Quote Originally Posted by rrgg View Post
As near as I can tell accuracy was pretty similar at both the high end and low end between 16th century and napoleonic smoothbores. What's more even a typical napoleonic musket would have been accurate enough to make linear tactics pretty much suicide in the right hands. "Musket trials" from the period tend to show that a volley could hit a battalion-sized target ~50% of the time at 100 yards, but in actual combat the accuracy at that distance seems to have only been 0-5% at best.

The real issue tends to be the soldiers themselves. In a massive engagement involving 10s of thousands it turns out that very few men are actually able to keep their cool in the face of all the noise, smoke, and imminent death and even well-trained troops resort to firing as fast as they can without aiming or simply shooting into the air. This is how you end up with accounts of troops literally failing to hit anything beyond 10 yards.

There's another persistent myth that the widespread adoption of rifles during the US Civil War suddenly made napoleonic tactics obsolete. In reality most fighting was still done from around 100 yards away and the minie rifle doesn't seem to have improved practical accuracy outside of specific sharpshooters and small-scale skirmishes.

For some more data I would recommend looking up "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat
Reality and Myth" by Hess.
Yes, the tactics used and the training are factors in terms of battlefield performance. However, it's important to establish a baseline -- how accurate is the weapon under ideal conditions? Then ask how do the tactics, training, and battlefield conditions affect that. 16th century tactics and training (and probably battlefield conditions) were different from the 19th century.

The theoretical performance of the muskets across different centuries is going to be very similar. (Although I doubt a brown bess could handle a 600 grain charge) In practice, a Napoleonic soldier could only use loose fitting ammo. Whereas, a 16th century soldier might have an option. When and how often they used that option, is unknown to me.



Quote Originally Posted by rrgg View Post
Out of curiosity, can you name what book that's from? I might need to add it to my library.
It's James Lavin's A History of Spanish Firearms. I can quote the whole section about the contract if you would like.