Category: Arms & Armament
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Short Takes
Many Civil War histories sort of assume that tactics developed in a vacuum, without antecedents. In a previous post I mentioned that both sides used tactics developed by the French chasseurs. Here I’ll point those who are interested in light infantry tactics toward some resources on the web. We hear a lot about “Napoleonic warfare” […]
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Chasseurs and Pennsylvanians
American Civil War units often copied their European counterparts. The best known were the flashy zouaves, but there were others as well, such as the chasseurs. The name means “hunter” in French, and they were light infantry, the functional equivalent of the German Jägers. Chasseurs came in both infantry (chasseurs à pied) and cavalry (chasseurs […]
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A Silver Stadia
Bill Adams sent me a link to a nice piece of Civil War militaria—a silver stadia. Normally made of brass, the stadia was a primitive range-finding instrument with scales on one side for cavalry and infantry on the other. I’ve never seen a reference to anyone actually using one (estimating by eye usually worked better […]
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Chivalry and Sharpshooting
Various commentators have mentioned that the ethos of the 18th and 19th Centuries disapproved of sharpshooters, who were seen as acting in a cowardly manner. Some even considered it unchivalrous to take aim at an individual foeman. Here’s an example in an editorial that appeared in the Missouri Democrat in December, 1862. Major-General Hindman, it […]
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1st New York Sharpshooters
Ran across a privately published book about the shadowy 1st New York Sharpshooters. I’ve come across references to this unit but was unable to come with much information about it. Now John Bennett has done it for me, tracking down the sometimes tangled history of this unit in the first book about it. Originally intended […]
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Rifles and Ranges
Drew Wagenhoffer has a short review up of Earl Hess’s The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth. Although he calls it “the best single volume treatment of the subject so far,” he does raise some significant questions, including one I hadn’t thought of (showing, again, the value of distributed intelligence). There is […]
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“Loose files and the American scramble”
I’m going to take a step backwards here into the Revolutionary War, both to get a perspective on infantry tactics and to get a feel for how the landscape affected them. I’ll also address another issue, that of weapon effectiveness, particularly the rifle, during the war. There are those who, with good reason, maintain that […]