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More importantly, you could aim a percussion musket much more effectively. The flintlock's flash prevented effective aiming, and the additional half a second between pulling the trigger and discharge caused the rounds to go high.
That's a difference, but it really didn't have much impact in the early days of percussion caps. That's because a smoothbore musket was still a smoothbore musket, wildly inaccurate at any distance. It is only after the widespread introduction of percussion-capped rifles in replacement of smoothbores that this effect is noticeable on the battlefield. That does not occur, realistically until the Crimean War and after.
The American Army in Mexico 1846-47, for example, is armed almost completely with smoothbores, most of them flintlocks, although it was beginning to change at that point. That's why US tactics in that war look so much like Napoleonic tactics, and why you find Braxton Bragg performing as brilliant an example of "flying battery" or horse artillery tactics at Buena Vista as you will ever find in recorded history.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
The problem of aiming for line is just one of marksmanship, but there was an additional problem with the low velocity Minie rifle, it required accurate range estimation, accurate to within 50m. To make matters worse, the sights of these rifles were only graduated very coursely (typically every 200m), and finer adjustments were made by adjusting the aiming point. This had major implications for rifle fire.
A man without specialist rifle training (which even the US Sharpshooters didn't receive much of) was unable to apply fire correctly. The leader on the American continent in giving his men such training was Cleburne, and by late 1864 some specialised CS skirmishers had received such training. The Union never really seems to from what I read.
Cleburne's men made a practiced regimen of it, and were justly famed for their actions. But the problems with these weapons were no worse than with smoothbores (and probably the smoothbores were worse). ACW troops did not generally fire at the 300 yard or so distance people speak of for a host of reasons, one of them being this, but also to the rarity of having a clear line-of-sight for 300 yards and a general desire of commanders to reserve their fire to deliver a more destructive volley at closer ranges and maintain fire discipline.
BTW, the Europeans were not a lot better. For example, the Austrians in 1859 had a good tactical system, maybe a superior one for rifled muskets, but lost to the French through inadequate training. It seems performance at the annual reviews weighed heavily on the officer's chance for promotion, so Austrian officers had been playing fast and loose with the annual training drafts, keeping more of the 2nd-and-3rd year men than they were supposed to and sending too many of the 1st year men back home. When it came time to call out the reserves for a war, they still had the traditional Austrian bravery, but a very large portion of the men had had no effective training.
Having lost to the French (who thought they were getting whacked around pretty good and were thinking about asking for a truce after Magenta and Solferino when the Austrians asked them for peace terms), the Austrians looked for the causes. They decided the French had shown them the way to use the new rifled muskets was not the firepower-based system of the Archduke Charles -- it was the massed bayonet assault. So they gave up the old tactics and stressed new ones that emphasized bayonet attacks in column for the next seven years. Duh. These guys just got it wrong.
Comes 1866. The Austrians fight five opening battles along the frontier, charging bravely into the massed fire of Prussian infantry. They lose four, taking casualties at a rate of about 3 Austrians to each Prussian. They "win" one, losing roughly 2 Austrians to each Prussian. At this point, the field commander orders a quick return to the Archduke Charles tactics. But he isn't really noble enough, and his corps commanders are noble enough, so a couple of them disobey him at Koeniggratz. They leave their trenches and advance into the woods to close with a single Prussian division. Bloody mess in the woods against the Prussian breechloaders. The Prussian division is chopped up badly; the 2 Austrian corps are also used up -- and then the rest of the Prussian left started ariving. The Austrian tight dissolves just as the Austrian commander is ready to launch his counterattack against the struggling Prussian center (which was being smashed as it tried to struggle across a stream and uphill into the Austrian entrenchments) and the left flank gives way too.
Meanwhile, in 1864 the French got around to sending an official observer team to the ACW. These guys read like a spy team from a bad novel. The colonel in charge could not speak English (supposedly; his wife was an American woman born in Baltimore). The other member of the team was a Lieutenant who apparently was closely connected to French intelligence services. The Lincoln administration left them cooling their heels in New York for a while (they visited West Point and marvelled at what they saw, measuring everything). Then they went down to spend about 3 months with Grant and Meade (after Grant reached Petersburg, so about July).
You'll find they did a study of cavalry horses in the Union stables, were amazed at the lack of back sores, and recommended the adoption of the McClellan saddle by the French Army. Also that they were highly impressed by American military camp hygenie and recommended a whole series of changes based on it to the French Army (seems stunning, but apparently true). That's all from the public part of their report.
There was also a secret part to the report. Last I heard, it was still classified. But apparently they gave a presentation to the influential French Artillery Committee when they returned that caused "a sensation" among the officers there. Not sure what happened to the colonel afterwards, but the Lieutenant kept getting promoted, and seemed to suddenly pop up anytime the French military had visiting US officers, or needed to send someone to the US (as in 1870 to negotiate for guns).
