Barbed wire in Napoleonic wars
- Thread starter Monk78
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You might well see earlier trench warfare, and armoured musket-proof wagons pushed forwards like tanks,soldiers moving up behind them, that would then get blasted with cannons.
An improved version of chevalier de frise useful for the defense of the fortified positions, etc.
Not too useful in a war of maneuver, which was a prevailing style of a warfare.
Did they have the steel manufacturing required? Barbed wire was a mass product, made in standardized form by huge factories.
Hussite Wars kind of did the wagon thing barbed wire could be made during this time. But it would be extremely costly
To what purpose though? Barbed wire was used both to slow down enemy advance, and to funnel them into lines of fire for machine guns. The problem is that with Napoleonic era guns you can't take advantage of either of those.
You can channel enemy cavalry To within the range of your cannons and musketeers While they are protected from charging horses behind these barriers
or is the range of muskets and cannons too short ?
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Cavalry in the Napoleonic era were mostly used for flanking attacks, or for following up successful infantry attacks. Barbed wire wouldn't have done much against either, unless you deploy it on the flanks which also would possibly serve to limit your own army's movement. Its not just a matter of range though, but also rate of fire. A soldier of the Napoleonic era might get up to six shots a minute off if he were very, very good. But the more likely number if a fraction of that. Artillery had a worse rate. Two rounds a minute for the 8 pound medium cannon for instance. By contrast the French 75 gun of WWI could fire TWENTY-FIVE rounds of artillery per minute. So the central problem as I see it isn't that the guns don't have the range, but rather that in WWI while the enemy is crossing No Man's Land the defenders can send tons of ammunition downrange through their bolt-action rifles and machine guns, meaning that every second the enemy is delayed is critical. But in the Napoleonic War if you delay the enemy by thirty seconds you get off maybe two extra shots with your muskets. And the enemy is shooting back since you don't have a line of trenches. (And no, trench warfare cannot develop in the Napoleonic era). Compared to the amount of work that would be required to produce barbed wire in the sort of quantities we see in WWI it just wouldn't be worth it.
Anyone who thinks barbed wire -if it could be produced at scale- wouldn't be quite useful in the Napoleonic Wars simply doesn't know what they're talking about. A gamechanger, no, but if Clausewitz reckoned an entrenched field position practically impregnable from the front, barbed wire is going to make setting up such a position that much easier; the greater the disruption inflicted on the enemy formation by fire or obstacles, the more assured the success of the counterattack, which is they key point of the defense. And if the wire is well positioned, the disruption can be immense. A single musket volley at close range could scythe down dozens in an instant, so getting to make two such volleys at optimal range would be frequently decisive. A formation that's taken skirmish fire all the way coming in, then has to pause in front of an obstacle long enough for point blank volley fire and enfilading canister is going nowhere fast.
The fleches and redoubts at Borodino were primarily earthworks afaik. I'm not sure if additional defensive measures were taken by the Russian army, but with barbed wire breaking up the French attacks they might have held the battlefield.
Would also be useful in sieges. Breaches could be quickly filled with a bundle of barbed wire to fortify against an assault. The cheval de frise, apparently along with flaming bales of hay, were used at the Siege of Badajoz for similar purposes to good effectiveness.
Would also be useful in sieges. Breaches could be quickly filled with a bundle of barbed wire to fortify against an assault. The cheval de frise, apparently along with flaming bales of hay, were used at the Siege of Badajoz for similar purposes to good effectiveness.
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Steel was very, VERY expensive before crucible steel came along. And plain iron wire was also not possible at the time, as they had no way of casting pure iron.
Cast iron, with its high carbon content, is brittle and can't be drawn into wire.
Wrought iron is low carbon - but has inclusions and requires huge amounts of a blacksmith's time to make, so also very expensive.
Copper might theoretically work, but it's soft enough it could be easily be cut with a bayonet or knife, which makes it pretty useless.
Basically, barbed wire is impossible until steel is produced by the tonne.
I disagree. Cutting it in a timely manner would require scissors. You try cutting copper wire with just a knife.
Industrial production of iron wire in England started in 1568 (Company of Mineral and Battery Works), expanded in the XVII century and by the early XIX was reasonably widely produced at least in Britain and Germany. Steel allowed to produce wire of any length but within this specific context this is not critical because wire can be used as a part of the pre-fabricated constructions, similar to cheval de frise and used to strengthen the field fortifications which, unlike wwi trenches, had a very limited perimeter.