Not all military men accepted the quick fire philosophy, which came into ever-increasing vogue from about 1750 onward. There were those who continued to maintain that accurate fire was far more valuable than a succession of quickly delivered volleys. Over the next several decades another school of thought would slowly emerge which espoused an entirely different philosophy as to how best to utilize infantry fire. Writing in the 1750s, General James Wolfe, cautioned younger officers that: “there is no necessity for firing very fast; a cool and well levelled fire, with the pieces carefully loaded, is much more destructive and formidable than the quickest fire in confusion.”

In the era of massed volleys, it was not possible for the individual soldier to aim, in the truest sense of the term. This required the soldier to coordinate the processing of pointing the firearm at the target with his breathing, and then to pull the trigger when he felt that the musket was pointed at the target. The soldier chose the moment to discharge his weapon. It was unlikely that the soldier would have his weapon perfectly aimed at the exact moment when firing. The best result might be that the troops fired generally in the direction of the intended target.

The practical solution was to have the men along the firing line 'level' their pieces before each fire. In the case of 'levelling', all the muskets along the line pointed at the same general 'height', such as the middle of the enemies' bodies. At first, even experienced officers were unaware how important it was to have the men properly level their weapons. There was no systematic method of adjusting the weapons' level to account for changes in elevation and distance. In other words, weapons were not sighted to allow the troops to aim at a specific target, a difficult procedure with a smoothbore weapon and crude sights with clouds of smoke further obscuring the target. The results of not paying attention to these factors could be, and occasionally were, catastrophic.

Maurice de Saxe at Belgrade (1717) never forgot the complete destruction of two Imperial battalions on a hill. Though they had properly reserved their fire until extremely close range, they only managed to kill about thirty enemy horsemen and within seconds were cut to pieces by the Turkish cavalry. Scarred by this experience, for the remainder of his life, de Saxe emotionally proffered this as the classic example of the ineffectiveness and unreliability of infantry fire.

It is difficult for us to fathom that as great a tactical genius as Maurice de Saxe was, he never understood something as simple as the effect of firing downhill on aiming techniques. It was simply that even the most knowledgeable military men of his time did not realize the difficulty of firing at downhill targets and how it was necessary to compensate when firing downhill at close range by further lowering the barrel. This was never intuitively obvious to the soldier, and was psychologically quite difficult to perform, since to the common soldier properly compensating for distance and firing downhill, it would appear that he was about to fire into the ground well in front of his adversaries!

Such a simple concept as systematically raising or lowering the musket barrel according to the enemy's distance and elevation was extremely slow to emerge in European warfare. However, by the mid-18th Century some officers began to understand the necessity of doing just this. The first step was but a modest improvement.

Some officers, especially in the British army, began to admonish their troops to fire 'at the middle of the enemy's body'. Unfortunately, this dictate was applied with little consideration given to range. Troops were made to level at the middle of the enemy's body, whether they were fifty or 120 paces distant, and more often than not the musket balls would lodge in the ground in front of the enemy formation or sail harmlessly over their heads. Before too long, it was noticed that at very close ranges, even when every effort was made to level the muskets at the prescribed height, the troops frequently fired above the enemy's heads. When this occurred during the final moments of an enemy assault, disaster almost invariably followed; the troops, unable to reload in time for another volley, would be forced to flee.

Noticing the tendency for troops to fire high at a nearby enemy, some officers ordered their men to level their pieces lower. Rather than directing their muskets towards the middle of the enemy's body, the men were enjoined to point their weapons at the enemy's knees instead. However, the distance separating the firing troops from their targets still was not considered, and the men levelled their pieces at the enemy's knees, regardless of their range.

In the 1780s, however, a few military experts began to understand the relationship of range to the musket ball's trajectory, and that this had to be systematically taken into account by the levelling process. The further the distance of the target the higher the men had to level their firearms. They would start off by levelling low at the closest ranges. However, as the distance increased the point that had to be aimed at was raised higher and higher until at the limit of the musket's effective range it was necessary to aim several feet over the enemy's heads. The exact amount of elevation, of course, depended upon the distance of the target.

There were a number of reasons why the practice of proper leveling was never universal. Although this advance in military science began to be documented in the professional literature from the 1790s onwards, it is clear from both theoretical writings and battle accounts that its benefits had never been appreciated fully by all officers and their men.

Moreover, there continued to be those who advocated the delivery of a rapid succession of volleys, and this practice made it difficult for the men to level properly before each volley.

When selecting a fire system an officer responded as much to the needs of the particular situation as he did to the doctrinal directives established by his army's military authorities. So, for example, one might find the same infantry using fire by ranks when deployed in square and warding off charging cavalry, and then later in the same battle firing by files when engaged in a firefight with enemy infantry. Relying on volume might cause sufficient casualties to deter the advance of the enemy, although there was no guarantee that the troops would hit the target even when firing volleys. Trying to aim at a target might raise the likelihood of inflicting casualties, although the limited accuracy of the musket and reliance on cadenced reloading would balance the results as well. The main point to note is that military thinkers were considering the various factors and trying to introduce innovations to improve the ability of infantry firepower to inflict damage on the enemy.

More Small Arms Tactics

Introduction
The Quick Fire Philosophy
Firing By Files Philosophy
The Development of Accurate 'Levelling' Practices