re: #300 Holidays are Family Fun Time

gattling gun?

Minie ball making muzzle-loaded rifles work better. Plus the beginning of effective breech-loading rifles.

The smooth-bores had an effective range of 75-100m. Thus the nice Napoleonic tactic of bringing out artillery, massing it about 150-200m off and blowing the crap out of infantry formations. (If you had cavalry about as a threat you could force the infantry into square as well to make an even better target.)

The Minie ball allowed accurate fire of rifle-muskets out to 250-400m. That invalidated the old artillery tactic, and also allowed the infantry to decimate cavalry formations from farther away as well. IIRC, the ACW was the last war where infantry fire caused the majority of the battle casualties.

The tech change made a lot of cavalry variants somewhat obsolete beyond the mobility factor for scouting and using the horse as essentially getting an infantryman to a location (dragoons). Until armored cars and tanks came along 50 years later. The artillery adapted by going rifled as well so they could stand off outside rifle range. All of which led towards the linear (line) tactics breaking up into much looser formations since concentrated targets were bad and you no longer needed tight formations to generate concentrated fire yourself. Which then generated issues with command and control since soldiers were getting out of the range of immediate shouted orders and officers running around (or gathered obviously around a regimental flag) made very good targets.)