interesting to note that when the other side uses the advantage of deception, cover, etc, we call them terrorists but if our side does it then it is a heroic act.

13

IIRC that style of combat continued more or less unchanged until World War I when machine guns proved once and for all that technology had trumped tactics.

14

I wouldn’t say it had trumped tactics. It only trumped the old tactics. Time for some new tactics or kiss your ass and your cause goodbye. This sort of dance has been going on since there was warfare. Come up with a good tactic…you win battles. Then someone comes up with a new weapon or tactic better than yours…you lose battles.

Indeed, better weapons don’t always trump good tactics either. Ask the British army that faced Zulu warriors about that one.

15

The American Civil War was among the first major conflicts in which true rifles were common. By this I mean rifled barrels, which dramatically increased both range and accuracy. The typical 1860’s rifle was still a muzzle-loader, and a good shooter could only get off 3-4 rounds per minute, I believe.

The big difference was the range. As has been pointed out, a mad charge against muskets had a some chance of success because the attacking troops were only going to to be subject to a couple of volleys from the defender before they reached him. With rifles, they’re being shot at (accurately) from a couple of hundred yards on in.

Not that mad charges weren’t tried. They sometimes worked, but the general tendancy was for casualties to be dreadful.

16

The tighter formation had two purposes.

One is the massed firepowere alluded to in other posts. John Keagan’s excellent work ‘The Face of Battle’ cites a statistic that 40 yards apart, the muskets of the day could expect to hit what they aimed at less than 40% of the time. You have to have a lot of shooting going on at the same time to hurt anything.

The other is in preparation for the bayonet (and pike) charge that often followed up the first exchange of volleys. Keeping the men grouped together increases the momentum of the charge, because those at the back of the lines, who are in less danger, creates pressure on those in the front and keeps them charging forward even while getting shot. It also makes it harder to run away, if there are people on either side of you keeping you in place and fighting instead of making tracks away from the battlefield. Again and again, the generals of the period complain that it is difficult to get the troops to charge properly instead of indulging their perfectly understandable urge to make like bunnies. The savagery of the punishments for desertion were intended, in the words of one general, to make the troops more afraid of their officers than their enemies. SMERSH, the Soviet terror organization, originally was a group designed to kill soldiers who deserted under fire. (Yes, it was a real organization that Ian Fleming fictionalized.)

Most soldiers of the period were conscripts, who wouldn’t be in the army if they could avoid it. Keep in mind what Wellington said about his troops. “I don’t know if they terrify the enemy, but by G*d, they terrify me!” And he mostly won.

Regards,
Shodan

17

Sounds like the SWAT team in ski masks breaking down the door.

18

I was under the impression that a square of infantry was safe from cavalry because horses are not stupid or mean and simply refuse to run over people. Mounted police do not trample a crowd; someone runs away from the horses and leaves a hole; the horses head for the hole so that they don’t hurt anyone.

19

> a steamroller over a troupe of circus midgets

That I would like to see!

20

Some histories say that the reason behind British red uniforms was Cromwell’s idea. If you’re wearing white, like the pre-revolutionary French or Austrians, and men around you are hit and suddenly are wearing red, it’s bad for morale. It was less of a shock if they were in red in the first place. The sharpshooters of the American revolution didn’t cause a change in the uniform color - but years later the Boers did.