Quote Originally Posted by Storm Bringer View Post
as Haighus mentioned, they needed the length, plus the shorter barrelled carbine type guns were even less accurate than the "shotgun with only one ball" spread of a regular musket.

also, the standard formation was only 3 ranks deep anyway, precisely to maximise the amount of shooters. 90% of the time, if you see a reference in a battle to a "column" of men that is 10-12 ranks deep and 30-40 men wide, normally, it is a column formed by three or four 3 deep lines "stacked" close to one another, which was supposed to deploy into a line before contact and thus bring every musket to bear.
If they moved in a column and then spread out when they got in range, didn't the time it took them to get into a line cause them to take a lot of fire from the enemy they were now in range of?