What a Redcoat Battle Really Looked Like

British redcoat tactics appeared insane—men in bright red coats standing shoulder-to-shoulder in open fields, walking slowly toward enemy musket fire while men around them fell—but this was actually a coldly logical system designed around the severe limitations of the Brown Bess musket, which was so inaccurate that individual soldiers were nearly useless; the solution was to concentrate 100 muskets in a tight line to create a devastating wall of lead through volleys, with soldiers trained to hold fire until point-blank range (30 yards) where accuracy improved dramatically, and the bayonet charge served as the decisive factor since musket hit rates were shockingly low (only about 20% of soldiers were hit), making battles decided by whose nerve broke first rather than who killed the most men.