Further Development

Meanwhile, tests were continuing at Meudon to alleviate the problems of moving inflated balloons. They first constructed small cylindrical 'aerostat' balloons, which instead of the 27ft diameter of the previous types, were progressively reduced to 19, 17 and finally 16ft. At both ends, the balloon was finished off with hemispherical end-pieces of the same diameter. The whole contraption measured just 26-27ft in height instead of 55ft.

A combination of the design and increased confidence in the safety of ballooning made it possible to reduce the crew to just one person in a basket attached to the envelope by just five lines. The cylindrical design also made the balloon more stable and less prone to spin.

As the 'Entreprenant' was being moved for service at Fleurus, the early success of that balloon prompted an expansion of the aerial force with the formation of the 2nd Airship Company on 23 June 1 794. However, the rush of personnel to Belgium meant that there was a shortage of good troops at Meudon and so Guyton had to supply a Corporal and 10 men from the 1st.

The 2nd had an establishment of a Captain, 1 (later 3) Subalterns, a Sergeant, 3 Corporals and 30 men and was initially based at Meudon to fill the gaps in the 1 st Company. A new Airship School was established to train 60 students at Meudon.

On the same day as the new Company was formed, the Commission for Public Safety ordered 6 of the cylindrical design of balloons. The three balloons, 'Martial', 'Emile'and 'Celeste' were 29ft high and 1 9ft in diameter. They were despatched to the Sambre-Meuse Army by the end of September. In total, some twenty small balloons would be despatched to the Revolutionary armies. Guyton also built some small unmanned spherical balloons, about 9ft in diameter for dropping leaflets in enemy territory.

Of these four and an elliptical balloon were ready in September. The instructions issued by the Commission (overthrown in July 94) described three roles. These were: clear reconnaissance; quick transfer of orders,(for which small unmanned balloons held in reserve could be used when the signal flags were rigged up) and distributing leaflets.

Back in Action

In September, the 'Entreprenant' returned to the army at Luttich (now central Belgium), together with the 'Martial' and a new gas oven, which was put to use early when the 'Martial' sustained a major rip. The new cylindrical balloon design proved itself more stable.

However, because it contained less gas, such balloons were more dangerous to fly and so the French reverted to spherical balloons until the cylindrical design was improved. During September, many flights were conducted.

Over the winter of 1794/95 the Intrepide and 4 new style balloons were prepared and despatched in January 1 795 to the Rhine and the Meuse. In 1795, the establishment of the Airship force was reorganised as a full battalion, commanded by Coutelle. It still had two companies, each comprising 4 officers and 51 men.

After 1794

From 1795-7, the balloons remained in service and were used quite extensively. The Austrians were however less enthusiastic and rejected all proposals from inventors - on the usual ground of expense.

In the 1796 campaign in Germany, the French 1st Airship Company was equipped with two balloons, 'Intrepide' and 'Hercule'. In late August, after his defeat at the hands of Archduke Charles at Amberg, Jourdan had retreated west. In early September he decided to try to reach the strategic town and fortress at Wurzburg, still held by a French garrison.

The French had originally seized the town from the local Archbishop's troops after a short siege at the end of July, during which a balloon was deployed. It seems to have stayed with the new Republican French castle garrison, while Jourdan had moved east.

As the Archduke drove him back again, the armies clashed east of Wurzburg on 3 September, in the bend of the Main river. For most of the morning the whole area was covered by fog rendering reconnaissance by balloon useless.

As the French army broke up and retreated north-west, the balloon troops were forced to retreat to the castle, where they were made prisoners of war. The captured balloon is described as being made of silk, the envelope roughly spherical and 9.8 metres in diameter. The gondola, slung underneath, consists of a wooden planked floor and a thicker wooden surround. It is covered in canvas painted blue. Including the wooden rails it measured 105cm in height, 114cm in length and 57cm in width, broadening to 75cm.

This balloon, now in the Vienna Army Museum, is usually believed to be the 'Intrepide', but some French writers claim it is the 'Entreprenant', which conforms more closely to the spherical 10m size.

Colonel Contenceau in 'La Campagne de 1794 a l'Armee du Nord'(Paris 1905) says that the 'Intrepide', which was constructed in Meudon, was elliptical in its vertical shape. It was 33ft (1Om) in the vertical, but just 22ft (7m) in diameter. It remains an object of some interest. The artist, Karl von Blaas, who painted the frescos in the Museum in the 1890s took the capture of the balloon as the subject for his painting to mark the 1796 campaign.

Situated in a ceiling corner at the entrance to the 1790-1866 section, the fresco shows the victorious Archduke Charles with some of his senior commanders, Sztaray, Schmitt and Wartensleben standing around thecaptured gondola.

Technical problems continued to plague the balloon service. Increasingly, the airships were regarded as a burden by the French armies. Napoleon used aerial observation in his 1797 Italian campaign, but increasingly thoughts turned towards disbanding them. The last chance really came for the 1st Airship Company when it accompanied Bonaparte's 1798 expedition to Egypt.

A newly constructed balloon went with the expedition, but the vessel it was aboard was sunk in the Battle of Aboukir Bay. A later kit of materials for a new balloon was captured en route at Alexandria. It was the final straw. Jourdan was asked for his views on continuing the balloon force by the Directory in January 1799. This was only a few months before the War of the Second Coalition broke out in March. He firmly rejected it on the grounds that it was impossible to get near enough to the enemy lines to check their moves with any certainty.

Consequently, the units were disbanded by Directory decree on 18 January 1799 and the Meudon base was steadily wound down during that year. When the balloonists finally returned from Egypt in 1802, they were formally disbanded and distributed amongst the engineers.

