"Why no one offers a 28mm SYW Amusette?" Topic

I see one or two folks offer an AmRev Amusette (e.g., Fife & Drum). Marshall Saxe was talking about these "looooong guns" (firing a one-pound or pound-and-a-half ball?). I've seen some references @ Kronoskaf) that at least the Hanoverian light infantry (two guns per battlaion), and the Hesse-Kassel Jägers (from 1762) used Amusettes?

DAF offers some examples in his press releases about their use in the AWI.
I told him he needs Hessian Jaeger crew.

John;
And now if I recall, didn't tell you to go and see Minden Miniatures about that sort of nonsense…

Eric
(Merry Christmas, by the way…)

A long time ago, RAFM offered amusettes in their Flint and Feather Range, albeit without a carriage, IIRC.

@drusty. Thanks, but have been to RAFM's website, and there are no "amusettes" in their "Flint and Feather Range" (though I can't say there NEVER were, but actually, I doubt it). RAFM's "Swivel & Wall Guns," which is what others have pointed to, are best thought of as "small cannon." TMP link

Amusettes are NOT "small cannon." The best way to think of an amusette is to envisage a BIG elephant gun -- a flintlock elephant gun, of course…

The more I think about it, I guess I'm just going to have to admit that NO-one making SYW figures is interested in offering an amusette "gunner," or "team." So, since I can't find somebody either DOING a SYW "German" i.e., Hanoverian light infantry or Hesse-Kassel Jäger, standing or kneeling, firing an amusette -- or about to release one -- I will have to improvise.

I'm thinking about fore-shortening the musket/rifle of such a "German," say just a little way behind the muzzle, and then taking a free-standing musket (e.g. from Front Rank), lopping off the butt just ahead of the lock, and the bayonet, and then "pinning" the barrel to the light infantryman/Jäger's weapon to create the "look" of such a "flintlock elephant gun." I've seen an interesting pix of a re-enactor group on-line, where such a "team" consists of the gunner and an "assistant gunner" if you will, who steadies some form of "gun rest" for the amussette.

Not sure what kind of figure I might be able to press into service for the second team member steadying the "rest."

Alternately, I guess I could pick up a set of the Perry AmRev (aka AWI to you-all) Hessian Amusette gunners and try to modify their uniform back to the late 1750s/early 1760s. Hopefully a "lick o' paint" and some shading would hide the fact the waistcoat was shorter by the 1770s… By deftly using an Exacto I'd try to scribe lines to make it look like they are wearing SYW gaiters, and not AmRev gaiter-trousers…

We'll see…

I include the actual weapon as an extra piece in the set, which also includes the mantlet and two crew members. One is actually firing the weapon and the second figure is helping him sight the target. You could conceivably use the extra wall gun casting and convert a Prussian jager figure.

There was one on the British Antiques Roadshow and their main military expert said they were the contemporary equivalent of sniper rifles for siege work.

Maybe I'm thinking of the 15mm Old Glory figures and not the 28mm SYW and Jacobite Rebellion figures or the 25mm F&I Wars figures but I seem to recall that there are some "falling wounded" figures that might be convertible to the gun rest holders. I'll have to check my F&I Wars figures to see if there's one I can photograph for you. (I don't have any of the 28s to check those for you.)

I've seen a French Gribeauval period 1-pounder barrel on display in the Vienna Museum. This is still a formidable gun barrel, rather then a heavy wall-musket class of piece. I had thought it's a 3-pounder. Caliber should be roundabout 5 cm. Cubic ratio of 1 lb to 3 lb iron shot is 1000:1442. A Prussian 3-pdr shot is 2.75 Zoll, therefore 1-pdr shot should have been 1.9 Zoll = 4.97 cm or exactly half that of a 8-pdr shot. If you know the English 3-pdr shot diameter you can find the 1-pdr shot with ease. The Desagulier period Amusette had a barrel of 30 shots length or approx. 150 cm, as per Scharnhorst's writings. The barrel was in fact longer then the English 3-pdr fielded during the SYW and AWI.
The Hessian piece should have been scaled quite similar to my understanding.

Cheers,
Christian
crogges7ywarmies.blogspot.de

@ Come in Nighthawk. I HAVE a packet of RAFM's "Swivel and Wall Guns", and sure enough, some are swivels (small cannon), and the others are wall guns -like elephant guns, i.e. amusettes. True, I got mine in the '80s, and they're no longer up on the RAFM site.

If anyone whilst in England wants to see a wall gun, the Royal Armouries Museum Artillery Collection has a French double-barrelled wall gun on display at Fort Nelson, Portchester. It is described as a rifled breech-loading gun, sometimes mounted on a light two wheeled carriage. The barrels are over and under, rather than side-by-side, and has the look of a very large, very ornate shotgun. It was made around 1690. It was brought to England in 1815.

