To tide everyone over, here: take a mediocre essay I wrote last semester for class. Hopefully it is somewhat edifying. I wish I were taking more military history courses, so I could regurgitate my essays here and get some use out of them. Unfortunately, citations are not included automatically on RPG, and I am too lazy to cite everything again on here.

[u][b]The Changing State of Battlefield Artillery, 1815-1900
[/b][/u]

Firearms matured immensely during the 19th century. New inventions were the product of an unprecedented rate of change in the science of firearms: automatics, the minie ball, the metal cartridge, the percussion cap, new and specialized varieties of shell, new and specialized varieties of powder, changing methods and materials of weapon construction to name only a few. Artillery was no exception to these upheavals, and with the radical changes in the state of firearms so too came radical changes in the state of army artillery, changing the capabilities and their method of use to ensure artillery’s continued prominence in battles on land between 1815 and the end of the 19th century.

The placement of field artillery changed dramatically with advancing technology and theory. At the start of the 19th century, artillery was usually placed twenty or thirty yards in front of infantry . This placement was a consequence of the technology: most of the guns at Waterloo, and indeed of the period in general, were direct-fire, especially those which were mobile enough to follow armies intending to fight battles in the field, with only a quarter of foot artillery, and no portion of horse artillery being howitzers . This placement was also necessitated by the fact that artillery were capable of being the chief death dealers to opposition cavalry1 and infantry  by way of canister or grape shot. The required number of guns firing single shot from long range was much greater if similar morale effects were desired , thanks to deficiencies of artillery science and the guns themselves. This method was obviously less efficient. Canister shot would dramatically lose its effectiveness with the increased range and angle that firing from behind infantry would necessitate , for no worthwhile benefit of safety of the guns . With developments in firearms, this placement changed. The range of small arms increased remarkably over the course of the century, and by the American Civil War the effective range of the infantry musket had increased from 100 to 500 yards, thanks chiefly to rifling and the minie ball, outranging canister shot fired from any sort of gun, necessitating the cannon drop back behind its own infantry or face its crew being shot to death . This change of positioning radically altered the role of artillery, which while falling behind its infantry became a “support weapon” , rather than a front-line killer of the enemy. Canister shot and point-blank solid shot had been made obsolete . However, this change did not stop artillery from being a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. Separate developments only increased the murderous power of the artillery piece.

Artillery retained its worth by becoming more accurate and longer-reaching while remaining mobile. The range and efficacy of artillery increased alongside developments in infantry weapons, though belatedly . The first truly modern piece of artillery, made by Sir William Armstrong, was rifled, and fired elongated shells father and much more accurately than smoothbore pieces could fire round shot , and managed to be loaded from the breech thanks to his screw mechanism, while loading shells that could be theoretically fused with remarkable accuracy . These advantages let artillery maintain its position of battlefield worth, while remaining behind the lines of rifle-equipped soldiery. The functional prowess of the gun is not the only benefit, however. The Armstrong gun was made of wrought iron and fitted with bands to keep the metal under compression, thus radically dropping the required weight , fixing one of the major problems that arose during the Crimean war, the immobility of powerful artillery . Indeed, this constant decrease in weight would continue after Armstrong had created his gun, with Russian, Austrian and Prussian services having much better projectile weight to gun weight ratios than Armstrong guns or other contemporary weapons, with the Russian 4 Pdr. Rifle having a ratio of 1:48 , and the Russian 9 Pdr having a ratio of less than 1:45 . The result of all of this was mobile batteries with massive ranges in comparison to the guns of 1815, who could fire larger shells more accurately while still being responsive to the commands given to them and still dealing death and more importantly morale damage to the enemy while being protected by friendly infantry.

