Linear Warfare. By the eighteenth century all of the European great powers maintained permanent standing armies. These armies were led by aristocratic officers who used a variety of forms of brutal corporal punishment to instill discipline among the troops. The soldiers of these armies came from a variety of backgrounds and included unemployed tradesmen, indebted poor, criminals, and unfortunate folk who got caught in military conscription dragnets. The standard infantry weapon in Great Britain was the 75-caliber smoothbore Brown Bess musket, a cumbersome firearm with a slow and complex reloading process (a fully trained soldier could fire three times per minute). The Brown Bess had to be loaded and fired from a standing position and was only accurate out to about 100 yards. It discharged a lead ball with a muzzle velocity of 800-950 feet per second. All European armies used similar...