One reason for the high casualties of Civil War battles was the disparity between traditional tactics and modern weapons. The [Page 473] tactical legacy of eighteenth-century and Napoleonic warfare had emphasized close-order formations of soldiers trained to maneuver in concert and fire by volleys. To be sure, some of the citizen-soldiers of the American Revolution fought Indian-style from behind trees or rocks, and the half-trained levée en masse of the French Revolution advanced in loose order like “clouds of skirmishers.” But they did so mainly because they lacked training and discipline;
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