Say you had a Napoleonic-era regiment of infantry who'd run out of ammo or whose powder had got wet, and who therefore had to rely on just their bayonets to defend themselves against enemy cavalry. Would they be able to do so, or would muskets and bayonets be too short to adequately defend them without musket fire to back them up?
How effective would bayonets alone be at stopping a cavalry charge?
- Thread starter Fabius Maximus
- Start date
There's examples of counter-charges formations with bayonets : with a disciplined enough infantry it could work (especially if it rains IIRC) and prevent cavalry to progress (but with few casualties as in the Battle of Katzbach).
But it was generally (and efficiently) countered with lancers, whom reach is greater, thrusting the ranks and allowing the rest of the cavalry to get in.
But it was generally (and efficiently) countered with lancers, whom reach is greater, thrusting the ranks and allowing the rest of the cavalry to get in.
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With bayonets only, infantry was able to stop the charge, but it was not enough AFAIK to break it and inflict losses : it was more of a case where neither side could damage the other significantly.
Well the difference would be that a pike is between 3 and 7 meters long, whereas a rifle is generally only 26 inches long (.66 meters). So it would be more like a spear square, which means cavalry will still be close enough to potentially strike you, and even if you do manage to kill a horse or a rider they're going to be right on top of you, and in all probability their momentum will carry them forward and crush you.
Theoretically, though I was wondering whether they'd be long enough. After all, armies of the early modern period used pikes as a counter to cavalry, and I'm not sure why they'd need to do so if shorter polearms would do the job equally well.
Napoleonic muskets were quite a bit longer than modern infantry rifles. Just based on looking at old pictures of soldiers, I'd guess that the average rifle + musket combo would come to maybe 1.6 metres or so in length.
RightHoJeeves
Banned
If the infantry square is out of ammo or powder couldn't the cav just bypass them and let advancing infantry/artillery destroy them?
Fair, though it still won't be quite so effective as a true pike. But probably still fairly effective.
Not necessarily : if aligned and formed well enough, they can be a relatively problematic tactical obstacle until you call the lancers to open the can and, admittedly, at this point infantry can be effectively destroyed with very important losses.
Unsupported cav could be defeated as long as the unit has time to form square. However with no fire (and no support for the Inf) there's no reason that the cav can't just wait for some inf/art to either smash the square or force them into line/column and charge. There's actually a good description of something quite like that where a regiment of Scots is all but destroyed after a horde of Maratta cav and European-style infantry pin them down when they go too far to one flank in one of the Sharpe books.
Marc
Donor
Assuming that the cavalry lack missile weapons, they wouldn't try to attack infantry armed with bayonet spears that can't be outflanked. Unless they heavily outnumbered the foot soldiers, and even then, while cavalry commanders weren't the brightest candles, they weren't that dim.
It would be a slaughter of horses gutted on bayonets - you do know that they were the primary targets. Hell, even without the stabbings, horses would be stumbling, twisting, colliding with each other at first contact, a bloody wreckage.
It's nothing like the fantasy of film. If you want a touch of the nightmare, do a Google video search of horse race accidents involving multiple mounts.
Frontal charges against a prepared defense are just about insane; in most wars.
It would be a slaughter of horses gutted on bayonets - you do know that they were the primary targets. Hell, even without the stabbings, horses would be stumbling, twisting, colliding with each other at first contact, a bloody wreckage.
It's nothing like the fantasy of film. If you want a touch of the nightmare, do a Google video search of horse race accidents involving multiple mounts.
Frontal charges against a prepared defense are just about insane; in most wars.
It was attempted tough, if cautiously (taken from Jean-Baptiste Marbot's account, itself from Les Tactiques de la Cavalerie Française 1805-1814)
In particularly ridiculous [circumstances] as we looked each other in the eyes without inflicting any losses, our sabers being too short to reach foes whom rifles couldn't fire. The 6th Regiment of Lancers, whom long lances outreached ennemy's bayonets, killed in one instant a lot of Prussians [...] allowing [...] mounted riflemen to enter the ennemy square, where our cavalrymen did an horrific slaughter.
Here is a historical example of just that, on a large scale. Pretty much what you asked for to the letter. The infantry gets slaughtered. Repeatedly - in squares and out of them, under canister fire and simply by cavalry action, Guard or raw recruit. On the other hand the combination of such heavy advantage in cavalry like the Allies had, AND the really heavy rain, seems like a rare scenario.
A pike is 12 to 16 feet long, most of which is set ahead of the infantryman. A musket with a bayonet in contrast has a comparable effective range to a man with a sabre, and is easily outreached by a Napoleonic lance. Hardly the same thing.
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Not really. The timing of the volley was essential in defeating a cavalry attack; standard procedure was for two squadrons to draw fire from two faces of the square, then the rest of the cavalry would smash into the corner. Good warhorses can pull of some incredible feats; French gendarmes once rode into a swiss pike square and out the other side, for instance.
The Battle of Dresden in 1813 is another good example; focusing Murat's cavalry on the Allies' left wing, the French horse was able to ride over Austrian infantry who were bereft of fire.
Good of you to bring up Dresden: even the losing Allied cavalry managed to break into French squares in the rain, but was in the end driven back by large numbers of infantry.
I mean, that's 16th c. Gendarmes, but I'd like to add that once they bumped their way through the pikes, they turned right around and charged in again, and kept doing it all day until reinforcements decided the battle elsewhere.
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Marc
Donor
I take it back, one can not ever underestimate how dim cavalry officers were...
(Note that quote speaks of mounted riflemen, dragoons, penetrating the square - my comment was directed towards both sides lacking firepower)
In Fabius' original scenario, it's raining heavily and I imagine that the carbines are as useless as the infantry muskets. In any case, you find all sorts of cavalry, French and Allied, smashing into infantry that cannot counter with fire: lancers, cuirassiers, carbiniers (not much firepower on any of those), cossacks, kalmycks, cheveaux-legers, dragoons and even simply hussars. This happens throughout the campaigns of 1813-14.
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FillyofDelphi
Banned
The trick is getting them to stand and take it in a tight, unmoving formation while they're getting struck with a hail of bullets without the ability to fire back. Unit cohesion/morale while out in the open is going to be next to impossible to realistically maintain without the right training, and unlike the pikemen of old a Napoleonic infantry weren't prepared in that way