It was, you just have a poor understanding of it.

Smoke and gay accuracy necessitated it

>>64352164
What would you have done differently?

>>64352164
The silly hats were kino, though.

Lanchester's laws, it also applies to animals too. If you're big enough, but still organized, then everyone smaller will be destroyed without causing much harm because they're overkilled.
The only way to win a battle against those armies was creating something equivalent, be a pair.
Asymmetrical warfare wasn't a thing because if you lost your quarters you lost your rights to govern that territory and you're still being haunted by your pedigree and you need your territory and power to gain allies and collaborators for your war (Europe was far more divided).

>Conquers half the world
Sorry, we didn't know it was a silly way to fight wars.

>>64352164
You have a musket that shoots twice a minute, with no rifling or sights. The enemy has cavalrymen with swords, wearing steel breastplates that can resist a musket shot at all but the closest ranges.

A lone man running around firing at targets of opportunity the way we fight today would be cut down in moments, likely without scoring a single hit. But if you fight in formation, giving ordered volleys on command, your combined firepower can halt a charge, while the ranks behind you can keep up a steady rate of fire while you reload. And if the enemy closes in to fight in melee, the bayonets of a massed infantry formation function like a phalanx of old, far more effectively repelling the enemy than the same number of men fighting individually could.

>>64352246
He's just a seething indian who's salty that white bois were able to conquer the world with wooden ships. They should do it again.

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>>64352246
The Spaniards didn't believe it at first either.

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>>64352164
It kinda was, mostly because of the strengths and limitations of their weapons. There was short period in the 1600s where it was somewhat fashionable to have guys in full armor run up to the enemy line on horseback, pepper them with their single shot pistols, and run away. They'd get fucked up by the firing line all the time so this trend died quick. Eventually the armor mostly goes away and it evolves into guys with rifles using horses to get to strategic vantage points to lay down volleys. Given the guns at the time, it just looks like formations and volleys are a result of every army minmaxing for attack.

>>64352399
Broken order combat, both with muskets and rifles, was also attempted. The problems with that are that the rifle was slow-loading and broken order does not bring as many guns to bear as a line formation. Hence these attempts were useful in wasting ammunition and harrassing at range, but couldn't bring decisive results. And a unit of skirmishers could not stand up to line infantry when the latter advanced on the former. Let alone, it was stated before, to cavalry.

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>>64352164
Linear warfare made sense; it only seems otherwise because an average person's understanding of it comes from pop history media made by equally uninformed people, and because they don't consider the limitations of period technology (in particular the absence of radios and smokeless powder)
>why lines?
first of all, that wall of bayonets is your only defense against getting steamrolled by enemy cavalry (or the enemy's wall of bayonets)
secondly, good luck coordinating five hundred dudes in any other way without radios
>why fire in volleys?
"accuracy" is probably the standard explanation, but that's not the full picture: it's more about effective range
an individual trained soldier with a smoothbore musket can reliably hit a dude up to about 100 yards, or maybe a bit further if he's really good; for context, this just happens to be about the same range a bayonet charge becomes viable at
put a bunch of dudes together, and collectively they can more effectively engage at significantly greater distances
>why brightly colored uniforms and banners?
because black powder: camo is largely irrelevant because the moment you take a shot, the big cloud of smoke gives your position away
a battlefield will get pretty smokey, so with that and the lack of radios, this is the only way anyone on either side will be able to tell what the fuck is going on
development of smokeless powder in the late 19th c. was very quickly followed by armies switching to more drab colors
>why musicians?
pre-radio comms relaying orders and signals
>did they just never think to try fighting like we do?
As it happens, they actually did: skirmishers/light infantry like in pic fought in a dispersed manner much more familiar to someone in current year, but due to already specified reasons, this was only viable in niche applications (e.g. harrassing the enemy, screening for the main body of infantry, or fighting in mountainous/densely forested terrain where cavalry is less dangerous)

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>>64352265
>with no [...] sights
ackshyually they did, kinda like the bead sights on shotguns in current year
>inb4 "but it is le bayonet lug"
tell it to the period writers who explicitly called it a sight

>>64352597
>that wall of bayonets is your only defense against getting steamrolled by enemy cavalry
Big mistake.
Its was salvo fire from dense ranks that stopped cavalry not bayonets. You ain't gonna stop horse with bayonet
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5iva_jAbzJY

>>64352164

Why no bows or slings? I get that a crossbow is in its function a less effective musket, but bows and slings fire faster and in the age of muskets there is basically no infantry armor anymore.

