Line Infantry - Battlefield Obsolescence

Battlefield Obsolescence

In the years after the Napoleonic Wars, line infantry continued to be deployed as the main battle force while light infantry provided fire support and covered the movement of units. In Russia, Great Britain, France and some other states, linear tactics and formation discipline were maintained into the late 19th century (examples: Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War).

With the invention of new weaponry, the concept of line infantry began to wane. The Minié ball (an improved rifle ammunition), allowed individual infantrymen to shoot more accurately and over greatly increased range. Men walking in formation line-abreast became far too easy a target, as evidenced in the American Civil War. By the end of this conflict breech-loading rifles were adopted, which gave the individual shooter even greater increased rate of fire as well. In the 1860s most German states and Russia converted their line infantry and riflemen into the united infantry, which used rifles and skirmish tactics. After the Franco-Prussian War both the German Empire and the French Third Republic did the same. However, Great Britain retained the name "line infantry", although it used rifled muskets from 1853, breech loading rifles from 1867, and switched from closed lines to extended order during Boer wars.

The growing accuracy and rate of fire of rifles and the invention of the Gatling gun in 1862 and the Maxim machine gun in 1883 meant that close orders of line infantry would suffer huge losses before being able to close with their foe, while the defensive advantages given to line infantry against cavalry became irrelevant with the effective removal of offensive cavalry from the battlefield in the face of the improved weaponry. With the turn of the 20th Century this slowly led to infantry increasingly adopting skirmish style light infantry tactics in battle, while retaining line infantry drill for training.