In Civil War Reenactments why do people walk across the battlefield
score:9
In the Civil War era and earlier, the units needed to keep together in order to avoid being ridden down by cavalry. An experienced infantryman could shoot three times a minute, and a line of them could punish a cavalry unit easily. If you scatter, then you have fewer effective shots while an enemy approaches and they get among your men and cut them down.
This was even more of a factor in the pre-Civil War era, when musket ranges were very short. Then you needed the mass to form square to repel hors*m*n.
You have a similar issue when facing another enemy infantry unit. If you lose formation, the other side has more firepower and more mass at the area of contact and you will likely lose the engagement.
The final reason to keep a unit form is tactical management. The officers can't control a unit that scatters over a wide area and can't see what to do. A unit not under control just has to sit there and take it, and thus could well lose more men than one that moved more slowly, but under control.
Upvote:0
By definition, re-enactments are a reflection of the way battles were actually fought. Civil War re-enactments are a reflection of the way Americans fought in the mid-nineteenth century. (Just about everyone in that war was American, with the exception of the odd foreigner.)
Americans were much better shots than most (European) foreigners. American (and British) soldiers and officers therefore had a much greater respect for "firepower." The way to maximize the value of firepower was to have soldiers "walk" across a battlefield at a measured pace, even if some of them, inevitably, get killed. This was in contrast to the melee and charging tactics that some European armies used. And by the Civil War times, guns could be reloaded fast enough so that these "walking" tactics were often effective even against cavalry.
The difference between and re-enactment and the "real thing" is that re-enacters don't fire, while their counterparts did. But re-enacters would walk/march across the battlefield at the same pace as real soldiers.
More post
- 📝 What would the style of wanted posters be in 1500's
- 📝 When, where and with what propagation through Europe did the idea of gypsies stealing children occur?
- 📝 After the Mongol Empire fell, did China really turn away from math and physics?
- 📝 What were the trade routes between Mapungubwe and other civilizations?
- 📝 Hand signal for suppressing enemy position in World War 2
- 📝 Who were the candidates in the consular elections for 80 BC in Rome?
- 📝 Why didn't Ronald Reagan become Republican candidate for the President of the USA in 1976?
- 📝 Why did some people not get a UK Birth Certificate before 1982?
- 📝 Which 1848 German revolutionaries became key players in the US Republican party?
- 📝 How did Romans organise their files?
- 📝 Would a Roman emperor during Pax Romana be recognised by Roman Britons as a king of Roman Britain?
- 📝 Why were terminal train stations built in Germany?
- 📝 Why does the UK buy some of its major military hardware from the USA while France is self-reliant?
- 📝 What was the biggest region in the Holy Roman Empire that was never Protestant, if any?
- 📝 When (and where) did public polling start taking place on topics other than elections?
- 📝 What can these photos say about my father's service for the British in WWII?
- 📝 How did succession in Anglo Saxon England work?
- 📝 Battle which has been decided by an epidemic plague
- 📝 Does the leather strap often depicted on a Pith helmets serve a purpose, or is it purely cosmetic?
- 📝 Historical and biblical names for bottles of wine
- 📝 Can anyone identify this Union commander?
- 📝 At the start of the Second Punic War, why didn't Hannibal engage Publius Scipio in Hispania, but crossed the alps instead?
- 📝 When did Robert Briscoe die?
- 📝 How was Takeda defeated at the Battle of Nagashino?
- 📝 The evolution of glove handness in falconry
- 📝 Why weren't the New Territories ceded to the British instead of leased in 1898?
- 📝 How did the Swedish army deal with prisoners of war in the Thirty Years War?
- 📝 How did Germany claim self-defense in WW1?
- 📝 Leather 1.50 German gold mark
- 📝 Invention of Planned Obsolescence
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 In Civil War Reenactments why do people walk across the battlefield
- 📝 Why were Civil War battle techniques so bloody, if the US had learned guerrilla fighting in the Revolutionary War?
- 📝 Why did the Union army favor a "western" route to approaching Richmond during the American Civil War
- 📝 Which American Civil War admiral said he would not punish people for getting their ship close to the enemy?
- 📝 Why wasn't the American civil war fought between slaves and masters?
- 📝 Why did the Confederacy think they could win the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why didn't Imperial Japan attack the Soviet Union during World War 2?
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 Why didn’t Japan attack the West Coast of the United States during World War II?
- 📝 Why did LBJ, a staunch segregationist, champion and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill?
- 📝 Why did Hitler declare war on the USA?
- 📝 Why was World War I ended on Nov 11 11:00, rather than immediately upon signing the armistice?
- 📝 Why did Civil War officers tell their men to "aim low"?
- 📝 Did the King of Siam offer war elephants to the Union during the Civil War?
- 📝 Why did the German army execute so few soldiers in World War I compared to most other armies?
- 📝 Why did Chamberlain act to appease Hitler leading up to the outbreak of World War 2?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 Is there a historical explanation as to why the USA people are so litigious compared to the French?
- 📝 Why didn't China assist in the Vietnam War like they did in Korea?
- 📝 Why are the French and Indian Wars / Seven Years' War not considered WW 1?
- 📝 Was the American Civil War the “bloodiest civil war in history”?
- 📝 Why did the USSR stop in the Winter War against Finland in 1940?
- 📝 Why did the United States enter World War I?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union not "grant" Inner Mongolia to Mongolia after World War Two?
- 📝 Why didn't the participants of the Korean War also fight in the Vietnam War?
- 📝 Why was the Western Front so static in World War I?
- 📝 Why did some people need to pay a bond in the 1700s in order to get married?
- 📝 Why was the Cold War carried out over the whole world instead of between Siberia and Alaska?
- 📝 Why were people from the Asian Steppes able to militarily dominate Europeans on a repeated basis?
- 📝 Why did the Arabs start the 1973 War during Ramadan, and did it affect their performance?