With a POD before the Napoleonic Wars, how is it possible for wars to still rely on formations of massed muskets?
Have something cause a failure of the American Revolution (which essentially first let Guerillas loose upon a formation army) and cause Britain to fail economically before the 1820s.
Just a simple billions of lives never created...
1) rule out rifled guns
smooth bore guns are less effective an you need a lot of them to make their fire effective
2) make some cavalry-based country more succesful (othman, austrian, maybe south russian).
with more cavalry to confront, infantry must remain in their squares.
3) make nationalis less effective. less motivated amies must rely on compact units not to rout
1) rule out rifled guns
smooth bore guns are less effective an you need a lot of them to make their fire effective
Supposing someone doesn't get the idea that rifling guns will make them more accurate?
I've not got my copy of From Waterloo to Balaklava with me, but certainly by the 1840s the British army had indicated that all soldiers would in future be expected to act both as line infantry and skirmishers. I can't remember when exactly the Prussians introduced their schwarm tactics, but it's clear that even before the introduction of smokeless powder and machine guns, massed formations are on the way out except for extremely inexperienced or unreliable troops (Austrians in 1866, Union and Confederacy in the Civil War, etc.)
Sorry, I've caused some confusion by being too lazy to quote. I was responding to the idea that it was smokeless powder and the machine gun which killed off formation warfare. In practice it's dying some time before that. It's not even the introduction of the Minie ball and the improvement of accuracy from a few hundred yards to half a mile and beyond that does it, because the British are urging light infantry practice on their troops while they've still got the P1839 percussion musket.Could a Pre-Napoleonic POD help?
Perhaps approach the problem from the opposite side? What if defensive technologies against rifle fire (e.g. the sort of armor US troops wear presently) were refined and perfected earlier? This would put more of a premium on shock and melee, which favors formations. Perhaps skirmishers and snipers would be used against artillery.