>>64353164
Skill, logistics, range

>>64353164
Require much more training and physical ability than a guy with a musket. It's why despite there being repeating rifles in the 17th century, people used smooth-boore muskets for a long time. Easier to maintain, cheaper to make, easier to train with.

>>64353100
depends on the definition of "stopped"

bayonets were needed to literally stop the cavalry charge, i.e. physically prevent horses from just crashing through the square, because musketry was not accurate or fast enough to wipe out a cavalry charge on its own. as any dressage rider knows, horses will balk at a fence of blades and cannot be made to deliberately impale itself.

however, if the infantry were armed with bayonets alone - spears, in other words - without muskets and ammo, they would be sitting ducks obviously for the cavalry's own firearms. they would be picked off at leisure from outside of bayonet reach.
hence, to figuratively stop the cavalry charge i.e. defeat it decisively, musketry was necessary.

TL;DR in anti-cavalry square tactics, both musket fire and bayonet play complementary and necessary roles.

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>TYERESE, GIVE THESE NIGGAS A VOLLEY

>>64352164
It's mainly about density.
If you were fighting on an infinite battlefield and your soldiers can be trusted to fight in small groups and you want to get the best KTD ratio possible, it would make sense to disperse as much as you could within shooting range and take prone potshots and slowly whittle down the enemy standing in their dense lines.
Even against cavalry you'd likely get a better KTD ratio by scattering for cover and hiding a guy behind every tree and rock, because even as their dense cavalry charge steamrolls the few guys in their path they'll be constantly shot to shit from all sides.

The problem is that it's not a team deathmatch server. It's a control point server and when everyone on your team picks the sniper class and runs to a corner of the map to camp, you lose.
You've arrived at this massive field battle because the enemy is marching down the road to Paris and you have to prevent that because the country falls if Paris does.
If you give the order 'everyone scatter and whittle them down' you're not playing the objective.
Maybe your skirmishers will kill a bunch of them at a really favorable ratio before they loot all the supplies in your camp, cross the next river, set up a small rearguard on the bridge and occupy Paris uncontested.
The way wars tend to be fought that is you end up really wanting to have a dense, decisive force that can punch through to the objective you're fighting for. And if maximum concentrated firepower comes from stacking your guys 3 ranks deep in a line and telling them to follow the guy with the giant hat and all shoot at once that's what you do.

There are other considerations like command and control and morale problems, but they could all have been worked around if they were the only thing standing in the way of a fundamentally better way of fighting.

>>64352164
>europeans driving the cutting edge of warfare technology and tactics for 2500 years
>noo this one period seems dumb to me

Odd considering it’s during this time Europe was at it most expansionist, conquering or making vassal the rest of the world

>>64352164
I'm sure I sound like a broken record at this point, but I will continue to recommend the excellent "The Art of War in the Western World" by Archer Jones. It goes into quite some detail how and why military formations evolved over the centuries. There are tactical, operational, and strategic reasons why lines of muskets dominated for so long.

>>64352164
You're a fucking stupid nigger

>>64352164
>>64353402
>It's mainly about density
One thing I've always wondered is why line infantry didn't evolve a front row of men just carrying bulletproof pavisses? Musketeer's immediate predecessors were crossbowman who used them for cover. Why not extend that to heavier shields for cover for musktmen?
I'm sure there's some several reasons but am unaware of why.

>>64353738
Because that shit would be heavy as fuck and maneuver is king

>>64352164
people fight in ways that win.

shitting on musket meta is more retarded than most metas because European armies went out of their way to stress test their approach to war against everybody else on their own home turf, and won far more often than not.

