"Austrian rockets" Topic

I have some free time to translate these interesting mentions of the usage of rockets in the First Serbian Rising. The quotes are from the memoirs of Mateja Nenadović link , and the described events are from 1806.

"I arrived from Vienna with Boža, reported what we had accomplished and brought a thousand pieces of large rockets, to burn Šabac when we approach it."

"While we were sitting in Topolik and fighting with the Turks during Peter's Fast, we decided to assault Šabac; considering that there was plenty of salt there caught in transit, we invited all who wished to volunteer for the attack, and, apart from loot, all the salt will be given as payment to the volunteers, and we gathered 200. We issued to each shot and birdshot to load their muskets with five of both. We divided: Cincar Janko (Kostić), the best fighter, from the riverbank, decided to attack the lower gate with 100 volunteers; we ordered Cincar Janko (Popović) to board a ship up from Šabac with 100 volunteers and move downstream to the houses on the river, since they are open from the Sava, without any fortification, and to enter the houses and open the lower gate; Živko Dabić to attack the upper gate to lure the Turks away, and all the rest of us to approach the redoubt, although the ditch was full of water and could not be crossed. We started firing those rockets that I had brought from Vienna, every army reached its designated spot, but Cincar Janko did not hit the open Sava bank to open the lower gate immediately, but passed down the Sava. Those at the gate waited for him and fought, muskets were firing without a pause; till Asan pasha noticed there was no threat to him from anywhere, since he was surrounded by a dich full of water and the upper gate was strong – the pasha and all the Turks rushed to the lower gate and secured themselves, although there were many dead and wounded on both sides."

Either you have made a mistake in translation or Nenadovic's memory was playing tricks with him. There weren't even tests with rockets in Austria until 1808. Maybe he means canister or shell- or maybe he is thinking of a later event? I doubt Austria would have supplied rockets to the Serbs anyway.

Dave@ Was wondering same as NV72 says, could these be small rockets not military ordinance if I could call them that? similar to signal rockets?

It is curious, but that is what it says in the two passages. The word he uses is raketla, which is today rarely heard (now it is raketa) but is common throughout the nineteenth century. I intentionally maintained the slightly confusing form of his sentences to be as faithful as I could to the original.

Nenadović's mission to Vienna was of the highest rank and luckily there can be no confusion of its date, nor of that failed assault on Šabac. Also, his memoirs are one of the most important sources for the period. I have just checked and they have been translated into English link The first quote is from the eight, and the second from the ninth chapter.

Austria would not supply the insurgents with weapons, but large amounts were smuggled, despite Austria's own great needs because of her losses.

Possibly something could be found in Austrian archives. Šabac is on the Sava, which was the border with Austria. As a farsighted and serious state Austria maintained a good network of informers.

There was plenty of gun-running across the Danube-Sava from the Serbs on the northern side. misha Glennie is quite interesting on it link

However, the Austrians only became interested in rockets following the British victory at Second Copenhagen in 1807 and it was 1815 before they took rockets into the field during the siege of Huningen in 1815.

Looking at Google, there is an alternative for rakelta with the meaning being a "bomb", which would suggest mortar bombs or possibly the illumination shells fired from howitzers, which could be used as incendiary weapons. It is quite possible that there were old mortars kicking around in the depots as Napoleon used some captured in Vienna in 1809. They fired all sorts of things out of mortars – so it is more likely to be a thousand mortar shells and balls plus presumably some old fixed mortar cannon. You can heat these rounds or put explosive inside them to make them incendiaries, which is just what you need in a siege type situation.

It would be more logical that the questionable weapons are not rockets.

Still, 14Bore's idea seems more convincing, that the insurgents used some type of flares. Did anything such exist? Different terms were in common use for howitzers and grenades.
Nenadović was a very experienced commander showing profound understanding of combat, training, weapons in his writing.

The French had an illuminating shell which was reported to be quite good and effective. British Sergeant Gunn reported their use at the siege of Burgos in 1811. So, while it wasn't a flare, per se, it could have been an illumation shell.

K

Signal rockets are post-Napoleonic – this must be old mortar bombs from the depots. The smugglers would not be able to get hold of experimental kit.

Didn't the Russians have a factory for signal rockets as far back as Peter the Great's time? Someone more knowledgable will have to find the primary evidence, but I recall it being mentioned on a lot of basic 'history of space-flight' type websites.

The same sites often point to the first European military use of rockets being as far back as 1379 during the siege of Chioggia in Italy.

I have checked the Vuk Karadžić's Serbian Dictionary editions from 1818 and 1852 link (luckily with German translations) and they note only the form raketla – ракетла, explaining it as die Rakette.
We could assume that in 1806 the term raketla might have not been used for rockets, as has later become common, particularly as it was such a backward society and since they did not exist as a weapon anyway.
The word has obviously been adopted from German, so we would need to know what were the possible meanings of it in that language before the appearance of military rockets. I don't.
However, Nenadović wrote his memoirs for his descendants in the final years of his life, in the eighteen-fifties, when the modern usage of the word was long established. So many problems…

When we further examine these "raketle" we encounter many new problems. A thousand "large" rockets would weigh a lot, and I presume be difficult to smuggle, but so would that many grenades. If we assume they are a form of grenade, large grenades would demand a large artillery piece, and they were rare among the insurgents. They possibly even did not have a heavy piece this early in the rebellion. I will investigate it.

