NOTE FROM EDITOR It is, in our opinion, very important to present to the readership documented, even contradictory, comments on all the points and questions we debate and raise in EEL. The best of us make mistakes and/or have opinions and points of view that are not in agreement with those of other readers. EEL seeks such comments. This section of EEL is a means to exchange ideas, data, comments on our articles, etc. and also to debate and argue all the points and ideas presented by our voluntary authors. Comments (or rebuttals) must be written on a high level of gentlemenship, respecting other points of view. Again, no one has to agree with anyone or anything written in EEL, but it is important to communicate to the readership different, documented points of view. EEL does not assume any responsibility whatsoever for the statements made by the voluntary authors (as in any other section of EEL). Such statements may not even reflect the point of view of EEL. Napoleonic Artillery 1.0 COMPLEMENTARY NOTES ON 'NOTES ON HORSE ARTILLERY (EEL 85, p.3) by Paddy Griffith In my note on horse artillery on p.3 of EEL 85, I stated that Jomini's work had not been translated into English until 1862. This is incorrect, strictly speaking, since Jomini had long been studied in anglophone military schools (notably West Point) and certain individuals, such as Henry Wager Halleck, had made private translations long before 1862. The influence of Jomini's thinking was already widespread in Britain and America by at least the 1840's, even though printed translations appeared only in 1862 (the Precis) and 1864 (Halleck's rendition of the Life of Napoleon). As a footnote to the above, one must stand in awe of any leading soldier in a war of national survival who can find time to get a book published while that war is still in progress. Some would argue that Halleck was the architect of Union victory, at least up to the battle of Chattanooga, yet here is the publishing at the very peak of the military crisis! I cannot offhand think of a Napoleonic equivalent (unless it is the self-seeking Jomini himself: scarcely in the same league as Halleck as a military practitioner). Maybe the Archduke Charles; maybe Scharnhorst; but certainly not Wellington, Napoleon, Suvarov or even those classic military writers Marmont, Morand or (lord of them all) Clausewitz. Military writing of high quality seems to come either from minor characters during a war (Duhesme, Meunier, Vacca, etc.), or from major characters after the war is over. This means that the war itself is depressingly short of contemporary analysis designed for a wider audience: if you want an 'insider's' view written at the time, you have to piece together fragmentary correspondence and secret documents rescued from the archives. 2.0 AN ANSWER AND SOME COMMENTS ON EEL 85 by John E. Koontz Kosciuszko mentioned in EEL 85 is Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the American Revolutionary hero, a military engineer who served with the Continental Army in several theaters. General Tadeusz Kosciuszko served in the Polish Army in 1792 against Russia and there led the insurrection in 1793. There must be some English language biographies of the general but I am not able to cast much additional light myself, however. On the influence of Jomini on US Civil War period military practice, see Herman Hattaway and Arthur Jones: "How the North Won: a Military History of the Civil War" (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 11 and following. For example, "until 1832, the cadets had to rely [for instruction in strategy] on a one-hundred-page selection drawn from the Traite des Grandes Operations Militaire[s]..." The author seems to feel that Jomini's influence was exercised through the medium of study and pre-war publication by American officers who had read Jomini in French, such as Union General Halleck. I do not know, but would not be surprised if French were not a required part of West Point curriculum in the early 1800's. As far as the prevalence of the use of large artillery reserves, this was a Russian penchant of the Napoleonic Wars, from what little I know on Russian tactics (note the example of Kutaisov's blunder at Borodino). McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac was a great admirer of the Russian Army, as a result of serving on an American military commission that visited Russia after the Crimean War. His book "the Armies of Europe...", reprinted in 1861 from his original report, is a very useful English language study of the Russian Army (among others) in the early 1800's. Actually, he devotes much of his text to the Russian Army, with only comments on others. Unfortunately, he doesn't clearly specify his sources. 3.0 A QUESTION ON THE EFFECT OF WINDAGE ON GUNWEAR by Kieran Bartley In the article on windage, in EEL 81, no mention is made about increased friction due to decreased windage. Was this a negligible effect or would the "tighter" barrels become hot enough in the heat of the battle to significantly increase wear on the barrel or to ignite premature firing? 