Battlefield artillery also maintained its relevance by adopting new shells which allowed it to project its power at long ranges with greater finesse than previously possible. At Waterloo, the British infantry remarked that they were glad when the enemy cavalry charged, as it gave them a break from the bombardment of French guns, whose direct fire of canister and shot was much more harrowing than the charging of horses and the flashing of sabers. This reprieve would no longer exist thanks to the aforementioned increased accuracy and more importantly the development of sophisticated fused shells, which allowed potent anti-infantry fire with great precision and localized damage. First introduced was the percussion shell, which was fused at the nose and, when an impact was felt, would explode , ideally amongst enemy positions. These shells were filled with small projectiles, which would scythe through the enemy there arrayed, and their relative simplicity ensured a remarkable reliability which would play to the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian war, who employed them against the French’s problematic timed fuses, which had not yet been perfected. Timed fuses were advanced from their infancy by Captain E.M. Boxer in the middle of the 19th century  and truly perfected by the 1880s, developing a new and improved shrapnel shell is a round that, when fired, will detonate in accordance with a timed fuse, ideally overtop the enemy, and propel small spherical balls into the enemy infantry to cause mass slaughter . The shells were improved when the charge layout was changed to propel the bullets forward rather than slowing them down, only increasing the deadly efficiency of the weapon. This development and its increasing efficacy let the artillery, which had been forced back by better infantry weapons, deliver the same effect as canister shot once held, or even an improved version, from the new massive ranges with the ability to deliver anti-infantry slaughter overtop friendly units, utterly shifting the tactical realities of battle and necessitating changes from the very infantry who forced the artillery to fall back and adapt, easily visible in the Franco-Prussian war and earlier in the American Civil War’s first days.

Artillery did not remain a decisive battlefield presence by the mere changes in technology; doctrinal shifts had to occur, and they did throughout the period. This shift in doctrine can be seen in the Franco-Prussian war, when the Prussians, relying on their superior artillery to compensate for French infantry weapon superiority, used their cannon in a chiefly infantry support role. Prussian artillery was used as infantry support, breaking open French formations and killing French soldiers with concentrated fire. They took advantage of the new lightness of the guns to move along with the infantry and reposition for maximum effect, while French heavy guns’ mistaken deployment to the rear, not taking full advantage of the better accuracy and not taking advantage at all of the light weight, failed to match the constant deadly barrages of Prussian weaponry. Even before this, however, the role of battlefield artillery was changing. One can see the change to support in the Instructions for Field Artillery, which claims “Field artillery is used to attack and defend the works of temporary fortification; to destroy or demolish material obstacles and means of cover, and thus prepare the way for the success of other arms; to act upon the field of battle; to break the enemy’s line or prevent him from forming; to crush his masses; to dismount his batteries; to follow and support in a pursuit; and to cover and protect a retreat” . The focus is on the preparation of the attack and the continued pressure of battle on the enemy, rather than the Napoleonic focus on defilade fire to destroy the enemy and send them to flight. The quoted passage mentions the dismounting of enemy batteries, which is a reflection of the beginning need for counter-battery fire, something which rarely occurred in the pre-1816 period and was made ineffectual by the inaccuracy of the cannon themselves  and the ineffectiveness of the round shot they fired. More sources corroborate this, writing that artillery was to be used in preparation of other attacks and to support their efforts, clearing the way for infantry or cavalry, but in the fortified positions which were becoming so common at the time, in trenches or the cover of cities.  This focus on breaking fortifications shows the interplay between artillery and general tactics, as advances in artillery necessitate changes in general doctrine, which then necessitate changes in artillery, in this case to combat an issue that had rarely been present in pre-1816 gunpowder combat, namely entrenched troops and city-fighting. 

As much as artillery changed in the evolving face of battle, it in many ways remained the same. Artillery was still a weapon that did catastrophic damage to morale beyond its killing power, and it was a way of projecting deadly force in concentration across the battlefield alongside other forces. These roles were not created in this shifting climate, but refined and re-enabled by advances in technology and doctrine. These safeguards against obsolescence would let artillery continue to be a decisive part of battle into its proudest and most violent hour, the Great War. 


Bibliography:
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