Anyone familiar with modern day small arms undoubtedly would probably expect a horrific casualty rate as a result of the prolonged firefights that frequently occurred on the Napoleonic battlefield. Although very high casualties were indeed inflicted by musket fire in certain situations, when considering all of the firefights that occurred in any sizeable conflict, the overall losses were very much less than what we would anticipate.

This was not due to any intrinsic inaccuracy of the flintlock musket. Hunters and marksmen armed with the musket were able to achieve remarkable accuracy up to between 100 and 150 yards, and many modern day musket enthusiasts are able to duplicate this result with this weapon.

By the late eighteenth century military authorities became increasingly interested in trying to determine the effectiveness of the musket, both under ideal conditions on the firing range and during the rigors of the battlefield.

At first lacking hard data, tacticians were only able to guess or crudely estimate the accuracy of infantrymen firing at targets during peace time practice. The English physician Robert Jackson, the British Inspector-General of Army Hospitals in 1803, for example, estimated that at 100 to 120 paces "one in three [shots] at least will strike within a the volume of a man's body." William Duane writing in America roughly about the same time placed the theoretical accuracy at about 20%: "not 1 out of 5 shots hit an object at the height of a horse's head at 300 feet away."

However, by the turn of the nineteenth century, tacticians began to try to accurately determine the "theoretical" effectiveness of the musket under ideal conditions. In France, for example, a musket was affixed to a permanent rest and then fired at a target 150 meters away. The resulting "mean error" for the Charleville at this distance was determined to be 1.75 meters by 3.00 meters.

About this time several experiments were conducted in Britain and France to try and determine the percentage of shots that hit a target. Both experiments came to almost the same conclusion, as shown by chart 1.

Chart 1
Test	Range	Percentage Hits (veteran troops %/raw troops %)
Picard	75m (82 yards)	60%
Muller	100 yards	53% / 40%
Picard	150m (164 yds)	40%
Muller	200 yards	30% / 18%
Picard	225m (246 yds)	25%
Muller	300 yards	23% / 15%
Picard	300m (328 yds)	20%

Muller's experiment differentiated between raw and veteran troops. The value to the left of the slash ("/") in the "Percentage Hits" columns indicates the results for veteran troops, the value after the slash for the less experienced counterpart. Most military experts agreed that musket fire was most effective when delivered at targets less than 150 meters distant.

These tests relied on the standard smoothbore musket, but how did a rifle from this time fare? During their reform era after 1807, the Prussians tested the accuracy of a number of muskets and rifles which Scharnhorst published in 1813 (chart 2).

Chart 2
Weapon	120 yards	160 yards	240 yards
Prussian rifle (plaster bullets)	68%	48%	31%
Prussian rifle (cartridges)	51%	26%	-
Prussian musket (1809)	-	21%	-

In other words, at 160 yards the Prussian rifle firing plaster bullets was roughly two and half times more accurate than a 1809 model of the Prussian musket. Scharnhorst pointed out that a rifle required twice as long to reload and therefore the number of casualties produced by each per unit time was about the same, but a musket expended about three to four times as many rounds.

If one relied exclusively on these experiments to determine the casualties that would be inflicted within this range one would expect extremely high casualty rates, where a 500-man battalion firing even at 150 meters would inflict 200 casualties. Of course, nothing of the sort happened on the battlefield. However, the inefficacy of musket fire under battlefield conditions was generally recognized by contemporary military authorities, who not only attempted to account for this seeming anomaly but also to discover some way of making small arms fire more effective.

Although there was no consensus about the exact "coefficient of effectiveness" of musket fire, if we are allowed to use this term, just about everyone who attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of musket fire admitted the percentage of shots fired in anger that succeeded in hitting a target were extremely low. This, however, was the theoretical performance of musketry conducted under the most favorable of circumstances. Military men knew that the actual performance under battlefield conditions was much lower, and many tacticians attempted to calculate the percentages of casualties inflicted during previous battles.

One contemporary historian noted that the Prussians at the Battle of Czaslau had to expend 650,000 cartridges to inflict about 6,500 Austrian casualties -- dead and wounded (i.e., a 1.0% casualty rate). This turns out to be an high estimate of the flintlock's effectiveness. Guibert felt, for example, that only 2,000 out of 1,000,000 (0.2%) of all shots resulted in some casualty, while Piobert thought it was necessary to fire between 3,000 to 10,000 (0.01% to 0.03%) shots to effect a single hit. Colonel Napier, like his compatriot Jackson, appears to have had a high estimation of the effectiveness of musketry in action of any during this era. Based on his experience fighting the French throughout the Peninsular War, Napier concluded: "not one out of 300 balls expended, took effect."

This appears to be an overly optimistic assessment. At Vittoria, for example, the British infantry were only able to inflict one casualty for every 800 rounds fired. Hughes, a modern day writer specializing in the statistical analysis of firepower, concluded that well-trained infantry were able to inflict a 3 to 5% casualty rate. Chart 3 shows the estimates of what percentage of shots fired hitting a target from a number of these military writers.

Chart 3
Guibert	Gassendi	Piobert	Anonymous	Jackson	Napier	Hughes	Decker
2/1000	1/3000	3/10000	1/1000	5/1000	1/300	2/100	1/10000
2.00%	0.03%	0.03%	0.10%	0.50%	0.30%	3-5%	0.01%

To help visualize the implications of these figures in practical terms, the rates of effectiveness quoted by these analysts meant that if a single infantryman was able to fire 3 rounds per minute continuously, something that wasn't possible for any length of time, between 33 minutes and 82.25 hours would elapse before the enemy suffered a single casualty. Or, if considering a 500-man battalion firing continuously between .005 and ten casualties would be suffered every volley. It must be remembered that these estimates counted all firefights, including those conducted at long and even ineffective ranges. The rate of casualties inflicted by the musket at point blank and close range obviously were on a different order of magnitude.

More of With Musket, Cannon and Sword

Introduction
Battle of Lodi (May 10, 1796)
Battle of Sedyman (October 7, 1798)
Theoretical vs. Practical Musketry
Speed of a Cavalry Attack
Concentrating Counter-Battery Fire

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