"Loosing your cannons by Cavalry." Topic

At the french Cavalry charge on Waterloo, all the British cannons at that side of the battlecamp became under the hands of the french riders, but no one was destroyed.
There were no horses to carry out them, no riders with spikes, nobody dismount and throw them down by hand into the ravine or to drive the ramrods of the pistols instead of nails into the touch holes.
Even they could destroyed the sponges!.

But nothing of that happened.

So, a great opportunity to leave the British without artillery was missed.

In your wargames, if your cavalry charge could arrived to the enemy batteries, it's automatic that they destroyed them?.
Could you took them, turn round and used against your opponent?
Could you carried them to your main position?
If the other side made a counteratack and retake the batteries, could them be used again?.

Many thanks in advance for your guidance.

Amicalement
Armand

I play Empire V.
When the cavalry charge, I run my gunners into handy nearby squares.
When the cavalry leave, I re-man the guns.

You are expecting cavalry to behave INTELLIGENTLY????

If I were dumb enough to man the guns and try to get off a futile salvo vs good French cavalry, I would die in the melee.
When I flee to my squares, I also take the sponges, etc. with me. It is what they are trained to do. No cavalryman is going to dismount in this mess.

I suppose that at least one officer could be point with that task before the charge.
If you know that your are taking or pass away a battery position, it would be not bad idea to task a little group to this purpose.

Thanks for your guidance John (and thanks for your post too, I enjoy them a lot).

Amicalement
Armand

Mercer commented that if the french had sent some limbers and horse artillerymen, they could have run off with his guns. Or even some HA with nails to spike them.

I suspect that this is one of these good ideas where the people who might think about them are a bit busy firing guns to take advantage of the opportunity. It is not as though there was a corps of idle mounted drivers tasked with this.

And a cavalryman with a hammer and nails, no chance.

Didn't Mercer in his Journal of the Waterloo Campaign relate that when they ran to the square they took a wheel with them? Just so the French couldn't drag them away? I've worked with reenactment cannons and it's really not very hard to pull and reattach a wheel to a field carriage.

As for in a game situation; it if was a skirmish game we might talk about improvised spiking attempts, but not at the level/scale of gaming most of us play.

"So, a great opportunity to leave the British without artillery was missed."

It did not really matter since Napoleon lost that battle.

I don't think Mercer ran to a square, with or without a wheel. Instead he shot the cavalry off.

In WRG you just have to test when being charged, and if the gunners react positively, you vcan have them take refuge with the infantry. When they run, hope they stop soon and send them back. Cavalry cannot spike the guns, nor move them without limbers.

Which is reasonable as this evidence suggests they didn't.

They had bigger fish to fry.

In his tactical study of Waterloo, John Keegan ponders this same thing, Armand. He suggests that men honed to fight from horseback were simply unwilling to dismount in such close proximity to the enemy. The French cavalry may have instinctively felt that dismounting then and there was tantamount to suicide, even though a rational observer may see opportunity where they only saw a bad end.

And a cavalryman with a hammer and nails, no chance.

The cavalry didn't have farriers, then?

Farriers did not charge guns.
Nor did they dismount to perform manual labor in the presence of many infantry squares, all with loaded muskets.

I would have ensured that the French Infantry was close behind with horse battery's galore, and shot the British to pieces (except the 24th foot dads regiment)

Then I would have pursued the Brits off the field and taken the Prusiians on with a drive on Liege.

As I recall, the Allied gunners who ran to safety from the French cavalry never returned, a sore point with Wellington. So it was entirely unnecessary for the cav to bring implements to disable the guns.

Ney asked for infantry and Napoleon denied the request even though he had units available. The moment passed and the French mercifully lost. I say mercifully because eventually Napoleon would have been ousted by overwelming numbers but only after the unnecessary loss of thousands of lives.

Bob Coggins

Ratisbon

What are half a million lives compared to glory?

And the brits would have had cuirasses and lancers!

And we might have seen steam warships, and military use of railways.

Re Mercer – he records one charge where they stood, in order not to disorder a square of nervy looking Brunswickers, but I seem to recall that he "evaded" under WRG rules, and came back to the guns. Perhaps someone with a copy of his memoir to hand could confirm or refute this.

If the artillerists could have run into a nearby infantry square for protection, who in their right mind is going to get off his horse to spike the gun??? Honestly, you would be in range of any musket from the squares pointed in your direction. I can't see a cavalryman stopping to spike a gun after over-running the battery unless they also broke the squares around the battery.

Wasn't Ney (and maybe another one) give saber blows to one british cannon?.
If a Marshal can why not a little platoon?

And by memory, at Austerlitz didn't some french cavalry spike russian or austrian cannons during a cavalry atack?.

So, noboby took enemy cannons and used against them in a wargame.

Many thanks for your comments and guidance.

Amicalement
Armand

Over the course of the approx. 2 hour phase of the French cavalry attacks, if the French could've successfully sighted guns--British or French--on that lip or the edge of that ridge, they would've and probably tried many times to do just that. But they didn't b/c the Brits kept them from doing it, not b/c the French military… or Napoleon for that matter… was a dull ogre that stupidly bashed ahead with brute force a view which is probably en vogue in some countries.

Of course, that doesn't answer the question, but the view that the British weren't interested in re-manning many of those guns after the "cavalry" attacks began would seem to stand to reason.

