Peloton fire

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The so-called peloton fire (English platoon fire ) was a fire drill of the line infantry in the military . During this drill, no massed volleys of the entire battle line were given, but the infantry shot into smaller groups (mostly in pelotons ), alternating, each closed with a musket volley , giving the impression of a "rolling fire".

This procedure ensured a constant bombardment of the enemy, which caused problems in particular for the large French columns in the Napoleonic wars , who did not use the peloton fire and were mowed down by the constant hail of bullets.

history

The peloton fire was introduced by the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf and is said to have been used for the first time in 1631 at the Battle of Breitenfeld . Soon it was taken over by the Dutch as well as German armies and in the 1660s by the officer and Drill Master Jean Martinet in the Kingdom of France introduced.

The British Army probably took over the peloton fire in the 18th century from the Prussians , who had used it for a long time in combination with linear tactics in the army, and drilled almost all of their infantry in it. Wellington earned many victories in the Peninsular War . It is viewed by some historians as a crucial factor in the superiority of the British troops who later defeated Napoleon Bonaparte along with the Prussians at the Battle of Waterloo .

At the latest with the dissolution of linear tactics and the introduction of the machine gun , peloton fire became superfluous.

execution

Different versions of the peloton fire are known. In the simplest variant, the unit at the edge of the army began to fire a volley. Shortly afterwards the peloton next to it fired a volley, then the third and so on, until it was possible to start again at the beginning, since the first group had now reloaded. In the Austrian army, on the other hand, the volleys were fired alternately from the two wings towards the center, with eight pelotons in the order 1, 8, 2, 7, 3, 6, 4, 5. In France, the reverse order was usually chosen so started in the middle.

In the Prussian army , the even-numbered and odd-numbered pelotons shot alternately. The tactics of the infantry of the imperial army was noteworthy , in which one unit of the advancing army always did not fire, but stood by as a fire reserve.

commitment

Under combat conditions, however, the well-ordered volley fire quickly dissolved into disordered single fire. Only really well trained troops were able to maintain fire away from the training areas after several salvos at the same time. The complicated loading processes of the muskets of the time, combined with the immense psychological stress and physical exertion - the firing soldiers were mostly exposed to enemy fire themselves - meant that the muskets were no longer fired synchronously, let alone loaded. In the heat of the moment, many soldiers also forgot to correctly observe the loading process, so that some muskets did not fire at all. Also, especially after long fire fights, powder residues in the weapons meant that muskets clogged or flints in the gun taps had to be replaced.

The effect of the peloton fire was above all a psychological one. When a unit was faced with a well-drilled troop that was not deterred by enemy fire and was like a machine with steady salvos that created a constant hail of bullets, it often lost courage and turned to flee.

As recently as 1831, Friedrich Greven advocated the use of peloton fire against cavalry, which was to be permanently under fire, while concentrated line fire against infantry had a significantly higher, also psychological effect.

popularity

literature

  • Johann Gottfried von Hoyer : History of the art of war from the first use of gunpowder for war use up to the end of the eighteenth century. Volume 2, Issue 1, Johann Georg Kosenbusch, Göttingen 1800, p. 99.
  • Peloton. In: Real Encyclopedia for the Educated Estates. Conversations Lexicon. Volume 11, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1867, p. 490 ( online ).
  • Wilhelm von Reinöhl: The development of the fire tactics of the infantry. In: Organ of the Military Scientific Associations , LXVIII. Volume (1904), pp. 1–33, especially p. 8 ( online )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David G. Chandler : The art of war on land. In: John S. Bromley (Ed.): The New Cambridge Modern History. Volume 6: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia, 1688–1715 / 25. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07524-6 , pp. 741–762, here p. 748 ( online )
  2. Julian Pagnet: Wellington's Peninsular War - Battles and Battlefields. Leo Cooper, London 1996, ISBN 0-85052-603-5 .
  3. ^ Rory Muir: Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1998, ISBN 978-0-300-08270-8 , pp. 77 f.
  4. ^ Friedrich Greven: Lectures on the most important branches of war science . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1831 ( google.com [accessed October 29, 2015]).