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
The Prussians are an interesting case. Their Dreyse was unaimable. The breach leaked gases and would often blind anyone who tried to aim it. Thus they adopted the tactic of not aiming, but firing rapidly from the hip at ranges of 300 yards and below.
Yes, that's so. In 1864, von Moltke was unsure which way the weapon should be used (the Prussian Army, realistically, only converted to the Dreyse in 1862, although the weapon had been in use with specialized units since at least the First Danish War in 1848). Debate inside the Army was divided over short/long range. After experience in the field in the 3rd Danish (or "Potato") War, they decided on relatively short range, and generally fired from 200 yards or less.
That's why the Austrian bayonet charges played right into the hands of the breechloader Prussian infantry in 1866. It is probably also noteworthy that the only Austrian commander to "win" one of the five opening battles in that war had commanded the Austrian Expeditionary Corps alongside the Prussians in 1864; he probably had a better idea about what he was facing.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Yes, it was unknown. Although Grant, Sherman etc. can be described as Clauswitzian, even though they'd never read it
Actually, if you had to pick two US officers who might have had exposure to Clausewitz, you could try with these two.
Both served under Halleck, and Sherman was a good friend of Halleck's, having sailed to California around the Horn with him at the time of the Mexican War, months together on a ship.
Halleck was usually considered a Jomini man -- but it is also known that he was aware of Clausewitz and his theories. I have no idea whether that was from reading Clausewitz or merely from articles about Clausewitz' work, but there are references to Clausewitz in Halleck's 1846 Elements of Military Art and Science.
Probably a better shot with Sherman by far. Grant wasn't a book man (he tended more towards the romance novels of Bulwer-Lytton while at West Point), but he had to suffer through some time at Halleck's HQ. You never know what he might have picked up.
One Union officer who had definitely studied both Jomini and Clausewitz is Carl Schurz.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
No, he was a reactionary against Napoleon's tactics, and a preacher of a return to Frederickian linear tactics and fighting by fire, not shock.
Jomini was widely regarded as the master interpreter of Napoleon right up through the Civil War. It was only the 1866 and 1870 Prussian victories that put his star in descent.
Now Napoleon was also an admirer of Frederick the Great, and commented favorably on the treatise on Frederick Jomini produced in 1801-03 ( peace of Amiens). But then Napoleon saw study of all the Great Captains as essential to the study of War. Still, if you'd asked in the days he was alive, most people would have spoken of Jomini as the conduit to Napoleon. (Not Wellington, for example, who saw Jomini as a charlatan.)
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Originally Posted by 67th Tigers
The first West Point translations of Jomini were introduced to the syllabus in 1818, and it was a continuing process.
Since his major works were published much later, they'd have to be.
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Originally Posted by 67th Tigers
The officers that led the ACW had been taught from an English translation of the Precis of the Art of War (not the Art of War, which was only published in English in NY in Jan 1862).
They would have been working from the 1854 translation, IIRR.
There wasn't a lot of teaching of strategy and tactics at West Point in those days. The exposure of most cadets to it was in Mahan's short class. Some did do further reading on their own. Other's (see Grant) did nothing.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Nope, the Union left their train at Winchester so as to not obstruct the roads for their concentration at Gettysburg, bring forward only a small ammunition reserve and a small number of ambulances.
I'm still not sure about this Winchester... you're not referring to VA are you? Winchester VA is considerably ****her than 25 miles form Gettysburg, and not in Union control at the time of Gettysburg.
On the other hand, I'm not aware of a Winchester, PA, but my PA geography isn't all that.
__________________ "In mortal combat, a man may and will become so infuriated by the din and dangers of a bloody fight that his heart will turn to stone and his every de sire [be] for blood."
John Hadley, 7th Indiana after the battle at Port Republic
That's a difference, but it really didn't have much impact in the early days of percussion caps. That's because a smoothbore musket was still a smoothbore musket, wildly inaccurate at any distance. It is only after the widespread introduction of percussion-capped rifles in replacement of smoothbores that this effect is noticeable on the battlefield. That does not occur, realistically until the Crimean War and after.
Well, the Mexican-American War shows a remarkable increase in the killing rate of percussion armed infantry, roughly 1 in 125 rounds (with percussion muskets) hit vs 1 in 4-800 in Napoleonic Wars involving prolonged musketry exchanges. The killing rates get more lethal in the Crimean, at Inkerman the British were hitting with about 1 round in 20 (and a quarter of their fire was from the smoothbores of 4th Division).
However, come to the ACW and killing rates drop below Napoleonic levels again, or at least into the same ballpark.