I pulled out my copy of Mercer's memoirs of the campaign and found this: the Duke's orders were for artillerymen to fire and retire, taking their tools. For most of the battle Mercer did not retire for fear that it would trigger a stampede, until finally he did under the direct orders of the Duke. No mention of taking a wheel with them so I'm either thinking of another occasion or hallucinating.

Late in the battle a French battery got on the ridge and was firing on his square with shot and shell. A one point he could see a shot coming at him and exclaimed, "this is it then!" But it grazed his pelisse and killed a horse instead. A Belgian battery came up on it's flank and drove the French away.

'Farriers did not charge guns'

Alas, I don't have the book to hand as I am in the Congo at the moment, but I remember reading in an account of the Charge of the Light Brigade called 'Hell Riders' (I know it wasn't in the Napoleonic Wars, before any one starts) about one of the British Farriers who killed several Russian gunners / Cossacks with an axe.
So he, at least, charged guns.

The French went up the ridge and the British artillery left! Wellington stated that with out the RHA batteries that where in reserve he would not have had artillery for the secound half of the battle.

So the artillery left and the French cav did not need to spike the guns.

Mercer was with the Brunswickers who were in the 2nd line in reserve. I look up Adkins book and the listed movements of Mercer's battery do not jive. anyone have a link about his movments.

Lord Ghee

In an issue of Empire magizine 10 years or so ago there was an article on french battery deployments. What I remember is that the HA batterise of the French cav where striped to fight on the flanks where the extra horse man moving them better.

Lord Ghee

AIUI the Allied guns crept backwards from the ridge line under their own recoil, and couldn't be brought back up into position because this required horse teams which the French skirmishers promptly picked off.

As a result, from quite early on there was very little Allied artillery in evidence. Gun batteries positioned and equipped to fire at the cavalry as they withdrew must have been the exception, not the rule. Most ended up well down the reverse slope and it proved so dangerous to get back to the crest that they abandoned trying.

Wellington made a point of opposing a Waterloo medal for his gunners, presumably because he was so irate at their perceived non-contribution.

Incidentally, IIRC the battery that caused such damage to Mercer's was Prussian! Mercer was able to hold his position exactly because he kept his guns in action throughout. There seems not have been any time when his guys were so tied up moving their guns that they were sitting ducks for French sharpshooters and unable to reply – which seems to be what happened elsewhere along the line.

In seems to me that Mercer was with the Brunwickers, they started in the secound line so when did they get called forward.

Question #1: when did the Brunswicker get committed?

Question #2: The French light Cav charged, which got hit by the British light cav (Brunswicher Hussars included) whcih got hit by the French Heavies and they where chased off. Which left the Squares. So during the cavarly charges after this where were the Brunswick squares and what French artillery could get at them (Mercer disscribes an artillery pounding they took).

Question #3 If they move to the left of the British line as in Adkins page 357 when did they shift to center? (page 396) Mercer dose not discribe this shift?. It has been a long time since I read Mercer's accounts.

what did Mercer state he was doing during the Middle Guarde's attack?

One main reason you bring up your secound line is that your frist is gone!

"Amicalement"
Lord Ghee

Anyone?

Lord Ghee

I prefer loosing my cannons *at* cavalry.

This is one of those subjects, which seem terribly heroic, yet were impractical and emerge from a mythological reading of memoirs (such as Mercer's). Light cavalry did carry nails, but this was as part of theor raiding and long range attacks. You are not going to do this in battle, because as soon as cavalry stops, it is a sitting target – and if you stop on your own, your mates have gone. What is the point of taking the guns? Fire a carbine into an ammo wagon and it might blow – the gun is useless then. You would need the horse teams to drag it, so where did they come from?

Mr. Lordghee, I had to search on my books to answer your questions, but I tried about some ones.

The brunswickers were in second line in the center of Wellington line.
They suffered by artillery all day, but they went on "shock" with the enemy when Ney send the big Cavalry attack. Some sources said that their square ended very bad.
The Prince of Orange was with them and he was wounded. So imagine the rest of the soldiers.
Before the French Cavalry atack the Brunswickers were send to the rearguard (or they gone for themselves).
They were hit by all the cavalry waves (impossible to move the square in this continue falling sabres)
The artillery commited after the Cavalry atack (there were not french artillery fire during the atack) was mostly from the Guard and some from Jerome Division.
The French cavalry waved after crossing the squares to many directions. Some to the right of the british squares (road closed with fallend trees)and others to the left (more infantry), but mostly was repulsed by the Allied Cavalry which amount more that 5 thousand sabres and were fresh.
There were two Infantry Brigades from Jerome Division (infantry) which were waiting to atack before the CAvalry, but Ney forget them and when he decided to used them, the British were in line again and ready to shoot them.
Both Brigades were decimated by this way.
Also Vandamme ordered two Cavalry Brigades to wait under cover and not atack as reserve. With those riders there were the Carabiniers. But Ney, mad in this moment, ordered them to atack too.
He was responsable from the lost of the French Cavalry. (and more much things as I had posted on other threads).
Mercer disapear from the battle before the Cavalry atack.
Maybe he had not more ammo or not enought gunners to carried his pieces.
I guess he went to the rearguard.

All of these are from memory, but if I had the time to found more info, I would put it here.

Amicalement
Armand