Something like that. The notion of modern sniping, including consistent concealment, was not known, and “sniping” in the sense of targeting specific figures at long distance was fairly new at this point - long rifles in the American Revolution ~20 years before had shocked Britain into forming their own experimental rifle corps, which practiced similar techniques - but more generally that good marksmen are wasted in the “Stand in the line and fire” style needed for most idiots to hit the literal broad side of a barn.
The advantage of such light infantry and skirmisher marksmen is that, by deploying ahead of the main force in loose formation, they’re too few and too spaced apart for the enemy lines to bother wasting a volley on (or if they do stop and fire a volley, far fewer skirmishers are killed than line-infantry would be, and a lot of the enemy’s maneuvering time is wasted), but the skirmishers can still inflict casualties on the rank-and-file due to their excellent marksmanship.
Would that be like a sniper unit, to the extend that the technology of the time permitted sniping? Like a unit with greater firing range than usual?
Something like that. The notion of modern sniping, including consistent concealment, was not known, and “sniping” in the sense of targeting specific figures at long distance was fairly new at this point - long rifles in the American Revolution ~20 years before had shocked Britain into forming their own experimental rifle corps, which practiced similar techniques - but more generally that good marksmen are wasted in the “Stand in the line and fire” style needed for most idiots to hit the literal broad side of a barn.
The advantage of such light infantry and skirmisher marksmen is that, by deploying ahead of the main force in loose formation, they’re too few and too spaced apart for the enemy lines to bother wasting a volley on (or if they do stop and fire a volley, far fewer skirmishers are killed than line-infantry would be, and a lot of the enemy’s maneuvering time is wasted), but the skirmishers can still inflict casualties on the rank-and-file due to their excellent marksmanship.