Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh
Probably a stupid question, but why are they all firing at the same time? Instead of going for continuous fire, for example?
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Probably due to formations being trained to fire in volley to make sure they hit at least something with the extremely inaccurate muskets of the era. Some units would rotate the lines so that a group with loaded muskets and a line of sight would shoot while the other line was reloading. Those that don't have that sort of training would go for volley fire. If I remember correctly.
And it takes time to reload a musket.
As rifling became more common and accuracy increased, you could afford more continuous fire as the mini-balls and bullets would actually hit their targets more often at better ranges.