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| of these individual breakthroughs; French standardization and
professionalism, Russian dual purpose guns, and British carriage designs, the Napoleonic
Wars saw the deployment of all the basic features of modern artillery.
After
1800 the French artillery service doubtlessly benefitted from the fact that
their Commander-in-Chief, Napoleon Bonaparte (shown at right), was by training an
artillery officer and mathematician. This, combined with the sweeping technological and
organizational changes begun before the French Revolution assured that the French
artillery service was the state-of-the-art for their time. These changes improved the
morale of the artillery arm, which already had a long tradition of professionalism. The
end result was more aggressive battlefield tactics and ensuing success which
ushered artillery away from a supporting position into a destructive role all its own. |
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The six pounder artillery piece shown at left is typical of the
Grimbeaval designs of the late eighteenth century. Reducing the gap between the cannonball
and barrel (called windage) allowed a reduction in barrel mass over previous models. This,
coupled with the use of bronze for the barrel itself allowed for a far lighter carriage
assembly for the gun. Half the weight of their predecessors, these field pieces enabled
turn of the century gunners to maneuver their companies in ways scarcely conceivable
thirty years before. Unlimbering time was usually less than one minute, and most guns
carried a ready supply of ammunition in small "trail chests" carried just behind
the barrel. |
| At right is shown the same six pounder artillery piece in its
"traveling" position; The bronze barrel slid into the lower set of trunnion
cut-outs, moving the piece's center of gravity toward the middle of the limbered assembly.
This allowed the gun teams to move over uneven ground with less chance of overturned guns
and other accidents. In rough terrain, there was always the possibility that the slower
artillerists would be left behind with their pieces if they could not keep up with the
rest of an army. In Spain, one column of French troops left their artillery park behind
when the guns could not fit through a canyon. As the army moved ahead, the gunners used
picks and tools to manually widen the rock walls. Once under way again, gunners took turns
walking ahead of the column with a limber axle as a "gauge" to assure passage of
the guns behind! The column ended up far behind the main force and barely survived an
attack by partisans. |
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Advance Retreat
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