What if any country mass equipped breech loading muskets in Napoleonic Era?

I had discussed with some friends before, if any country equipped a rifle that can fire 6-8 rounds per minute and had the same accuracy and stopping power in 100 metres, how much difference would made on the battlefield?
 
In the Napoleonic era Army's wind up in shot on each over over an open field.
Breach holders fire roughly three times as fast as a muzzleloader. The army with muzzleloaders would have a serious force multiplier. God help anyone stupid enough to do I frontal Calvary charge against breechloading rifles.
 

Kaze

Banned
The problem with breach loaders at the time is that there were several problems - the breach itself and putting the load in. The bullets at the time were still fired with loose gun power so that the bullet would dirty up the barrel and hit the target. The breach would have to be cleaned out after every other shot which reduces firing rate and might cause the lead slug to jam in the barrel or misfire killing the user of the breech-loader. A better way to do it was the latter development of the bullet - the load of black-powder, a percussion cap, and slug is all placed within a small metal tube - the trigger is pulled the percussion cap fires the black powder ejecting the slug out of the metal tube down and out of the barrel towards the target. Then you remove the metal tube and fire again. This is how modern guns work today - the metal tube filled with a slug, a percussion cap, and a propellant. The problem is that the metal tube system would have to be invented to be viable in the Napoleonic era, at the time they had yet to develop the percussion cap.
 
I'd recommend a through read on the Ferguson breach loader. There are many descriptions of it, so read several as they are spotty on details.

Tactics matter here. Issuing breech loaders to regiments trained in column & deep rank tactics would negate the advantages. The Brits use of rapid fire musketry and two rank lines were parts of a package, a system.
 
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One of the problems with this is that with black powder you can rarely fire more than 20-30 shots before the gun needs cleaning - black powder leaves a lot of residue, and it builds up. A breechloaded with paper cartridges may have a much higher rate of fire for a while, but not being able to fire due to the risk of the gun bursting in your hands is a huge liability on the battlefield.
 
There's a number of problems with mass use of breechloaders:
  • Expense: These guns are far more expensive than Muskets.
  • Reliability: These guns were less reliable than traditional muskets.
  • Ammunition: One objection to BLs were that they would deplete ammo stocks far faster than MLs. A rapid rate of fire means you would run out of ammo far faster.
 
One of the points about 18th Century combat is soldiers seldom fired a dozen shots per day. The Brits using Moore's tactics might let off two dozen in a few minutes. I can't recall what Ferguson's battalion average was in combat.
 
Also, manufacturability, cost and reliability in field conditions just aren't there yet.

The Brits, with lots of money, and the most advanced industry in the world, might be able to equip a specialist unit with them. Probably no other nation could do that much.

The tech and industrial base just wasn't there. You'd need a PoD probably a century earlier to push usable breechloaders forward that much.

Now, Minié muskets, or equivalent, COULD have been introduced much, much earlier than OTL.

Of course, having the industry to equip all your infantry with rifles is something few nations could manage at the time.
 
The problem with breach loaders at the time is that there were several problems - the breach itself and putting the load in. The bullets at the time were still fired with loose gun power so that the bullet would dirty up the barrel and hit the target. The breach would have to be cleaned out after every other shot which reduces firing rate and might cause the lead slug to jam in the barrel or misfire killing the user of the breech-loader. A better way to do it was the latter development of the bullet - the load of black-powder, a percussion cap, and slug is all placed within a small metal tube - the trigger is pulled the percussion cap fires the black powder ejecting the slug out of the metal tube down and out of the barrel towards the target. Then you remove the metal tube and fire again. This is how modern guns work today - the metal tube filled with a slug, a percussion cap, and a propellant. The problem is that the metal tube system would have to be invented to be viable in the Napoleonic era, at the time they had yet to develop the percussion cap.

I don't think metal cartridges would be necessary -- at any rate, the early breechloaders (Chassepot, Dreyse, etc.) mostly used paper, and they don't seem to have had a problem with killing their users.
 
Now, Minié muskets, or equivalent, COULD have been introduced much, much earlier than OTL.

Of course, having the industry to equip all your infantry with rifles is something few nations could manage at the time.
The problem with Rifled Muzzle Loaders using Minié balls is that they had lower muzzle velocities that comparable smoothbores (this was learned via firing tests). Guns like this could be in service sooner, but these weapons would be limited to specialist skirmisher units with marksmanship training.
 
The problem with Rifled Muzzle Loaders using Minié balls is that they had lower muzzle velocities that comparable smoothbores (this was learned via firing tests). Guns like this could be in service sooner, but these weapons would be limited to specialist skirmisher units with marksmanship training.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Weren't rifled muzzle loaders with minie balls exactly what most armies gave their infantry of the line in the 1840s and '50s?
 
I'm not sure I follow you here. Weren't rifled muzzle loaders with minie balls exactly what most armies gave their infantry of the line in the 1840s and '50s?
I've recently been re-reading Brent Nosworthy's The Bloody Crucible of Courage (about weapons and tactics of the American Civil War); the early chapters discuss pre-war development of various weapons and tactics used during the war. From the book:
"When one takes a closer look at the history of the rifle musket, however, one is forced to conclude that the American Revolution's influence on the weapon's development was limited to the British army and in many respects represented an evolutionary cul-de-sac that abruptly ended with the close of the Napoleonic Wars. The real impetus that stimulated the French to develop a more effective rifle came from North Africa. Although the story of the Algerian Wars (1830-47) might appear to have little connection to the American Civil War, this conflict was actually one of the great military watersheds of the nineteenth century. There are several reasons sons why a study of the French military experience in Algeria in this present work is necessary. The entire doctrinal system contained within Casey's Infantry Tactics and Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics originated with the French infantry's experiences in North Africa, and these were but translations of a work utilized by French chasseurs and Zouaves. When, during the first months of the Civil War, seemingly countless volunteer organizations donned exotic, loose-fitting garb with baggy red trousers, they were merely emulatingthe dress of the feared native soldiers in French service during the colonial wars. Today, when a U.S. Marine recruit at Parris Island is forced to climb rope walls and scamper over obstacles, he is following a training regimen first devised for the fierce Algerian fighters. Probably the greatest impact of the Algerian Wars, however, was the effect it had on shoulder arms. The American Springfield rifle musket and its British cousin, the Enfield, were by far the most common small arms carried by the Civil War infantry. The development of the original version of these weapons in France between 1830 and 1846 is thus the story of not only the origin of both Enfield and Springfield rifles but also that of the military philosophy and doctrine that surrounded these weapons."

Brent Nosworthy. The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 333-344). Kindle Edition.
My point is that if someone had proposed the cylindro-conoidal bullet earlier that 1832, even if the British Ordnance Department did not reject it, they would not equip all line troops with RMLs but limit it to skirmishers and specialists (no sense wasting all those Brown Bess muskets).
 
Breach loading firearms have been around a long time. Mostly as expensive custom made firearms in the early days of firearms. The big problem is sealing the breach from gas leakage. Something that today's brass case ammunition eliminates. Sharps produced a falling block rifle that used paper cartridges in which the block would shear off the end of the paper cartridge exposing the enclosed power. Breach sealing was an issue. And this was with much better machinery of the 1850s. Mass produced breach loadrs in the first decade of the 1800s. I seriously doubt it
 
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