Reddit reviews Napoleonic Infantry: Napoleonic Weapons and Warfare (Napoleonic Weapons & Warfare)

There is a certain arrogance that many people have when it comes to dealing with the military history of this era - it is common to assume that line tactics simply grew out of stupidity or an attachment to honor, but this simply isn't the case. Commanders viewed line infantry as an effective tactic because it was an effective tactic, and it proved its effectiveness in many battles. Quite simply, these tactics produced real-world results. Line formation was a very tactically sound formation, given the weapons of the era. It was also not the only tactic used by European armies, contrary to popular belief.

The main weapon of the era for infantry was the musket. Muskets are muzzle-loading, smoothbore firearms, that are neither quick to load (compared with the guns that would supersede them) nor accurate. They are, however, very deadly (armour generally won't stop a musket ball), fairly cheap, and fairly easy to operate. To create good line infantry you do need to have men that are very well-drilled, so the idea that muskets supplanted other ranged weapons simply because anyone could use them is an idea that is a bit exaggerated (many European leaders before the French Revolution didn't exactly enjoy arming the peasantry anyways), but muskets simply don't require the sheer physical strength needed to, say, pull a bow. So it is easy to see why muskets became such a dominant weapon on European battlefields.

If you are going to use muskets for your army, the best way to deliver large amounts of fire upon your enemy is to have your men line up in shallow lines, level their muskets, and fire. The idea was not to politely trade shots with the enemy, but rather, to deliver as much fire as was possible. Drills of the day emphasized rate of fire above accuracy - You leveled your gun, fired, reloaded as fast as possible, and fired again, though the precise pattern in which this takes place was dictated by the particular type of drill. Well-drilled infantry could lay down highly impressive rates of fire, even given the technical limitations of muzzle-loading muskets. The culmination of these engagements was often the bayonet charge - these charges often resulted in the side being charged simply breaking, providing that their morale was sufficiently low.

Line formations were not the only sort of arrangement used by infantry. With enough numerical superiority, or if the enemy is suspect of having weak morale, an army could just charge the enemy off the bat. This tactic certainly worked well for French armies during the wars of the Revolution - it allowed them to defeat better-trained and better-equipped enemy armies that used line formation. This tactic was heavily dependent on both numbers (the French, who created the first modern system of conscription, could raise huge armies and replace vast losses more easily than their rivals could) and morale, however. /u/elos_ did a great write-up on French tactics during the Revolution a few months ago. Charges were conducted in columns, rather than lines. Even for the French, though, these charges were not some perfect tactic, and as the French Army improved post-revolution, French generals used a more balanced mix of column charges, line fire, skirmishing, and the use of artillery.

Besides lines and columns, the aforementioned skirmishing was another other way to use infantry. Skirmishing meant dispersing your men, so that there was some distance between each soldier, and engaging the enemy in ways besides simply standing in front of them and shooting (though they could do that as well). However, skirmishers are very vulnerable to cavalry. It is also difficult to coordinate - battles are by their very nature chaotic, and when you add in the large quantities of smoke that is generated by weapons that use gunpowder, things can become very hard to coordinate. Skirmishing was still used, and it proved to be very valuable on many occasions. Skirmishers could harass the enemy, create disorder, deal with enemy skirmishers, et cetera. Certain types of terrain would make skirmishing very effective. The French were very fond of skirmishers, and they made up a big part of Napoleon's armies. Line infantrymen were trained to skirmish, and skirmishers were trained to fight in lines. One wasn't inherently better or worse than the other, it was all situational.

Note: some skirmishers used rifled muskets, but most (at least during the Napoleonic era) used regular smoothbore muskets. There was a recent kerfuffle in this sub about skirmishing with muskets, which was summed up by /u/elos_ in /r/badhistory.

Line formation emerged as a very natural way to utilize muskets, and it disappeared when smoothbore muskets were replaced with better firearms. As all of this indicate, though, line formation was not the only formation used, and battles were not just affairs in which two sides shot at each other face-to-face until one side was mostly dead. Good generals coordinated different sorts of infantry, cavalry, and artillery in order to achieve victory - these men were certainly not idiots.

I really like the book Napoleonic Infantry by Philip J. Haythornthwaite, which can be found pretty inexpensively on Amazon.