"artillery against a village or town prepared for defence" Topic

Any thoughts on how effective bombarding a town or village during the course a battle actually was ? Especially if prepared for defence with barricades etc.

I have always thought this was as much likely to be a nuisance to the attacker as the defender and merely added to the confusion with buildings set on fire etc.

I was pondering this during out recent Ligny game and wondering how best to model it, or whether the effect was mostly cancelled out in any event as there seems to have been a few cases of it not seriously affecting a determined defence.

Artillery firing roundshot would simply knock holes in the walls. It won't set fire to anything. Artillery firing spherical caae would more likely cause casualties. The defences if any are largely irrelevant, unless you are talking about earthern ramparts or Vauban style defences.

From reading acounts of town battles, the towns almost always and up in s full blaze often burning to the ground.

Howitzers firing common shell had the capability of setting fire to buildings in defended towns.

I'm talking about ah hoc style barricades and thick walled buildings within the town being used as strongpoints, which I assume would be enough to provide protection against canister. In the course of a larger battle over a day or two I am assuming roundshot will not have enough time to reduce most barricades or substantial buildings except perhaps at a local tactical level.

Mainly I am talking about shell and carcass shot from howitzers to set the town ablaze, which I am aware of. My question is how much this setting the town on fire adversely affects the defence compared to the attack. Both would find it equally awkward I imagine.

Which raises the question how best to model this on the table

The shells will set fire. Roofs and all the wooden stuff around ( toilets, stacks of wood, barns…) that is why when defenders prepare it they try to make water ready for roofs. Dismantle these for that ( and allowing firing from top ).
Powerful guns within say 500 m like 12 lb will do damage inside, like AT guns. Hole yes with projection of bits behind, concussions…

Then it would take time, do they have the ammo?
And villages were not like wargames tables. They most often (France/Center Europe) will have trees, gardens, walls, fences hedges around. and it is not so easy to see properly the houses from 500 m, certainly not all. It all depends on position. Something we hardly do in games. ( if terrain is not accurate… And maybe it should not be to have too much knowledge) die roll to find a good position. ( a bit like hull down in battlefront).

I had a very good example of this when studying the battlefield of Nuits St Georges 1870 which has changed very little. We know the position of the guns and the Badeners had to look for a good position to finally be able to shoot at a chateau.

The French napoleonic tactic of strongpoints inside, is due to structure resistance and most often ( less so in Russia as streets are bigger with open constructions) it would very hard to bring in guns with the horses, and more than 2 at that; then they will be well within shooting range of the defenders. No fun.

For guns, rather than howitzers, the weight of the shot would be a consideration. 12lb roundshot will do a bit of damage against brick walls and lighter. Stone walls will be tougher. Everything bounced off the Granary walls at Essling.

Yes. It really depends on the walls. Hence in games the random effects or even random defence factor, known only when first shot at.
In Smolensk they have not figured out the way the bricks for the city walls were done, resisting so well in 1812 and 1941. I was pretty disparaging when first saw them, as " medieval, outdated".

I like the idea of a random effect when first shot at, this could work for towns 'prepared for defence' and those not prepared, with a factor more likely to be favourable to the defenders if they have had time to prepare. It could also factor in stuff like building materials, I would say in Russia the wooden structure of most village houses was much easier to set fire to. Where dealing with a historic encounter then these factors can be built in to the scenario where particular buildings are known to have been particularly resilient (or not as the case may be).

Setting fire to the buildings on the perimeter – most likely thatched/timber as was quite usual for buildings on the outskirts – of the village of Essling concentrated the defence to centrally located stone structures. The village had not been prepared properly before battle but it would seem probable that the more or less wooden structures would have been much harder to defend because of the likelihood of them catching fire. A stonewalled cemetery in the same area was better valued but abandoned due to its isolation. The similar and better located linear feature of the Great Garden held out much better. The three-foot thick walls of the Granary proved to be impregnable.

Rather than giving a BUA a 'prepared' rating, I would be more inclined to give troops an entrenched rating. If troops take a BUA, they can't assume that the defences will suit their purposes unless they do something themselves.

IIRC,some of the buildings at Leipzig gave good cover because the walls were light enough to allow shot to pass through them without creating additional shards to injure the occupants. They were still strong enough not to easily collapse and gave sufficient cover vs. small arms.

P.

At Hougoumont it was howitzers and fire that proved the main difficulty for the defenders. That was also because it was quite difficult for the French to site batteries firing shot directly onto it, without being exposed to British fire. But even with the fire the defence went on – it was a temporary reduction in defensive value. Of course if a building is on fire it is difficult for an attacker to occupy it too!

My impression of most town fighting though is that it wasn't a building-by-building clearance (apart from rare instances like Zaragossa). Defenders concentrated on a single, or small number, of robust strongpoints – which would tend to be fire resistant.The other fighting would be along streets, with rather insubstantial barricades used as soft cover. Small numbers of men might use buildings for supporting fire, but they would not defend them particularly. In Ligny there was talk of piles of body in the streets – because that was were the fighting was – not in the buildings.

But if there was a major conflagration (not infrequent) then it would become impossible for either side to occupy even the streets. It might be worth looking at Ebersberg in 1809 as an example of where that happened.

There are a lot of things that will burn in a city/town of that time. Cooking fires were often kept running, bakeries, lite candles, sparks from cannonballs hitting stones next to dry wood. If you have ever seen a black powder cannon or musket being fired at night, or seen the wadding being discharged smoking or on fire, the question is why a town under attack WOULDN'T catch fire. Also,attackers could set fires before being repelled in order to reduce some strongpoints.

If you have ever seen a black powder cannon or musket being fired at night, or seen the wadding being discharged smoking or on fire,

All that is true, but remember the artillery are usually firing at some distance so that these effects are unlikely to affect the target.

the question is why a town under attack WOULDN'T catch fire.

As a rule cannon balls are not hot. You need explosive ordnance (howitzer or mortars) to cause fires.

Remember the forest fires in the Wilderness in the ACW?

Thanks all, an interesting discussion.

Here is how I've decided to deal with it in my rules, without going into too much detail as to exact mechanics.

Only rockets, howitzers or heavies may bombard an urban area or strongpoint.

The target is given a resilience factor based on a dice roll and adjusted as to whether it is predominantly flammable (wooden buildings etc), predominantly brick or stone or a prepared fortification (in order of likelihood that such a bombardment will cause significant disruption in the form of a fire, or just general destruction etc.)

This resilience factor is compared to the strength of artillery assigned to the bombardment and if it is less the target is assumed to be disrupted. In the case of fieldworks this is assumed to temporary as working repairs are made and it is unlikely to cause a fire, for other targets it represents a significant conflagration that immediate resources are not available to put out.

Any units within, passing through or attacking a disrupted target have to roll to see if they are shaken based on their morale, quality and leadership. They do this each turn it applies (so with fortifications only on the turn a successful roll is made.) This represents how successfully they avoid being disrupted based on their experience ie more experienced units in a village on fire are more likely to be able to move around to other areas and still mount an active defence or choose more resilient buildings that are not affected by the fire.