Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Is there a source where one can find which caliber of guns was used by a particular company of French artillery for the Napoleonic Wars?

Was it a standard that some companies were heavy and others light?

Did a company that used 6lb guns ALWAYS use that caliber or was the battery composition changed?

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

Bill I recall there was a watershed where the French medium artillery switched from 8pdr's to 6pdr's. I don't have my books handy as I am at work but I suspect it was after or around the 1809 campaign. At which time N captured a lot of 6pdr's.

There is some debate about how many 8pdr's were in use after 1809 I suspect more than is reflected in the games. Although others will no doubt disagree. But to show 0 8pdrs is not correct in my view.

Salute!

General de Brigade Knox
Grand Duc d'Austerlitz et Comte de Argentan



Escadron Mamelouks
Chasseurs a'Cheval
Division de Cavalerie la Vieille Garde.





CO. 1er Brigade, II Heavy Cavalry Division, Reserve Cavalry.
http://www.aspire.co.nz/colinknoxnwc.htm

Ok - let me rephrase my question: I am wondering if a list exists of French artillery that says which caliber each COMPANY used.

For instance: what caliber did the 1/5 Foot use? Etc.

Not concerned about the changeover from 6lb to 8lb. More interested in knowing MAINLY if the companies retained a Heavy or Medium rating and if so is there is a listing that says what they were rated at.

Quite often in OBs all you get is the company designation with no composition listed. Or something like "1st Co./5th Regiment Foot"

Was this a heavy or medium battery and if so did it ALWAYS retain this rating or did the guns get switched out from time to time?

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

Ah I see Bill. Makes sense would be a good thing to know to make all of the obs more accurate. Sorry I can't help though.

Kliff can probably give you the indidvidual colour schemes and pet names of each gun though[:D]

Salute!

General de Brigade Knox
Grand Duc d'Austerlitz et Comte de Argentan



Escadron Mamelouks
Chasseurs a'Cheval
Division de Cavalerie la Vieille Garde.





CO. 1er Brigade, II Heavy Cavalry Division, Reserve Cavalry.
http://www.aspire.co.nz/colinknoxnwc.htm

Kliff is busy making up a list of BP execs to send to the firing squad.

Wondering what effect this spill has had on the Cajun cookin' in his area.

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

Bill,

Did you see this one? http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/805KXI.pdf It's from Nafziger files. I recon there may be similar files for other years. With a list of batteries at hand it's easy to get the armament of each of them.

My $0.02

<center></center>
<center><b>Eyo Imperatorskogo Velichestva Leib-Kirassirskogo polku
General-Adjutant Anton Valeryevich Kosyanenko
Commander of the Second Army of the West </b></center>

Anton - yes that list is helpful in knowing the KINDS of guns in the corps but you dont know which companies are using them. I see this alot.

For instance: Digby-Smith in his Napoleonic Wars Data Book says something like "12 FABs" which means 12 field artillery batteries. Doesn't say which company/regiment and the caliber.

Even the list you reference only tells me the various calibers.

I made up a list on my own for the title I am working on and its VERY exhaustive. It also shows that the French army DID stick to one caliber per campaign for a company. I also found that one of my main sources did a rather slipshod job on the batteries and one other source was able to help me correct it.

The list will be in the game so that the guys can use it for scenario design work.

The horse artillery is simple as once they went over to the six pound gun they more or less stuck with it. You will once in awhile see a four pound gun but mainly they all used the six pounder.

Foot artillery is harder to fix as you see something like:

1 co./6 regt. and it wont say what kind of guns they used.

My list helped me figure that out.

When I get a chance I will make one up for Austerlitz for the French. I may find an error or two as well doing that.

How did I make up my list:

1. Go into Ultra Edit and use the Seach in Files command. Paste in the text for a eight pound foot battery. Usually all you need is the size, weapon type, uniform numbers and that is it. Here is what it looks like for Austerlitz:

B B 25 2

Set the path to be the main Austerlitz folder and pick the 1805.oob file. Execute the command and the Output window shows you every eight pound battery in that OB.