Flying Machines of the Later Wars

Coutelle's balloons had been tethered, but free-flying balloons were later successfully developed. In the late 1780s, the American, Benjamin Franklin, had already considered the possibilities of using balloons for airborne invasion.

By the early 1800s, fevered plans were being put forward by Frenchmen to bomb the Royal Navy and cross the Channel to invade Britain. This was famously illustrated by the conjunction of a Channel Tunnel and a seaborne assault in the painting, 'The Project for the Invasion of England', (see p.329 of Dr. Chandler's 'Campaigns of Napoleon').

A former balloonist, Major L'Homond, proposed the same on a grander scale in 1808. He suggested using 100 enormous Montgolfier hot-air balloons. They would be 100m in diameter, each to carry a thousand men with 15 days rations, 2 cannon and caissons, 25 horses and sufficient wood to fuel to balloon. Gespard Monge, Napoleon's scientific adviser, wisely advised the Emperor to reject the scheme without any tests.

Coronation Balloon

Napoleon himself had never been a fan of balloons. In honour of his Coronation in 1804, the physicist and former Army Inspector of Balloons, Andre Jacques Garnerin persuaded the new Emperor to make a grand gesture. He suggested having a balloon carry the news of the event across the Imperial and satellite domains. An enormous balloon was constructed, which was decked out in multi-coloured bunting.

On the day of the Coronation, 2 December, the balloon lifted into the air from Paris and flew south. On reaching Rome, it floated across St. Peter's Square, distributing the news by leaflet. From there, it headed north again, but after touching ground two or three times, it crashed into the Bracciano Lake, reputedly striking the gravestone of the Roman Emperor Nero as it fell.

Napoleon, who had gone to great lengths to emulate Charlemagne in his Coronation ceremony, was not impressed and rapidly lost interest in balloons. Nonetheless, the bizarre schemes continued across Europe. In 1807, the Dane, Kolding, proposed attacking the British fleet from the air by means of another oar- powered dirigible, close to Meusnier's 1784 design.

The Russian Tsar, Alexander I hired a German, Lepping, to construct a balloon to carry several soldiers. The design was again of the dirigible shape, propelled bv 'fins' and it was allegedly to be used for bombing Napoleon's headquarters in 1812.

The last effort came as late as 1814, when Carnot, back in harness, built a new balloon to observe Allied troops besieging him at Antwerp.

After the Wars

After the Wars ended, a number of enterprising aeronauts gave fireworks displays from their baskets. One, Madame Blanchard, wife of the first cross-Channel balloonist, was rather too reckless when ascending above Paris in 1819 and gave a more spectacular show than she presumably intended. Her small balloon rapidly reached a height where the gas reached its full expansion in the reduced air pressure and the hydrogen began to leak through the open neck of the balloon envelope.

As the display began, the gas caught light and although Madame Blanchard managed to reduce the speed of her rapid descent, the balloon struck a house roof, throwing her into the street, killing her instantly.

The development of the balloon had been slowed by the natural nervousness of the potential passengers of being supported by just a bag of gas. It is a sobering thought that the development of a means of escape lagged behind somewhat! The first parachute jump had been made by Sebastian Lenormand from the tower of Montpelier observatory in France in 1783, but the first public demonstration of an escape from a balloon was performed by Andre Garnerin.

Although he suffered from air-sickness, he made a series of escapes from a balloon up to 3,050 feet above Monceau Park, Paris on 22 October 1797. The device was made of 36 strips of material sewn together in a circular shape 8 metres in diameter. The folded parachute was attached to the balloon's gondola and crowds watched as Garnerin cut the cord which attached him to the balloon and then, as the parachute opened, floated safely to earth in the gondola. The basic design was developed into a form of rib- supported canvas umbrella up to 60ft across in the following years.

A Pole, Jordaki Kurapento, certainly owed his life to the parachute, as he made the earliest emergency jump from a burning balloon in 1808. Other technical developments continued.

As early as 1799, British engineer, Sir George Cayley, explained on paper the principle of 'lift' acting on a horizontal wing of a heavier-than-air craft, later identifying the principles of drag and thrust. Fifteen years later in 1804, he launched the first aircraft, a model glider, but it was another half a century before Cayley managed to get a full-sized manned glider aloft.

After a shaky start, balloons continued to be deployed for battlefield observation, notably during the American Civil War, where the military observers on the Union side included the German, Count Zeppelin. By the early years of this century, however, balloons were primarily a means of transport, most famously the German 'Hindenberg'.

German Zeppelin dirigibles bombed London during WWI, but the crashes of the Hindenberg and R101 airships in the inter- war years reduced the role of balloons during World War Two to hoisting metal cables to counter airborne attack as 'barrage balloons'.

Today, there is a revival of interest in the balloon as a means of hoisting a mobile radar antenna near a battlefield -ironically to get a better view of the local area! The hot-air balloon for leisure use has returned, using burners in place of the Montgolfier straw brazier. Many companies offer balloon flights all over the world and wargamers might like to combine two leisure pursuits in the name of research.

l must leave suitable rule writing to those more proficient than myself, but flying over the Australian bush at dawn one autumn day was an unforgettable experience, albeit the landing was a bit hard.

Sources

Capt Peters: 'Die Anfange der Miliarluftschiffahrt undihre erste Anwendung im Feldzug 1794' in Mitteilungen des Kriegsarchivs, Dritte Folge, Vol.5 (1907) pp.123-184
Abbott: 'Airship' (1973) Chapter 1
Chandler: 'The Campaigns of Napoleon' 1966)
Elting: 'Swords Around A Throne', (1989) pp.266-7
Pothenberg: 'The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon' 1977) pp.123-4
Catalogue to the Exhibition in Vienna commemorating the 100th anniversary of Aspern. (1909)
Author's visits to the Army Museum in Vienna.

Napoleonic Balloons (Part 1)