"Introduction of British Single Trail Guns?" Topic

I'm collecting miniatures for the French in Egypt and Wellington in India campaigns. So the last few years of the 18th and first few of the 19th centuries. Should my British medium and light artillery units field guns with the new single trails, or the older style of gun with double trails? And related to this, when did the British start introducing the single trail guns for overseas use? Any help appreciated!

The block trail, as opposed to the split, or bracket, trail gun carriages were introduced in the Royal Artillery beginning in 1793 for issue to the Royal Horse Artillery. The new pattern limber, caisson, and new horse teams being introduced harnessing in pairs instead of single file was also begun. The new gun carriages were first designed for 6-pounders, and when the new 9-pounder gun tube was introduced in 1808 all were issued with block trail gun carriages.

The new vehicles were in general service by 1794 and, but their use in the colonies went much slower. Some of the artillery had received the new pattern block trail gun carriages by 1812.

In Egypt in 1800, British General Lawson remarked that 'These block-trail carriages, from their lightness, short draught, and quick turning, passed over the inundation s and desert with great ease, while the framed carriages with more horses were attended with difficulty and delay, and once in the desert, were obliged to be left behind.'

So the new pattern gun carriages were used in Egypt, and probably not in Wellington's campaigns in India. Apparently both the split trail and block trail gun carriages were used at the same time post-1794 until all of the older gun carriages could be replaced with the new ones. That was a function of production, which was slow initially.

The replacement policy as stated in 1804 was:

'Carriages of other construction will be furnished as soon as they can be prepared. As soon as the cavalry brigades arrive an equal number of similar pieces not so equipped with their carriages and appointments to be returned to Woolwich in lieu of those supplied from thence.'

The 'workload' of the Royal Arsenal for the production of the new gun carriage, limber and caisson apparently was overwhelming. In 1803 the Royal Carriage Department was authorized and formed for the artillery vehicles and all were then produced by this new organization.

The department had a steam-driven saw pit and planer which was 'the first fully mechanized facility at the Royal Arsenal.'

See British Napoleonic Field Artillery by CE Franklin Chapter 3, pages 53-54.

Another excellent reference is the five-volume Dickson Manuscripts which describes the Royal Artillery on active service in the Peninsula.

You know, this is almost better than Google.

Not sure if this David Rowlands painting helps:

36regt RA: Bombay Artillery – 10 (Assaye) Battery RA

I'd have thought the Presidencies would use equipment they could procure/maintain – double-cheek carriages.

However, the RA might have their gear shipped out.

The artillery of the HEIC is a very different animal. They continued to use their own patterns of bracket trail carriages until after the Napoleonic Wars.

The RA were a negligible presence in India until the Mutiny.

There are three references that might be of assistance finding out the use and employment of the block trail carriage in India.

The first is British Smooth-Bore Artillery by BP Hughes, page 69. Apparently between 1810 and 1826 the Bengal artillery used a gun carriage based on the French Gribeauval design, as stated in Captain Buckle's memoir.

For the Madras artillery, the block carriage was first employed in 1826.

The second is The Artillery Officer's Assistant by Captain AF Oakes which was the training manual of the Madras artillery, published in 1847.

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The third is Memoir of the Services of the Bengal Artillery by Captain E Buckle, published in 1852.

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I would also add Major Stubbs' History of the Organization, Equipment, and War Services of the Regiment of Bengal Artillery"

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and Major Begbie's History of the Services of the Madras Artillery, with a Sketch of the Rise of the Power of the East India Company in Southern India
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I have found them very useful. Also, unit histories that trace their lineage to HEIC artillery can be quite informative. Those written in the late 19C and early 20C often have some detailed information from the 1780s-1850s.

Brechtel and Enfant, many thanks for your learned and insightful responses. Very useful to discover that for Egypt the British 6pdrs and 3 pdrs can be single trail.
And for the Wellington in India period, double/block trail for guns of all calibres.
I'm going to be following up on your links with great interest!

It appears that some form of block trail for light field pieces was in use by troops of the Madras presidency before 1800 and with certain exceptions "the wheels and elevating-screw, the Bengal wheels and the royal 3-pounder screw being considered better" – was recommended for general use but progress of adoption was slow.

See: 'Memoir of the services of the Bengal Artillery, from the formation of the corps to the present time, with some account of its internal organization. By Capt. E. Buckle. Edited by J.W. Kaye' pp 165-72

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The Madras carriage had some disadvantages (See p 168 in link) "This pattern, however, considerably modified, became the galloper or horse-artillery carriage in Bengal. It is, however, worthy of notice, how nearly the principle of this carriage corresponds with that of the royal pattern introduced twenty years later, and now the standard of all India." (pp168-69)

"At this time then there were two patterns of light field-carriages in use, — one a beam-trail with the galloper-guns; the other a double cheek with the foot artillery and battalion guns." (p172)

If you take a look at one of the above posts on the subject, the work you reference by Capt Buckle can be downloaded for use from Google Books.