>>64353738
>Have to carry a heavy ass slab of metal around
>Can't maneuver as fast in case of calavry or just to plug up any gaps that open.
>Lose a whole line of men when you can just give those same men guns so you have more firepower.
If you just use 10% of logic then you can see why that is a retarded idea. The pavises worked for crossbow men because crossbow men weren't used as line infantry and their job was just to sit down in one spot and pepper the enemy with bolts. The musket armed troops replaced pike men and like pike men they had to move around and engage with the enemy.

>>64353738
>why line infantry didn't evolve a front row of men just carrying bulletproof pavisses
artillery. fucking artillery existed, retard.

why do you retards always forget that every army in this period deployed with dozens to hundreds of field guns and typically had a greater number of cavalry squadrons than infantry battalions (force mixes of 30-50% cavalry were quite typical in terms of man counts)

>>64353738
Sounds expensive. Economics of war are a thing. Campaigning is expensive. Laying siege very expensive. Can the coffers afford it?

>>64353779
>>64353738
also, the enemy infantry would just rush you with bayonets.

>>64353402
>Even against cavalry you'd likely get a better KTD ratio by scattering for cover and hiding a guy behind every tree and rock
You really, really won't. Even if your guys were freakin' robots with unbreakable morale.

>>64353402
How could you be so wrong
For thousands of years scattering against cavalry charges has been the way you get absolutely massacred

>>64353164
because basic armor would hard counter your tactics and get you even more fucked than the sods who got massacred by firearms even without any armor in every engagement

bow fire rate was never a meaningful factor even during the time when it was a viable battlefield weapon, they still shot like once per minute to not get stammed out and preserve ammo over the course of battles.

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>>64352246
>half

>>64353402
>Even against cavalry you'd likely get a better KTD ratio by scattering for cover and hiding a guy behind every tree and rock
no, you would get fucking massacred because that's what always happens when cavalry runs into scattered infantry. they'd need to be in ground where cavalry can't really operate like thick forest, boulders or a town to have any chance. in the open you close ranks and present bayonets, or you die immediately

it wasn't until repeating rifles and machine guns that infantry gained enough mass of fire to actually stand a chance of repulsing cavalry without cold steel and forming a physical barrier

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>>64352164
>it can't be
>it's not possible
>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!1!
if you think about it, the refusal of the common public to understand line and column infantry tactics is exactly why they were necessary, and why so many men were killed when they fell out of formation

>>64352164
But it was.

>>64352265
Cavalry costs many times to train, equip and supply than an infantryman. Cavalry also cannot fight all day. Frequently you get one orderly charge and that's it. Cavalry reforming more than once was extraordinarily rare. Cavalry in 95% of battles simply nullified their counterparts.

>>64352164
You're right: it was the best way to fight wars for 6000 years.

>>64355825
>Cavalry reforming more than once was extraordinarily rare.
if you only read about Roman cavalry in the Punic wars, maybe.

history is full of cavalry forces that doctrinally fought by repeatedly engaging and disengaging, all day every day. from Parthian horse archers to medieval knights to 18th century cavalry squadrons, disengaging and reforming wasn't just a thing that could be done but the default approach to fighting. illiterate faggot.

>>64353272
>bayonets were needed to literally stop the cavalry charge, i.e. physically prevent horses from just crashing through the square,
Bayonets cant do that. Horses weights 1000 pounds you aren't stopping them with bayonets, they just tear through formation like bowling ball through pins. Horse may (or not) die after but your formation would trampled and broken and broken.
Pikes were compatible different matter with at least 6 pikes hitting one horse (with 2 pikes braced against ground), combined mass behind these pikes was comparable to horse weight.

>because musketry was not accurate or fast enough to wipe out a cavalry charge on its own
This is why infantry had such dense formations, they achieved about 6 bullets per charging front horse and this is what was stopping charges.

>>64355988
>they just tear through formation like bowling ball through pins
as any dressage rider knows, horses will balk at a fence of blades and cannot be made to deliberately impale itself.
it HAS happened before, both in the Napoleonic Wars and in sport, that horses will bash themselves into an obstacle, but it's rare and unpredictable enough that nobody formed any tactical doctrine around this behaviour

>this is what was stopping charges
if bullets alone were sufficient then in theory fast musketry from a line formation could have seen off any cavalry charge easy peasy, but instances of that happening are even rarer than the above, vanishingly rare; in fact I think it only happened once.

you need both. the bayonet hedge to scare off the horses, and musketry to kill them.

