While target shooting commonly involved files of men firing
successively at marks, and the fire divisions generally practiced volleying
with squibs rather than with live ammunition, on occasion both methods were
combined. A visitor to Boston witnessed one such session in late March 1775: “I
saw a regiment and the body of Marines, each by itself, firing at marks. A
target being set up before each company, the soldiers of the regiment stepped
out singly, took aim and fired, and the firing was kept up in this manner by
the whole regiment till they had all fired ten rounds. The Marines fired by
platoons, by companies, and sometimes by files, and made some general
discharges, taking aim all the while at targets the same as the regiment.” In
New Jersey in May 1777, the battalions of the Fourth Brigade were urged to
undertake a similar exercise: “Lieutenant Colonel Mawhood recommends to the
officers commanding the several regiments of the 4th Brigade to practice the
men in firing ball by platoon[s], sub[divisions] and grand-divisions and by
battalion; and this [is] to be done by word of command and on uneven ground, so
as to accustom the men not to fire but when ordered, and not only to level but
to be taught to fire up and downhill.”
Frequent target shooting undoubtedly improved soldiers’
marksmanship, as David Harding has shown through systematic analysis of the
extensive contemporary East India Company test-firing data. Although these
impressive test results were unattainable under actual combat conditions,
repeated practice with the firelock probably did have the effect of influencing
the soldier (even subconsciously) to take more care when shooting in action.
This is what Gage probably meant when he observed at Boston in November 1774
“that the men [should] be taught to take good aim, which if they do they will
always level well.” Moreover, as Houlding has pointed out, practicing with the
firelock had other practical benefits than simply enhancing accuracy — such as
removing inexperienced men’s apprehension at firing live ammunition.
Earlier we noted that the effectiveness of troops’ musketry
in action tended to deteriorate when orchestrated volleying degenerated into an
uncontrollable “running fire.” It was therefore essential (as Cuthbertson put
it in 1768) for the officers and sergeants “to attend very particularly to the
men’s behavior during the firings; to observe if they are expert in loading,
and to oblige them to perform the whole of their business with a proper
spirit.” If British musketry was not as deadly in America as on European
battlefields, it is possible that the adoption of the formation of two ranks at
open files was partly to blame in that the dispersal of the men over a wider
frontage weakened the fire control that their officers and sergeants were able
to exert over them in combat. This theory gains credence from Thomas Anburey’s
later account of the scrambling action at Hubbardton (where he participated as
a gentleman volunteer with the grenadier battalion), which seems to suggest
that that, in combat in America, the redcoats did not always load according to
the regulation procedure: “In this action I found all manual exercise is but an
ornament, and the only object of importance it can boast of was that of
loading, firing and charging with bayonets. As to the former, the soldiers
should be instructed in the best and most expeditious method. Here I cannot
help observing to you, whether it proceeded from an idea of self-preservation,
or natural instinct, but the soldiers greatly improved the mode they were
taught in, as to expedition. For as soon as they had primed their pieces and
put the cartridge into the barrel, instead of ramming it down with their rods,
they struck the butt end of the piece upon the ground, and bringing it to the
present, fired it off.” Here Anburey’s references to “self-preservation” and
“natural instinct,” his comment that the men “fired . . . off” their pieces once they brought them to
the “present,” and the fact that he does not mention verbal commands strongly
imply that the grenadiers were loading and firing at will. In the context of
the furious, scrambling action at Hubbardton, this is not surprising. But the
fact that former sergeant Roger Lamb reproduced Anburey’s passage almost
verbatim in his memoir (though he participated in Burgoyne’s Albany expedition
as a corporal in the 9th Regiment, he was not present at Hubbardton) would tend
to suggest that he too was familiar with this corner-cutting loading technique.
While both Anburey and Lamb seem to have approved the way in
which troops achieved a higher rate of fire by spurning the ramrod and firing
at will, Anburey’s further comments reveal that at Hubbardton the combination
of haste and a lack of supervision had an undesirable side effect: “The
confusion of a man’s ideas during the time of action, brave as he may be, is
undoubtedly great. Several of the men, upon examining their muskets, after all
was over, found five or six cartridges which they were positive to the having
discharged.” Clearly the malfunction of a proportion of the men’s weapons
reduced the battalion’s volume of firepower and had major safety implications.
Yet neither Anburey nor Lamb seems to have been aware that the practice of
spurning the ramrod also significantly reduced the muzzle velocity of each
discharge. As evidence of this one should note that, during a skirmish in New
Jersey in February 1780, soldiers of the Queen’s Rangers were struck by rebel
bullets that did not penetrate their clothes. Simcoe later judged that these
rounds had been fired by militiamen “who had not recollection sufficient to ram
down their charges.”