@drusty, thanks for clarifying. I thought about it later last night; "hmm, maybe they changed the package or deleted an item?"

@Christian. Hey, hope you are well! Thank you for the quick thumbnail word-sketch there. I am increasingly minded to pursue this little project after the New Year!

This is a fun place. Thank you to all for your suggestions!

The French 1-pdr Rostaign gun had a calibre of 57mm

The French 1-pdrs cast in the mid 1790s are an interesting anomaly. Gribeuaval did not have anything smaller than 4-pdr. It is absolutely correct dimensions. I have found no refererence to it in the literature.

The British 1-pdr Amusette was 5 or 7 feet long. These can be seen at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Again an very interesting area that is very limited in the literature as they were Infantry Guns so ignored by the Artillery and the Infantry as it was not an musket.
Stephen

'Amusette' was a blanket name covering -rather confusingly- two different kinds of pieces:
- very light guns, of the type normally swivel-mounted on boats or fortifications, placed on a wheeled carriage (either to be moved quickly to reinforce a threatened point of the defenses, or as an improvisation to turn a fortress or boat piece into a field one)

(reportedly a model of the 'Rostaing' 1 pounder link )

- developments of the old rampart musket, used on the field
as described by de Saxe

The first type was characterized by the weight of the ball as for cannons, while the second was by its caliber or by the number of balls to the pound as for muskets. Only the 2nd type had a musket butt.
Btw these two types of pieces -very light gun and very heavy jezzail- also appear on illustrations of zambereck camels.

According to 'Grasshoppers & Butterflies: the light 3 Pounders of Pattison and Townshend' (A.B. Caruana, Bloomfield Museum restoration Service, Canada, 1980, ISBN 0-919-316-74-3) the wheeled mantled was actually the limber part of the carriage designed by Captain Congreve for Lord Townsend's Light Infantry 3 Pounder, the 'butterfly' (the 3 pder with ammo chests on every side of the barrel; the 'grasshopper' was Colonel Pattison's Light 3 Pounder, with normal ammo chest on the trail). The rampart musket was part of the standard equipment carried on the limber, for point defense and pinning the target down while the gun was reloaded -the 'butterflies' were planned to be deployed by pairs. It is quoted as an enlarged version of the Long Land Pattern musket, of 1 inch caliber (*not* as a 1 pounder; the 'normal' Brown Bess was 0.75 caliber, its bullet weighted 545 grains, which suggests that the rampart musket shot a bullet of ca. 3 oz?).

Yes that is a 1-pdr Rostiang Gun. Despite having the same calibre it is also described as a 2-pdr as it fired lead shot.

I have photos of the Pattison Gun in the reserve collection of the Royal Armouries that will be piblished in the next edition of the Smoothbore Ordnance Journal.
Stephen

The De Saxe Amusette resembles the 1 or 2 bore punt guns that are still used to kill birds on the Fens. You can see examples at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
Stephen

For the amusettes of the Hessian Jaeger: link

Early heavy handguns were similarly crewed by 2

I vaguely remember 28mm historical minis (Indians? Chinese?) of heavy musket teams of 2, a shooter and a crouching rest holder.

Indeed for the type of amusette wanted, the main difficulty is the crouching / kneeling rest holder, since he uses both hands to hold the rest. The weapon itself could simply be a 28mm musket with the barrel of a 40mm one, and the 'rest' would not be too difficult to scratchbuild (or may exist as part of a 'Renaissance weapons' set?).

Btw de Saxe describes in his 'Rêveries' his amusette (obviously a little larger than the AWI type) as shooting 0.5 (French) pds bullets. But such was the confusion about what was an 'amusette' that in 1812 Lazare Carnot wrote of 'amusettes' as shooting balls of 24 onces i.e. 1.5 French Livres! I suppose he called them so because, while swivel mounted, they had a musket butt, like the heavy espingoles of the Mediterranean Fleet?

(while the French 'Sunset Fleet' used 'normal' swivel guns -pierriers- the 'Sunrise Fleet' of the Mediterranean, by tradition, used mostly oversized blunderbusses: the same difference as between the 2 types of 'amusette', very light gun or oversized shoulder weapon).

Similar confusion reigned about what was a 'Rostaing', the name was used for 'off standard' pieces for 1 to 3 lb.

Intriguingly Carnot quotes contemporary French Navy swivel guns (espingards / pierriers) as 5 pders *breech loaders*?

I always thought an "amusette" was a set of small bellows blown bagpipes!

The swivels and wall guns ARE on RAFM's site. In their All the Kings Men range. pack # RAF06160.

@Andygamer: There is that officer bent double in the Old Glory FIW 25mm range that might do!