It’s hard to fathom that someone at some point wouldn’t have thought, “*hmmm, maybe just standing in a big line waiting to get shot isn’t the most optimal tactic*”
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It wasn’t really just like dodgeball lines, a lot of time, it was small columns, where row one would fire, duck down, row two would fire, etc. This was necessitated because muskets load slow. Even though it was riskier against things like cavalry, it was the best frontage to do volleyfire.
Remember, muskets weren’t great at direct aim and hit, so volley created a wall of ammo that would keep the other guys back.
The alternative was worse. Black powder muskets create big clouds of smoke with every shot, and are inaccurate enough that it’s hard to hit anything without massed fire (and losses from enemy gunfire still were often fairly low.) An 18th-century battlefield was hazy, noisy, and terrifying, with no idea what was happening outside your area. Any reasonable soldier’s instinct would be to turn and run at the first sign of trouble, and militia frequently did just that. The only way to prevent total chaos was to drill tight formations over and over, wear high-visibility uniforms, play fife and drums to prove your unit was sort of in one piece, and maintain your line.
One of Napoleon’s innovations was a heavier focus on using skirmishers to harass and disrupt enemy formations, but he still knew there was no way around using line infantry in a major battle. Guerrilla tactics like those used in the American Revolution or Peninsular War could be effective over time, but only if you were willing to let the enemy seize your major cities and fight them painfully and slowly for years, which major powers mostly weren’t willing to do. It wasn’t until smokeless powder and improved artillery made it very easy to cause terrible casualties in packed lines that armies had to switch things up.
EDIT: Adding the role of cavalry. Until we had rifles and machine guns firing quickly and accurately enough to bring down horse-mounted soldiers, your only defense against getting slaughtered by a cavalry charge was forming a tight barrier tipped with something sharp (first pikes, later bayonet-tipped muskets.) Skirmishers were quite vulnerable to even light cavalry.
Great summary from u/police-ical.
And this is part of what made the US Civil War such a tragedy, but also so important around the world. It was the first ‘modern’ war but it was still fought with 18th century tactics.
To your point, what happens when you put modern weapons into the hands of soldiers and then just have them line up and fire away at each other? *Slaughter.* It was a horrific war of unspeakably large casualties. In case you’re not from the US, granted it was the US vs. US, but still, more Americans died during the civil war than the US lost in all other wars *combined*. It was just fields of blood and viscera.
But it did teach the world the value of modern weapons and lead to a complete revision of military tactics.
At the time the firearms were not rifles because they didn’t have rifling, the spiraling grooves that increase the accuracy of the bullet. As a consequence if you just had a single firearm and fired it at a distant enemy, chances are you would completely miss your target. Massing infantry together was partly intended to make their firing effective through sheer volume; *someone* would hit *something* when you have an entire line of people firing at once.
Another thing to consider is that such weapons were very slow to reload. It was expected that a standard infantryman could fire their weapon twice a minute, and a good one perhaps three times. If you have a lone infantryman in a field shooting once every 30 seconds with horrible accuracy then it is relatively easy to just send a few guys over to stab them with a spear or whatever. By keeping the infantry together in a big bunch they could use their long firearms with bayonets to function like traditional spear formations, deterring people just charging them with melee weapons.
Finally it was likely a requirement of organization and coordination of military units to keep them together in some kind of orderly bunch. There weren’t radios or anything and some nobleman shouting orders to a bunch of peasants free to hide in ditches or scatter into the trees was likely to end up with half the force deserting and the other half not firing a shot. Keeping them together, in formation and performing a synchronized task probably got better results overall. Until firearms actually got accurate enough that was suicide of course.
There are at least two major reasons for this. First – in 18th century, cavalry was still a thing on the battlefield. Single soldiers spread out on the battlefield would be perfect targets for it, while a larger formation had a bit of a better chance at defending itself. The other is the accuracy of the firearms at the time – it could not reliably hit targets, so you needed a volume of coordinated fire instead, hence a bigger unit to provide it.
Bear in mind that at the same time, part of the infantry (light infantry) did operate in spread out, skirmish formation, partially for the reason you are mentioning. They often used rifled carbines, which were more expensive but also more accurate.
Smooth bore muskets had terrible accuracy, especially in battlefield conditions. Massing your troops meant massing your firepower which meant being much more likely to hit someone. Another factor is that the bayonet charge was also the culmination of most battles. Lines would match forward, pausing to shoot and reload then when they were within sprinting distance they would charge and it became hand to hand combat, so if your troops are spread out and taking cover they won’t hit many of the opposing troops then will get overrun by the charge. A third factor was that muskets are loaded from the end of the barrel, and it’s almost impossible to reload lying or even knelling down.
