Wednesday, October 11, 2006
This Day in Very Late-19th Century History
On this day in 1899, the Second Boer War began in South Africa between the British and the Dutch settlers who had been there in numbers for nearly 300 years. At first a disaster for the British, with the Dutch farmers, armed with Mauser 1895 model rifles, knocking down the tommies at 1800 yards over iron sites, the British poured in men (nearly a quarter million) and eventually clubbed the guerilla bands, called Kommandos, into submission over 2 and 1/2 years later; and the Orange Free State and the Transvaal joined the empire. No need to talk about British use of the Spanish invention, the concentration camp, as its heyday came the next century. It is indeed a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way, my friend.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 12:23 AM 
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The Boer war was yet another opportunity for a European power to understand the changes that breech-loading magazine rifles had wrought on the battlefield.
Massed British columns and artillery crews were repeatedly cut apart by aimed rifle fire at long range. As was true of the ACW, the Austro-Prussian war, and the Franco-Prussian war (not to mention countless colonial actions), they failed to pay attention.
The result was, of course, the slaughter that was WWI.
Massed British columns and artillery crews were repeatedly cut apart by aimed rifle fire at long range. As was true of the ACW, the Austro-Prussian war, and the Franco-Prussian war (not to mention countless colonial actions), they failed to pay attention.
The result was, of course, the slaughter that was WWI.
Napoleonic tactics when the 50 yard accurate musket had become the 400 yard accurate rifle--result 600,000 American dead. WWII, bolt action rapid accurate rifle fire and American designed machine guns ignored or discounted--result 8 million killed. What did they ignore in WWII (other than that ships were vulnerable to air attack)? I'm thinking, but I've nothing yet.
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