Inadequate supervision of the loading process in action
seems to have been matched on occasion by a failure to ensure that the men
directed their fire properly. For example, according to Lieutenant Frederick
Mackenzie, during the final leg of the return march from Concord, the panicky
redcoats “threw away their fire very inconsiderately, and without being certain
of its effect.” Similarly, another officer who complained that the redcoats
returned the militia’s fire “with too much eagerness, so that at first most of
it was thrown away” laid the blame for “this improper conduct” largely at the
door of the officers, who “did not prevent [it] as they should have done.”
Significantly, after the battle of Freeman’s Farm, Burgoyne’s public censure on
his troops’ unsteady shooting went hand in hand with an avowal of the
importance of maintaining fire discipline: “[T]he impetuosity and uncertain aim
of the British troops in giving their fire, and the mistake they are still
under in preferring it to the bayonet, is much to be lamented. The Lieutenant
General is persuaded this error will be corrected in the next engagement, upon
the conviction of their own reason and reflection, as well as upon that general
precept of discipline, never to fire but by order of an officer.” Rebel
eyewitnesses frequently observed that the King’s troops customarily overshot
the enemy in action because, when they brought their pieces to the “present,”
they did not level them low enough to compensate for the kick and for any
difference in elevation between themselves and the target.
Coincidentally, the two most graphic examples of this
phenomenon concern the storming of Fort Washington. According to the
recollections of one rebel participant, when during the course of the action
his militia party discharged a few rounds at two British battalions that were
advancing in line against them, the latter
halted and began to fire on us at not more than eighty
yards distance. Their whole battalion on the right of the colors were ordered
to fire at once. I heard the words “Battalion, make ready!”; and, as few as we
were (notwithstanding their boasted discipline), when the word was given and
they came to a “recover” to cock their muskets, a considerable number went off
and were fired in the air. When the word PRESENT was given (which means “take
aim”), they fired, along the battalion as if it were a feu de joie; and when
the word FIRE was given, there was but few pieces to fire. The battalion on the
left of the colors fired much better than [that on] the right; but I do not
recollect of my attending any more of their manner of firing, though it was
very brisk for a few rounds. But at least 99 shot out of 100 went a
considerable distance over our heads. . . . While we were here engaged with the
enemy I saw [Lieutenant] Colonel [Thomas] Bull . . . ride within fifty or sixty yards of the
British along their whole front when they were firing briskly, as I supposed to
show and demonstrate to the men . . .
that there was not so much danger as they might apprehend.
The British corps in question here may have been the 42nd
Regiment. Interestingly enough, it was to a party from this corps that Captain
Alexander Graydon and a fellow rebel officer attempted to surrender later that
day, when they found that the British had cut off their retreat to the
fortress. Although ten of the Highlanders discharged their muskets at the pair
from various ranges between twenty and fifty yards, Graydon attributed the
failure of these “blunt shooters” to hit him or his companion to the fact that
the pair were ascending a considerable hill. But like Adlum, Graydon also noted
significantly, “I observed they took no aim, and that the moment of presenting
and firing, was the same.”
Nevertheless, any real disparity in the effectiveness of
British and rebel musketry in combat in America was almost certainly rooted in
other factors. One might argue that the variation in the type and quality of
the long arms utilized by the contending armies affected their performance.
Rifle-armed regulars and irregulars were to be found on both sides,
particularly in the South, where the militia employed the weapon more commonly
than is often recognized. But if the focus remains on the smoothbore muskets
that the vast majority of troops wielded, there is little evidence that either
side enjoyed a significant advantage. Houlding has shown that, while many British
regiments’ firelocks were in shockingly poor condition in peacetime, the Board
of Ordnance often issued ill-armed regiments with new weapons when they went on
active service. Indeed, the record for last-minute issues was probably that
made to the 52nd Regiment on Boston Common on the morning of 17 June 1775 —
just hours before the corps fought at Bunker Hill. As for the rebels, both
regulars and militia commonly employed old or captured British Land Pattern
pieces or locally made imitations (the “Committee of Safety” musket), while
from 1777 large numbers of imported French weapons became available. While
there is some disagreement as to the respective ballistic qualities of British
and French firelocks, it is interesting to note that, when Continental troops
at the battle of Monmouth had the opportunity to acquire the muskets of the 2nd
Battalion of Grenadiers’ dead and wounded, “[t]hey threw away their French
pieces, preferring the British.”
If probably neither side enjoyed a substantial advantage in
terms of the quality of their firelocks, the apparent disparity in the
effectiveness of British and rebel musketry may have had something to do with
ammunition. In particular, British troops appear to have been supplied with
poor-quality flints. Captain the Honorable Colin Lindsay commanded the 55th
Regiment’s grenadier company in America and during Major General Grant’s
expedition to St. Lucia, and he later noted that the British musketry at the
bloody action at the Vigie would have been even more destructive had it not
been for the number of misfires caused by “the badness of a pebble-stone”: “In
the attack, the bayonet is always a remedy for this deficiency, but to find in
a defense that one-third of your men are useless from this cause is indeed extraordinary.
