That's no surprise, as many History Channel documentaries have often been criticized as being "grossly inaccurate". The difficulties in reloading due to carbon fouling significantly reduced the rate of fire for rifles to about one or two per minute vs. three for a smoothbore musket. Thus, soldiers armed with smoothbores could easily outshoot rifle troops at close range. Many infantrymen of the period still used long spears, called pikes, until the development of the bayonet, when most of the world's modern armies switched to close order formations of musketeers rather than pikemen.
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