Firing in 3 Ranks!!!!????

[tompritchett]

I wonder how that third rank can hit anything (besides the front rank) in the configuration in the photo. Do you think the executioners were heartless enough to take a studio picture with everyone standing and pointing their rifles at the condemned, then did the whole thing over again with the front rank kneeling when they pulled the trigger?

Looking closely, it looks like the second rank is firing over the left shoulder of first rank file leader and the third rank is firing over his right shoulder. However, it does look like several of the front rank file leaders are going to get severe powder burns on their right ears and be temporarily deaf in that ear after the execution.

[johnduffer]

Scott's Tactics (1835) describes it and has illustrations. I got to do this with a company during downtime at a LH at the Carter House. We didn't actually fire, just went throught the motion, mainly to see how it was done at the left oblique. The 2nd & 3rd rank fire to the left of their kneeling front rank man and this is where some of the argument arises on firing to the left or right of your file leader in two ranks, the wording is left over from the three rank description.

John Duffer

[jjack]

Think the photo could have been staged as a propaganda shot to cause a public outrage? John Jackson

[Rob Weaver]

Think the photo could have been staged as a propaganda shot to cause a public outrage? John Jackson

I don't think so, as I alluded, the French have a long history of anticlericalism and are rabid about preventing an alliance between church and state. After the fall of the Third Empire and the mess the Communards made, there was a bloodbath of purges, arrests, kangaroo courts and executions. Ironically, the Germans hadn't left the country yet, and in some places were still garrisoning parts of the country watching this crazy stuff go on around them. They found it incomprehensible. Histories of the Franco-Prussian War in English can be a bit hard to come by, but Michael Howard's The Franco-Prussian War is quite comprehensive. If you like French literature, Emile Zola is your man for the FP War: Nana, The Debacle, etc. There's also a chapter early in The Debacle which describes two of the central characters putting up a tent d'abri which any reenactor will recognize.