Why was Revolutionary-Napoleonic warfare so idiotic? Standing rank and file to get slaughtered by inaccurate musket fire in bright colors makes no sense.
The development between the Napoleonic Wars and The Great War is something to behold, however.
>>1152125
Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
What did the soldiers eat?
>>1152265
Napoleon promote the inventions if canned food as well as margarine.
Other armies: bread bacon crauts and pork fat
>>1152265
Bread and high-yield crops like potatoes, esp. during the crusades
>1485
>English Civil War
The War of the Roses and the English Civil War are two different things you jackass
>>1152125
Standing in line in bright uniforms is the only way it could be done. The muskets were too inaccurate to reliably hit anything unless you got a hundred of them and shot in the same direction at once. Uniforms had to be bright so generals and officers could see where their men were and how the battle was unfolding with no radios, reconnaissance planes or satellite feeds.
>>1152291
>potatoes
>during the Crusades
Please be bait.
>>1152291
Potatoes are from the New World
>>1152301
>implying the Wars of the Roses weren't *A* English Civil War
>implying that THE English Civil War isn't properly titled the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
>implying OP even made this picture but got it from somewhere else who in turn got it from The Telegraph
>>1152319
>an article about British soldiers is sourced from an accredited English newspaper
This is bad in what way?
>>1152319
War of the Three Kingdoms is better title as the British Civil Wars since it included the rest of the British Isles, the English civil war was part of the War of the Three Kingdoms.
The War of the Roses was a civil war correct, but it is not THE English Civil War. Nobody calls the War of the Roses the English civil war.
>>1152125
Because if they weren't in tight groups for cohesion and protection, they would be easily mauled by cavalry as the French did to the British Sixty-Ninth Regiment at Quatre Bras days before Waterloo.
It's better to face unaimed volleys of already inaccurate muskets than be cut down by sword or sabre.
>>1152125
The main reason to have a line of muskets instead of spreading out was not actually because of the properties of the guns, but rather because of the threat of a cavalry charge. Spreading out your men means you risk being completely broken by a cavalry charge. A line of muskets essentially becomes a line of spears when packed in close formation. The reason to stay in a relatively close formation is because when the enemy cavalry is detected, you have only seconds before it hits you- not nearly enough time to do anything as cumbersome and slow as change formation. Although being in close formation means artillery hurts, not being able to survive a cavalry charge results in an immediate defeat.
Muskets are also really bad guns. A single shooter's odds of hitting a single target were actually terrible, so in order to consistently do damage you need massed fire. Because of muskets' reload times, this also ensures that your force can survive losing a lot of men to incoming shots from the enemy, at least long enough to shoot again a couple times. What you must avoid is defeat in detail with a large, concentrated force shaving off the front of your forces and then advancing to shave off the next few lines. Although you could minimize damage from enemy fire somewhat by spreading out, you would also reduce your own effectiveness, arguably by considerably more than the enemy's difficulty in hitting more spread out targets.
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>>1152125
Communication. Before the existence of radio, this was the most effective way of controlling armies large enough to win wars.
>>1152125
>why is communication important
>>1152517
So were muskets already capable of puncturing a chest plate? I'd probably psychologically feel safer in a sheet of iron than in just in my cloth uniform.
