"Skirmish fire........how effective was it?" Topic

Kevin,

I have never come across any recorded data from British target practice sessions, but there is some comprehensive data from the East India Company's records, which should give a reasonable comparision, as the men were armed with exactly the same weapons (India Pattern Brown Bess and Baker Rifle). Unless of course you believe, as some undoubtably will, that British troops could have achieved better results than their similarly trained European and Native counterparts in India. The target used was 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide, divided into equal top, middle and bottom sections with an 8 inch bullseye.

The following percentage hits are an average of several years' worth of data. The men were not in formation, but aimed and fired as individuals:

80 yards: Rifle 42% Musket 33%

100 yards: Rifle 48% Musket 27%

120 yards: Rifle 41% Musket 21%

150 yards: Rifle 37% Musket 15%

200 Yards: Rifle 32% Musket 8%

250 Yards: Rifle 22%

I think that is good shooting with these rather innaccurate weapons for men who had limited practice.

The allocation of practice ammunition per year, for the British regular army was as follows:

Riflemen: 60 rounds ball cartridge, 3 flints.

Light infantry: 40 rounds ball cartridge, 30 rounds blank cartridge, 3 flints.

Line infantry: 30 rounds ball cartridge, 40 rounds blank cartridge, 3 flints.

This is obviously a very small amount, and even the Riflemen were unlikely to become expert marksmen without very long service.

To compare this with the weights of powder and lead that you quoted for the French above, 125Kgs of lead would have given about 4,900 x 18 bore musket balls and 250Kgs of powder would represent about 28,000 x 5 dram charges for a musket. If this is for a battalion of say 800 men, it represents a lot less than the British allocation. Of course the lead could have been reclaimed and recast if necessary to give more live rounds, but the limiting factor is the powder.

Kevin Kiley 25 Jul 2009 7:26 a.m. PST

thank you. a very nice post.

Just a comment about the British.

I think their units wereabove average because they fought so little. The Brits paid money for they Austrians, Russians, Italians, Dutch, Germans, and Prussians to go out and die for Britian's interests. The Brits did not suffer the repeated large scale casulties due to deaths, disease and wearing out. Where everyone else was starting off again and again with new armies, the Brits were using long serving soliders and a large cadre. That is a recipe for better units. Nothing racial about it.

well there is some simple but logical analysis for you…

The Brits did not suffer the repeated large scale casualties due to deaths, disease and wearing out. Where everyone else was starting off again and again with new armies, the Brits were using long serving soldiers and a large cadre. That is a recipe for better units. Nothing racial about it.

How much plainer can one say it ?

well said and I agree totally.

Shane

Capt S,

Great information on the British firing tests. I agree with you that they are valid, British Indian Army or not.
And it was good shooting.

For the French, I would think that the basic allowance would be augmented, especially if there were to be competitions. And it would also depend on the commander. That's only an 'educated' guess at best.

Sincerely,
K

The last few posts have saved this thread. Thank you Shane and others.

The three main battle chapters in Bressonnet are replete with examples of tirailleur combat, especially their use in rear-guards and pursuits. These roles were just as vital as
acting as "snipers" and completely neglected in wargames (guilty myself). By hurrying along disintegrating formations, tirailleurs played a vital role in buying time for victorious Divisions to quickly reorganize before pushing on. Skirmishers could also cast a wide net, as per Friant as an example, in finding the enemy and scouting the flanks. They can and did provide an eyes and ears function when cavalry was not available.

Then, of course, the use of voltiguers and tirailleurs to act in taking unsupported artillery was huge for the French.

You're probably not going to be able to deduce the "average effect of skirmish combat" until you understand what happened at Saalfeld, Jena, and Auerstadt. That's one of the reasons I thought Bressonnet made some much sense to publish.

Billfan wrote:

The Brits did not suffer the repeated large scale casualties due to deaths, disease and wearing out. Where everyone else was starting off again and again with new armies, the Brits were using long serving soldiers and a large cadre. That is a recipe for better units. Nothing racial about it.

That is not true. After the American Revolution, the Pitt administration cut back on the British army. The British Regulars in 1792 had been reduced to 49,000. During the first decade of war, the British Army lost nearly 100,000 in campaigns in the West Indies and Holland. And in both cases, disease was the major cause. Those losses represented a huge portion of the entire strength of the army. After 1803 the British turned around and suffered another huge casualty count in the West Indies. Being sent to the West Indies was considered a death sentence among British Regulars. Only the worst regiments failed to avoid the duty.

