Dear All,
does anybody have a source-grounded idea of how long a 8-gun deployed artillery company frontage was under average circumstances? thank you for attention, marcod
artillery frontage
(9 posts) (5 voices)-
Posted 1 year ago #
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Marcod,
Both the French 8-gun company and the British 6-gun brigade, both of which would later be called batteries, kept a standard spacing of 10 yards between pieces. So, on paper, the French unit would have a frontage of 70 yards while the British would have theirs about 50 yards wide. In reality, the units varied in size from one campaign to the next (sometimes their number of guns both increased and decreased several times within the same campaign). To that, I should add that the terrain and speed in which they had to deploy made it very difficult to maintain a 'standard' frontage. Still, these are the best numbers to use as a guide.
EdgarPosted 1 year ago # -
It might be better to look at the space as if it were a base size. So then there would be 20 metres (60 feet) allowed for each gun. People forget the limbers had to be able to pass through the guns. A battery let a huge foot print on a battlefield one of the things the artillery gets treated far to lightly for.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Thank you both. Lasalle basing seems to me much more consistent with Pickton's view than Edgar's. A 500 man, 3-rank infantry unit in line covers (assuming 1 yard per man)a space of about 170 yards and, in LAsalle's terms, 4 bases. The former is more or less the theoretical space according to Pickton for a 8 gun battery. Nonetheless, I tend to think that Lasalle allows deployed batteries a little too much space . Thank you very much again.
Posted 1 year ago # -
No, a 500 man 3-rank line would only cover about 100 yards. (Assuming about 22" per man.)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Marcod's spacing would be consistent with today's average man's size... Way too many obese people in America!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Actually I'm from Europe (Italy)... Sam's clarification is indeed very useful and Edgar's as well, I must admit that the difference between today's peoples's size and that of poorly fed early XIX century's hadn't occurred to me... Still 22" per man sounds a bit too much narrow-shouldered to me even if it certainly must be a contemporary drilling handbook standard measurement. Reverting to my original curiosity, what about what some rules call compressed artillery deployment?
Posted 1 year ago # -
I would use approx. 15 yards per gun, with 5 yards for the last gun (eg. 8x guns = 110 yards [7x15=105+5=110]).
As an aside, I did read some (a long) time past, that the frontage was 2ft per man and 4ft per horse, not sure how accurate it is, but sounds right to me.
Paul
Posted 1 year ago # -
I suppose one pays the price for answering late at night and in haste. Gun-pit you are correct the distance between guns as a standard WAS given as 15 yards, for the British anyway. Adkins gives the distance per gun as 20 metres and I confess to being lazy and quoting from the last book I had read.
However I think the last five yards bit is being a little too precise. What Wellington might have called 'crimping' :))
Sam is also correct when he says the spacing tended to be 22" for heavy infantry. People do tend to round up for ease of calculation. After all what difference can 2" make in the scheme of things...
Yes! Yes! I know. 500" in a British Battalion, nearly 14 feet (13.88), or room for another 15 muskets. :)So assuming a British force of a Battalion with 500 muskets in two ranks covers 250x22"=5500"
152.77 yards. A 6 gun battery might be assumed to cover 15x6=90 yards. or 59% of the frontageFor the French in line we have the same 500 muskets in three ranks say
166.66" x 22" = 3666.52"
101.85 yards frontage.Gun Batteries have 8 guns at 15 yards/gun= 120yards
Of course this is the drill manuals and just goes to illustrate the wisdom of having some standardisation in the Lasalle rules.
Posted 1 year ago #
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