Successful pursuits and tired troops

[Elennsar]

It can be argued until our computers have it etched into our screen on whether or not a given pursuit should have been made, and we have specific threads for that.

What I'd like to know is more general.

In the period from the flintlock musket up to the Civil War - how many commanders were able to successfuly pursue an enemy to his doom (capture, destruction, or scattered to the point where its as good as destruction for some time) without having fresh troops for the pursuit?

Sure, luck and chance and seizing the moment and so on can count for a lot. But they can also go either way, and its understandable to be reluctant to trust overmuch in them being favorable - Lady Luck is a fickle b----.

Its not reasonable to point to examples after the Civil War - technology starts changing the battlefield to the point conditions are too dissimilar, and for the same reason, the pike and shot era is also a different tactical picture.

So, in the 150 years or so covered in this question, what do we have to work with?

I'm wondering because its a lot easier to understand Meade (for instance) being reluctant to pursue hell-for-leather after Gettysburg when Napolean is hard pressed to achieve a decisive victory under those conditions.

Conversely, if Frederick the Great repeatedly shattered enemy armies despite having exhausted men - well, why aren't Civil War commanders able to get the same last burst out of their armies? What are they doing wrong? Something, obviously.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Aside from those horrible times when troops were too bloodied to continue or simply exhausted from having marched 25 miles prior to the battle, the usual limitation was horse fatigue and the general logistics of trying to move the equipment and food trains. That's what made folks like Forrest so effective; the ability to travel light. Even he was severly limited by the horse thing. He just managed a little better than others.