Napoleonic tactics

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Napoleonic tactics" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Napoleonic tactics describe certain battlefield principles used by national armies from the late 18th century until the invention and adoption of the rifled musket in the mid 19th century. Napoleonic tactics are characterised by intense drilling of soldiers; speedy battlefield movement; combined arms assaults between infantry, cavalry, and artillery; relatively small numbers of cannon; short-range musket fire; and bayonet charges.^[1] French Emperor Napoleon I is considered by military historians to have been a master of this particular form of warfare. Military powers would continue to employ such tactics even as technological advancements during the industrial revolutions gradually rendered them impractically obsolete, leading to devastating losses of life in the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the World War I.