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I was watching television today and suddenly saw one documentary about Syrian conflict, in which a rebel was throwing modern hand grenades with a sling above a wall and later directly on Syrian soldiers ... suddenly I got a weird idea to improve the deadliness of the European warfare in the 17th century.

It's interesting to read about historical grenades. "Grenadier" as you might expect has its origins in units that were specialized at heavy assault and the use of grenades. Grenades in the 17th and 18th century were iron balls filled with gunpowder and thus were heavier than anything we use today, so grenadiers tended to be atypically large for their time. Because hurling or rolling these iron balls of death could open breaches in enemy defensive positions or lines, grenadiers were often used for heavy assault actions. Over time the specialized grenade techniques lost importance, but grenadier as a name for regiments was kept in many armies as a traditional form, and became synonymous with "heavy assault" infantry. I looked more carefully at the first grenades and they were indeed small iron spheres filled with gunpowder fused with a length of slow-match, roughly the size of a cricket ball or a baseball, which is small. The use of a simple sling would have considerably increased their range.

I know that using a sling requires a lot of training to become effective, but we speak about elite soldiers who will take the time to train to master this weapon. The armored opponents problem is also solved, we throw explosives grenades at the enemy.

I suddenly began to imagine Royal Grenadiers slingers throwing grenades against French revolutionaries or French Grenadiers de la Garde pounding Wellington at Waterloo with such explosive devices. So my question is quite simple :

How much would warfare in Europe have changed, if those 17th century grenadiers began to use slings to throw their grenades ?
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