this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Napoleonic tactics worked fairly well in the 19th century. Mixed results in mid to late-19th.
It’s when they tried to apply them to WW1 that the body counts got ridiculous.
It’s my understanding that they really didn’t. The American Revolution was won in part because the Americans more often “adopted Native tactics” (I.e. attacking from tree lines, on paths on unsuspecting units moving from place to place, aiming for officers, etc).
The big Napoleonic blocks were done, but often just out of honor and so officers had some sense of “control” over the battle so they could both easily pull out before it descended into a large brawl where they might actually be killed
Coordination is essential to any military action. The better you can coordinate your actions, the greater the objectives you can achieve.
When your ability to coordinate is limited to the distance that people can hear a drum or a trumpet, you're not capable of coordinating across any area larger than a few city blocks. You're a sitting duck against any massed troops, unless you also mass enough troops to stop them from marching right through you.
Small unit tactics are largely ineffective against massed troops until the invention of the telegraph, 30-40 years after the revolution.
They didn't use guerrilla tactics against massed formations. They used them against the British supply lines, and they were effective at it.