General Discussions

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 OP 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 who's in a bayonet block"?

If its true that soldiers prior to the World War 1 particularly the Napoleon years just shot bullets aimlessly without bothering to try to target on an enemy because they expected their mass volleys to hit so many marching enemy troops in square formations......... Why did they still hold rifles in the basic aiming stance and arm structure? Why didn't they just tell soldiers to hold rifles from the hips and shoot in any angle or any stance they want?