Which brings in the crux of the issue, the Minie was a vast increase in firepower to troops that had been properly trained with it, but actually decreased the firepower of untrained troops. This was a known in Europe, and various armies were considering reversion to the smoothbore for the line infantry. The French removed the long range sights from the bulk of their rifles, the Prussians only allowed NCOs to fire above 300 yds.
Some in America recognised this, hence the Irish Brigade, 1st Texan Brigade etc. retained smoothbores well after Minies were available, usually firing buck and ball and increase their volume of fire.
The American Army in Mexico 1846-47, for example, is armed almost completely with smoothbores, most of them flintlocks, although it was beginning to change at that point. That's why US tactics in that war look so much like Napoleonic tactics, and why you find Braxton Bragg performing as brilliant an example of "flying battery" or horse artillery tactics at Buena Vista as you will ever find in recorded history.
Tim
I think it's more a question of what the guys on the other side were shooting with?
I'm still not sure about this Winchester... you're not referring to VA are you? Winchester VA is considerably ****her than 25 miles form Gettysburg, and not in Union control at the time of Gettysburg.
On the other hand, I'm not aware of a Winchester, PA, but my PA geography isn't all that.
Checking my books, I am indeed confused. It's Frederick
Yes, that's so. In 1864, von Moltke was unsure which way the weapon should be used (the Prussian Army, realistically, only converted to the Dreyse in 1862, although the weapon had been in use with specialized units since at least the First Danish War in 1848). Debate inside the Army was divided over short/long range. After experience in the field in the 3rd Danish (or "Potato") War, they decided on relatively short range, and generally fired from 200 yards or less.
True, and short range and storm columns won out. In 1870 they were shot to pieces by French infantry and compensated by pushing their guns towards the forward of columns and using them to establish bases of fire over 1,000m from the French riflemen.
By 1870, the prediction that artillery couldn't operate in close support was becoming true, it does not follow they couldn't earlier.
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That's why the Austrian bayonet charges played right into the hands of the breechloader Prussian infantry in 1866. It is probably also noteworthy that the only Austrian commander to "win" one of the five opening battles in that war had commanded the Austrian Expeditionary Corps alongside the Prussians in 1864; he probably had a better idea about what he was facing.
Tim
Kongshoi , I assume? An interesting battle dominated by skirmishing Austrian jaegars ISTR.
Cleburne's men made a practiced regimen of it, and were justly famed for their actions. But the problems with these weapons were no worse than with smoothbores (and probably the smoothbores were worse). ACW troops did not generally fire at the 300 yard or so distance people speak of for a host of reasons, one of them being this, but also to the rarity of having a clear line-of-sight for 300 yards and a general desire of commanders to reserve their fire to deliver a more destructive volley at closer ranges and maintain fire discipline.
True, this was also the reason the British reserved fire in the Peninsula. Griffith could find a reference to fire above 300 yds ISTR, and Nosworthy could only find a couple of skirmishing shots (at batteries) at greater ranges, including a shoot at 800 yds (which didn't hit anything).
Going back to day 3 at Gettysburg, the defending infantry opened fire at between 90 and 175 yds.
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BTW, the Europeans were not a lot better. For example, the Austrians in 1859 had a good tactical system, maybe a superior one for rifled muskets, but lost to the French through inadequate training. It seems performance at the annual reviews weighed heavily on the officer's chance for promotion, so Austrian officers had been playing fast and loose with the annual training drafts, keeping more of the 2nd-and-3rd year men than they were supposed to and sending too many of the 1st year men back home. When it came time to call out the reserves for a war, they still had the traditional Austrian bravery, but a very large portion of the men had had no effective training.
From what I read the major problem was the language. The non-Germans were taught 80 words of German (things like halt), but failed to react to them in the heat of battle. This made command and control haphazard in the extreme.
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Having lost to the French (who thought they were getting whacked around pretty good and were thinking about asking for a truce after Magenta and Solferino when the Austrians asked them for peace terms), the Austrians looked for the causes. They decided the French had shown them the way to use the new rifled muskets was not the firepower-based system of the Archduke Charles -- it was the massed bayonet assault. So they gave up the old tactics and stressed new ones that emphasized bayonet attacks in column for the next seven years. Duh. These guys just got it wrong.
A lot of that was due to their C&C issues. It was much easier to control troops simply going to storm forward. It was really wrong though, as you say. They should have formed ethnic regiments and given words of command in their own language instead (and given troops more than 20 practice shots a year).
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You'll find they did a study of cavalry horses in the Union stables, were amazed at the lack of back sores, and recommended the adoption of the McClellan saddle by the French Army. Also that they were highly impressed by American military camp hygenie and recommended a whole series of changes based on it to the French Army (seems stunning, but apparently true). That's all from the public part of their report.
True, although the McClellan saddle, I'm told, was one of the worst for shock cavalry.
<much snippage of interesting stuff, I'm writing while commuting>
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