>>64356003
Dressage horses are not war horses
You should look into the industry of rearing and training war horses for the last few thousand years
A horse will absolutely charge head first into certain death, and did so for millenia
Go look up the footage for the film The King, and then understand that those aren't war horses

>>64352164
Every battle back in the day was like a giant chess game where victory was (to a certain extent) determined by the competency of the commander.
Besides reforms, Frederick the Great was 'great' because he understood the essence of warfare and was very creative during battle; he used the central position for both strategical and tactical scenarios, took advantage of the terrain and he was very good with early implementation of combat arms, and the Prussians basically perfected the oblique order. However over time people discover tactics are not a deciding factor in a peer war, if both sides are equally competent. Superior training, and smart CO & NCOs are the deciding factor

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>>64352230
>Asymmetrical warfare wasn't a thing
Yes it was, plenty of times

>>64353164
Well, samurai fought with bows until they've discovered guns.

>>64356003
>if bullets alone were sufficient then in theory fast musketry from a line formation could have seen off any cavalry charge easy peasy,
If you read about well documented Napoleonic wars history you will find countless cases of infantry squares successfully defending from cavalry attacks
As well as countless cases of cavalry crushing such squares.
Key was cold blooded disciplined fire. Delivering rolling salvo just before impact. It was easy to lose nerves and unload salvo prematurely from long range say 200 yards and after musketeers have no time to reload and are left defenseless against cavalry charge.

>>64356008
Yet cavalry never seemed to be able to break squares by charging them

>>64356071
>As well as countless cases of cavalry crushing such squares.
I'm calling absolute bullshit here, no way there's more than a handful of cases
If there are countless then where did you see this?

I would go so far as to say that there are not even 10 cases in all of the Napoleonic wars in which a formed infantry square was broken by a cavalry charge, just a few freak examples or infantry caught out of formation

>>64356003
Well I'm not going to deny that the psychological impact of bayonets are an integral part of the defense and one part of the equation, but
>if bullets alone were sufficient then in theory fast musketry from a line formation could have seen off any cavalry charge easy peasy
You don't see it happening because the muskets only have one chance to fire, and they're going to wait until the very last moment when the charge is fully committed. The cavalry know this and they're not going to charge. So you get a game of chicken where the cavalry make fake charges trying to bait out an early fire, and the muskets stand firm and don't fire. If the cavalry actually charges, then the muskets fire and the first rank goes down and halts the charge, at which point the cavalry are easy pickings.

>>64356008
>Dressage horses are not war horses
indeed, because it's already stressful enough to a war horse to get it to ignore yelling and musketry and the rest of its natural instincts
but the ultimate test of horsemanship has long been the ability to get the horse to deal with an obstacle, usually by leaping it, and often horses balk even without the stress of battle and the gleam of bayonets as opposed to hedges

>>64356071
>If you read about well documented Napoleonic wars history you will find countless cases of infantry squares successfully defending from cavalry attacks
that's not in question
the question being debated here is, precisely how
>As well as countless cases of cavalry crushing such squares
for many reasons

>>64356165
>You don't see it happening because the muskets only have one chance to fire
Yes, we know
again, that's not the question here
>the first rank goes down and halts the charge, at which point the cavalry are easy pickings
once again, if this was true, an infantry battalion can pull off the exact same thing. in fact they would slaughter even more cavalry because they can fire more bullets per attacking cavalry than if they were formed in square

>>64352301
>read cliff notes
Looked like they fell victim to a classic foible: lost the Calvary battle. The infantry seemed to be cutting through their French counterpart till they got slammed on every side by charges (and subsequently everyone not apart of the veteran core routing: namely the mercs and Calvary)
Apparently they even managed to repel a good number of them but just got pinned and pummeled with the help of uncontested enemy artillery.

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What I always wonder is how the tactics and technology of the era were influenced by the societies that produced them. Would a society like ours sent back in time fight the same way or would our way of war reflect how our society is structured.