All that said, skirmish groups were definitely a thing where a smaller group of musketeers would harass larger formations, jumping in, firing shots then running away.
The invention of the Minié ball and rifled barrels made the weapons much more accurate and powerful, but it took a long time for tactics to completely evolve with the new technology.
In general they had skirmishers who ran around finding cover and taking potshots at officers the way you’d fight now. Armies in formation would use walls, ditches and so on for cover sometimes if they could. They didn’t normally take turns shooting each other, they shot in volleys as fast as they could.
What you are missing out is that cavalry was still a major threat then, if they’d tried to all stand around spaced out like skirmishers or modern soldiers, the cavalry would have ridden them down.
Standing around being shot at or waiting to be stabbed is terrifying at the best of times, most people will run away without encourgement and threats. The skirmishers were elite. For the rest of the troops, without a crowd of allies close around them and some NCOs behind them with big pointy sticks they’d probably have cut their losses and ran. Maybe pausing to loot their own baggage train, if you were lucky.
The other thing is that volley fire maybe wasn’t so great as a method to accurately shoot the other side to death but it was excellent at making them run away. Whole armies fled after receiving a single volley, or even after just firing one, like the four Spanish battalions at Talavera.
So you can imagine there are a few ways to ‘win’ a fight.
1) Hurt/kill so many of the other guy that they’re no longer capable of continuing the fight.
2) Make the other side lose the will to fight.
Early guns are actually kinda terrible at killing people, so a lot of the tactics for their use revolved around approach #2, relying on inflicting ‘shock’ (basically traumatizing the individuals on the other side so badly that they don’t fight). Hand-to-hand fighting was really good at causing shock, but on an individual-gun level early firearms on the other hand were pretty bad at it. Sure having someone shoot at you is an emotional event, but they’ll probably miss, and the amount of time it takes for the next shot to come is basically enough to you to recover. The ‘big long lines’ was a way to concentrate firepower so you could inflict more shock. The ideal method would be something like you’d get close, shoot, and then advance while they were recovering. If the enemy ‘broke’ and was no longer operating in their own ‘big long line’ then you’d have follow up troops (ideally on horse) that could come in and inflict lots of damage on the now disorganized enemy. Similarly the ‘big long line’ was also a way to make your guys less vulnerable to shock. Standing with a large group feels ‘safer’ than standing by yourself in the chaos of a fight.
They were still operating on some outdated “rules of war” notions. Last time they attempted that was during WWI and it just turned into a meat grinder because or machine guns.
The 18th century was just a hundred years after firearms were introduced in Europe. This was before rifling, smokeless powder and cartridges. The guns would take 20 seconds to reload in best conditions, make a big bang that would blind the shooter and cover them in smoke, and occasionally it would hit a barn door at a hundred paces. So standing upright in the middle of a battlefield was not that bad, but it was terrifying with all the noise, flashes and smoke.
The biggest danger on a battlefield were not the guns but the cavalry. They could quickly move around and cut people down with their sabers. The best way to defend against the cavalry was with close formations because the horses could not ride close enough. Especially if the soldiers mounted bayonets as that would wound any horse getting close enough.
So the general goal of a platoon was to keep everyone in tight formation and moving together. This not only protected against cavalry charges but also made sure everyone would follow orders and not go hide in a ditch out of fear or turn and run the other way.
Of course there are plenty of examples of platoons taking up defensive position behind cover and even dig trenches. But just marching somewhere in the open was not as deadly as it may sound. And you had to stand upright when reloading anyway due to the design of the gun so there is no need to go down on your stomach and hide, that would just slow down your reloading.
But battles were rarely won by soldiers slowly marching up to the enemy and shooting at them until both were dead. You would march up in order to take control over some strategic territory and hold on to it. This gave room to prepare charges of either infantry or cavalry. You can not actually charge very far as you get tired after the first sprint. So you need to get pretty close to the enemy to make the last charge. And you need space to get into the right position, preferably without the enemy in a position to see it. And you need to be able to find the right place to attack so you can encircle the enemy the best you can.
Of course in the 19th century technology changed a lot. The advancements in artillery, rifles, carbines, revolvers, machine guns, etc. meant that by the early 20th century you could not be seen on the battlefield without getting killed. Although some of the strategies of moving slowly forwards preparing for a charge was employed and is still used today. But with a lot more stealth and in coordination with other units.
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