Some new Nap French sculpts!

[WeeWars]

I'm amazed they aren't out already. They must be the single most popular Napoleonic troop-types ever.

The Emperor will be sighting the Nassau troops before his escort arrives on the field of Waterloo.

[Leon026]

I think all armies of the period fired at will as soon as possible unless using the tactic of a battalion volley at close range followed by a charge.

The French method varied by corps commander but it seems the most favoured method was a fire by files where the fire started at the left, right or both ends of a line and each file fired in succession to give a constant rolling fire. The theory was that once this broke down into individual fire it gave the best coverage of continuous fire across a battalion frontage.

The dynamics of musketry changed quite a lot between 1700 and 1815.

As far as I know, didn't they fire by platoon?

Would love to see some variety in skirmishing figures too - kneeling, loading, running, etc

[Zippee]

As far as I know, didn't they fire by platoon?

Peleton not platoon; effectively what we usually call companies, which were actually administrative building blocks. On campaign the battalions would be divided into 8, later 6 equal peletons so that evolutions worked properly. They did this as often as necessary to take account of losses.

Firing was usually either by peleton, file or individual - not as far as I know by rank. That was an old method back in the SYW. Though I think it was still used whilst in square (which would be twice as many ranks deep as a line anyway) as it preserved an entire volley/face.

But the most efficious form of fire was by file as a rolling volley, timed correctly each peleton would be constantly firing a part of its front. Usually though this quickly deteriorated into individuals firing as fast as possible.

The British maintained better fire discipline and avoided that deterioration, thus giving rise to the mystique of superior musketry.