Musket in the context of "Ngāi Tahu"

A pike is a long thrusting spear formerly used in European warfare from the Late Middle Ages and most of the early modern period, and wielded by foot soldiers deployed in pike square formation, until it was largely replaced by bayonet-equipped muskets. The pike was particularly well known as the primary weapon of Spanish tercios, Swiss mercenaries, German Landsknecht units and French sans-culottes. A similar weapon, the sarissa, had been used in antiquity by Alexander the Great's Macedonian phalanx infantry.

Volley fire, as a military tactic, is (in its simplest form) the concept of having soldiers shoot in the same direction en masse. In practice, it often consists of having a line of soldiers all discharge their weapons simultaneously at the enemy forces on command, known as "firing a volley", followed by more lines of soldiers repeating the same manoeuvre in turns. This is usually to compensate for the inaccuracy, slow rate of fire (as many early ranged weapons took a long time and much effort to reload), limited effective range and stopping power of individual weapons, which often requires a massed saturation attack to be effective. The volley fire, specifically the musketry volley technique (also known as the countermarch), requires lines of soldiers to step to the front, fire on command and then march back into a column to reload, while the next row repeats the same process.

The term "volley" came from Middle French volée, substantivation of the verb voler, which in turns came from Latin volare, both meaning "to fly", referring to the pre-firearm practice of archers mass-shooting into the air to shower their enemy with arrows. While the tactic of volley fire is usually associated with Dutch military thinkers in the late 16th century, its principles have been applied to crossbow infantry since at least the Chinese Tang dynasty.

Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier, and the leaf-mimic katydid's wings. A third approach, motion dazzle, confuses the observer with a conspicuous pattern, making the object visible but momentarily harder to locate. The majority of camouflage methods aim for crypsis, often through a general resemblance to the background, high contrast disruptive coloration, eliminating shadow, and countershading. In the open ocean, where there is no background, the principal methods of camouflage are transparency, silvering, and countershading, while the ability to produce light is among other things used for counter-illumination on the undersides of cephalopods such as squid. Some animals, such as chameleons and octopuses, are capable of actively changing their skin pattern and colours, whether for camouflage or for signalling. It is possible that some plants use camouflage to evade being eaten by herbivores.

Military camouflage was spurred by the increasing range and accuracy of firearms in the 19th century. In particular the replacement of the inaccurate musket with the rifle made personal concealment in battle a survival skill. In the 20th century, military camouflage developed rapidly, especially during the World War I. On land, artists such as André Mare designed camouflage schemes and observation posts disguised as trees. At sea, merchant ships and troop carriers were painted in dazzle patterns that were highly visible, but designed to confuse enemy submarines as to the target's speed, range, and heading. During and after World War II, a variety of camouflage schemes were used for aircraft and for ground vehicles in different theatres of war. The use of radar since the mid-20th century has largely made camouflage for fixed-wing military aircraft obsolete.

The twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt (German pronunciation: [ˈjeːna … ˈaʊ̯ɐ.ʃtɛt]; older spelling: Auerstädt) were fought on 14 October 1806 on the plateau west of the river Saale in today's Germany, more specifically in today's Thuringia, between the forces of Napoleon I of France and Frederick William III of Prussia, at the outset of the War of the Fourth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars. The disastrous defeats suffered in these battles by the Prussian Army, which had not been reformed for about half a century, subjugated the Kingdom of Prussia to the French Empire until the Sixth Coalition was formed in 1813.

