people like you should have their threadmaking rights revoked

I thought it was an interesting question

hey this is the only thread i've ever made

that's a pretty rude thing to say?

The loch-n-load seduced them with its incredible speed.

this might have been a shitpost but now im legitimately curious

im p sure grenadier just means special unit

Specialized infantry wasn't needed to throw grenades by the 1800s, for France I think they basically just assumed the role of tackling assaults head on. To be a grenadier you had to be quite strong to throw the grenades distances. I'm picking this from my head from playing AoE3... and Year 9 History.

werent battlefields in that era open as fuck

/

From my understanding grenadiers didn't use grenades due to a shift in French military doctrine. They focused much less on the use of siege tactics and much more on the destruction of armies. As a result this made French wars very costly and there was always a need for senior officers. Thus, every campaign the French army took the strongest and tallest of the surviving men of one previous campaign and promoted then to the rank of Grenadier.

To the French, the term Grenadier was more of a title rather than a specialization. They were considered the elite line of infantry and were used to make decisive offensives during battles.

tl;dr Grenadier was more of a title than a specialization and the French did not use grenades too much since they wanted to kill armies instead of siege positions.

I'm not an expert but that's just from my knowledge. (oh and they started using grenades post-napoleon anyway since trench warfare became really huge in Europe)

Napoleonic era warfare didn't feature grenades because, in the main, standard infantry tactics were to shoot 1-2 times at a reasonable distance and then initiate a bayonet charge to dislodge and disorganize your enemy - if you were attacking - if you were the defender you just attempted to hold whatever sort of fortified area you had - warfare was still *very* much based on positioning, so if you held important hills/features/towns/forts you had a definitive if not usually a decisive advantage (history records various battles - but not the huge amount of battles that never happened because the opposition was too entrenched to make an attack possible) advantage - and the way you went about dislodging people form those fortifications wasn't hand-held grenades but large artillery bombardment and sieges - although smaller bombs were used - but typically not by grenadiers - usually sappers is what they'd be termed as (untrained folks given some crappy job).

That's the real secret to Napoleon's success is they were very good at moving large artillery pieces quickly and having more of it than the opposition which more or less obviates the needs to have guys carry around large amounts of ordinance and chuck it at other people.

Specialized grenade troops however were pointless because they would be absolutely decimated by musket/rifle fire before they even got into chuckin' range :(

The reason the term "grenadier" lived on is because, in earlier periods, grenadiers were usually very physically fit - because they needed to be strong to chuck a bomb at somebody. In time, as this tactic became less useful, grenadiers were still typically bigger and more fit than regular soldiers and so they were considered "elite" - which in time morphed them into the precursors to modern light infantry or specialized troops. The elite status was also thought to have positive effects on recruitment and morale. Various "elite" formations were quite popular throughout the Napoleonic era - particularly as a propaganda tool, from the Polish Lancers, various Hussar units, Cossacks, The Grumblers, etc.

That's a bit harsh coming from you