fichage livre artillerie napoléonienne

« The guns were their standards : losing them to an enemy was a disgrace, and the bouches à feu had a personality all their own, and were treated as comrades in action. The Frenchmen Eble, Senarmont, Drouot, Lariboisière, Songis, Ruty, Marmont Britons such as Frazer, Dickson, Ramsay, Ross and Mercer; Austrian Smola, Russians Kutusaiv and Arakcheev, Prussian von Holtzendorf. Theorists and inventors such as Gribeauval, Lichtenstein, Congreve and Schrapnel.

The horse-drawn artillery came of age. For the first time in military history they are artillery generals who command artillery organizations at the corps and army level, and who command artillery units larger than a single company or battery. They take their just place on the battlefield, mobile dealers of death and destruction, the operational equals of their infantry and cavalry brethren. For the first time there are artillery battles that decide the fate of kingdoms. Pour la rpz de l’artilleur : the one-legged French Captain Brechtel commanding his artillery battery supporting the river crossing (Berezina, 1812).

Drouot leading his gunners in a hell-for-leather artillery charge at Lützen in 1813 when he unlimbered as close as possible to the allied line and blew out its center whit point-blank canister.

And the most important artillery action of the period: the wild artillery chevauchee at the Batlle of Friedland in 1807, where Senarmont led his men in front of the infantry, turning his gunners and their well-served guns into the main attack while he assaulted the Russian center, and in twenty minutes knocking 4k of them over, blowing a hole in the Russian center. With their high deeds, the artillerymen of the period set a milestone in military history and saw their arm grow in strength and prestige an become a force to reckon with on the modern battlefield. It should be noted that what is now called field artillery was usually referred to as light artillery during the Napoleonic period.

This included both foot artillery and horse artillery. Quote from Napoleon: “ I don’t attach importance to the loss of cannon if the risk of their being taken is compensated for by the chance of success”. Partie 1 CH1 Leurs canons étaient leur fierté, et ils les défendaient comme on défend un drapeau ou un étendard.

Napoleon called his 12-pounders his favorite, his “pretty girls.

One French company commander in Spain during the Peninsular War, when urged to abandon his guns during a desperate retreat, proudly proclaimed that the guns of his company “were our flag." Thiebault later remarked, after they had reached safety, that the exertions of Hulot and his artillerymen were “superhuman." Another French artillery officer would remark that his gunners “loved their guns like their sweethearts.” The French developed more than artillery doctrine for the fighting of their guns: they also developed a definite com mand structure for artillery that mirrored the tactical and grand tactical developments with the infantry and cavalry.

They undoubtedly had the most highly developed artillery command structure, as well as the most flexible tactical system of the period.. »