Rifle regiment

A rifle regiment is a military unit consisting of a regiment of infantry troops armed with rifles and known as riflemen. While all infantry units in modern armies are typically armed with rifled weapons the term is still used to denote regiments that follow the distinct traditions that differentiated them from other infantry units.

Rifles had existed for decades, before the formations of the first rifle regiments, but were initially too slow to load and too unreliable for use as practical weapons for mass issue. With improvements in the designs of rifles, the first rifle regiment was raised very late in the 18th century as armies could now equip entire units of troops with these new weapons in preference to earlier firearms such as muskets. Though rifles still took about twice as long to load as a musket the increase in accuracy and change in tactics more than compensated for this delay.

European armies in the 18th century largely consisted of large numbers of line infantry troops in brightly coloured uniforms firing volleys in massed formations on open fields. More emphasis was placed on volume of fire than on individual marksmanship, there was little room for individual manoeuvrability and soldiers were expected to carry heavy packs and march in file. As muskets took so long to reload and were rather inaccurate at more than one or two hundred yards a mass volley was often followed by a bayonet charge. The side that fired first charged then had its charge disrupted by the opposing volley meaning that firing first was not necessarily an advantage.

These tactics proved ineffective versus the French troops and their Native American allies in the often wooded terrain of North America in the middle of the 18th century. Unofficial experiments with troops wearing homemade dark green or brown coloured jackets and carrying lighter gear were carried out by 60th (Royal American) Regiment under the inspiration of 1st battalion commander Henri Bouquet. A sister battalion, the 5/60 that was raised from foreign troops later fought in the Peninsular War equipped as a normal regiment. It quickly replaced its line infantry with riflemen to become a rifle unit in practice and later in the 19th century it became a rifle unit in name as well.

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