French and Indian War... or general BP effectiveness

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Borf

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Not sure if this should go here or in Blackpowder... but....

Having recently started reading Last of the Mohicans (btw an excellent book!), and having grown up in a major F&I War/Independance/War of 1812 area, I've been wondering some things.

How effective was the smoothbore fire of the time? I'm aware that the tactic of the time (for regulars under command) was to face off and fire into the enemy line. Does anyone have numbers or formulas from wargaming (in the military sense) of the time? I.e. expected casuality rates and the like?

I had always regarded Brown Bess vs. Charleville as being essentially equal in reloading time and incapacitation potential. Is this flawed?

It seems there's not a whole lot written on military analysis of the French and Indian War. Can someone point me to interesting works?

edit: I mean in comparison to Civil War, WWII, etc.

Thanks!
 
re: reading material

Howdy;
Have you read Kenneth Roberts books... Northwest Passage, Arundel and many others that I can't bring to mind right now? They're superbly researched historically and very well written. Also, The First First World War has just been reprinted; it's a history of the F&I War, IIRC and darned if I can recall the authors name. It's around here someplace... I'll do a "trace" and see if I can find it.

From what I've read, as well as from personal experience of shooting the Bess and Charleville replicas several years ago, the fire from both was VERY effective out to 50 yards. At a hundred yards it was a very unfortunate individual who got hit, IF he was the one being shot at. However, when there were say, a couple hundred rounds in the air being fired in your general direction, it was not a healthy place to be.

For example, many matches were shot w/ a trade gun, generally a 20 gauge smoothbore, the target being a fairly large tin mug at fifty yards. It often took three or four shots to break a tie w/ five or six guys shooting. Not always, but often.
 
A military adage of the time was "It takes a man's weight in bullets to kill him." In other words, military experts of the time estimated about 2 to 3,000 rounds for each casualty. In practical terms, each dead man represented all the ammunition carried by some 50 to 75 enemy soldiers.

Of course, bayonets and artillery killed quite a few, as well. Even then, artillery was known as "the King of Battle."

The Brown Bess and the Charleville were about equal in terms of loading, but only the British Army actually trained with live ammunition -- what advantage that gave them (given the limited amount of ammo allocated for training) is anyone's guess.

European armies of the day did not aim -- soldiers held their pieces horizontally, and a sergeant with a half-pike stood on the flank to elevate or depress the guns of his squad or section. Held dead horizontal or level, the ball would strike the ground at about 120 yards.
 
In those days an Iroquois indian was considered to be the equivalent of SEVEN whites ! In a recent history channel program they were able to fire a flintlock every 20 seconds. I agree that 50 yards would be about the effective range.
 
In those days an Iroquois indian was considered to be the equivalent of SEVEN whites!
Click to expand...
:confused: By whom? The French? Doubt it--BTW the Iroquois Confederacy was on the English side...
Another source is the books by Alan Eckert. Just can't recall which ones were about the F&I...:eek:
Do a Google search for "French and Indian War" and join some emails groups, there is at least one for reenactors; last I looked there were two for RevWar=; there are also several usenet newsgroups.
In a recent history channel program they were able to fire a flintlock every 20 seconds.
Click to expand...
3 rounds a minute sustained fire was "the standard" for the recoats and other European standing armies; doubtful whether native Americans matched that, although some of the provincial/colonial regimnents raised for the F&I may have.

Edited by DW Drang to delete an embarassing math error. :eek:
 
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European armies relied on volley fire -- which meant the rate of fire was limited to that of the slowest soldier. Fire at will allowed the faster men to get of more shots in the same amount of time.

The Iroquois practiced eugenics through infanticide, killing off sickly children, and producing a population of large and well-developed people. Supposedly an American sculptor, visiting the Vatican in the late 1700s saw the Apollo Belvedere (a statue of the "perfect man") and said "Good God! A Mohawk!"
 
I suspect that the non-use of cover and generally close ranges meant that probability of a hit was relatively high...and that poor field doctoring killed off a lot of the wounded.

Enter the 1864 war where muzzle-loaders were up against breechloaders, and the effectiveness of the muzzle-loaders would become poor due to the other side taking cover more. Same for the Crimean War of 1854-55, rifles against muskets...except that the reason was the extension of the range past effective distance of smoothbore fire. But so long as the weapons were comparable, I'd expect fairly high number of hits due to close range preferred by both sides. Then again, once the smoke was up, bayonets probably did as much damage as bullets.
 
I'd recommend reading Costain's "The Gettysburg Campaign," especially Chapter 10, "Arms and Men" where he discusses such things as "The Breechloader Question."

As Costain points out, there is no instance where you can show that weaponry was the deciding factor in any battle -- despite claims and anecdotes, rigid analysis just doesn't support any theory that the breechloaders were better than muzzle loaders in winning battles.

Another good source is "Civil War Firearms" by Joseph Bilby. Bilby also points out that the officers on both sides did not understand the capabilities of their weapons, and failed to take advantage of them. Elite units -- like the Irish Brigade, or the Iron Brigade of the West, were armed with smoothbores, or third-rate imported weapons, and still fought very well.

I'd also recommend watching "Gallipoli" with Mel Gibson -- for one scene. The Australians are about to attack the Turks. They are in the trench, with Lee-Enfield rifles, bayonets fixed leaning against the paraphet, ladders in place, and officers checking and re-checking everything. The battalion commander comes walking down the trench and asks if something has been checked. (This scene was taken from a recorded, eye-witness account.)

What is the ONE thing the battalion commander wanted checked?

"Has anyone checked to make sure these rifles are UNloaded? This is supposed to be a bayonet attack, you know!"

Now, if you're NOT going to load your rifles, what difference does it make if you DON'T load them from the muzzle or the breech?

And this was 50 years after the end of the American Civil War, with vastly superior weapons, in an army with a year of combat under its belt!

Until appropriate tactics that took advantage of the breechloader were developed, breechloaders weren't nearly as effective as the theoriticians thought they would be -- and that didn't happen until 1918.
 
A movie, yes -- but that scene was taken from real life. British Field Service Regulations of 1914 (which were followed by the Australians) laid down that bayonet attacks were to be made with unloaded rifles -- if someone fired in the melee, "might hit one of our own chaps."

The British persisted in using the same tactics right through the war, including advancing in open order. The French and other nations did about the same -- it wasn't until the development of the Hutier "storm trooper" tactics by the Germans late in the war that appropriate breech loader tactics began to appear.
 
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