Napoleonic tactics

Napoleonic tactics describe certain battlefield principles used by national armies from the late 18th century until the invention and adoption of the rifled musket in the mid 19th century. Napoleonic tactics are characterized by intense drilling of the soldiers; speedy battlefield movement; combined arms assaults between infantry, cavalry, and artillery; relatively small numbers of cannon; short-range musket fire; and bayonet charges. Napoleon I is considered by military historians to have been a master of this particular form of warfare. Military powers would continue to employ such tactics even as technological advancements during the Industrial revolutions gradually rendered them impractically obsolete, leading to devastating losses of life in the American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War and the First World War.