Hello, It has always struck me how many casualties were involved in the Napoleonic Wars, and how important incremental technological improvements were in warfare at the time.
My query is, how would an Army from the early French Revolutionary War in 1792 fare against an army at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 ?
Which were the most significant technological breakthroughs that were made during this period of time, that were destined to give an army the edge in battle ?
Thank you,
In terms of technology unfortunately there was not too much change, the armies of the Napoleonic wars still used the same old Pattern muskets as they did at the start of the war for the most part(Foreign muskets would sometimes. Be Issued to various armies such as one instance where several thousand British Brown Bess muskets were issued to numerous Russian elite Guard units), as well as the same varieties of artillery. There were some experimental new weapons used like experimental rifles and Artillery rounds but they could not make a serious impact on the war.
What did change Drastically were the tactics and the ability to handle logistics, more than anything.
If you took a French revolutionary army and pitted it against a same size French army like the one at Waterloo, they'd still probably be at the same tech level, but the Waterloo army would crush the Revolutionary army from sheer experience(Few veterans in the revolutionary army), tactics(Waterloo army which although recently has been pumped up by new recruits to account for losses in Russia was still formidable and had 10 years of tactical knowledge behind it), and probably most importantly logistics, as the Revolutinary armies of France were notoriously underequipped at times during the early stages of the Revolutionary wars.