4.0 An Answer to the Above Questions by Jean A. Lochet In my on going Artillery series, entitled "On Artillery and Its Application to Wargames...", I am trying to concentrate on the different factors that affect artillery fire. One of them is windage. In EEL 81, I concentrated on the effect of windage on range errors etc. I did not attempt to cover the subject of wear, or increased friction, due to decreased windage, since such factors do not affect artillery fire in a direct manner and consequently are out of the scope of my series. However, since I have the data available, I am very glad to answer and try to cover very briefly (and not exhaustively) the above questions. From the data at hand, it does not appear that friction was a significant factor in gun wear. The windage was still very "generous" in the Gribeauval guns with their .088in. and allowed the round shots to escape without much friction, a certain "cushion" being formed between the shot and the gun barrel by the escaping gases. Furthermore, gun wear was not due to friction but mainly to the bouncing of the round shots from side to side inside the gun barrels which made the shot unsteady (see EEL 81, p.5). So, less wear resulted from decreased windage since it reduced that bouncing considerably. That is clearly stated by de Toussard in "The American Artillerist Companion volume II, pp. 22 to 25 and reproduced below: When Gribeauval proposed the adoption of the new pieces, he also proposed the reduction of the windage of their shot to 0.088 inch, and in this alteration he had three objects in view: The first, to procure the shot a truer direction: the shot being much more liable to depart from its true line of direction, as it strikes the bore at the mouth under more obtuse angles, when quitting the piece. The second, less fatigue to the pieces: for what render the guns unfit for service, long before they have any external appearance of injury, are the widenings produced by the shakings of the balls in the bore, which are the more dangerous as the piece becomes heated in action; and certainly the less the windage allowed is, the less capable will the ball be of producing such widenings, and of making them deeper when they are begun. The third, an increase of range: for the ball having less play within the piece, there remains less space for the escape of the elastic fluid which impels it forward. Besides, its centre of gravity being nearer to the axis of the bore, this impulse is made in a more direct line, and has consequently more force. This was not, however, the object which Gribeauval had in view, for the reasons we have already stated; the first and second were chiefly what he expected the proposed reduction would produce. No comparison was made between the solidity of the old and new pieces, but the most enlightened officers, who knew that guns are mostly rendered unfit for service by the destruction of their bore, which occasions a deviation of the shot, thought that the thickness of metal given to these new pieces would, notwithstanding, be sufficient to maintain them until the entire destruction of their bore should render them unfit for service; and that, in this respect, the new pieces were nearly on a level with the old. But as this injury to the bore was chiefly occasioned by the shaking of the balls, which the reduction of the windage by one half would in a great measure remove; they also thought that if, contrary to their own ideas, the old pieces should have any advantage as to solidity on account of their greater thickness of metal, it would be Counterbalanced by this reduction, the ball having less play, and, consequently, a less injurious effect on the bore. The more or less standard gun firing procedures adopted by all nations, called for the gun bore to be swabbed with water between each shot to prevent premature ignition of the gun powder. Gun barrels would become hot during a battle usually after firing some 40 shots. The procedure used to prevent any firing accident from happening is also related by the de Toussard, vol. II, p. 17: When the pieces were so heated as not to admit of being touched with the hand, which commonly happened after forty rounds, water was thrown on them until they became so far cooled as to remain somewhat moist; they might, however, have been fired sixty rounds, by making use of the thumb piece which gunners employ in manoeuvring. In all the sources consulted, I failed to find any evidence that reduced windage caused guns to heat faster than the guns with larger windage. It appears that the life expectancy of a gun barrel was somewhere around 800 to 1000 shots. We hope the above will be of interest. Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 1 No. 86 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1985 by Emperor's Headquarters 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