enemy forces at Metz and Sedan, French society did not accept that verdict of defeat as
nationally decisive. What followed was in reality a second war, one wherein the Prussians
were obliged to crush enthusiastic but amateurish armies raised by patriotic Republican
politicians who appealed to the spirit of the legend of 1793: ‘la patrie en danger’. Waging
war against French civilians, both in uniform and not, the invaders were none too
discriminating in the violence they dispensed.
There is a great deal more to warfare than firepower, just as technology is only one of
war’s vital contexts. Moreover, ideas for the effective use of weapons are at least as
important as are the weapons themselves. And, always, the state of mind of the soldier
behind the gun is of greater significance than is the gun itself. Nevertheless, weapons
matter, and from the 1 8 40s to the 1910s they were changing at a rate, and with possible
implications, that challenged military comprehension and therefore military doctrine.
The primary story concerns the radical, albeit evolutionary, advances in infantry fire-
power. Those advances created what contemporaries referred to as ‘the tactical crisis’, a
condition that persisted, and was never truly resolved, from the 1 8 50s until the final year
of World War I. Technical improvements in the lethality of infantry small arms, to be
joined towards the close of the century by the novelty of the machine-gun and the
recoilless field gun, suggested that infantry could no longer take the offensive, at least
not in frontal attacks. And if soldiers could not advance in the face of modern firepower,
how could wars be won?
How far did the firepower of armies progress from the 1 8 40s to 1914? The story is
simply told, though, as always in this text, it is the strategic and ultimately the political
consequences that really matter. Box 5.1 provides a brief summary of more than sixty
years of development in infantry small arms.
Nineteenth century: technology and war 65Box 5.1The revolution in infantry firepower, 1840–1914
- Percussion capsreplaced flintlocks on muskets, thereby negating the fatal
effects of damp weather, as well as the all but proverbial ‘flash in the pan’
(1 8 30s). - Breech-loadingwas introduced, which improved the rate of fire some seven-
fold over the smooth-bore muzzle-loader, though gas leakage from the breech
remained a problem. Breech-loading allowed soldiers to reload lying down,
which had major implications for tactics (1 8 40s). - The conoidal bullet, the ‘minié ball’, was invented in the 1 8 30s, met wide-
spread acceptance in the 1 8 40s, and became the standard weapon of the
infantry in modern armies, except for the Prussian, in the 1 8 50s and 1 8 60s.
The minié rifle, or certainly the minié ball in a British Enfield rifle (1 8 51), was
a muzzle-loader that could fire two or three shots a minute. The technical
principle was that the propellant caused the hollow base of the conoidal ‘ball’
to expand and grip the rifling grooves, thereby eliminating the negative effects
of windage on both range and accuracy. The minié rifle, though still requiring
soldiers to reload standing up, was sighted up to 8 00 yards. It could be lethal
at 1,000 yards, though it was a reliable killer at only half that range. The minié