Not to copy Foucault too hard but it's an awful coincidence that massed formations led by a cadre of largely hereditary middle-class managers and upper-class generals started to develop and refine with societies beginning to industrialise. Whereas I imagine a much more post-industrial society would lean harder on individual units understanding strategic context (commander's intent) rather than ruthless discipline to work like cogs. Similar to how Revolutionary France ROFLstomped the rest of Europe with mass mobilisation.

>hurr durr no

Massed formations of infantry, uniformly equipped and paid by the central government, served the purpose of centralised monarchy. They were a tool of state centralisation. An army that drilled and moved as one body was a physical manifestation of a unified state.

The officer corps was drawn from the aristocracy and gentry, while the rank-and-file were peasants, urban poor, or mercenaries. The tactics reflected this divide. Individual initiative from a common soldier was neither expected nor trusted. Discipline, enforced through brutal punishment and relentless drill, was paramount. The soldier was a cog in a human machine, and the tactics were designed around this principle. They were not seen as individual citizens with agency, but as interchangeable parts of a state-owned weapon.

Pike and shot tactics along with the very slow development of professional (non-mercenary) armies was a reflection of cost. Muskets were extremely expensive weapons at the start and maintaining a standing army was ruinous to the degree if you tried everyone would view you as a threat. Similarly rifling existed for centuries before its viable deployment on the battlefield due to the cost and fouling.

>>64356233
good question
well with the greater intelligence of today you could field better quality infantry in general and probably lots more riflemen
but you will still need to adopt lines and squares to overcome the hard tech limitations of not having radios and shitty infantry weapons

>>64356233
So if you wanted a smarter way to fight you might see a modern force:

1. Adapt modern knowledge like sanitation and mathematics
2. Lean harder into asymmetries - control/disrupt supplies of saltpetre, use commando units to assassinate leaders
3. Go for obvious tech early that maximise individual effectiveness like the socket bayonet and lighter, faster-firing and more mobile cannons

Basically fight the Gulf War without the crushing advantage in tech and material.

>>64356183
>an infantry battalion can pull off the exact same thing
Historically they indeed did: during the seven years' war in the mid 18th century, it was apparently quite common to not bother with forming a square and just staying in line (it still happened of course, just not as much).
A regular line does indeed have more fire going towards the front, but the square is going to be more flexible in dealing with flanking: the line can obviously just about face if there's an attack from behind, but the sides are still more vulnerable.
This last bit's just my personal speculation, but I imagine that the advantage might have been psychological too, with the infantry not having any exposed flanks to be concerned about (and if anyone does break through, then the rest of the square can just about face and suddenly they're surrounded).

>>64356112
Because of the weight of spear and men behind them.
From a glance it’s obvious a horse would be more likely to crash and subsequently crush a sparse or failing “line”
It’s more likely to be impaled hopelessly at a stand off point and cause problems for its fellows when there is a hedge of seemingly countless spears aiming for it with men behind them
The threat then solves the problem, since a horse and the man riding it is normally much more valuable then the few dozen mercs they would have mortally failed to trample.

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>>64353100
Wellington is turning in his grave

>>64356031
And resulting in ending with urban centers destroyed, genocide, slavery and emigration.
All ancient wars were deep-penetration expeditions that if you couldn't stop them then the result depended more on the weather, disease, plain stupidity and maybe an opportunistic poisoning of a water source. They didn't even have supply chain.
Even federations (like Germania) or mongols that used all the tricks in the book relied on large concentration of forces to achieve results. The main tactic of the mongols was divide their enemies and destroy them with a large force.

>>64356247
I think terrain is the big factor in favour of squares and probably goes back to how Rome defeated hoplite formations. Even assuming fairly open ground you won't be able to march in a proper line for line before people start to fall out of formation, people will fall behind or get ahead, dudes will spread out to avoid a bush or clump closer together due to the power of friendship. You could likely only deploy it in a very short advance or defence.

You see this happening even today with patrols where infantry need to be watched to avoid people bunching or losing contact. I remember back in the day marching up a wooded hill to a battle, losing contact with the guy in front due to the twisting turns, panicking (a little) and just trampling my way through hedges to lead everyone behind me to the top.

