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!
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