Watching muskets being used, it’s hard to believe they were effective on confronting native Americans

 

I never knew that the Notheast indians actually used the phalanx.  It may even have been borrowed from europe a thousand years earlier.  It is effective in terms of mass formations asw the greeks proved.  Yet it must be taught and trained for.  

We really need to see just how common it was elsewhere.

In the event ,the natives wised up in a hurry and reverted to small team ambushes to place pressure on the europeans.

Watching muskets being used, it’s hard to believe they were effective on confronting native Americans or other combatants, they take forever to load and shoot, how were they ever effective?

Pieter

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Read way to much about naval warfareMay 24

One of the veterans of the French Wars of Religion mentions how firearms changed the dynamics of cavalry combat.

For they contesteth no longer as the Romans did against other nations, who oftentimes keep the field fighting two hours face to face before either party turned back

The introduction of firearms had made combat(s) a much shorter affair because of how effective they were. No longer hacking away at each other with swords or weathering showers of arrows; one bullet could be sufficient to kill or incapacitate all but some lucky individuals. During WW2 an M2 Browning Machine gun might manage to fire 600 rounds per minute while it took Enola Gay 12 hours to drop one measly little bomb, yet the Japanese seem to have been far more in awe of the latter. You can’t take the admittedly slow rate of fire of a musket out of its context. It hit and hit hard.

Roman soldiers could be engaged in formation combat for hours on end sustaining only 5% casualties in the process. Archers frequently emptied their quivers without causing the enemy to flee. At ranges where melee combat took place or where archers could lay down effective fire a musket volley could end a contest in a second. A single pull of the trigger could accomplish what an hour of melee jabs or twenty arrows might do. Coincidentally the thinning of ranks and discarding of armor also had the effect of making melee combat last shorter in the age of the musket.

When Europeans first arrived around the Great Lakes of the modern US they found the natives fighting quite conventionally. They had armor, spears and shields which were used in phalanx type formations and they had archers.

When guns did enter the scene they quickly adapted because their old tactics and technology had become stupendously suicidal.

One shouldn’t think that combat becomes more or less lethal with new weapons. People naturally mitigate risks. I believe skydiving hasn’t gotten any less dangerous over the years despite improvements in gear and procedures, the cause being that people have simply started doing more dangerous stunts. For that matter cyclists who wear helmets are apparently more likely to get hit by cars than those who don’t.

When it came to the increased lethality of firearms over traditional weaponry this increase was mitigated in several ways. In truly close range and murderous fire the fighting simply lasted much shorter. A unit might break or retreat after a few minutes of fighting or even after receiving just a single volley.

Another adaption was that the initial range of engagements increased. The murderous close range fire became progressively less dangerous to the point that it matched the lethality of traditional weapons at really great ranges.

A people like the Iroquois or the Huron never really got a taste for open field pitched battles again. They were quite content to engage in skirmishes with fewer combatants. For this purpose they also endeavored to acquire the best weapon for the job.

Those same muskets with which they were faced.

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