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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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.
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