Shortly after the end of the 
Napoleonic wars, the battlefield 
entered a period of technology-
driven evolution toward today's 
pattern of modern warfare.  
Prior to this, most troops were 
armed with hand-to-hand weapons 
and smoothbore muskets.  

These muskets were direct 
descendants of the earliest 
gunpowder weapons.  In some 
ways, these weapons merely 
continued the centuries long 
trend toward increasing the 
reach of troops in hand-to-hand 
combat.  The accuracy of the 
musket was so poor that the 
practical effect was to extend 
the range at which large bodies 
of troops could fight.  Rates of 
fire were low and effective 
ranges had not changed for over 
a century.  The battlefield was 
still ruled by shock action - 
bayonets, sabers, and lances 
remained the arms of decision.

Armies started issuing rifles 
as standard arms during the 
1840's.  This had a dramatic 
effect on the battlefield.  
While early rifles still 
suffered from low rates of fire, 
they extended the range at which 
infantry could engage the enemy 
so greatly that for the first 
time the value of shock action 
began to be questioned.  Even 
standard field artillery of the 
day could be brought under 
rifled small arms fire, as its 
effective range was similar to 
that of the individual soldier's 
rifle.  In fact, a major driving 
factor in the development of 
extended range, rifled artillery 
was the need to be able to 
operate guns beyond the range 
of small arms.  

Well trained or highly motivated 
troops could still be formed 
into attack columns and ordered 
to charge enemy positions, but 
lesser forces were much less 
likely to be able to press a 
charge home.  By the 1850's, 
only elite European cavalry 
could still be relied upon for 
decisive shock action.

The Golden Age of the rifle 
began in the late 1860's with 
the general introduction of 
rapid-fire, breach-loading, and 
magazine-fed weapons.  European 
cavalry could still successfully 
charge into hand-to-hand combat, 
but only at a very high cost.  
Smoothbore artillery became 
useless except in fortified 
positions.  The dramatic success 
of the Prussian "needle gun" in 
campaigns against Denmark and 
Austria spurred all major powers 
to develop similar weapons.

By the time of the Franco-
Prussian War (1870), the 
European battlefield was a 
very lethal place indeed.  
Outside of continental Europe, 
the deployment of rapid fire 
rifles proceeded at a slower 
pace.  Many American soldiers 
were still armed with single 
shot black powder rifles as late 
as the Spanish American War 
(1898). 

In the hands of the private 
soldier the rifle dominated the 
battlefield for about 20 years.  
Weapons technology, however, 
continued to evolve, and with 
the deployment of machine guns 
and rapid fire artillery in the 
1880's, crew served weapons 
began to eclipse the rifle.  
Throughout of the nineteenth 
century and into the early years 
of the twentieth, troops went 
into combat in formations that 
would have been familiar to 
their fathers and grandfathers. 

Tactical doctrine changed much 
more slowly than the technology 
of military hardware, resulting 
in the blood baths of the Russo-
Japanese War and World War I. 
The lessons learned from these 
terrible conflicts eventually 
led to development of truly 
modern tactics, giving rise to 
today's battlefield. But that 
is the subject of another game.