The Prussians did not forget the military glory of Frederick the Great and venerated it, but by the time of the war, changes were needed for victory, despite the fact that Prussia showed itself well in the French Revolutionary Wars. Thus at Jena and Auerstedt the backwardness of the Prussian Army became apparent. By 1806, Prussian military doctrines have been unchanged for more than 50 years,—tactics were monotonous, and wagon system was obsolete. The Prussian musket of 1806 (the 1754 model) was called "the worst in Europe" by one authority; there were many recruited non-Prussians in the royal army. At the same time, Napoleon's army was recently reorganized according to the advanced corps system, which the French Emperor improved greatly by 1805. At Jena the French were led by Napoleon himself, and at Auerstedt they were led by one of the most outstanding commanders of the Napoleonic Wars, Louis-Nicolas Davout. The battle took the Prussian supreme commander at Jena, Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, by surprise due to his misorientation and ignorance of the enemy. Due to this incompetence, the Prussians fought a series of isolated, disjointed engagements, unconnected by a unified plan. From beginning to end, Hohenlohe remained disoriented regarding the enemy's strength and direction of advance, and not only did not find time to maintain control of the battle but was unable to even organize an adequate retreat; whilst Napoleon showed firm will at Jena, skillfully taking advantage of both the weather conditions (fog) and the rugged terrain when his troops gradually entered the battle from the march.

The Adal Sultanate, also known as the Adal Empire or Barr Saʿad dīn (alt. spelling Adel Sultanate, Adal Sultanate) (Arabic: سلطنة عدل), was a medieval Sunni Muslim empire which was located in the Horn of Africa. It was founded by Sabr ad-Din III on the Harar plateau in Adal after the fall of the Sultanate of Ifat. The kingdom flourished c. 1415 to 1577. At its height, the polity under Sultan Badlay controlled the territory stretching from Cape Guardafui in Somalia to the port city of Suakin in Sudan.

The empire's frequent wars with its Christian rival, the Solomonic Dynasty of Abyssinia, during the 15th and 16th centuries, led by important early figures such as Jamal ad-Din II, Badlay, and Mahfuz, would earn the sovereigns of Adal a reputation in the Islamic World as one of saints, and were as a result regularly supplied with arms, horses and other articles of war. In the 16th century under the leadership of Imam Ahmed ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi and his successor Nur ibn Mujahid, Adal embarked on the Conquest of Abyssinia deploying muskets and cannons. The war would eventually draw in the Portuguese and Ottoman Empires. The Adalites maintained a strong relationship with the Ottomans in particular.

Heavy infantry consisted of heavily armed and armoured infantrymen who were trained to mount frontal assaults and/or anchor the defensive center of a battle line. This differentiated them from light infantry who were relatively mobile and lightly armoured skirmisher troops intended for screening, scouting, and other tactical roles unsuited to soldiers carrying heavier loads. Heavy infantry typically made use of dense battlefield formations, such as shield wall or phalanx, multiplying their effective weight of arms with force concentration.

Heavy infantry were critical to many ancient armies, which first attested by the Sumerians in the Stele of the Vultures. It was also used by rival Assyrian and Persian Sparabara, then by Greek hoplites, Macedonian phalangites, and Roman legionaries. After the fall of Rome, heavy infantry declined in Europe but returned to dominance in the Late Middle Ages with Swiss pikemen and German Landsknechts. With the rise of firearms during early modern warfare, dense formations became increasingly infeasible, and heavy armours were either ineffective or too cumbersome to be tactically useful. By the early 18th century, heavy infantry were replaced by line infantry armed with muskets and bayonets and wearing little to no armour.

A musketeer (French: mousquetaire [muskətɛʁ] ) was a type of soldier equipped with a musket. Musketeers were an important part of early modern warfare from the mid 15th to mid 19th centuries, particularly in Europe, where they normally comprised the majority of their infantry after 1600. The musketeer was a precursor to the rifleman. Muskets were replaced by breech loading rifles as the almost universal firearm for modern armies during the period 1850 to 1870. The traditional designation of "musketeer" for an infantry private survived in the Imperial German Army until World War I.

A bayonet (from Old French bayonette, now spelt baïonnette) is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped melee weapon designed to be mounted on the end of the barrel of a rifle, carbine, musket or similar long firearm, allowing the gun to be used as an improvised spear in close combat.

The term is derived from the town of Bayonne in southwestern France, where bayonets were supposedly first used by Basques in the 17th century. From the early 17th to the early 20th century, it was an infantry melee weapon used for both offensive and defensive tactics, usually when charging in mass formations (human wave attacks). In contemporary times, bayonets are considered a weapon of last resort, and are rarely used in combat, although they are still used for ceremonial purposes (e.g, military parades).