Muzzle-loading blackpowder question.

[viper37]

I think a swab or two was part of the standard reloading drill, but I was led to believe that wouldn't be enough.  The gun can lock up or worse after repeated usage.  I was wondering if after say 10-20 shots a line would fall back and perhaps another one take it's place.  Or maybe just charge (especially in earlier eras).

Probably something Grumbler would know.

how many shots did they fire before charging with bayonnettes, or before the ennemy lines in front of them collapse?

Presumably, they'd fire 3-4 times each (with 3 ranks, let's say, 9-12 volleys).  You fire 9 times, concentrated fire, at a distance where you can see your opponent and people still close in on each other.  I don't think they would fire for 1hr or so.

[Berkut]

I think a swab or two was part of the standard reloading drill, but I was led to believe that wouldn't be enough.  The gun can lock up or worse after repeated usage.  I was wondering if after say 10-20 shots a line would fall back and perhaps another one take it's place.  Or maybe just charge (especially in earlier eras).

Probably something Grumbler would know.

how many shots did they fire before charging with bayonnettes, or before the ennemy lines in front of them collapse?

Presumably, they'd fire 3-4 times each (with 3 ranks, let's say, 9-12 volleys).  You fire 9 times, concentrated fire, at a distance where you can see your opponent and people still close in on each other.  I don't think they would fire for 1hr or so.

Uhh, I can think of quite a few civil war battles where battle lines fired at one another for more than an hour. Obviously this would be in some kind of cover, but it certainly could (and did) happen. In fact, I would guess that most ACW civil war battles had tactical engagements decided by weight of fire/morale, not by a melee. IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

[Syt]

I would guess that most ACW civil war battles had tactical engagements decided by weight of fire/morale, not by a melee. IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

IIRC it was similar in Napoleonic warfare. Melees were less frequent than Hollywood would make us think.

[Caliga]

IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

Correct... unless you were commanded by John Bell Hood.

[Ed Anger]

IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

Correct... unless you were commanded by John Bell Hood.

A lot of Squee in that one.

[jimmy olsen]

I think a swab or two was part of the standard reloading drill, but I was led to believe that wouldn't be enough.  The gun can lock up or worse after repeated usage.  I was wondering if after say 10-20 shots a line would fall back and perhaps another one take it's place.  Or maybe just charge (especially in earlier eras).

Probably something Grumbler would know.

how many shots did they fire before charging with bayonnettes, or before the ennemy lines in front of them collapse?

Presumably, they'd fire 3-4 times each (with 3 ranks, let's say, 9-12 volleys).  You fire 9 times, concentrated fire, at a distance where you can see your opponent and people still close in on each other.  I don't think they would fire for 1hr or so.

Uhh, I can think of quite a few civil war battles where battle lines fired at one another for more than an hour. Obviously this would be in some kind of cover, but it certainly could (and did) happen. In fact, I would guess that most ACW civil war battles had tactical engagements decided by weight of fire/morale, not by a melee. IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

At the corn field in Antietam didn't the two lines hammer each other for half an hour in the open? And from a ridiculous short range too IIRC. (Been a few years since I read Sears excellent book on the battle)

[Berkut]

I think a swab or two was part of the standard reloading drill, but I was led to believe that wouldn't be enough.  The gun can lock up or worse after repeated usage.  I was wondering if after say 10-20 shots a line would fall back and perhaps another one take it's place.  Or maybe just charge (especially in earlier eras).

Probably something Grumbler would know.

how many shots did they fire before charging with bayonnettes, or before the ennemy lines in front of them collapse?

Presumably, they'd fire 3-4 times each (with 3 ranks, let's say, 9-12 volleys).  You fire 9 times, concentrated fire, at a distance where you can see your opponent and people still close in on each other.  I don't think they would fire for 1hr or so.

Uhh, I can think of quite a few civil war battles where battle lines fired at one another for more than an hour. Obviously this would be in some kind of cover, but it certainly could (and did) happen. In fact, I would guess that most ACW civil war battles had tactical engagements decided by weight of fire/morale, not by a melee. IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

At the corn field in Antietam didn't the two lines hammer each other for half an hour in the open? And from a ridiculous short range too IIRC. (Been a few years since I read Sears excellent book on the battle)

Sounds right. But even just looking at Gettysburg you saw several examples of ranged combat that lasted much more than a few volleys each way.

[Agelastus]

I would guess that most ACW civil war battles had tactical engagements decided by weight of fire/morale, not by a melee. IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

IIRC it was similar in Napoleonic warfare. Melees were less frequent than Hollywood would make us think.

The same's true of Eighteenth Century battles; and even late seventeenth century affairs. Battles decided by shock action (melee) pretty much ended when armies dropped pikemen after the invention of the ring bayonet. Battlelines stood and blasted away at each other for hours sometimes.

French columns were actually supposed to reintroduce decisiveness by forcing shock action in battles (they're famous from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras where they were used as an expedient for making use of a mass of undertrained recruits, but the basic tactical evolutions and theories were actually a product of French military theorists of the old Royal Army of the 1770s and 1780s.)

Just as British and Dutch platoon fire was supposed to maximise the effect of fire reducing the need for shock action (which lines were not really suited for) even though people now have this image of the fire being nothing but a precursor to the bayonet charge of the Redcoats.

[Razgovory]

Uhh, I can think of quite a few civil war battles where battle lines fired at one another for more than an hour. Obviously this would be in some kind of cover, but it certainly could (and did) happen. In fact, I would guess that most ACW civil war battles had tactical engagements decided by weight of fire/morale, not by a melee. IIRC, most of the time when attacking you would not charge until you had already broken the enemy line by weight of fire.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  But if rifles can easily get clogged up you need some mechanism where the soldiers could have a break to clear their guns.  Maybe they just stood there and scrapped the fouling out of the gun right on the battle line.  Probably not ideal.

[grumbler]

IIRC it was similar in Napoleonic warfare. Melees were less frequent than Hollywood would make us think.

The reason why melees were rare was not because charges were rare, but because charges seldom went home into a melee; one side or the other would give way before the melee started.

In the Napoleonic wars, musketry was used defensively and as part of a pinning attack.  Preps for the major attack would be by artillery fire, not musket fire. 

Skirmish fire, obviously, excepted.  But even skirmishers seldom fired more than a dozen times or so in a battle.

By the ACW, infantry fire was heavy enough to decide battles without massed artillery.  As Berkut and you noted, a charge was really not an attempt to melee, but rather to break the wavering enemy's line, just like in the Napoleonic era.

[grumbler]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  But if rifles can easily get clogged up you need some mechanism where the soldiers could have a break to clear their guns.  Maybe they just stood there and scrapped the fouling out of the gun right on the battle line.  Probably not ideal.

If you allowed soldiers to leave the ranks, you'd never get them back.

[CountDeMoney]

Someone writes about men peeing into the musket barrels to loosen up the gunk and allow them to keep firing.  Can't recall the book or circumstances though - could have been Napoleonic.  At a guess, Swords Around a throne, which has those kinds of details.

Who knew rifle barrels got athlete's foot?  Amazing.

[Berkut]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  But if rifles can easily get clogged up you need some mechanism where the soldiers could have a break to clear their guns.  Maybe they just stood there and scrapped the fouling out of the gun right on the battle line.  Probably not ideal.

If you allowed soldiers to leave the ranks, you'd never get them back.

That is an excellent point.