>According to mel gibson, in the 18th century countries fought by having 2 armies march up to each other in a field at a pre-arranged side and take turns taking shots at each other.
>According to mel gibson, in the 18th century countries fought by having 2 armies march up to each other in a field at a pre-arranged side and take...
And?
according to my fake education they did that. not sure if true because it came from public school a long with lots of other lies.
they did do that, but there was more to it than just "let's stand in a line and shoot lol we are so dumb"
If only someone would make a major historical film from that time period and showcased the intricacies of "linear warfare"
why didn't they just duck
hadnt been invented yet
banned for being too OP
They didn't start doing that until the American Civil War, humorously enough. Some people say the civil war was the first "modern" war because of quite a few novel inventions.
>hey, here's a stone wall, let's crouch behind it and shoot those bastards
AND BOOM! We just invented cover.
>hey, let's ride our horses really fast and then dismount over to the flank of those bastards and shoot them
AND BOOM! That's pretty much what cavalry is TO THIS DAY! Amazing.
>hey, let's just...lay down on the ground so maybe their shots just fly overhead
AND BOOM! To this day, everyone and their mother fighting a firefight either lays or crouches down! Amazing.
But, in all seriousness, muskets are a pain in the ass to reload when you're prone. That's pretty much it. The Prussians invented a bolt-action rifle (pic related, called a Needle Gun) around that time and repeating rifles such as the Henry and Spence were also invented around that time and saw some use. Bolt actions won the day because, guess what, they're easier to fire when you're prone and you don't lose your aim quite as bad.
The true reason was the innovation of the efficient rifled musket + minie ball
Pic related is the M1853 Enfield Rifled Musket. The rifled barrel allowed the projectile to be fired 3x further and far more accurately. Before this, rifled barrel muskets did exist but were costly and time-consuming to make (as expensive as 5 smoothbore muskets usually). Moreover the loading process was quite cumbersome and you needed to hammer down the shot into the barrel with a "starter" tool on top of everything else. The Enfield however was brought about with industrial revolution-tier standardization and was easy and quick to make, and its loading process was as easy as contemporary smoothbore muskets at the time.
The second is the minie ball, a french-derived musket ball that allowed for it to move even further and more accurately on top of leaving grievous wounds, becoming known as the "bone cruncher". Minie ball wounds were 3-4x more likely to result in an amputation than the standard spherical musket balls of prior wars.
As a result your average infantryman was able to deliver accurate and devastating firepower at a far greater range (sometimes up to a km away). It completely demolished armies using napoleonic tactics and made battles far more static (trenches started becoming common to avoid fire), requiring far more men, and often took far longer and saw far greater casualties to both sides. The more gentlemanly and professional aspect of prior wars died out.
You actually saw a preview for it in the Crimean War, but few in America paid much attention to it.
ok so how did they fight, mister history buff?
armies would spend weeks if not months attempting to out-maneuver one another into strategically advantageous positions
Battles didn't just suddenly begin, but slowly escalated as forward elements came into contact and more and more formations arrived to engage one another.
Individual lines weren't so closely packed together but spread out and giving each other effective fields of fire.
People didn't move so slowly, they were constantly on the move and often fired while moving as well.
Battles rarely took place in open fields but in wooded areas to conceal positions.
charges weren't melee berserk rushes and unit cohesion/formation was maintained, and they moved at a fast trot at most.
artillery and cavalry were way more important and what really won battles.
Soldiers weren't so clean and spotless, they were marching for often weeks on end and quite dirty despite their colorful uniforms. Granted, there are semi-frequent exceptions to this rule at least.
>armies would spend weeks if not months
Armies work on minutes not weeks
>People didn't move so slowly, they
Simply wrong
>Battles rarely took place in open fields
Most if Europe was not wooded and several countries did not even have forests but then
>charges weren't melee berserk rushes and unit cohesion
Far too general
>M-muh strategy!
you dont know shit
A lot like the opening battle of Gladiator.
And he's right. The American Revolution being won by plucky guerillas outsmarting the Brits by taking cover behind trees and shit is a complete myth, the war was won because Washington modelled the continental army after the European standard well enough to start getting taken seriously by the French. Washington disliked working with militia.
Square formations were effectively invulnerable to cavalry.
that's not a square formation
That's at least one thing Ridley Scott got right in Napoleon
This looks so stupid, like some aristocratic game of reaux chambeaux. Nobody buys that.
The Patriot could have been such a good film
There will never be a good film about the American Revolution
>There will never be a good film about the American Revolution
>give me liberty ese
We need to have a thread about forgotten movies like these.
> Mel Gibson.
> Being historical in any way.
Hysterical.
The Passion of the Christ and Apocayplo are 100 percent perfectly accurate.
They lined up but usually they’d only fire a couple of times before a bayonet charge
Uhhhhh, homie, Mel didn't direct The Patriot.
This, why does everyone blame Gibson for The Patriot’s historical inaccuracies? He did not produce, write, or direct it.
According to Mel Gibson there is only one group responsible for wars in the 18th century.
Most conflicts were like the forest ambush scene but there were field battles. moron.
Here's what shit actually looked like.
From what I understand, If the line broke, cavalry was waiting on the flanks ready to murder all the stragglers. The line breaking meant certain death for everyone trying to escape
Reminder that both wars between the US and British were entirely Britain's fault
It was a better, more honorable time.
You're acting like this is unrealistically wasteful but from what we've seen so far, 21st century european warfare is just two armies stationed at pre-arranged sides bombing the shit out of eachother until someone runs out of teenagers whose only job is to sit around and wait to get bombed.