"Fife & Drum Amusette - Painted Pix" Topic

All right, you KNOW you want one:

Click on the link for more information:

link

According to Adrian Caruana in "Grasshoppers and Butterflies: the Light 3 Pounders of Pattison and Townsend", the mantlets were used to protect the artillerymen at an advanced post. The mantlet was armed with a wall piece, a one-inch calibre, greatly enlarged version of the Long Land or Short Land Pattern flintlock musket. The book depicts a pair of mantlets with each cannon.

Here is a picture of the individual pieces that make up the set of AE-6:

Priced at $6.00 USD per set with free shipping through December 31, 2012.

Very nicely done.

No. No, DAF, I don't want one…

I need three. One for my British, one for a friend of mine, and a third for my Imagi-Nation army…

Darn you again, sir.

Eric

You need a Hessian crew for them, you know.
Were they jaegers?

@JOFM: since Carauna (and I think that he would know) states that the equipment was used by the RA, I had the crew done as Royal Artillery (RA).

The RA drill manuals show pictures of the mantlet and wall gun in a variety of uses including protecting a pair of 3-pounders; and used in amphibious landings as the "first ashore" and set up to defend as the rest of the company disembarks from boats.

I meant "in addition"…

When the subject of Amusettes first came up on TMP, there was an incident about Hessians shooting through a redneck's cabin, in one wall out the other. Like the Clint Eastwood "Gauntlet".
Well… That's why I need a Hessian team, preferably jaegers!

Oh, by the way…
My commission check is due on the 28th.

You could use the Minden Prussian jagers as stand ins along with the F&D mantlet.

These look really nice. As someone who is just beginning down the imagination SYW path, are these usable that early, or were they only developed and used in time for the AWI? Were they used all across Europe, or were they something unique to North America? In my (very limited) reading on the period so far they have not come up. In other words, would my SYW imagination benefit from these?

Thanks,

Dan

If it's an imagi-nation, then YOU are the Colonel, so they do what you tell them to do.

@Dan Wideman II: I think that amusettes go back a ways to the early 18th century and might have been included in Maurice de Saxe's conceptual legion in the mid 1740s.

Below is a link to the history of the amusette and some accounts of von Ewald's use of the weapon during the AWI. He used the amusette to blast the enemy out of a barn and when they retreated from the barn, they were picked off by other jagers armed with rifles. Very clever, eh?

link

Thank you, Fritz. That was very interesting reading.

I think the Dalriadic Confederacy needs one! Are there crews in kilts?

You could paint the overalls in tartan pattern and call them trewes.

Whats the sudden fascination with these amusette thingies?? I never heard of them,or them ever being used before the Perry's released their set…

Bob

Just don't look at the reenactors on that site! WOW!!

Bob

Well Bob, there is this:

"April 20th. 1777,Capt Johann von Ewald "several hours before daybreak, I put an amusette behind a false hedge which I had fashioned from bushes, placing it so that the barn could be pierced easily. I sent Lieutenant Trautvetter with twelve jagers to a small hollow on this side of the river across from the parsonage, with orders to keep hidden until the Americans were dislodged from the barn by the fire of the amusette. Then they were to rise and accompany the piece with sharp rifle fire. All went well. As soon as day broke, the riflemen began their harassing with their long rifles. After the third cannon shot, the barn became silent and the enemy left it, whereupon he fell into the jagers' fire. Since the road ran up along the river, which was not over a hundred paces wide, the jagers had the best possible range, and every jager killed or wounded his man"

AND THEN THESE ACCOUNTS:

3 Sept 1777 Captain von Wreden gained a patch of woods on the enemy's left flank, from which he made a spirited attack. When his jagers cannonaded their front with some amusettes and charged with bayonets, the enemy withdrew in the direction of Christiana Bridge, leaving behind thirty killed—among them five officers—but taking their wounded with them.

16 Sept 1777 This enemy corps arrived toward one o'clock on the 16th in front of our right column at a time when both our columns were making a halt behind the Boot Tavern and while Colonel von Donop was reconnoitering the road in front with a part of the jagers of the vanguard. Colonel von Donop was almost cut off, but he joined the vanguard again with all possible speed after skillfully executing some maneuvers to his left. All the jagers, mounted and dismounted, and the Hessian grenadiers formed in a few minutes, left the column, and advanced in line to the right against the rebels, who were posted on high ground covered with a corn field and orchards. The jagers, dodging behind the fences around the fields and woods, had an opportunity to demonstrate to the enemy their superior marksmanship a d their skill with the amusettes, and the enemy, who soon retired to a dense forest left behind many killed and wounded.

July 15th On the 15th, the Queen's Rangers, and Emmerick's corps, encamped outside Kingshridge ; the three Provincial troops of Hovenden, James, and Sandford, also joined the Queen's Rangers : an Amuzette, and three artillery men, were now added to the three pounder attached to the regiment. The post was of great extent, liable to insult, and required many sentinels :

January 12 1780 On the 12th at daybreak all the troops disembarked without the guns'(except the four amusettes of the light infantry, which the men themselves had to remove) or any of the baggage, not even a horse for the Commander in Chief.

After reading these accounts, how could you NOT want to have an amusette or two in your AWI British army?

Wow, that musket seems too long. Maybe because the figure is kneeling.

It's a kind of wall gun. Kind of. :-)