"French mobile "kitchens"" Topic

Called "Napoleon's Kitchen", a sort of double-boiler : a fire underneath, a water bath, then the food in a separate container. Drawn by one horse. Only 60 pieces were made, and these were allocated to senior officers in the French army headquarters, the Imperial Guard and the Ie corps of the maréchal Davout (which together had about 60 top senior officers or officials ranking as général de division, maréchal, major général, inspecteur aux revues en chef, commissaire ordonnateur en chef or payeur général).
It would appear that all of them were taken, lost or destroyed in Russia.

Taken at Vyazma by the Life-Guard Cossacks under the command of the general adjudant graf Orlov-Denisov.

- Sasha

Amazing…

Napoleon had a more impressive thing for his household use (of course he would!) Patrice Courcelle did an illustration that I have saved somewhere.

Historex made it and I have several photos, but apologies that I cannot recall the source. There is also a reconstruction. Lots of pics here

imageshack.com/a/694z/1

Finally I have two more photos of the same one that you are showing. As I recall it was Niels Rullkotter who sent me those;

Found it, clearly much smaller effort here;

In w w 1 the germans called them goulash kannone greetings serge joe

There were also with the French mobile ovens for baking bread. Or at least the intention of having same. Napoléon ordered Davout to have some of them made. I assume some were, Davout being rather prone to follow orders and at least to consider the welfare of his men.

But, the scale of preparations was – as typical for the Russian campaign – completely off.

The late Colonel Elting said (and I have no reason to doubt) that 3 dépôts each with rations for 100,000 men for 40 days were constructed in the rear of the French army prior to invading Russia. Colonel Elting judges this effort positively. But, the army was more than twice this size and 40 days was less than "lightening" campaign of 1806 against Prussia (which could be said to have started with Napoléon's orders to concentrate the army at the beginning of September). The whole French supply effort was just all too little, even though it was a huge effort, greater than had likely ever been made for an offensive campaign on foreign territory.

The weird thing is that the French really *were* highly professional. Berthier, Daru, their staffs and I am sure many others did the math and warned Napoléon. Even the "bean-counters" like the comtes Mollein and Gaudin repeatedly warned that offensive wars at long distances would bankrupt France, even if the wars were won. But all to no avail.

- Sasha