>>64356240
I'm wondering if light infantry - engineers - artillery might just be the combo we go for. We're certainly not going to be putting together anything approaching cavalry force due to the amount of people who know how to ride and maintain a horse these days so we'd have to fight very differently.

>>64353550
Can second, that's an excellent book.

>>64356247
there was a brief moment somewhere between 1700 and 1750 when pikes were discarded for all musket infantry, but the cavalry corps responded by developing better charge tactics and it was in part the cavalry massacres of the Seven Years War that so firmly impressed the importance of the bayonet and the infantry square

>>64356165
>The cavalry know this and they're not going to charge. So you get a game of chicken where the cavalry make fake charges trying to bait out an early fire, and the muskets stand firm and don't fire
You are right.
This cavalry tactic was called "bait out fire".
And to counter some musketeers were nominated as designed shooters (generally best shooters in company) who were allowed to fire at will to harass cavalry lingering in range. When rest of the musketeers were commanded to hold fire and were only allowed to shoulder muskets and fire at officers command.

>>64356183
>in fact they would slaughter even more cavalry because they can fire more bullets per attacking cavalry than if they were formed in square
If its line cavalry can maneuver to a flank and attack from there. Line cant shoot to the side.
This is why it was square, square can fire with large amount of fire to any direction.

>>64356330
so just place all regiments in line shoulder to shoulder, and anchor the flanks with terrain or infantry squares. voila, impenetrable army.

the reason why this was not done is because it didn't work.

>>64356112
>"It is an awful thing for infantry to see a body of cavalry riding at them at full gallop. The men in the square frequently begin to shuffle, and so create some unsteadiness. This causes them to neglect their fire. The cavalry seeing them waver, have an inducement for riding close up, and in all probability succeed in getting into the square, when it is all over."
Yes, they could and did.

>>64356183
I don't disagree about the temperament of horses, but did you look up the clip? Read the quote above? Horses absolutely charged into formations, and war horses were conditioned for exactly that temperament which is why for much of history they cost absolutely insane sums of money

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>>64356728
>Horses absolutely charged into formations and war horses were conditioned for exactly that temperament
Refer picrel
99% of the time, war horses could not be made to charge a spear or bayonet wall. period.
if they could, it would have been easy for the French described here to ride down the infantry rather than attempt to fence with the infantry with swords. (in this paragraph, the soldiers were likely holding their fire until they absolutely needed to shoot, as in the case of a close-range mass charge or if some Frenchman actually leaped their horse into the square, which has been done before)

>bbbbut what about squares breaking huh
they break because they shrink back and open up gaps for enough cavalry troopers to break into the middle of the square. if only a few troopers make it in, the cavalry might not succeed; enough holes have to be opened up for enough horsemen to get in and kill. much of the time the infantry break because they have taken heavy casualties and can't be induced to reform a contiguous line of bayonets, or because of sheer panic.

>which is why for much of history they cost absolutely insane sums of money
War horses cost a lot of money because they were bred, selected, and trained, which means that many horses were unsuitable. In effect, the premium was paid for the cost of supporting so many horses so that a small number of the very best could be used. Regardless of their expense however, it does not follow that a horse must therefore be capable of superequine feats.

>>64356935
Except they did, my quote quite clearly stated so. Its not easy, it's not the norm, and against a square it is likely suicidal, but it was possible and did happen more than 1% of the time you double nigger faggot.
Cavalry absolutely broke infantry formations with cohesion for hundreds of years, it happened all the fucking time even if it was against the odds and infantry held the advantage in their formation, it categorically happened and you'd be an idiot to deny it.
>bred selected and trained
Yes, to ignore the stench of blood, the screaming and ear splitting noises surrounding battle, the smoke of powder and yes, for the temperament to ignore the overriding instinct of
>this will probably kill me
And to charge a packed formation
Go and watch the clip from the filming of The King, and then contemplate that they are not war horses in breed or training that are doing that charge.

