Position:Home>History> Have they really fought so stupid like in"The Patriot" with lines of s

The standing lines of soldiers was simply the continuing evolution of battle formations from pre-gunpowder days!. From the Greek phaylanx to the Roman legions, and various other formations, the idea was to group your soldiers to provide mutual support for each other!. A soldier could only control as much terrirtory as his weapon could reach!. Thus, all the way to the gunpowder age troops were for the most part trained to fight close together!. (there were exceptions such as skirmishers)!.
When gunpowder made bows obsolete in battle, the generals found that there was a viscious effectiveness in the volley!. This was latter refined into the rolling volley, where you had your troops firing in successive waves, keeping an almost constant fire on your enemy!. And given that the earlier muskets were of limited accuracy,it took this kind of volley fire to inflict significant casualties!. So again, keeping troops bunched was to the benefit!. Finally, troops were trained to obey orders, even if it meant holding in place under hostile fire!. They were rarely trained to take initiative, and again, keeping your troops in strict formation, whether column or line, made sense!.
The Revolutionary war began to change this view!. For one, Americans were starting to use rifled muskets, vastly increasing their accuracy, and at greater range!. If you study training manuals of the time, originally the order was "Ready, Fire" to deliver a volley!. With the more accurate rifles, American troops began to learn the modified order "Ready, AIM, Fire"!. Now the same soldier who two centuries before could effectively control a few square feet had a lethal reach allowing him to control a much larger area!.
But while a single soldier could control more area, a general could not!. Bugles, drums, pipe, and maybe flags were still standard ways of delivering messages as to what the troops were supposed to do!. The further out you spread your troops, the harder they are to control!. So the instinct is still to group people!.
As for partisans, partisans by nature operate in small units!. The company sized ones seen in the Patriot is fairly large!. So you might have a hundred men, able to use terrain and ambush to inflict casualties!. Against an equal number of men, or even two or three times their own number, partisans did have the advantage!. But when you're talking entire regiments of men moving together, a hundred men would rapidly find themselves pursued and overwhelmed by the larger force!. So partisans can harry, hinder, and bleed an enemy, but by their nature don't carry the ability to deliver a knockout punch!. Thus, if two armies wanted to decide who was going to control a piece of property, it came down to the fact that they have to step up, literally, and face the other man across a field in order to settle the matter!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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The weapons of the time were single-shot muzzle loaders!.
Standing and firing in a line was the best way to concentrate fire power!. If you were fighting in woods and wanted to advance, your formation would break up due to the terrain!.
also, after you fired your single shot you had to reload your weapon from the muzzle!. You had to dump your gun powder and bullet down the barrel, that's very hard to do if the rifle is not in a vertical position!.
And yes, partisans hiding behind trees was effective, that was how " guerrilla warfare " got started and that was how the colonists in America chased the British back to Boston during the Lexington and Concord battles at the start of the American Revolution!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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That was the way European wars were fought, and the British had become quite good at it!. Muskets were smoothbores and lacked the accuracy of rifles, but they could be reloaded much quicker!. Whoever had the best coordination and quickest reloading won the battle!. The duke of Wellington had beaten the mighty Napoleaon at Waterloo, so the British were invincible in such fighting!. When Americans tried to fight such an army on its own terms, they were slaughtered, as at Concord!. Americans learned to use guerilla tactics!. They hid behind trees, etc!. and were safe from musket fire!. Some British officers were shot down at long ranges when they believed they were safe!. The "Kentucky rifle" was accurate to 300 yards, while a Brown Bess musket was only accurate to 100 yards!. I can load the rifle in about a minute and the musket in 20 seconds or so!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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It was smart at the time!. The standard infantry weapon was the musket, and its inherent inaccuracy made massed fire a necessity!. The British army spent a lot of time in drill moving between in-line positions, best for offensive firepower, and in-square, best for defense against cavalry!. A few partisans hiding behind rocks would be easy prey for a couple of men on horse!. The myth of the American rifleman winning the Revolutionary War has only a tiny grain of truth in it!. The war was won by a revolutionary army fighting in exactly the same way as the Europeans did!. Think von Steuben!. Cover, fire, and maneuver became eminently sensible when the individual soldier's firepower was increased by technologic advances!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Muskets of the time only had a short effective range and were not remotely accurate, the Brown Bess musket was not equipped with sights, the orders to fire did not include the word aim!. The only effective way of using them against any number of enemy was to volley fire in ranks by platoon, there were rifles available (that twisted the round in the barrel, this increases accuracy and range at the expense of load time) but they were limited in number and, compared to the robust musket, fragile!. Naturally the movie is in the business of attracting audiences rather than historical accuracy – troops on both sides would take advantage of cover provided but it rarely allows for a whole unit to fire from cover, bear in mind that muzzle-loaded weapons require a standing position to load quickly!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Well, this WAS the way Europeans fought!.

In fact, the British were appalled at the Americans' use of ambush tactics, firing from cover, and other methods that the settlers had learned from the Native Americans--after all, the Eastern Woodland nations were some of the greatest light infantry the world has ever seen, just as the nations of the Plains became, after the introduction of the horse, among the greatest light cavalry!.

The Europeans still fought in ranks at least up until the time of the Napoleonic Wars!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Yeah!. It was the standard way of fighting in the colonial era!.

Didn't you ever take US history!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

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