Motif of 18th Century English Military Ineptitude

[Cromlech]

It's a Mel Gibson film. I suppose I should be thankful that he stopped short of showing the British eating babies.

Exactly. He has a fetish for bashing Brits. :D

[Jocassee]

Also, the film depicted Cornwallis as being present at Cowpens.  He wasn't.  Tarleton (on which the movie's Tavington character is loosely based) commanded the British force in that battle.

There's a scene, early in the film, in which it's established that the black people working Benjamin Martin's farm are freedmen, not slaves.  While not impossible, it's unlikely in 1770s South Carolina.

It kills me how whenever the South is dealt with in films, there has to be a "slavery to redemption" thread in it where a stupid white man gradually grows to accept a black man as his equal. Why can't we let history be history? What's that? Oh, it's Hollywood.

[MechAg94]

I was going to mention the defensive advantages of a massed disciplined formation, but that was already mentioned.  Lacking rapid fire small arms, loose or scattered formations of infantry are dead meat to cavalry or other more concentrated infantry formations.  That was the case before firearms and it remained the case pretty much until machine guns ruled the battlefield.

That is why movies about ancient warfare always piss me off.  They very rarely show any semblance of massed, disciplined formations in combat.  Every battle breaks down into a wild charge with no discipline whatsoever.  Gladiator is the only recent movie I can think of that showed it a little.  300 failed completely.

[roo_ster]

All this also brings up the point that the Civil War generals were not fools when, in the offensive or in the presence/risk of enemy cavalry, they kept to the massed line & square infantry formations. 

Yes, the rifled musket was now a deadlier weapon at range, but that was not the only consideration.  Infantry out in the open not in a square armed with rifled muskets were just as vulnerable to enemy cavalry as if they were toting smooth bores.

And there still was no good means to relay orders beyond the leather-lunged NCOs.

[MicroBalrog]

300 failed completely.

It was never the goal of 300 to be historically accurate.

[Matthew Carberry]

Note that until the militia had their rifles and shotguns taken away as Washington and Baron von Wolfenstein them militia into a regular army that could take on the British, the Americans couldn't stand a charge as they had no bayonets and a much lower rate of fire.  Clubbed rifles and tomahawks are no match for fixed bayonets en masse.

[Bigjake]

It was never the goal of 300 to be historically accurate.

 Agreed, it's just a  bummer to those of us who understand the battle, to make such a 180 degree of rendition of it..  300 was definitely entertaining though.  I got my 9 bucks worth.

If someone could pull off a Gates of Fire version of Thermopylae,  It could be EPIC.

[lupinus]

That is why movies about ancient warfare always piss me off.  They very rarely show any semblance of massed, disciplined formations in combat.  Every battle breaks down into a wild charge with no discipline whatsoever.  Gladiator is the only recent movie I can think of that showed it a little.  300 failed completely.

This is largely true, and it pisses me off as well.

Gods and Generals IIR did a decent enough job.

Also, while not a movie, Rome on HBO showed 2 or 3 very good battle scenes that were very well done. 

[Perd Hapley]

Mind if I ask a stupid question?

Why was the lining soldiers up the preferred method of battle? It just seems like a firing line. Wouldn't breaking the troops down into smaller, dispersed units have been more effective?

All other reasons listed, plus:

a) I always thought it had a lot to do with the fact that, for eons, keeping a line of soldiers/warriors together was the essence of military ground combat.  Breaking up your line meant that the enemy would get in through your lines and cut you up from all sides.  It seems it would require a great deal for fighting men to give up such a long-established, fundamental rule.  (But I've never considered myself a military historian or a tactician.)

b) Gustavus Adolphus was quite successful with such tactics, thank you very much.

c) It made it easier for Mel Gibson's kids to shoot Lobster-backs like ducks in a shooting gallery.  

d) see below

[K Frame]

What truly did massed infantry in during the Civil War was artillery.

Up to that time, artillery had really been a rather minor player on the battlefield. The guns were mostly limited in size and artillery tactics were rather crude.

Artillery design and tactics underwent a rather incredible revolution in the decades before the Civil War, which was the first war to really use artillery as a major component on a mobile battlefield.

The adoption by the United States of the relatively light weight 12-pound Napoleon, and later the Parrot and US Ordnance Rifle, gave artillery a punch that made continued shoulder to shoulder infantry tactics almost suicidal. The prime example of this is Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. I've seen it estimated that artillery did more than 70% of the damage suffered by the Confederate troops.

[Kaylee]

Imagine if just one guy had come up with the idea of mass production/tooling standardization, and the conical bullet and a breechloader 100 years earlier, and had the ear of a King, or Parliament.

Can I ask a related question then?

I recall reading on at least one instance that standardized parts in longarms (and other machinery as well I assume) was regarded as something of a "holy grail" in early Republic.. by the time Hall was working at Harper's Ferry on that promise, the idea had apparently been tried and failed before. Certainly the assembly line is presaged even in Adam Smith's needle factory (1776, Wealth of Nations).

Yet is was the mid-late 19th c. before we actually had it.

That implies that some manner of supporting technology was missing - and not just here, but in Europe as well. So what was it? Precision measuring tools? Standardized rules and measures for machine parts like screws and such? Patterns for dies? Consistently regulated RPM in water-mill machine tools?Something else?

Thank you, and sorry for the veerage. :)

[Perd Hapley]

What truly did massed infantry in during the Civil War was artillery.  

Yes.  I meant to add that the main reason NCOs gave for keeping an interval between us in the battlefield (besides "I said so!") was that grouping together made you an easy target for arty, grenades, etc. 

[Stand_watie]

Exactly. He has a fetish for bashing Brits. :D

A little backstory on that Cromlech...what you're seeing there is a unique segue of the desire to produce patriotic type action films, with the need to make the villians as politically incorrect as possible, to be able to sell it to Hollywood. The only thing "whiter" than Americans in "politically incorrect" parlance, is the British, nazi era Germans, and perhaps white South Africans.

When you see Britain unfairly bashed, and there's a large component of the production that comes out of the American far left (IE, most of Hollywood), consider it "self loathing" and wear it as a badge of honor.

[Perd Hapley]

I don't know why you lot are so upset that they had the British burn a church full of Yankee rebels.  What ought to offend you is that Jayne Cobb was the rutting Loyalist that actually fired it.  

[half-serious]