How could French voltigeurs and tirailleurs be of much use if

They used cover to harass moving formation of men in the open

>>2404227
How come the formation couldn't just swing around and give a volley? A spread formation of voltigeurs must've been chewed up by something like that, cover or not?

You should read up about Skirmishing and Light Infantry tactics.

Skirmishers in open formation using cover are impossible for a close-in large formation to turn and shoot at.

They're all spread out and in cover, sniping and scooting. They're not hanging out in plain sight, in large groups, with no cover, waiting for you to shoot back while they reload.

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157KB, 600x390px

>>2404975
There's many problems with that. First, even a well-drilled musket line can't turn to address threats very easily. Orienting a linear formation and getting them into a volleying rhythm takes a good minute. Second, muskets are really, really fucking inaccurate. You could fire a dozen muskets at the same man-sized target and easily not hit it, even in the absence of cover. Third, any volley dealt by the formation is going to generate a lot of smoke, which gives the skirmishers all the concealment they need to fall back, reorganize, and come back at the formation again.

>>2405029
So if a a dozen muskets can't find their marks, would one or two really be that big a threat? I understand that they had some sort of marksmanship training but still, you pretty much had to be withing throwing distance right? British rifles were reasonably accurate up to around 150 yards iirc.

>>2405120
A dozen muskets *firing at individual spread out soldiers* couldn't find their marks. One or two *firing at a massed line infantry formation* were pretty much certain to hit something.

>>2405156
Oh, gotcha. I thought they would be picking out individual targets. Do we know from sources how much damage they made? Were they a serious concern or just a slight annoyance?

>>2405190
Probably both, no? Unable to stop a determined attacker or overwhelm a defender, but very much able to force a unit to respond somehow, since nobody likes to be shot at for long.

>>2405120
Because the skirmishers are firing at a formation, not at a single dude

they practiced hard

The lack of name calling in this thread is astounding, good show