Existing comment:
The Minie-Ball: A Rifle Bullet Creates a Revolution:
-- "... the musket is the queen of weapons..." -- General Thomas Williams - Commandery of Wisconsin -- 1891
When French Army Captain Claude E. Minie developed a new type of bullet in 1849, he probably did not foresee the dramatic effects that his invention would have on warfare. But Minie's bullet, known commonly as the Minie-ball, allowed soldiers to fire rifle-muskets upon enemy forces at greater ranges and with much greater accuracy than the smoothbore firearms used since the eighteenth century.
The increased range and accuracy of Civil War rifle-muskets enhanced the defensive power of rifle-armed infantrymen. Massed frontal assaults against infantry became suicidal. After the introduction of rifle-muskets, the cavalry was forced to the fringes of major actions and artillery was driven to the rear and flanks of a battlefield because the gun crews and horsemen now presented such easy targets. In the latter stages of the war, both sides dug extensive trench systems to provide cover from the deadly power of improved rifles and bullets. This foreshadowed the trench warfare of World War I.
The infantryman armed with a rifle-musket dominated virtually all of the important engagements of the Civil War and brought citizen-soldiers, who were primarily infantrymen, into the forefront of military activities. The coupling of mass infantry tactics, inherited from the days of Napoleon, with the modern rifle-musket contributed to the tremendous battlefield casualties of the Civil War. |