Artillery Through the Ages | Page 4

for successful application in later centuries. Breech-loading guns, for instance, had already been invented. They were unsatisfactory because the breech could not be sealed against escape of the powder gases, and the crude, chambered breechblocks, jammed against the bore with a wedge, often cracked under the shock of firing. Neither is spiral rifling new. It appeared in a few guns during the 1500's.
Mobile artillery came on the field with the cart guns of John Zizka during the Hussite Wars of Bohemia (1419-24). Using light guns, hauled by the best of horses instead of the usual oxen, the French further improved field artillery, and maneuverable French guns proved to be an excellent means for breaking up heavy masses of pikemen in the Italian campaigns of the early 1500's. The Germans under Maximilian I, however, took the armament leadership away from the French with guns that ranged 1,500 yards and with men who had earned the reputation of being the best gunners in Europe.
Then about 1525 the famous Spanish Square of heavily armed pikemen and musketeers began to dominate the battlefield. In the face of musketry, field artillery declined. Although artillery had achieved some mobility, carriages were still cumbrous. To move a heavy English cannon, even over good ground, it took 23 horses; a culverin needed nine beasts. Ammunition--mainly cast-iron round shot, the bomb (an iron shell filled with gunpowder), canister (a can filled with small projectiles), and grape shot (a cluster of iron balls)--was carried the primitive way, in wheelbarrows and carts or on a man's back. The gunner's pace was the measure of field artillery's speed: the gunner walked beside his gun! Furthermore, some of these experts were getting along in years. During Elizabeth's reign several of the gunners at the Tower of London were over 90 years old.
Lacking mobility, guns were captured and recaptured with every changing sweep of the battle; so for the artillerist generally, this was a difficult period. The actual commander of artillery was usually a soldier; but transport and drivers were still hired, and the drivers naturally had a layman's attitude toward battle. Even the gunners, those civilian artists who owed no special duty to the prince, were concerned mainly over the safety of their pieces--and their hides, since artillerists who stuck with their guns were apt to be picked off by an enemy musketeer. Fusilier companies were organized as artillery guards, but their job was as much to keep the gun crew from running away as to protect them from the enemy.
[Illustration: Figure 5--FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BREECHLOADER.]
So, during 400 years, cannon had changed from the little vases, valuable chiefly for making noise, into the largest caliber weapons ever built, and then from the bombards into smaller, more powerful cannon. The gun of 1600 could throw a shot almost as far as the gun of 1850; not in fire power, but in mobility, organization, and tactics was artillery undeveloped. Because artillery lacked these things, the pike and musket were supreme on the battlefield.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS
Under the Swedish warrior Gustavus Adolphus, artillery began to take its true position on the field of battle. Gustavus saw the need for mobility, so he divorced anything heavier than a 12-pounder from his field artillery. His famous "leatheren" gun was so light that it could be drawn and served by two men. This gun was a wrought-copper tube screwed into a chambered brass breech, bound with four iron hoops. The copper tube was covered with layers of mastic, wrapped firmly with cords, then coated with an equalizing layer of plaster. A cover of leather, boiled and varnished, completed the gun. Naturally, the piece could withstand only a small charge, but it was highly mobile.
Gustavus abandoned the leather gun, however, in favor of a cast-iron 4-pounder and a 9-pounder demiculverin produced by his bright young artillery chief, Lennart Torstensson. The demiculverin was classed as the "feildpeece" par excellence, while the 4-pounder was so light (about 500 pounds) that two horses could pull it in the field.
These pieces could be served by three men. Combining the powder charge and projectile into a single cartridge did away with the old method of ladling the powder into the gun and increased the rapidity of fire. Whereas in the past one cannon for each thousand infantrymen had been standard, Gustavus brought the ratio up to six cannon, and attached a pair of light pieces to each regiment as "battalion guns." At the same time he knew the value of fire concentration, and he frequently massed guns in strong batteries. His plans called for smashing hostile infantry formations with artillery fire, while neutralizing the ponderous, immobile enemy guns with a whirlwind cavalry charge. The ideas were sound. Gustavus smashed the Spanish Squares at Breitenfeld in 1631.
[Illustration: Figure 6--LIGHT ARTILLERY OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS (1630).]
Following the Swedish