One result of all this action was the awareness that light infantry was necessary. York's concern grew after being embarrassed in Holland. It led to the creation and training of the 95th and the light infantry under McKenzie and Moore. But before that route was taken, the army tried mercenaries again to create light infantry. The first light infantry units raised in 1803 were mostly German and all foriegn nationals. They didn't last and what remained was folded into later light units. At least one battalion of the 60th was entirely German nationals. Germans made up a good portion of the first battalions of the 95th. One belief that led to these actions was that the Germans [Hess, Hanover, etc.] made for better light infantry than the British.

The Rifles were constantly in action from their inception, from South America to Spain. As a consequence, the 95th recruited more than most regiments.

Nor was the manpower strain over after 1809. In 1813 the 95th actually attempted to recruit *more* Spanish nationals into the regiment. I say more because there are several off-hand comments by Harris and Costello concerning Spaniards wearing the Rifleman's green in earlier years.

The British didn't avoid wholesale losses of soldiers and sailors. They sued for Peace in 1799 because they couldn't raise enough men to continue the war.

Best Regards,

Bill H.

As for who was the best light infantry, or the uniform success of the British skirmishers against the French, it just ain't so. I don't think the British--in general--were any better than the French, if that. The 95th Rifles was an exceptional unit, but still just one small part of the British Army. It is a much more complicated issue and one that the British themselves had opinions on.

Captain Kincaid of the 95th Rifles wrote:

"Certainly I never saw such skirmishers as the ninety-fifth, now the Rifle Brigade. They could do the work much better and with infinitely less loss than any other of our best light troops…They were, in fact, as much superior to the French voltigeurs, as the latter were to our skirmishers in general."

Nor was that just a Rifleman's opinion. Moyle Sherer of the 34th, gave the following view following the battle of Vitoria:

"Not a soul…was in the village, but a wood a few hundred yards to its left, and the ravines above it, were filled with French light infantry. I, with my company, was soon engaged in smart skirmishing among the ravines, and lost about eleven men killed and wounded, out of thirty-eight. The English do not skirmish so well as the Germans or the French; and it is really hard work to make them preserve their proper extended order, cover themselves, and not throw away their fire;"

Like every nation, the British Army did not enjoy some uniform level of training or experience. Authors from the British light infantry regiments all describe their own embarrassment against the French as well as that of other regiments:

At Vimeiro: "The 43rd regiment was much cut up, while being employed in skirmishing, considerably exposed." The officer of the 43rd goes on at length describing the British confusion in resisting the unseen French.

Rifleman Harris recalls the 52nd being driven in by French skirmishers in January 1809. At Fruentes del Oronto, he describes relieving skirmishers of the 79th on the outskirts of the village. Noting the red clad bodies scattered around, he decried the highlanders' foolishness in standing out in the open rather than seeking cover in the buildings like the French.

Another Light Infantry Officer speaks of his fustration in trying to instruct his regiment to skirmish: "…our officers would be indifferent whether it was a hill or hollow that they were in or on; and our men would stand erect and expose their whole persons in the most useless manner.

Captain Blakiston of the 17th Portuguese Regiment observed the Guards Brigade in 1811: "Their light companies received a dreadful mauling from the French voltigeurs. The great John Bulls had no notion fo screeing themselves from the fire of their more cautious adversaries, and suffered accordingly."

All these quotes are from the chapters on light infantry in A History of the Peninsular War Vol. IX edited by Paddy Griffith and Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon by Rory Muir.

Whatever skills the British developed in skirmishing were in part a result of experience, and it was hard won and very unevenly learned. A good deal of their success had to do with the way they were handled too.

Best Regards,

Bill H.

The British didn't avoid wholesale losses of soldiers and sailors. They sued for Peace in 1799 because they couldn't raise enough men to continue the war.

This might be true but it also might interest people to know that Great Britain back then had a population that was quite large by the standards of the day. A census taken during the middle of the wars indicated a population of 10.5 million which had grown to over 14 million by the end of the wars. This is nothing to sneeze at by any means…(Abrams, Mark. )
link

Their problem was that they did not introduce conscription as did many other armies of the time and thus if the men are not forced to fight why would you unless you had an overwhelming sense of honour, nationalistic pride or a death wish. GB had a difficult time putting enough soldiers into the field due to many reasons such as those and more. Men would only join up if it meant escaping bondage, imprisonment and so on or even just to get a steady source of meals. This in no way is meant to be a recrimination on GB for its practices of the time but merely to point out the nationalistic policy differences compared to other nations who cared less about the loss of their men.

It is no wonder the Regiments were much more inclined to train and drill their men compared to other larger nations who used conscription and used their men like cannon fodder. This did not mean these other nations' manpower were not trained and drilled incessantly because there is much evidence to suggest otherwise but it goes to show that nations who cannot afford the losses in manpower usually make up for this or compensated for it in training, (not always but more often than not).

