> Not that the old way was any better. It's just plain stupid to fight wars by lining all your men up in rows and standing them twenty feet away from their armed enemies.

Unless of course both sides happen to be using extremely primitive guns (which did not even have rifled barrels for some time), meaning that if you didn't have a big line to shoot at, your guns wouldn't do much.

What gets overlooked so often is that until roughly World War I (and even then, to some extent) the bayonet and sword were important weapons in war, precisely because everybody back then realized how stupid it would be to just line your guys up and shoot and do nothing else. But having such a line *does* tend to discourage a group of people rushing at you with hand weapons, which is why firearms were worthwhile. But until the introduction of the rifle, you certainly weren't going to be able to do a whole lot more with them...

Stephen