It becomes easier to understand the connection between the so-called linear period of warfare and Napoleon when it is recognized that the technology affecting infantry tactics was virtually identical from 1703 through 1815. Had a soldier of 1748 been transported forward through time to the field of Waterloo, he would not have found its nature unfathomable, as would be the case if he had been moved forward in time to, say, 1918. He would note that due to the short ranges of the weapons, troops still fought in mass formations, with columns used for movement, and lines used by infantry to deliver fire.

He would note that legs and muscles still provided the only motive power, and that cavalry continued to fight with sword or lance. Light troops, by no means unheard of during the linear period, would be skirmishing out in front of the masses. Cannons would be more numerous and somewhat more efficient, but still smooth bored. The smoothbore flintlock musket with its socket bayonet remained the standard small arm, and generals were still trying to solve the salient tactical dilemma of whether the enemy could best be beaten with attack by fire, or was shock assault more likely to bring success?

It would be incorrect to assume that increased firepower gave total tactical ascendancy to the defense. In fact, the close assault with bayonet and sword still won many a conflict. The massed firepower of troops armed with the flintlock musket did not create an impenetrable zone of fire in front of a battalion, such as is the case with modern automatic weapons, and there was no guarantee that the musketry alone could stop an enemy charge.

Under combat conditions many factors militated against the realization of the musket's potential, and mass assault could still overrun a defending line. One reason for this was that the musket had a very short range, so the deadly fire zone was short. It was not very effective at ranges in excess of one hundred yards, and many contemporary writers believed that under combat conditions it to be truly deadly only at ranges under fifty yards.

Another reason fire was not as effective as we might suppose was that in order to achieve a rate of fire of three to five rounds per minute a musketeer had to be skillful, disciplined, and composed under fire. Although there is a fondness for describing well-trained troops of the 18th Century as automatons capable of marching and delivering fire like machines, the reality is that they were very well-trained and hardened men, but human beings nonetheless, susceptible to a myriad of emotions and other human failings, such as fatigue. It cannot have been easy for them to act mechanically while coping with the confusion and stress of their life-threatening predicament. It was an awesome task trying to get a battalion of 600 or so musket-armed soldiers to perform coordinated defensive fire while a resolute mass of fierce warriors descended upon them with the obvious intent to kill without mercy.

The Highland clans of Scotland proved in many engagements with the English during the various Jacobite wars that a shock assault delivered by a resolute body of troops was still an effective tactic. There is a tendency to emphasize only the last and most famous of these battles, Culloden (1746), which was a disaster for the Highlanders. It is often overlooked that at the battles of Killiecrankie (1689), Prestonpans (1745), and Falkirk (1746) - all of which occurred after the introduction of the flintlock musket into the English service - the charging Scots armed primarily with swords swept the enemy firing lines from the field.

The French were equally committed to the close assault, and were often as successful. Maurice of Saxony, later the famed Marshal Saxe, gives an eyewitness account of what often occurred in their wars and illustrates just how effective a shock assault could be against defenders who relied on firepower:

"At the Battle of Calciante (April 19, 1706), Monsieur de Rentventlau, who commanded the Imperial army, had ranged his infantry on a plateau and had ordered them to allow the French infantry to approach to twenty paces, hoping to destroy them with a general discharge. His troops executed his orders exactly.

"The French with some difficulty climbed the hill which separated them from the Imperials and ranged themselves on a plateau opposite the enemy. They had been ordered not to fire at all....The Imperialists allowed them to approach to within 20 to 25 paces, raised their arms, and fired with entire coolness and with all possible care. They were broken before the smoke had cleared. There were a great many (Imperialists) killed by point blank fire and bayonet thrusts and the disorder was general."

Hence, the bayonet charge remained a viable tactical option throughout the era of the musket because it could win battles. The debate was really about whether success in the attack could best be achieved with fire, or by shock assault. This debate has never been resolved; historians today still debate the subject.

During the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and Seven Years War (1756-1763), Frederick William II, King of Prussia, who became known as Frederick the Great, began for all practical purposes the process of changing forever how armies fought. Frederick entered these conflicts with a system of war that brought traditional linear tactics to their most perfect state, which was, as he found out, still pretty imperfect. Frederick believed that the limited resources of his small nation compelled him to fight "short and lively wars." Therefore, he sought battle, which was unusual during the earlier 18th Century, when one battle per campaign was common. There were plenty of campaigns that resulted in no pitched battles at all.

For a while Frederick was brilliantly successful. However, the stunning defeats he inflicted upon his opponents, who could never get their own infantry forces to maneuver or deliver fire with the machine-like efficiency of the Prussians, forced them to rethink their doctrine, to copy what they could from him, and to develop new methods to frustrate Prussian superiority.

Paradoxically, the defeats Frederick eventually suffered at the hands of his enemies illustrated the defects inherent in his system and forced him to modify his approach. By the latter years of the Seven Years War, all the belligerent armies were operating on the battlefield much differently than they had been when the war began.

The much improved tactics used by the French Revolutionaries (as mandated in the Regulations of 1791) can be directly attributed to these trial and error efforts of Frederick and his opponents. These tactical corrections and innovations, imperfect or embryonic as they sometimes were, led almost imperceptibly away from the pure linear concept, to the more advanced tactical system which we know as "Napoleonic." The next article in this series will attempt to describe how, as the result of experience in combat, the French, Prussians, and Austrians moved gradually away from basic linear tactics during the Seven Years War to develop systems unique to each army that solved many of the tactical problems faced by the unitary armies of the linear period which I have tried to describe.

We will also see how the French, smarting from defeat and humiliation in the Seven Years War, surpassed all others in developing a tactical doctrine that gave the French Revolutionary armies battlefield superiority, and also gave General Bonaparte the tools he needed to implement a system of grand-tactics and operational level warfare which Robert M. Epstein refers to as "distributed maneuver" in his book, Napoleon's Last Victory and the Emergence of Modern War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994).

More From Breitenfeld to Waterloo The Origins of Napoleonic Infantry Tactics

Introduction
Infantry in the Early Musket Era
The Flintlock Musket Revolutionizes Warfare
The "Order of Battle" During the Classical Linear Period
Firepower vs. Shock
Further Reading