The Brits might not be much different from the, "cannon fodder" mentality of the other nations of the time but they also knew that if a regiment was decimated it could take 10 plus years to rebuild it. So caring for them and keeping them relatively secure, well fed, well trained and drilled whenever possible was high on their agendas. Try telling that to Napoleon, Francis or Alexander who were more focused on numbers in the field and you would get a good belly laugh response. They too desired to achieve a high standard of training for their men but this was impossible for them usually in critical periods of time. So the Brits were inclined to well drill and train what they had in the relative safety at home before sending them abroad to face the rigors of campaigning. We have already had these discussions many times here.

Shane

Shane:
Certainly, Britain had an adequate population base, and they certainly screwed the pooch when it came to actually recruiting--their system[s] were a mess until after 1810. A major reason for ending the war with France in 1799 was the governments inability to raise enough soldiers fast enough. The Royal Navy resorted to press gangs, which led to the mutinies in 1799. The British Army, always second priority with the British had just lost huge numbers of trained men, almost equal to the Regular Army's size, and simply couldn't recover fast enough.

From all that I have read, the training of British soldiers was neither different nor done more diligently than other nations. Like other nations, training was very much a responsibility of the regimental commander, and it could vary widely. The need for uniformity was a major reason Dundas' regulations were officially accepted and 'enforced' by inspections after 1800.

Until then, privately written drill manuals were the norm like Cooper's Light Infantry Instructions in 1805 or O'Neil's Eighteen Maneuvers in 1806. Even with new cavalry regulations, Paget still collected and wrote his own regulations for the Hussar Brigade in 1796, stitched together from Austrian, German, and Spanish regulations, as well as the French.

This moving from the particular to the universal in training was very much the same process in other armies. Davout is writing his instructions in 1811 and still debating whether to use the third rank as skirmishers or deploying them by company. Ney, in his own instructions of 1803, advocated the third rank. After two decades of war, Davout still feels it's necessary to write his own instructions.

Any uniformity in training or how much was done during the Napoleonic Wars doesn't begin to approach what we know today. Grattan mentions that the 88th only practiced eight of the eighteen maneuvers that inspectors wanted to see mastered. The colonel felt that was all his Irishmen needed.

That isn't to say the British Army didn't train or work on uniform practices, but we are talking about a the twenty year period of constant war. In that time, the British army, much like all Continental armies, moved from a very provincial, proprietary form where men joined the colonel's regiment, not the army, to a much more corporate, professional model of a national army.

I don't think we can point to one or two things like training or safe training grounds to explain the British successes anymore than we can the French.

Best Regards,

Bill H.

Bill H,

I am not going to be drawn into a profitless debate on whose skirmishers were the best, but I think that the selection of quotes that you have provided needs to be scrutinised. The problem with out-of-context quotes, and you admit you have lifted these from secondary sources, is that we have no idea of the situations being described by the original authors. I know that you understand this and it is probably Griffith and Muir at fault anyway, but I hope that you won't be offended if I make a few points:

Moyle Sherer is describing the activity of centre companies being used in the skirmish line, not light companies, so the men probably had very little, if any, training in this method of fighting, so to use this as an example of the poor quality of British light troops is misleading.

Similarly, the quote that you attribute to Harris, who incidentally was not at Fuentes de Onoro, refers to the 79th Highland regiment in general, and not its light company. Other eyewitnesses testify that the regiment suffered heavily when used as light infantry – something that they had received absolutely no training for at all.

The "officer of the 43th" is actually John Patterson of the 50th, and his account only mentions that the 43rd suffered heavily, especially from enfilading grapeshot, and mentions nothing about their quality as light infantry. The confused retreat he describes is that of the outpost pickets, and not the skirmish line.

So that leaves three quotes that could be valid. Kincaid (who is incidentally quoting Blakiston here and says nothing of poor quality light troops himself), Blakiston, and the unnamed officer whose words I do not recognise.

The vast majority of eyewitnesses do not mention any particular advantage or disadvantage between the skirmishers of the two nations.

Captain:

I agree, this isn't about who was best, but rather that there wasn't some vast superiority generally on one side or the other. I think two British quotes mentioning the relative skill of the nations' skirmishers are enough to demonstrate that even the British veterans weren't in agreement on the British being the 'best'.

The "vast majority of the quotes" were simply to provide some balance to the idea that the British were generally superior skirmishers to the French. If we need quotes referring ONLY to light companies to be valid, and not light infantry, like the 43rd and 52nd of the Light Division, I can provide them. Both light regiments had their lunch handed to them as skirmishers from time to time.

Sherer is describing the skirmish involving center companies supporting the regiment's light company, so while he is from a center company, he is relating what he sees as the outcome of the whole engagement--And yes, he is generalizing and not commenting on the difference in performance between light and center companies. I didn't provide the quote to demonstrate that.

