Enemy Rifles And Machine Guns Are The Real Danger; Artillery Is Just Background Noise
Creeping Barrage in WW I: Get it wrong and you kill nearly all your own troops!
Some rounds would fall short anyway ... Eeek!
Theory is that it takes out Machine Gun Nests, Barbed wire and Mines in front of your troops as they slowly advance. Or at least keeps enemy down in their shelter/trench/tunnels.
Muskets Turned Linear Warfare Into A Ridiculous Mass Suicide
Ummm... perhaps machine gun emplacements did for a while. Though if you have enough Zulus and not enough ammo the machine gun might not seem so good.
Muskets take so long to reload, hence I suppose assistants sometimes loading a 2nd musket? and multiple or at least alternate ranks. Canon are time consuming too?
A .303 Lee Enfield seemed very slow compared to SLR, and while faster than cranking a crossbow, might be slower than some archers with regular bows, long bow slower than the sort bow a mongol might use on horse back, but it would have poor range. Can't see how Muskets aren't very slow. Of course there was the foot cocked crossbow (but you'd not use that on a horse). I've used .303 Len Enfield, SLR, a variety of bows, Bren, 2" mortar (slow enough), but not a crossbow of any kind, just read about them.
I think musket you had 4 operations?
1) Pour in powder.
2) push in small pad with big stick
3) put in ball/shot
4) push in pad with big stick to stop ball/shot falling out
Then you cock, prime and fire. Early ones had a sort of glowing fuse affair rather than flint striker.
Mostly books are better. Not dominated by need to have special effects and cinematic action. Hobbit, Prince Caspian (esp), LOTR pretty mad compared to the books.
Don't write after playing FPS computer games or watching War films?
EDIT
obviously dudes aren't picking up heavy machine guns and mowing down entire armies, Rambo-style
Nobody tries to carry and fire a proper machine gun like WW1 Maxim or WWII Bren.
a) barely possible for one person to carry far
b) feeding the ammo. Seriously eats it.
Two people work a machine gun and it has legs for a good reason!