>>64356966
>my quote quite clearly stated so
>The cavalry seeing them waver, have an inducement for riding close up, and in all probability succeed in getting into the square...
>"succeed in getting into the square" is supposed to mean "quite clearly" that "the horses crashed through a firm line of bayonets"
which are you, disingenuous or ESL?

>watch the clip from the filming of The King
that's fucking Hollywood, you utter nigger; they use specially-trained horses who know how to fall for the camera, and they crash into stuntmen in soft padded suits so the horses don't get spooked you fucking idiot

>>64357012
>Hollywood horses are better trained than legitimate war horses with war horse pedigrees and training
>full plate and armaments are padded suits
Jej

>>64356008
>You should look into the industry of rearing and training war horses for the last few thousand years
I did, and I found no compelling evidence that it was ever common practice for cavalry to crash into infantry formations. That seems to be a movie thing, not how they were actually used.

>>64357461
Holy shit you must be fucking joking

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>>64356270
>I'm wondering if light infantry - engineers - artillery might just be the combo we go for. We're certainly not going to be putting together anything approaching cavalry force due to the amount of people who know how to ride and maintain a horse these days so we'd have to fight very differently.

I can't stop thinking about this now. The lack of cavalry would be an Achilles heel meaning no scouts, no screening, no chance to rout a broken army and no hard hitting unit to break lines.

A modern society in pike and shot technology would be almost Roman in doctrine, relying on engineering as the backbone to set up mobile forts (and bridges) as it goes and facing the same issues as the Battle of Alesia. Only this time we'd no doubt go absolutely nuts for artillery using the superior knowledge of mathematics, chemistry and sanitation to do devastating flying cannonades and star-forts.

Smokeless powder would be an issue (assuming we don't develop black powder in which case gg) but fire an manoeuvrer could work and communication could be handled using a mixture of modern cartography, flag semaphore or heliographs combined with flares/rockets. For anything else there's mission command where local commanders can make decisions. Maybe if we get more horses we'll eventually get dragoons too for basic mounted infantry scouting.

Anyway OP is wrong because of the technology AND the society. We'd smash those wig wearing poofs but we have the secret sauce of universal education and centuries of societal development. A different kind of army from the era however was a tool of state power in a brutally underdeveloped (by our standards) world but if we nuked ourselves into oblivion we wouldn't immediately fall to the level of the 30 Years War.

>this thread again

>>64356728
>Horses absolutely charged into formations
Modern riot police charge their horses into hordes of unruly demonstrators all the time. Granted, it's been a while since I've seen Hooligans form a phalanx of pikes or indeed muskets. Black powder weapons generally being legal everywhere, I am not saying it couldn't happen.

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>>64357012
>it's impossible to train horses to crash into infantry
>hollywood movies where they do just that don't count because the horses were trained to do that
Huh?

>>64356233
Mesoamericans never had wheels and they had the same ideas about cyclical time.
The idea of Logos existed long after written language became a thing, and long before books were actually invented
The gear thing is kind of accurate
the simulation hypothesis is as old as the concept of mind-body dualism and can debatedly be dated back to the formation of Indo-Aryan religions.
This image is for midwits

>>64356233
intelligent question but your picrel is egregious midwittery

>>64352164

War is to fought for the state.

The state needs to bleed off excess males or else they will cause "problems" (to the state) at home.

Now a days, we have gaming and anime to keep the males from being an issue. Why execute when you can just self imprison.

>>64352164
Every army used skirmishers to a limited extent, and cover whenever it was available. Some focused on it more or less, but lines were necessary to concentrate foreword firepower while minimizing casualties from cannon fire.

>>64358437
What's funny is if you skim off a relatively small amount of men over generations with certain traits (soldiers were not ever a neutral cross section) you can have extremely dramatic effects on those traits over time.

Which is more than half the reason the average euro man has the testosterone of a teenage girl.

>>64356935
Your pic says nothing to support your point.

>>64358437
>shit I just pulled out of my ass

>>64357171
>full plate and armaments
laughs in Weta

>>64357675
unruly demonstrators are a perfect example of the perfect target for cavalry. unled, undisciplined, untrained, nor even equipped with even a 2m long bayonet.