Copy the output to the clipboard and dump it into a text file. Parse out the text you dont need. Takes a bit of time to do this part as you get unique line numbers for each line entry to the left of the unit data. But once that is done I then open up a new spreadsheet and manually enter in the data for the battery:

Size (Heavy, Medium, Light)
Company #
Regiment #

Once my list is done I can then sort it by Regiment and then Company. I can find all cases where the same company and regiment is used (OB errors from the source or just my bad typing).

Then I do the same for six pound foot sections and twelve pound foot sections. Put them in the same column so you can sort them by weight or regiment/co. or whatever.

In my spreadsheet I did for my next game I copied the data so I could see two sorts simultaneously: by weight and then regiment, company and the second list is by regiment, company so I can reconcile the differences in duplicate entries.

I use the second list to check the OBs whenever I build a new OB.

I will do this with all projects I build so that I do not create two batteries using the same co/regt number.

Once the title is released I will probably post the information too for those that like this kind of thing.


Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

Of course it does not! But if you know that this corps had say batteries X and Y from Z arty regiment it's rather important to know that these two companies had such-and-such inventory of the pieces. After all this inventory is what we, gamers, are interested in. Exact names of the units are a kind of eye candy. Besides it concerns only the French army. For Austrians and Russians everything we may hope for is "6lb Cavalry bty" or even "Light section". Russian army of the era proves least problems at all - all the companies were uniform and had a straight numeration sequence. Still there is no distinction between light (10 lb) and heavy (20 lb) licornes of Russian arty. This looks kind of strange.

From the technical point of view, if you use the spreadsheets anyway, why don't you break your entire line into different cells. In your example with 8lb guns it would be U in in A1, <strength> in B1, <quality> in C1, B in D1, B in E1, etc. Each line represents one entry in the oob. Each column representing a certain info about the unit. With all the units from the entire oob in such a spreadsheet you could select any type of unit indicated by different letters or any unit having a specific weapons or sort them out, our count etc. All the operations are done with a mere couple of mouse clicks. A formula written with a Wizard at max. Creating such a spreadsheet will take some time, but much less than you describe with text operations. It needs some practice, but it's worth that!

<center></center>
<center><b>Eyo Imperatorskogo Velichestva Leib-Kirassirskogo polku
General-Adjutant Anton Valeryevich Kosyanenko
Commander of the Second Army of the West </b></center>

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I suspect that we will never have the answer. Did anyone at the time actually keep such records? And along the same line, I suspect that over the entire 20 or so years of the Napoleonic Wars, some batteries came and went, and came again, as armies expanded or contracted, and technology changed such as the Brits phasing out 3 pounders, and the French phasing out 4 pounders. When did the occur. Was it all at once, or a battery here and there over a period of time. Likewise the French change from 8 pounders to 6 pounders. I would think that by 1812, most 4 and 8 pounders were gone, but by 1814 they were back, replacing all the 6 pounders lost at in Russian and at Leipzig.
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<center><font color="yellow">2nd Lieutenant Willie Davis
Light Bn Luneburg</font id="yellow">

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Actually the 6lb gun remained. The 8lb guns if my memory serves me right were all melted down to make the 6lb gun when they changed French artillery systems.

I suspect that you could separate the periods into these:

1. 1805 to 1809 - changeover from 8lb to 6lb gun. Recovery of many 3lb guns from Austrians to be used as regimental guns. New carriage system and so on.

2. 1809 to 1812 - new system, Russian retreat many guns lost.

3. 1812 to 1814 - regiments reorganized. New men had to be trained. Probably lead some batteries not be handled as well as before.

4. 1815 - organization may have been similar to 1814 but probably slightly different. Army was still recovering from the tragic losses of the last 3 years.

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!