In order to prepare part III of the article "FIRING FROM THE SADDLE", I had to read over some books covering the subject of Russian cavalry, Among the book consulted is BORODINO by Christopher Duffy. ii.,r. Duffy is a lecturer of war studies at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst. Yet I came across the following discrepencies. (I) page 32. "As if-the firepower of the French was not sufficiently weakened by such columnar tactics, the infantry were armed with the Model 1777 Charleville musket, a not particularly robust weapon of light caliber and liable to bad fouling from the coarse French powder." Facts. I'll leave on the side the question of coarse French powder, since that point can be argued for different period. Let me just quote Robert Wilkinson-Latham in BRITISH ARTILLERY ON LAND AND SEA, page 23: " ... there was often criticism of British powder, the shots of the French being said to outrange the British, this was probably due to the differing methods of gunnery etc..." The quotation is inconclusive at best, but yet there was some doubt on the quality of the British powder in some occasion .... On the subject of caliber it is a different story. As far as I know only the British Army was using a musket of larger caliber than the rest of Europe. The Russian had no less than twenty-eight different calibres of infantry musket. ref. BORODINO page 42. Following are the main calibers of muskets used by the major powers. FRANCE Charleville .70 caliber Austria .70 caliber Britain Tower musket .75 caliber Prussia Nothardt .60 caliber rebored to the standard calibre of .72 Prussia New Musket .72 caliber ref. STRATEGY AND TACTICS #32 and The PRUSSIAN ARMY(Almark) (2) page 33. "The Napoleonic artillery was based upon the range of guns which had been introduced by Jean Baptiste de Gribeauval in 1774. The heavy pieces, the twelve- and eight-pounder cannon, were usually held in corps or divisional reserve, ready to be brought forward when one of the senior commanders called for massive firepower. The numerous and mobile four-pounders were distributed among the army to provide close support to the infantry or formed into batteries of horse artillery to follow the movements of the cavalry. The six-inch howitzer, a notoriously inaccurate piece, was employed at all the levels of the Army." Facts. The Grande Armee in Russia did not use cannons of the Gribeauval system, but the new guns of the Year IX system. Such guns were the new 6-pounder and the howitzer was the copy of the Austrian howitzer of smaller caliber and more precise. Furthermore, according to Colonel H.C. Rogers NAPOLEON'S ARMY page 79, the smaller caliber howitzer allowed to carry 75 rounds per ammunition wagons (caliber 5.5 in) versus only 50 rounds for the 6-inch Gribeauval howitzer. According to NAPOLEON AND THE GRAND ARMY IN RUSSIA by General Gourgaud, ADC to Napoleon in Russia, page 109 the artillery of the I, III, IV, V, and VIII Corps and the reserve de cavalry before Smolensk was: 12-pounders 57 6-pounders 267 4-pounders 32 3-pounders 2 6.6 in.howitzers 16 5.5 in.howitzers 122 We can see that the 4-pounders were not that numerous, the 8-pounders non-existant and the 6.6 in. howitzers only 16. After the disaster of Russia, the newly raised French artillery was reverted to the Gribeauval system probably because the guns were the only ones available; most of the ordnance had been lost in the retreat. Please note, that in Spain, the French army was still using the Gribeauval guns. It is certainly the reason for the mistake in Borodino. I don't know the date at which the French Army of Germany changed over the guns of the Year IX system but, according to NAPOLEON'S ARMY.. page 79, in 1809, during the campaign against Austria, the artillery of the Imperial Guard had 48 pieces of ordnance, consisting of 12 12-pounders, 28 6-pounders and 8 24-pounders howitzers. Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 1 No. 23 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1978 by Jean Lochet This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com