>>64357753
first day on the set?
also,
>it's impossible to train horses to crash into infantry
is NOT what I said
READ carefully
what I said was
>war horses could not be made to charge a spear or bayonet wall
>horses will balk at a fence of blades and cannot be made to deliberately impale itself

>>64358548
French cavalry were forced to duel British infantry squares with swords to try and break the formation. now if it was possible to force horses to crash through a bristling barrier of bayonets, why couldn't they do that?
>hurr durr muskets
as the passage says, the infantry were conserving their loaded muskets, because they knew that if all the infantry on one side fire, they will not have the time to reload their muskets and will be attrited away by cavalry taking turns to ride up, shoot into them at point blank range, ride off and reload (the caracole)

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>>64352164
Much, much longer than two centuries, actually: the core concept of
>advance until your ranged weapons can reach the enemy
>dump your ranged weapons into the enemy formation
>charge in before they can recover cohesion
goes back to antiquity, not being any fundamentally different from Roman legionary tactics (though obviously with very different weapons, using muskets and bayonets instead of javelins and swords).
It remained very effective, and only ceased to be viable around the latter half of the 19th century, as longer ranged and faster firing guns made the "charge in" part increasingly less feasible.

>>64352399
This was the greatest aesthetic in military history, and it's a shame it lasted for the shortest time.

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>>64352164
>marching in formation with spears
>"This is fine"
>marching in formation with arrows
>"This too is fine."
>marching in formation with muskets
>"WTF WHO WOULD DO SOMETHING SO SUICIDAL?!?!"

>>64352399
Yeah the cuirassiers in the early days of the 30 year war would fuck up untrained infantry formations and break them and ride them down. That changed when the swedes and their accurate and disciplined musketmen set the new norm in germany and that tactic just became obsolete especially since they integrated regimental artillery.

>>64356240
>with the greater intelligence of today
We're not smarter, we just know more.

>>64364222
I'd argue that we also have better problem-solving heuristics, but fine, greater knowledge works too.

>>64362150
Arguably still relevant.
>Advance until you're in grenade range
>Blast enemy positions to hell
>Breach and clear before they recover.
Obviously not as common but it's still standard for professional infantry.

>>64358437
Yeah, that backfire spectacularly. The problem with giving your problem kids guns is that they'll turn those guns against you if you give them cause. The musket ushered in a lot of republics and reform as monarchs couldn't rely on small groups of nobles to keep order.

>>64353738
>bulletproof pavisses
Didn't exist. At medium to close range a musket could punch through any armor you could carry. Curaissiers wore armor but that was only good for bayonets and sabers. They might stop a round at long range but generally speaking a bullet would punch right through steel plate.

This was one of the reasons Infantry Squares were so effective. Even if you managed to get into melee with one side the other sides could just turn around and had a perfect shot at any man on a horse. Didn't matter if they were armored, nobody could carry enough armor to block a bullet.

>>64366900
I suppose one also could make a case that artillery now serves as the javelin (and/or suppressive fire from an LMG), and the rifle as the blade

>>64352211
Laid down

>>64367977
Great so you can no longer reload and your enemy just aims slightly downwards.

>>64364659
>have better problem-solving heuristics
no amount of heuristics by a single person will do what centuries of brutal survival of the fittest on the battlefield cannot

if they fought a certain way, it's because that's what worked given the physical, technological, economic and political constraints of the time and place. millions of people put their minds to finding even the tiniest edge over their enemy time and time again, you think you can do better because you watched some pop sci youtubers a bit?

>>64367977
You would occasionally see skirmishers who would kneel or lie down and try to pick off targets with rifles, but they obviously had an extremely low rate of fire and had to flee in the face of any approaching force, including slightly more packed together, standing skirmishers.

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Compare it to what came before

>>64367181
>At medium to close range a musket could punch through any armor you could carry
Any armor that was cost effective to arm large bodies of men with you mean. You could still have made armor to cover the chest that was both able to be worn in terms of weight and proof against muskets. A musket ball would not penetrate a quarter inch of steel, even contemporary steel, for example.

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>>64356071
Cavalry breaking (good) squares was rare and remarked upon because of it