From Flintlock to Rifle: Infantry Tactics, 1740-1866 - Hardcover

Ross, Steven T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714646024 ISBN 13: 9780714646022

Publisher: Routledge, 1996

Synopsis

This is a comprehensive study of the major changes in infantry tacticts from the time of Frederick the Great to the beginning of what many see as the era of modern war, in the 1860s. Ross lays social and political change side by side with technical change. He argues that the French revolution, due to the fervour and loyalty it inspired in its participants, led to huge citizen armies of devolved command which were able to make use of new tactics that swept the poorly paid and poorly treated professional armies of their enemies from the field. Shortly after the Napoleonic wars other European countries experienced similar social change and by the middle of the Nineteenth Century these massive conscript armies were equipped with breech-loading rifles and more powerful artillery. The battlefield of the late 1860's had become a place where close infantry formations could not survive for long in the linear formations of the past.

About this title

About the Author

Steven T. Ross

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0714646024
• ISBN 13: 9780714646022
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228