To resurrect an old thread, as well as reopening the controversial topic of infantry fire versus artillery guncrews, here is a great treatise from 2008 addressing Civil War tactics:
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html
Included in the body of this study is an interesting comment regarding the effectiveness of infantry fire upon the crews manning the artillery guns:
"We have seen that the effectiveness of rifled muskets wasn't as great as is often portrayed. So far, we haven't said much about Civil War artillery. The supposed threat that rifled muskets posed to artillerymen is
largely an illusion. Artillery units suffered lower casualty rates than the infantry, in line with experience in previous wars. New rifled artillery pieces were accurate at long range, making columns vulnerable. At ranges less than 1,000 yards, brass Napoleon guns were more useful. (Fratt 50)"
Author John Hamill continues:
"Could the increased effectiveness of Civil War era artillery help explain the tactical changes since Napoleon's time?
Perhaps advances in artillery explain why it was rare for infantry to advance in maneuver columns, and almost never with cavalry support. Prussian observer Justus Scheibert says as much;
"Americans tried the column for offense and gave it up because artillery poured murder on their columns." (Scheibert 41) The only alternative, advancing over long distances in line, was cumbersome and likely to result in confusion. Better discipline and better coordination between units was required to successfully attack in line.....For short range defense against infantry attack, the 12 pounder (Napoleon) was a great advancement from the past because a canister round from a 12 pounder not only contained more projectiles, those projectiles could be shot much further. This made the weapon much deadlier than its smaller rivals. (Eighteenth century tests showed that canister projectiles spread 32 feet per 100 yards of range.) (Hughes 35)"
Finally, Hamill concludes by stating:
"Another beneficial advance of the 12-pounder Napoleon was far and away the most important and dramatic. Before and during the Napoleonic Wars, guns, which are direct fire weapons, were limited to firing round shot or canister. Howitzers, for indirect fire at a higher trajectory, fired a shell, a hollow projectile filled with explosive detonated by a fuse which was set alight during firing. Around 1800, Henry Shrapnel invented the round that bears his name, a shell filled with powder and small round balls, a much more lethal round than the simple shell that it made obsolete. When it was invented, the shrapnel round could only be fired by howitzers, a small fraction of the artillery pieces in use. With advances in metal technology, however, and with a reduction in the powder charge from 1/3 to 1/4 of the weight of the projectile, the shrapnel round could be fired from a standard piece styled a "gun-howitzer",
the famed Napoleon gun-howitzer. Seventy eight bullets were contained in a single 12 pounder shrapnel round. (Coggins 67) No longer was the artilleryman limited to roundshot at long range.
Now he could deliver killing power said to approach that of canister at nearly a mile's range. In British peacetime experiments, around 10% of the bullets in a shrapnel round hit a target. (Hughes 38) Both enemy infantry and cavalry were made more vulnerable. Brent Nosworthy notes that during the 1859 Italian War, artillery disrupted a cavalry unit from over a mile away, preventing it from forming and attacking. Confirming that this thinking was prevalent during the Civil War, in 1865, Francis Lippitt wrote in "A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms, Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry",
Since the introduction of the new rifled arms, exposing cavalry masses to a deadly fire at far greater distances than ever before known, a fire often reaching to the reserves, it seemed doubtful whether the maneuvering and charging in heavy compact masses, which formerly
rendered cavalry of the line so formidable, would any longer be practical.
So more than any other cause, advances in artillery technology made the combined use of cavalry and infantry for decisive combat a difficult proposition.
Despite all this, many historians still believe that artillery wasn't important during the war. Casualties caused by artillery fire were negligible - or so they say. A frequently cited example is the Wilderness, where artillery was said to account for only about 6% of all casualties. Paddy Griffith points out that many casualties attributed to small arms fire may in fact have been caused by artillery, specifically by the small round balls in Shrapnel rounds. Griffith suggests that the percentage of casualties caused by artillery in this battle were probably in proportion to the percentage of artillerymen in the armies. Because of the terrain, this battle, and this result, represent an extreme case. Lee knew that he was deficient in artillery, and he fought in the Wilderness in order to negate the Union advantage. The relative ineffectiveness of artillery in this battle is clearly an aberration. Chancellorsville was also fought in the Wilderness. In this battle, perhaps only the Confederate guns at Hazel Grove allowed Lee to capture Fairview Heights and defeat the Union army. Look at Spotsylvania a year later, also fought in the Wilderness. The massive Union attack on the Mule Shoe broke through because Lee had withdrawn his artillery the night before. Several days later, a Union attack on the base of the salient failed quickly and decisively due to Confederate artillery fire. And we must remember that most ground was NOT as unfavorable as the Wilderness. Take a look at Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg and the importance of artillery is obvious. Clearly artillery was important or army commanders wouldn't have eagerly added to their stocks of guns up until the last year of the war.
In fact, Paddy Griffith suggests that in some battles, artillery accounted for 20 to 50% of casualties. Those who over-estimate the advantages of the rifled musket say that it threatened to make the artilleryman obsolete, but perhaps the opposite was more true. Although many historians do not stress this point, or even acknowledge it, advances in the artillery arm had made Napoleonic combined arms tactics difficult to impossible."
Which leads to the reasoning why SoW:GB artillery commanders advance the guns so close to the infantry lines: Simply stated, the game does not accurately reflect the effectiveness, even with the latest adjustment, of the impact of direct artillery fire at the typical Civil War ranges leading to the advanced placements of the guns in the game. The advancement of infantry columns within 1,000 yards of the frontline is historically inaccurate and does not reflect the tactics of the period, nor the ineffectiveness of artillery fire upon their massed, rank advance.
Hamill's dissertation is well-researched and documented and easily demonstrates the (in)effectiveness of Civil War tactics. I apologize for the length of this post, but I do hope that everyone will take a few minutes to read his conclusions.
J
