

Such a shootout in a puff of smoke could occur for a very long period of time and the result was unpredictable. This brought confusion to the system, and the smoke interfered with accurate shooting.

After one or two volleys, each soldier charged a musket and fired at his own discretion, without hearing the commands of the officers. The soldiers were supposed to fire volleys at the command of officers, but in practice this happened only in the first minutes of the battle. A line consisted of 2, 3 or 4 ranks of soldiers. With the massive proliferation of small arms (firearms that could be carried by hand, as opposed to cannon) in the infantry units from the middle of 17th century, the battlefield was dominated by linear tactics, according to which the infantry was aligned into long thin lines and fired volleys. Line infantry mainly used three formations in its battles: the line, the square and the column.
#Hold the line military plus#
By extension, the term came to be applied to the regular regiments "of the line" as opposed to light infantry, skirmishers, militia, support personnel, plus some other special categories of infantry not focused on heavy front line combat. For both battle and parade drill, it consisted of two to four ranks of foot soldiers drawn up side by side in rigid alignment, and thereby maximizing the effect of their firepower. Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus are generally regarded as its pioneers, while Turenne and Montecuccoli are closely associated with the post-1648 development of linear infantry tactics. Line infantry was the type of infantry that composed the basis of European land armies from the late 17th century to the mid-19th century. Mattis has not yet commented on the video.Prussian line infantry attack at the 1745 Battle of Hohenfriedberg. "You get cold, you get hot, you get sloppy, you get complacent, don't let it happen," he says. He ends the speech by asking the troops to take care of each other. He continues, "But we don't frickin' scare and that's the bottom line, and we'll go out there and fight alongside our friends and allies, and we're going to keep on fighting until they're sick of us and leave us alone." He notes that many in the group surrounding him were too young to remember 9/11, but explains that the enemy then "thought if he could hurt us, he could scare us." And the only way this great big experiment you and I call America is gonna survive is we got tough hombres like you," says Mattis. I know you all should be going to college, you young people or you could be back on the block. "Believe me, I know you're far from home, every one of you. Troops who spotted Mattis gathered around to hear the unscripted motivational speech. And I work in the Department of Defense," he says. "To those of you I don't know, I'm Mattis.

In the video, Mattis begins by introducing himself to a small group. It's unclear when exactly Mattis made the comments, though Mattis traveled to Turkey, Ukraine and Jordan last week. Mattis' remarks, which were made in Jordan, according to the site's administrator, were posted in the wake of a tumultuous week in the United States following the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and fallout from President Donald Trump's response. And you just hold the line, my fine soldiers, and sailors and airmen and Marines." It's got problems we don't have in the military. "You're a great example for our country right now and it's got problems," Mattis says in the video. Army W.T.F! Moments," a group that focuses on Army-related news and entertainment stories. - In an impromptu speech while traveling abroad, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told a group of young troops to "just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other."įootage of Mattis' off-the-cuff remarks was posted to a Facebook page titled "U.S.
