Quote Originally Posted by Storm Bringer View Post
it was standard practice, but, firing on command didn't work, mainly because the troops, in the heat of battle, didn't hold their fire once given permission to start shooting. "hat tended to happen was the officer would give the order to start shooting, then every man would just start loading and firing at his own best pace, rather than loading and waiting for the officer to order the next volley (ie it became fire at will).


its not hard to understand the reasons why a man, under fire, with a loaded weapon, would think it stupid to wait until the last man in his unit was loaded before he shot. the officers in the field didn't try to control this behaviour, partly because it wasn't really possible to stop it without breaking unit cohesion, but moreso because they wanted the unit to generate as much fire as possible, and volley fire was always as slow as the slowest loading man, so it made tactical sense to just let the troops fire at will.
Out of curiosity, how does this mesh with the countermarch (ie the front rank retreats to reload) and firing by ranks? Did they result in a best of both worlds (ie rapid fire with fire discipline) or the worst (poor rate of fire and poor unit cohesion)?