TheDoctorKing wrote:I don't think that the troops got quite as close to each other as in the first painting. Close combat usually meant ten or twenty meters as everybody blazed away with pistols (as seen in the lower painting) and everything else they had. Real hand to hand rarely took place. Mostly the firepower was so overwhelming that a few minutes of it would result in one side or the other being so shot up that the survivors would run away.
I don't know... I think there was plenty of face to face combat in the Civil War. It may have been brief, but it happened. You're right that generally the lines of soldiers stood apart from one another and fired away, but, I mean, how else could prisoners have been taken during the middle of a battle, but for having gotten close enough to them to force them to surrender?
I read a story recently of where a Confederate pleaded for mercy when a Union soldier grabbed the Confederate's knife during a successful charge and was going to plunge it in to him, until the Confederate called for him to not do it and just capture him. The whole point of charges was to breach the opponents line and force their line to fall back. At some point, if not obliterated, the charging attackers would reach the line and make contact with people.