There aren’t any books I can suggest that are entirely about the topic, but bits and pieces show up in memoirs as well as more general works. There are some research papers as well, from a wide variety of disciplines.

Still, I am curious what a better representation of hand-to-hand combat would be. It always seemed that people would be more careful to protect themselves by clustering in groups than was shown in the hockey line-brawl style movie fighting.

25 years ago if you wanted to most effectively train unarmed individual combat you had no real idea where to start. Today you have a specific plan — either learn how to defend against being taken to the ground, learn how to strike and escape if you do get taken down, learn how to take someone to the ground and how to dominate on the ground, or learn enough of each of the three main skills to keep the fight where you have an edge on your opponent. That is a huge increase in knowledge.

Compare to UFC 1–5, when people would come in knowing striking but no take down defense (very poor idea) or take down defense and striking with no ground skills (more successful).

It really is astounding how much the understanding of individual fighting has advanced in a short period of time.

For Napoleonic combat, I can’t help but suggest the incredibly epic “Waterloo” by Sergei Bondarchuk (produced by the De Laurentis company). IIRC, the Soviet government lent them a motor rifle division to equip and train as Napoleonic troops and had the Red Army’s engineering troops recreate the Waterloo battlefield in Ukraine, including moving hills and ridges around, building roads and villages, and planting crops before production so that they’d show the right stage of growth during filming. They even laid irrigation piping to make the right spots muddy.

Then they marched full-sized units around on it, including cavalry. Here’s a taste.

Sadly the artillery’s realism was limited by the special effects technology of the day.

Bruce, there have been plenty of mass bayonet charges in history. It’s just that they’re usually conducted at the quick-march rather than as a pell-mell rush, and they very rarely actually reach the enemy line. If they’re successful the enemy runs away; if they’re unsuccessful the charging unit withers under fire and falls back. There have been only a very few occasions where actual fighting with the bayonet occurred between the charging and defending units.

“Running shot being a fast half-charge reload with a musket while scooting from one piece of cover to another.”

These are skirmishing tactics, which everyone used very heavily during the Napoleonic period and thereafter. Skirmishers fix the enemy, disrupt his movements, and reduce his morale. While they occasionally won battles on their own, it was more common that, due to the communications difficulties in commanding men who are spread out, the battle was decided by larger forces in close order.

Of course there were always schools of thought that argued the entire army should be deployed as skirmishers, especially among the French, the acknowledged masters of skirmishing tactics. They never really came up with a solution for imposing any kind of coherent direction on those dispersed swarms, though. That had to wait for the radio.