The Chinese and the Indians both used signal rockets quite some time before the Napoleonic period. Further, Congreve had an illumination rocket during the Napoleonic period which probably could have been used for signalling.

See The Details of the Rocket System by William Congreve and The First Golden Age of Rocketry by Frank Winter.

K

What I was thinking was almost toy size rockets, if nothing else to throw confusion into the battle. The only reason I can think to shoot lots into the air

It could be grenades as the Austrians had a musket and a pistol, which could launch them in the late 18th century inventory. It could just be simple howitzer shells.

The OED suggests a meaning around this time of a cylinder projecting some light, which would suggest an illumination shell.

Military rockets seem to have been around a lot earlier than Congreve's rockets. For example, von Geissler, a Saxon artillery officer, conducted experiments with rockets in the late 1600s/early 1700s.

A modern book (so not, admittedly, a primary source) states: "His rockets were very large for the time, weighing from 55 to 132 pounds (25 to 60 kilograms). They were made of wood covered with canvas soaked in glue. They were propelled by specially made gunpowder and carried a 16-pound (7 kg) warhead. The exhaust from these impressive rockets blasted a deep hole in the ground at takeoff.

"Geissler published the results of its experiments in a book. It inspired a large number of people to perform their own experiments. Rockets grew ever larger and heavier, with 100-pounds (45 kg) rockets being built by 1730. Experiments were also made to improve the gunpowder propellant. Many different proportions of the ingredients were tried. As one observer reported,'The rocket case weighed 33 lbs (15 kg), the charge 23 lbs (10 kg), the guiding stick 33 lbs (15 kg) and the cap and payload 4 lbs (1.8 kg), the whole rocket, therefore, 93 lbs (42 kg). It rose to an extremely high altitude'." ('Rockets (Space Innovations)', Ron Miller, 2007).

Note that I'm not saying these were the rockets in the OP's posting – just that there seem to have been military rockets a lot earlier in Europe (I don't know about Austria, though) than Congreve's famous rockets.

Oh, and signal rockets don't appear to be post-Napoleonic. I found another modern source (not primary, sorry) that states: "Following the development and use of military missiles in Europe, the "Rocket Enterprise" (Raketnoe Zavedenie) was founded in Moscow around 1680. A signaling rocket developed in Russia in 1717 could reportedly reach an altitude of several hundreds meters. According to Russian archival records, in 1732, the St Petersburg-based Arsenal artillery enterprise originally founded by Peter the Great in 1711, produced 20 rocket-launching devices for the Russian border fortress of Brest."
link

Arteis,

What you found is an English translation of what would be generally accepted as the history of early rocketry in Russia. I was about to post it myself when I saw your post.

I can't confirm the nature and type of the pre-1800 rocket activity from really primary sources, on-line, and in a few minutes, but what you found is not a "strange" or "isolated" view and the works footnoted in my link (yours lacked the notes) are considered to be "mainstream" works. They are also mostly post-Soviet publications.

link

So, I don't think any apology is needed …. I wasn't planning on asking for one!
:-)

Russians (and I assume everyone else) had a lovely array of "bombs", fired from mortars and unicorns usually, for both incendiary attacks (брандскугель) and illumination (светящее ядро).
Described in some detail at the bottom of this page (in Russian, sorry) : link

A time line of early rocket use in several countries (sorry, Russian again) :
link

Amicalement.

It would be amazing if we could learn more about the state of rocketry at that time in Europe.

I have went through some notes I had taken many years ago but have found nothing helpful.
Ernst Gedeon Maretić, an Austrian officer from Zemun tasked with reporting on the rebellion only mentions that Serbian assaults on the town had been repulsed.
He also notes that in February the entire Serbian artillery consisted of 54 guns and 12 mortars.
In April he notes it as 48 guns and 8 mortars.
I will try to get that book again to look through it more carefully.

So many new post while I was rummaging through old notebooks!
Thank you

Here is the hetman who used rockets at Belgorod against the Crimean Tatars in 1576 (not 1516). He was an early hetman of the Zaporozhets (Dniepr river cossacks) named magnat Bohdan Rożyński. He was actually Polish, but Russians know him as князь Ружинский Богдан Михайлович :
picture

I wonder how much of the early rocketry was more or less "non-professional", or "unconventional" or "asymmetrical" warfare.

Amicalement.

Thank you very much for all the data.
I should not have been surprised by the reappearance of rockets in Europe throughout centuries, it is, after all, very simple to experiment with them, and their nonmilitary usage is spectacular.
Thus so far we only have one testimony of rockets (if at all they are) acquired in Vienna, but not used to a notable effect. Too little to even speculate. I will research the incident more.

I have just been looking at the catalogue to the Zeughaus in Graz. On p.23 is a whole lot of "tools used in making rockets", which date from the 17th century. It says these paper rockets were used as signals in case of attack or as celebration fireworks. There are paper rounds – they look like tubes less than 12 inches long with a spherical lump tied off at the top.

The 1808 Austrian rockets are more like a larger tube of stiff paper with a shell round fixed at the top.

Such rockets would fit great to the story – light, small, possibly not even considered a weapon and therefore possible to export.
Another issue with so many grenades or bombs would be the amount of gunpowder they require. Only in 1807 the rebells opened a powder mill, and until then there are mentions of commanders assisting each other with a single barrel or a small amount being smuggled and in numerous occasions not having enough. An exotic weapon expending rare resources would have been a luxury.
Again that is only my speculation.

Hi

Curious about which book on Graz you are looking at.

Thanks