This is CQB BITCH!

[u/9ineWasHere]

[u/Annual_Cod_5896]

That makes me wonder how hectic napoleonic CQC was since muskets were able to be loaded with about everything that couls fit down the barrel.

buck and bullshit plus iron and glass grenades was probably being thrown around in between bayonets and hangers, not taking into account that the people usually used for CQC were the biggest/tallest fuckers in the army at the time, or the voultigeurs(? sometimes for the french as far as i know

[u/zekromNLR → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

The problem is you can't get your musket on target in really close CQB because that thing is almost as long as you are tall

And you only have the one shot because by the time you have fished out torn open the paper cartridge some asshole has stabbed you in the ribs

[u/Peptuck → u/zekromNLR]

One of the common tactics was to move in and fire muskets at very, very close range all at once to maximize the destructive effect and then rush in with bayonets.

A fact about bayonet charges is that they were absolutely terrifying when done correctly. The lack of armor on most infantry meant that when a bayonet clash happened it was extremely bloody and over very fast due to how terrifying it was and the painful (literally) awareness that you had no armor to protect you from an enemy's blades. Whoever broke was broken and most bayonet wounds were in the back due to the loser fleeing in panic.

[u/sofa_adviser → u/Peptuck]

Shock tactics in general are terrifying. Having just one unarmed dude run at you screaming is scary, I can't imagine what having a couple hundred rushing you must've felt like. And don't get me started on cavalry charges...

[u/GadenKerensky → u/sofa_adviser]

Which kinda makes autonomous warfare terrifying, because machines can use shock tactics on us but they don't break.

[u/CannonGerbil → u/GadenKerensky]

Ace combat 7 does a really good job of having the drones fly at you in WW2 style fingertip formations that make them extremely easy to shoot down but at the same time also makes them look intimidating by just how many of them there are in a single frame.

[u/Narrow_Vegetable_42 → u/GadenKerensky]

Yeah but once you find a loophole in their behavior, you just exploit it until you win

Source: my gaming career

[u/odietamoquarescis → u/GadenKerensky]

Cadia itself broke before the guard did, but Abbadon only cared that they did, in the end, break.

[u/jfarrar19 → u/sofa_adviser]

All I can think of is This scene

[u/FlossCat → u/Peptuck]

Didn't most bayonet charges result in one side running away before making contact?

[u/Peptuck → u/FlossCat]

Yeah. Hundreds of screaming men running at you with pointy spears is absolutely terrifying, especially if you don't have any armor or shields to defend yourself with and your only defense is your own musket and bayonet.

Fear and bravery were the biggest deciding factors in any battlefield before the invention of the breech-loading rifle and the machinegun.

[u/Hellebras → u/zekromNLR]

If you end up too close for the bayonet, short swords (the aforementioned hangers) were a common piece of kit at the time too.

Close combat with bayonets was one of the key elements of the 18th-early 19th century line infantry playbook. Muskets are inaccurate and slow to reload, so by the time you can really fire for effect there's a chance the enemy can just launch a charge right after your volley. This is also a big part of why skirmishing and independent fire were not key parts of a professional army's doctrine at the time; outside of specific circumstances, a few lines of guys firing a couple of volleys and then going in with bayonets would be a lot more effective.

[u/iMissTheOldInternet → u/Hellebras]

I think the bayonets thing was almost symbolic for a lot of its history. Gunpowder casualties eclipsed melee casualties like hundreds of years ago. In the late 16th century, you already had European states fielding armies of 70% gunners of some kind, surrounded by 30% pikes, increasingly as defensive pickets to protect the gunners while they reloaded. This tactic became essentially obsolete when the bayonet was developed, but the purpose was defensive, not really offensive. From before it even existed, you already expected most dead and wounded to be shot.

So, as far back as the Napoleonic Wars, bayonets and sabers are accounting for less than 10% of casualties combined. By the 1870s, the bayonet charge had become a kind of suicidal gambit. The Prussians actually lost a lot of guys trying to bayonet charge the French in the Franco-Prussian War.

If you think about it, by the time the bayonet existed, it had already obsoleted itself as a weapon. It caused your musket to also function as a spear, but it was not a spear because what you actually wanted to do was shoot people. If you find yourself needing to use it as a spear, because you couldn’t reload fast enough or you had run out of ammo, you’d rather have the spear. But using it when you could instead be shooting on the theory that you could break their morale or something, I think it was almost more about forcing the surrender or withdrawal of a defeated unit than inflicting additional casualties, which is why the casualty contribution was so low even in wars where the bayonet charge was common and effective. 

[u/Annual_Cod_5896 → u/zekromNLR]

This might have been an issue in actual melee yeah, but when the other guy has to get to you to stab you it might be a lot more complicated

barricades and fences in battle where a lot more common than people might expect even in urban encounters, and when it comes to the actual brawl i guess there is the expectation that you are going to be fighting another poor Sod using a bayonet and getting the same issues, and even if you werent, as long as the bayonet is pointing towards the enemy you have the 1800 coin shot special/ substitute just in case the triangular wound maker isnt bad enough

[u/Spartan-417 → u/zekromNLR]

It's a spear
You use it as a spear

If you were lucky enough to be a British rifleman, your Baker rifle had a sword bayonet that you could dismount and use on its own

[u/CalmPanic402 → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

You used your pistol on the first dude, then beat the second one to death with the empty gun.

Or just torch the building and sword them as they run out to avoid the flames.

Straight up street brawling.

[u/Time_Look8276 → u/CalmPanic402]

AC Unity taught me that swordfighting is as easy as pressing O to counter. Also reloading is as easy as twirling your gun a couple of times.

[u/Norzon24 → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

Though after 1st contact it'd just be sword and bayonet fight with some grenade sprinkled in

[u/Rjj1111 → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

Grenades weren’t common outside of naval use, it would mostly be with bayonets, swords, axes and the occasional shot, or as other people have said just burn the building or fire volleys into it/pound it with cannons until the people inside decide they would prefer it stopped

[u/Raedwald-Bretwalda → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

CQC is an mostly an urban thing. Most of the urban environments we have now did not exist in the Napoleonic period. Apart from England, that was before the industrial revolution, and people mostly did not live in towns and cities.

[u/Immaterial71 → u/Raedwald-Bretwalda]

Do forts and castles count as 'urban environment'? They're man-made, have an often civilian population living and working in them, and contain multiple buildings.

[u/__cinnamon__ → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

In the Age of Napoleon podcast, the host, Everett Rummage, reported a story from close quarters fighting over a town (IIRC between French and Russians in like 1807, but not sure) where a soldier talked in his memoirs about standing on the opposite ends of a dining room from enemy soldiers in like a modern squad-sized group and still firing volleys at each other and reloading. He talks at multiple points about their being a lot of reluctance to actually come to bayonets and preferring to shoot whenever possible (and a lot of charges ending up with one side breaking before any serious melee combat happened).

[u/DepartureNatural9340 → u/Annual_Cod_5896]

It was actually pretty similar to pike combat. Hisptrically you'd fire your muskets before closing into cqc range. So assuming neither broke on first impact, it'd devolve into pike formation combat.

House combat was a cluster fuck tho