Calvary charge
Was using speech to text, the phone God must have a sense of humorA fortuitous typo, some might say...
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.
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.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.
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: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?
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)."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.