Artillery Through the Ages | Page 5

lead, all nations modified their artillery. Leadership fell alternately to the Germans, the French, and the Austrians. The mystery of artillery began to disappear, and gunners became professional soldiers. Bronze came to be the favorite gunmetal.
Louis XIV of France seems to have been the first to give permanent organization to the artillery. He raised a regiment of artillerymen in 1671 and established schools of instruction. The "standing army" principle that began about 1500 was by now in general use, and small armies of highly trained professional soldiers formed a class distinct from the rest of the population. As artillery became an organized arm of the military, expensive personnel and equipment had to be maintained even in peacetime. Still, some necessary changes were slow in coming. French artillery officers did not receive military rank until 1732, and in some countries drivers were still civilians in the 1790's. In 1716, Britain had organized artillery into two permanent companies, comprising the Royal Regiment of Artillery. Yet as late as the American Revolution there was a dispute about whether a general officer whose service had been in the Royal Artillery was entitled to command troops of all arms. There was no such question in England of the previous century: the artillery general was a personage having "alwayes a part of the charge, and when the chief generall is absent, he is to command all the army."
[Illustration: Figure 7--FRENCH GARRISON GUN (1650-1700). The gun is on a sloping wooden platform at the embrasure. Note the heavy bed on which the cheeks of the carriage rest and the built-in skid under the center of the rear axletree.]
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
During the early 1700's cannon were used to protect an army's deployment and to prepare for the advance of the troops by firing upon enemy formations. There was a tendency to regard heavy batteries, properly protected by field works or permanent fortifications, as the natural role for artillery. But if artillery was seldom decisive in battle, it nevertheless waxed more important through improved organization, training, and discipline. In the previous century, calibers had been reduced in number and more or less standardized; now, there were notable scientific and technical improvements. The English scientist Benjamin Robins wedded theory to practice; his New Principles of Gunnery (1742) did much to bring about a more scientific attitude toward ballistics. One result of Robins' research was the introduction, in 1779, of carronades, those short, light pieces so useful in the confines of a ship's gun deck. Carronades usually ranged in caliber from 6- to 68-pounders.
In North America, cannon were generally too cumbrous for Indian fighting. But from the time (1565) the French, in Florida, loosed the first bolt at the rival fleet of the Spaniard Men��ndez, cannon were used on land and sea during intercolonial strife, or against corsairs. Over the vast distances of early America, transport of heavy guns was necessarily by water. Without ships, the guns were inexorably walled in by the forest. So it was when the Carolinian Moore besieged St. Augustine in 1702. When his ships burned, Moore had to leave his guns to the Spaniards.
One of the first appearances of organized American field artillery on the battlefield was in the Northeast, where France's Louisburg fell to British and Colonial forces in 1745. Serving with the British Royal Artillery was the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, which had originated in 1637. English field artillery of the day had "brigades" of four to six cannon, and each piece was supplied with 100 rounds of solid shot and 30 rounds of grape. John M��ller's Treatise on Artillery, the standard English authority, was republished in Philadelphia (1779), and British artillery was naturally a model for the arm in America.
[Illustration: Figure 8--AMERICAN 6-POUNDER FIELDPIECE (c. 1775).]
At the outbreak of the War of Independence, American artillery was an accumulation of guns, mortars, and howitzers of every sort and some 13 different calibers. Since the source of importation was cut off, the undeveloped casting industries of the Colonies undertook cannon founding, and by 1775 the foundries of Philadelphia were casting both bronze and iron guns. A number of bronze French guns were brought in later. The mobile guns of Washington's army ranged from 3- to 24-pounders, with 5-1/2- and 8-inch howitzers. They were usually bronze. A few iron siege guns of 18-, 24-, and 32-pounder caliber were on hand. The guns used round shot, grape, and case shot; mortars and howitzers fired bombs and carcasses. "Side boxes" on each side of the carriage held 21 rounds of ammunition and were taken off when the piece was brought into battery. Horses or oxen, with hired civilian drivers, formed the transport. On the battlefield the cannoneers manned drag ropes to maneuver the guns into position.
Sometimes, as at Guilford Courthouse, the ever-present forest diminished the