. . . It was a common saying among the soldiers in America, that a Yankee flint
was as good as a glass of grog. The government flints will often fire five or
six shots very well, but they are of a bad sort of flint, and are too thick.”
As for the propellant, there are hints that the black powder supplied to the
army and navy during the American War was also of inferior quality (a problem
that was exacerbated by poor storage conditions during the transatlantic
voyage), while Henry Lee later asserted that British soldiers commonly
overcharged their cartridges. In terms of shot, rebel practice differed from
the British in that their musket cartridges customarily included (commonly
three) buckshot along with the ball; irregulars sometimes fired these loose.
While the redcoats lightheartedly styled these multiple projectiles “Yankee
peas,” they were potentially lethal at up to about fifty yards. For example,
they probably accounted for a good proportion of the approximately one hundred
casualties that Ensign George Inman estimated the 17th Regiment sustained
during its first charge at Princeton, he himself having been wounded in the
belly by a single buckshot that penetrated his leather shoulder belt.
Leaving aside differences in weaponry, several other factors
contributed to give the impression that rebel musketry was superior to that of
the redcoats. First, as in the British attack on the first rebel line at
Guilford Courthouse, it would often have been the case that the rebels simply
had more men involved in an exchange of fire, largely because the British
deployed and advanced at open files. The Hessian adjutant general in America
made this point explicitly when he reported that, at the action outside
Savannah, “the rebels at first withstood the fire of the British, who had
opened ranks [sic], but . . . they lost
their coolness when the said regiment [von Trümbach] advanced with closed front
and effectively answered their disorderly fire.” Second, one should not forget
that rebel troops on the defensive often knelt or lay down to fire behind
trees, rail fences, and walls, which provided stable firing platforms as well
as varying degrees of cover.
Finally (and perhaps most significantly), it is well known
that in conventional linear warfare a battalion’s first fire was the most
destructive. This was because the soldiers had carefully loaded this round
before the action, their barrels were clean, their flints were sharp, and their
field of vision was clear of powder smoke. This is crucial because one should
remember that the kind of “heavy though intermitting fire” that the British and
rebel centers exchanged “for near three hours” at Freeman’s Farm was not
typical of most of the war’s engagements. Indeed, whenever a genuine firefight
of even a few minutes’ duration occurred in America (as for instance at
Brandywine, Bemis Heights, Monmouth, Cowpens, Green Springs, and Eutaw
Springs), participants noted this circumstance with genuine interest. Such
prolonged exchanges were comparatively rare because (as discussed in the next
chapter) the British tended to spurn them wherever possible in favor of
dislodging the enemy quickly at the point of the bayonet. When these bayonet
rushes succeeded in their purpose (as they commonly did), rebel troops did not
have the opportunity to get off more than one or two rounds. Since these first
shots were potentially the most destructive delivered in combat, it may well be
that the historical record tends to give an inflated impression of the general
effectiveness of rebel musketry. This idea gains strength when one considers,
once again, that in the South the militia carried rifles far more commonly than
is often realized; clearly the tactic of firing and then retiring played to the
rifle’s main strength (its accuracy) while negating its principal weakness (the
time it took to load).
This idea that the general effectiveness of the rebels’
musketry has been overstated tends to gain support from the fact that, when
sustained firefights did occur, the redcoats’ musketry drew the same kind of
praise that it did against European enemies. For example, Tarleton believed
that the duel between the British line and the rebel regulars at Cowpens was
“well supported” and “equally balanced”; indeed, from an analysis of the rebel
casualties, Lawrence Babits has concluded that the 7th Regiment’s musketry must
have been especially punishing. British troops appear to have shot similarly
well at the action at Green Springs. One rebel and one British officer each wrote
of the firefight between the Pennsylvania Continentals and Lieutenant Colonel
Thomas Dundas’s brigade that the latter, “aiming very low kept up a deadly
fire,” and that many of the rebel casualties “were wounded in the lower
extremities, a proof that the young [British] soldiers had taken good aim.”
During the eighteenth century, technological advances spawned a significant increase in the volume of musketry that infantry could generate in action. This ensured that fire tactics gradually eclipsed infantry shock as the key to battlefield success. By the end of the Seven Years War, British infantry regiments had cemented their longstanding reputation for being among the most formidable practitioners of fire tactics in Europe. Yet against the shaky American rebels, Crown commanders instead relied overwhelmingly upon shock tactics to deliver quick and cheap tactical decisions. This meant that British musketry was most commonly delivered in combat in America in the form of general volleys, which the troops threw in immediately prior to the bayonet charge (rather than as regulation-style sequenced firings). When British infantry did become involved in sustained firefights, it is most likely that fire control devolved entirely to the officers commanding companies. As at Hubbardton, if these officers and their sergeants did not closely supervise the loading and leveling of weapons, the men probably did not execute these actions well, and the effectiveness of the battalion’s fire must almost certainly have suffered accordingly. Despite this, it is difficult to believe that the musketry of the generality of rebel regulars or militiaman significantly outclassed that of the King’s troops.
