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If marksmanship didn't matter for line infantry esp in volley fire, why did soldiers bother aiming their iron sights with proper stances?

This post from Reddit is making me inquisitive.

The stereotype of Napoleonic Warfare and indeed any gunpowder war before the World War 1 is that soldiers just line up and shoot without regard to marksmanship because they assume that an enemy will get hit in the mass fire of volley. So much that I seen comments about how you don't even have to hold your rifle properly and you just shoot it in the American Civil War and earlier because you are guaranteed to hit an enemy in the mass rigid square blocks they are stuck in.

However this thread on suppressive fire in modern warfare made me curious.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/7vkubw/how_important_is_individual_marksmanship_is_in

The creator of the above link states despite the cliche that hundreds of bullets are spent to kill a single enemy and most tactics in modern war involves spraying at an enemy to get him to become too scared to shoot back and hide while you have one person sneak up behind the now cowering enemy and kill him, plenty of marksmanship training is still done in modern warfare.

So I have to ask if marksmanship was important even in volley fire seen before WW1 in the American Civil War and other earlier time periods in particular Napoleonic? Is it misunderstood much like modern suppression tactics is by people where they get the wrong impression that you just spray bullets on an enemy and marksmanship doesn't matter because your buddies will sneak behind them and kill them? Is it more than just "spray bullets nonstop and hope it hits the guy in front of you in a bayonet block"?

He does bring a good point about one thing-why did soldiers prior to World War 1 esp in the era of 1 bullet guns like Napoleonic and American Civil War bother learning proper stances and how to hold a rifle if warfare in the time used nonstop volleys after volleys while in formation because you'd be too blinded to shoot because of the smoke from shooting guns creating fog in the battle field? If that was true, why did soldiers bother even aiming on their iron sights as they began their volleys?

If individual aiming was useless, why not have soldiers just fire their guns at random from the hip or some other sloppy random shooting method? Why did soldiers still train to lay their eyes near the rifle as they shot like modern hunters do while aiming at deer and other prey? If volleys were used during this time because speed of shooting bullets and reloading ASAP to shoot again was the key to victory, why bother teaching soldiers on how to hold rifles in a specific way during the gunpowder eras when guns contained only a single bullet esp in the Napoleonic Wars and before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated? Most of all why did American Civil War soldiers, Revolutionary War troops, and Napoleonic armies bother aiming on their iron sights if gun accuracy was so poor and armies were expected to close in and shoot nonstop volleys where speed of reloading guns was of utmost important? Esp if the battlefield was expected to be covered with smoke thus blinding soldiers? Why no armies ever did volley fire at the hips or some random disorganized way if accuracy was based on how close you were to the enemy and the smoke blinded soldiers' vision? Why bother even aiming on your iron sights at all in such circumstances esp with the method of fighting in this era?

12 comments

12 Comments

David Hollins

May 26

This Alexandria event is a myth. The memoir says:"At that time Colonel Paget ordered the regiment to the right about, and firing a volley as the enemy came within a few horse lengths, occasioned a most dreadful carnage; such a quantity of horses falling from the fire, occasioned many others to stumble, and fall upon them, the others were thrown into complete disorder, and made all speed to return.". The troops were also in a redoubt, not open ground.

john fortune

Replying to

I feel I should point out that Joseph Coates, whose memoir you quote, does not in fact write the "whole regimen.t" His phrase "He ordered the regiment to the right about" could be reasonably be taken as a generalised comment, and to be fair, his account cannot really be counted as definitive. For example, his attribution of the celebrated order to Lieut Col Paget is subject to question given that Paget had been wounded in the throat at the start of the action and Lieut Col Chambers was in active command. One of the earliest references to the 28th turning its rear rank right about comes from Robert Wilson's History of the British Expedition to Egypt (pp 31-31): "The 28th regiment had presented, as well as the 58th, the extraordinary spectacle of troops fighting at the same time to the front, flanks, and rear.`' Other contemporary accounts are hard to find but in 1822 Col David Stewart, late the 42nd, who was wounded at Alexandria fighting next in line to the 28th, wrote in his Sketches of the Highlanders: "

"When [the enemy] passed the rear of the redoubt, the 28th faced about, and fired upon them."

A year after Coate's Narrative of a soldier was published, the editor of the United Services Journal wrote, "[The 28th] performed the prompt, simple and decisive manoeuvre of facing the rear ranks on the right-about, and thus repulsing the French who attacked them both in their front and rear, when posted in an old and open entrenchment..." The 28th were indeed occupying a redoubt rather than being formed up in the open and this is not always mentioned in popular references. However, there are numerous references to the fortification being open to the rear which made the French attacks from the rear, both infantry and cavalry more critical, and their repulse more vital. I should also point out that my previous brief reference to Alexandria, while bearing in mind the 28th's defence of their position that morning, also had in mind similar measures by the 58th and the flank coys of the 40th and, most critically the response of the 42nd who having pursued retreating enemy infantry off the position, lost formation somewhat and were caught in the open by the same brigade of French dragoons who assailed the 28th. Despite being ridden over, or through, the separate companies of the 42nd, strung out in echelon as they tried to form up, formed rallying squares and, according to Stewart in his Sketches, "Many of the enemy were killed in the advance. All those who directed their charge on the companies, which stood in compact bodies, were driven back with great loss. The others passed through the intervals, and wheeling to their left, as the column of infantry had done early in the morning, they were received by the 28th, who facing to their rear, poured on them a fire so effective, that the greater part were killed or taken."

The point I was hoping to make was that cavalry could be received and repelled by infantry in linear formation without having to form square. Clearly obstacles that broke up the shock effect of cavalry might be an advantage.

The exploits of the 28th at Alexandria have certainly been mythologised down the years, focussing on the novelty of the cap ornament adopted by the regiment. Some accounts even suggest that the battle turned on the stand they made, conveniently overlooking the involvement of the other regiments in Moore's Reserve corps. Such is the working of regimental tradition and popular history but it is surely going too far to dismiss the entire episode as myth.