"Artillery wagons FPW" Topic

Does anybody know how artillery wagon train/munitionwageons looked during the FPW. I have som indication that they were very similar to Napoleonic Caissons for both french and prussians, but nothing definitive.

Here's a rather naïve image of French equipment:

And Foundry model for Prussia:

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Hope that is a start.

Thank you for the pics. It seems to be a bit different from the gribeaval model in the pic above. The uniforms seems more 1850 to me and it appears to predate rifled artillery – I do not know if the caissons changed.
The Foundr figs are nice, but is is more a supplky than an artillery wagon?

You are probably right on all points. It seems a difficult question to answer considering these are major armies in a major war.

Yes I have also been quite amazed that it seems absolutely impossible to find any info on the net on something as simple as artillery caissons for the two major protagonists in one of the most important european wars.

I have ordrered Summefields smoothbore ordnance journals issue on the FPW to see if there is any info there…

Hope I'm not too late but the french ammunition wagon is called "Caisson" and during the FPW the main ammuntion wagon for field artillry is the "Caisson de 4 rayé de campagne Modèle 1858" (M1858 ammunition wagon for 4kilos rifled field gun. It consisted of a limber towing two trunks of ammunitions on a two whells carriage.
It is really similar to the Valée system Caisson, only the size and inside organisation of the trunks really differs.

It's inspired by british napoleonic ammunition wagon (as the whole Valée system, but that's another story…)

Hope that helps

Thanks for the info. It seems that theese were the caisson accompanying the artillery in the french army, were they similar in the prussian?

I am doing 6 mm, and have not found anyone who does anything like this…

I was wondering if the largery artillery train had similar wagons or if the train had something else.

I found theese who seem very detalied, but I have not found any sources

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You will find some images of French and German equipment here link

Thx Mark – that is just great – it seems like I can use gribeauval style amuunition caissons from the 6mm Napoleonic range for both prussians and french in 1870.

I off course already knew your page, from when we corresponded about infantry formations – you really are that man for the hyphen wars :-)

Nic

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This carriage, the "Chariot de batterie" is used for carrying tools, spare parts and supplies, no ammunitions. They do not go on front line.

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This is not a french 12 pdr but a russian gun offered by the tsar to Napoleon III.

And concerning this ammunition wagon, I'm not sure it's german…
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If I were you I would not use Gribeauval caissons for FPW. Some of them have been used by the french army but just for infantry ammunition (the two remaining caissons of the invalides were used to carry Mle1866 chassepot ammunition).

Here is a photo of a M1873 caisson for German artillery.

And here are some other M1872-73 carriage

The text in french explains that artillery use M1873 ammunition caissons, or M1864-73 (previous model wooden caisson with modified trunks).
I guess from that sentence taht M1864 caissons looked like M1873 but with wooden trunks, but I can be wrong. ;-)

Source : Aide-mémoire à l'usage de Officiers d'artillerie, Chapitre XXII, Renseignements sur les artilleries étrangères, Paris, Dumaine, 1882=)

Very interesting – thx for your feedback leBrutal. So the ammo wagon for the prussians is very close to the one made by foundry – also for artillery ammo

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I am still a bit unsure about how the french ammowagon looked then – but you say that some gribeauval style ones were used by the french..

If you want to represent french field artillery you can't go wrong with this kind of caisson

For example this painting of Edouard Detaille depicting the horse artillery of the Imperial Guard. In front line artillery piece firing at prussians (4kilos Mle 1858) behind the tree lines, 20 meters behind the gun line, limbers of the guns and lastly (in the foreground of the painting) the caissons (ammunition wagon)

I see your point. Great pic find!!!

Problem is that it does not exist in 6 mm :-(

I think you can find something good in ACW range (But I don't know 6mm miniatures)
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