I find it interesting that few if any British commentaries make that distinction between light company skirmishers from line troops, from light infantry regiments and center companies in describing skirmishes except when talking about the 95th.

IF not Harris, then it was Costello. And yes, we are speaking of the 79th in general. The account makes no distinction. Either the light company was there, and it was common for the line to support the light companies, or the 79th light company had been formed with separate light battalion and the center companies of the regiment were being asked to skirmish.

Either way, Costello notes inexperience for their poor performance--but makes no comment on whether it was the light company or not. Regardless, they were deployed as skirmishers--without the light company is as significant as them being deployed in support of the light company…

Actually it is an officer of the 43rd who described the confusion and Patterson of the 50th that I quoted. That wasn't clear. I can provide the quotes. Both quotes are referenced in Griffin's book.

Kincaid provides the quote as support for his position on the matter, so that isn't quite accurate.

The vast majority of eyewitnesses do not mention any particular advantage or disadvantage between the skirmishers of the two nations.

Which was my point exactly…

Best Regards,

Bill H.

Scotsman said somethings including

The Rifles were constantly in action from their inception, from South America to Spain. As a consequence, the 95th recruited more than most regiments.
Nor was the manpower strain over after 1809. In 1813 the 95th actually attempted to recruit *more* Spanish nationals into the regiment. I say more because there are several off-hand comments by Harris and Costello concerning Spaniards wearing the Rifleman's green in earlier years.
The British didn't avoid wholesale losses of soldiers and sailors. They sued for Peace in 1799 because they couldn't raise enough men to continue the war.

Sorry but I don't agree. The Brits did not have army after army wiped out. They were known as "the nation of shopkeepers" not of one that put corps after corps into the field. They had continuity and low casulties. An ability to see and learn without having the bravest and most capable cut down in battle. They had a "minor league" (a.k.a. Second Division reserve club) in the colonies and India for player development. I could name battle after major battle, and campaign after campaign and quote the Austrian, Prussian, Russian, German and French casulties….and there wasn't a British soldier within 700 miles of the smell of gunpowder.

Actually disease played Hob with the British troops in the tropics. Assignment to the Caribbean was considered a death sentence. India was none too healthy either.

Also enlistment in the militia which could not be sent overseas helped to create a shortage of combat troops in Europe.

In 1806 some battalions were still being assigned to the fleet as there weren't enough sailors to man all the ships required for the blockade.

Battle deaths are not the only drain on man power.

Fortescue goes to some length speaking about British man power shortages.

Billfan wrote:

The Brits did not have army after army wiped out. They were known as "the nation of shopkeepers" not of one that put corps after corps into the field.

I didn't say anything about armies being wiped out. I simply said that the British suffered huge casualties in the West Indies and Holland. Britain did send troops all over, regardless of what kind of nation they were.

The British invaded the French colonies in the West Indies, Sent an army to Holland that fought several battles in the 1790's--Under the "Grand ol' Duke of York." That is not counting the battles in India and other places.

Between 1792 and 1799 British losses amounted to 130,000. From 1792 to 1799, the regular Army had gone from 49,000 to 103,000. The strain of accomplishing that exhausted Britain's ability to maintain the army, which is one big reason they sued for peace in 1800.

The attrition suffered by the army was so high, it was difficult for Britain to even maintain the strength of the army, let alone increase it. That 130,000 is a loss of about about 18,500 men per year between 1792-1799. Compare that to later years:

The casualties from all causes in just the first nine months of 1804 was 16,400. The Army recruited 13,400 that year. Lord Grenville stated in the House of Lords that in January of 1804 the army numbered 105,886, and in January of 1805 it numbered 105,033, or a loss of 853 men. And remember, the Army didn't go to the Peninsula until 1808, so what activities were causing all those casualties if they didn't send corps out?

To provide some more comparison: in 1811, with the Peninsula battles of Barrosa, Fuenties d'Onoro, and ALbuera, the casualties for that year amounted to 19,019. The voluntary enlistments came to 9,532 men, added to 11,453 men transferred from the Militia, for a total of 20,985--a net gain of 1,966 for the year. This was seen as a distinct success. Forescue states that "The Army, therefore at the outset of 1812 was in a strong position…"[page 144 and pps 259-260 in his The County Lieutenancies].

Those may be paltry numbers compared to the Continental armies, but the average British yearly casualties represent 25% or more of Britain's entire Army strength each year for the duration of the wars, 1792 to 1815.

And proportionally, that isn't all that different from any of the Continental armies--and at times more because there were several spurts of Peace for Austria, Prussia and Russia that found the British still at war with Napoleon.

Best Regards,

Bill H.

Drat, did I say 25% of Britain's Army?

That should read 15-20% I'm not very good at math. I only taught it…

Bill H.