A contraption on wheels, somewhat like an ox cart, but with sloped metal plates for armour, and a single small cannon loaded with cannister shot, and pushed by one or two men inside it, protected by the armour plates.
They wouldn’t be very fast, but if their armour were sloped, they could be able to withstand musket-fire. Exactly like modern tanks, they would be massed into one sector of the battlefield.
They would also be followed up by a cavalry charge.
Would the metal have been too heavy, to brittle to withstand musket-fire, too expensive? Would it have been too vulnerable to artillery?
Would they have been too heavy and slow? That's what I've been told elsewhere. Is there a way to accurately estimate how heavy it would be?
Like maybe 5 or 6 suits of plate armour + the ox cart itself + the small cannon/couple of large blunderbusses. That does sound pretty hefty, but it wouldn't have to be particularly quick, especially considering line infantry fought at ridiculously close range, as little as 20ish meters sometimes.
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards, in our experience as moderators. There are a few reasons for this. It often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. 'Why didn't X do Y' questions are also sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations: things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!