Attacks across open ground became even more dangerous after the introduction of rapid-firing artillery, exemplified by the 'French 75', and high explosive fragmentation rounds. Fundamentally, as the range and rate of fire of rifled small-arms increased, a defender shielded from enemy fire (in a trench, at a house window, behind a large rock, or behind other cover) was often able to kill several approaching foes before they closed with his position. Photo by Ernest BrooksĪlthough technology had dramatically changed the nature of warfare by 1914, the armies of the major combatants had not fully absorbed the implications. Adoption ġst Lancashire Fusiliers, in communication trench near Beaumont Hamel, Somme, 1916. Trenches were also utilized in the Paraguayan War (which started in 1864), the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Union and Confederate armies employed field works and extensive trench systems in the American Civil War (1861–1865) - most notably in the sieges of Vicksburg (1863) and Petersburg (1864–1865), the latter of which saw the first use by the Union Army of the rapid-fire Gatling gun, the important precursor to modern-day machine guns. The Crimean War (1853–1856) saw 'massive trench works and trench warfare', even though 'the modernity of the trench war was not immediately apparent to the contemporaries'. However, this has been criticised by some other academics, with Gavin McLean noting that while the Māori had certainly adapted pā to suit contemporary weaponry, many historians have dismissed Belich's claim as 'baseless. There has been an academic debate surrounding this since the 1980s, when in his book The New Zealand Wars, historian James Belich claimed that Northern Māori had effectively invented trench warfare during the first stages of the New Zealand Wars. British casualty rates of up to 45 percent, such as at Gate Pa in 1864 and the Battle of Ohaeawai in 1845, suggested that contemporary weaponry, such as muskets and cannon, proved insufficient to dislodge defenders from a trench system. These systems included firing trenches, communication trenches, tunnels, and anti-artillery bunkers. According to one British observer, 'the fence round the pa is covered between every paling with loose bunches of flax, against which the bullets fall and drop in the night they repair every hole made by the guns'. In the New Zealand Wars (1845–1872), the Maori developed elaborate trench and bunker systems as part of fortified areas known as pā, employing them successfully as early as the 1840s to withstand British artillery bombardments. The development of armoured warfare and combined arms tactics permitted static lines to be bypassed and defeated, leading to the decline of trench warfare after the war.įollowing World War I, 'trench warfare' became a byword for stalemate, attrition, sieges, and futility in conflict. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties. The area between opposing trench lines (known as ' no man's land') was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides.

On the Western Front in 1914–1918, both sides constructed elaborate trench, underground, and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire. Trench warfare proliferated when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a gruelling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. Trench warfare became archetypically associated with World War I (1914–1918), when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914. Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery.

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