re: #178 FemNaziBitch

Impetus was the wrong word. I guess I don’t know the right word. The Civil War was the “time” or the economic reason that things came together for the gattling gun to be produced.

That would fit. There are constant developments in military hardware being played and experimented all the time. A “new” conflict brings a sudden influx of interest and funding into the picture and leads to evolutionary or revolutionary tech getting tried out and possibly adopted on a much quicker cycle.

Besides Gatlings gun getting use in the ACW (and thus being displayed for other military nations to consider) there was also considerable development with breech-loading rifles, breech-loading cannon, and the final realization that rifled cannon were the death knell of masonry-based fortifications. (Much like the cannon itself was the doom of the old-style castle.)

And the firepower and increased range of rifled weapons were the end of the line tactics (with some variation) that had been the norm for European warfare for a few centuries.

John Keegan’s _The Face of Battle_ is a short study in a number of battles in Europe and compares scale, tactics, unit interactions, etc. A good start in looking at these sort of things.

amazon.com