"French incendiary rounds" Topic

Greetings. An artillery question…

Were incendiary rounds carried by French field artillery units as a matter of course? Or were there specialist munitions that had to be brought up for specific tasks, which might range from attacking structures prepared for defence on the battlefield to fortifiied towns and cities under siege. What was the French equivalent to the English term 'carcass'?

What preparations were made in the artillery supply chain should such munitions be required?

Many thanks.
JF

Carcass rounds I think were commonly used, just not many. Star round also.

The usual incendiary round for field artillery was the shell, commonly referred to as a 'bomb.' It was used to set targets, such as villages, on fire.

The French did use a carcass, and also called it that. There was also a round known as a fireball. Both rounds was usually employed in sieges. They were usually fired from mortars. The composition of the rounds was black pitch, white pitch, mutton suet, linseed oil, and oil turpentine.

The carcass is constructed of two or three hoops of iron that are joined at the top. The hoops are constructed at right angles to each other and form an oval and are attached to a piece of iron at the bottom of the oval.

The fireball is made of a bag of buckram, also formed into an oval and is wrapped in strong cord which give it the necessary shape.

There was also hot shot, known as a 'red bullet' that was heated in an air furnace specifically constructed for the purpose of heating the shot. Artillerymen did not like to use hot shot because of the danger of prematurely igniting the powder which would lead to considerable trouble in the gun position.

Napoleon supervised the construction of furnaces on the Italian front in the 1793 when he was still a captain.

There were also illumination 'rounds' made that were not fired from artillery pieces. These were termed 'tourteaux' or 'tarred tourteaux' and were constructed of the same ingredients as the carcass and fireball. They were used to illuminate places during a siege, were used in the passage of rivers and defiles for illumination and were also thrown into a fortress's ditch at night to illuminate whatever was going on, such as an assault by the besieging force.

The particulars of the construction of carcasses and fireballs can be found in the period French artillery manuals.

Would it be fair to say the effect of an exploding shell as an incendiary device was to some extent a hit and miss affair, relying on the shell landing in a suitable place, the fuse setting off the main charge succesfully and then either heat from the blast or incandescent fragments setting alight flammable materials in the radius of the explosion. It wasn't an incendiary device of itself.

The rest, I take it, being specialist munitions, were not stored as a matter of course in the limbers or caissons of field batteries.

That's one reason why howitzers were massed by the French at Borodino, Dresden, and Waterloo, for example. You get better effect on target by massing artillery. It is a basic artillery principle.

If the shell starts a fire on the target, I would suggest that it is an incendiary round. The fuse ignites an explosion which is initially a fireball for all intents and purposes.

You may take it to be so; however the French did not store or transport ammunition in their limbers, as the limbers had no ammunition boxes. Ammunition was carried in the caissons and in the coffret that was stored between the cheeks of the gun carriage during movement and then placed on the limber while in action and emplaced.

I did think I was quite clear that the ammunition described was used in siege. It was constructed and stored usually in the siege emplacements/magazines or in the fortresses that were under siege.

My question pertained to field artillery so it seemed sensible to clarify.

"If the shell starts a fire on a target…"

Indeed. The distinction in my mind was between a munition such as a shell that might start a fire where it exploded; that likelihood increasing with the number of shells that were landing on target; and a munition bearing inflammable materials such as you describe whose principal function was to import flame and ignite any combustible materials where it landed.

The latter would seem to me to be an incendiary round and I am satisfied that French field artillery did not carry these as standard ammunition. VMT

So the fires in LHS and Hougoumont were started by conventional shell bursts then rather than a carcass? Certainly the artillery assault on them could not be called a formal "siege". Interesting discussion. Thanks

I wanted to keep the question non-specific but, spot on, Deadhead, that would seem to be the case.

Along the same lines, the Congreve naval rockets used a carcass as an incendiary round.

They also had a 'floating carcass' round that was a carcass with an attached parachute used as an illumination round.

Undoubtedly, the British used the rocket carcass in the terror bombardment of Copenhagen during the 1807 siege of that city.

Of the 5,000 rounds fired into central Copenhagen though, only 300 were Congreve rockets.