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Stoppage, thanks for that useful link as well – shows me how to paint my artillery units!

42 Flanker very interesting contribution that Madras used some block/single trail guns for the gallopers before 1800.
Looks like HEIC in India were the innovators before anyone else.
Who would have thought. From a wargaming perspective a few guns from an Egypt collection could now plausibly used in India from the 1790s it seems!

DG, this also might contain something of interest.

'Memorandum by Brig. Gen. Lawson on artillery arrangements in Egypt',

Proceedings of Royal Artillery Institution XII, Woolwich.

Lawson's "Memorandums of Artillery in Egypt"

Bound volumes held in the British Library. Can be ordered, I think

Holdings Notes: Asia Pacific & Africa RL 713 Another copy of: vol XIII (1886).
General Reference Collection Ac.4357. Vol. 1 (1858) – v. 32, no. 3 (June 1905); (Missing: v.12)
Document Supply 5810.950000 Vol. 1 (1858)-v. 31 (1904/05)
Shelfmark(s): Asia, Pacific & Africa RL 713
General Reference Collection Ac.4357.
Document Supply 5810.950000
UIN: BLL01015414275

Lawson's account of Egypt is quoted at length in Duncan's History of the Royal Artillery.

v2 p104 onwards.

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From the above, would I be correct in assuming that the bracket trail was used in the Flanders Campain 1793-95?

As the new block trail was only initially issued for RHA 6-pounders, and was new in 1794, that is most likely correct. And it is also most likely correct that the Royal Artillery was still using horse teams in single file, not harnessed in pairs yet.

The Royal Artillery as to guns and ancillary equipment was behind the armies of Austria and France, whose artillery arms were upgraded and modernized in the 1750s and 1760s, respectfully. The Russian artillery arm would not be upgraded until the 1805 system was put into effect. The Prussians were behind both France and Austria.

Captain Ralph Willett Adye said it succinctly ca 1800, regarding the Royal Artillery compared to the Gribeauval System:

‘The French system of artillery was established as far back as the year 1765, and has been rigidly adhered to through a convulsion in the country which overturned everything like order, and which even the government itself has not been able to withstand. We should, therefore, conclude that it has merit, and, though in an enemy, ought to avail ourselves of its advantages. At the formation of their system, they saw the necessity of the most exact correspondence in the most minute particulars, and so rigidly have they adhered to this principle that, though they have several arsenals, where carriages and other military machines are constructed, the different parts of a carriage may be collected from these several arsenals, in the opposite extremes of the extremities of the country, and will as well unite and form a carriage as if they were all made and fitted in the same workshop. As long as every man who fancies he has made an improvement is permitted to introduce it into our service, this cannot be the case with us.'

Luckily for the British, the arms and equipment of the Royal Artillery was greatly improved by the time they became involved in the Peninsular War. Numbers wise, that still wasn't sufficient and the British aggressively improved the Portuguese artillery arm to serve alongside them.

Looks like HEIC in India were the innovators before anyone else.

They were searching for solutions to their own unique problems, principally geography and the types of enemies they faced. This is best illustrated by the fact that they didn't widely adopt the block trail carriage until well after the Napoleonic Wars, whereas the RA made considerable effort to standardize on it as quickly as production would allow.

The quote by Buckle is also useful in pointing put some distinctions in terminology. Galloper guns were a subset of ordnance belonging to the horse artilleries and sometimes the cavalries. Largely gone from European armies of the time, they were generally analogous to those "grasshopper" guns of the late 18C with a split trail formed of draft poles. Ordnance was typically 3lb but could vary from 1 ½ to 6. As they were meant to be pulled by a single horse, they could theoretically move at the gallop. It was common (not universal) for HEIC cavalry regiments to have their own organic gallopers, a practice sometimes adopted by HM's Light Dragoon regiments on Indian service. So, what the Presidencies were experimenting with was a replacement for these very light and comparatively fragile carriages, whereas the RA was after a universal solution.

The main ordnance of the HEIC horse artilleries was still on double bracket carriages and the Bengal HA seemed to favor the 12lb gun as their principal piece. Remember the foot artillery in India was entirely bullock-drawn, so any horse artillery, even with heavy ordnance, would be "volante" by comparison!

Galloper guns were used before the development of horse artillery in the British and US Continental armies.

Galloper guns were not 'generally analogous to those 'grasshopper' guns of the late 18C.' In short, the galloper and grasshopper gun carriages were different. Then there was also the field piece known as the butterfly which was similar in appearance to the grasshopper but not to the galloper.

Both the butterfly and the grasshopper were 3-pounders; the galloper could be used for the 1 1/2-, 2-, and 3-pounders.

From The Book of the Continental Soldier by Harold Peterson, 124:

'There was also one other type of carriage for the light field pieces. Called a galloper carriage, it was sometimes used for the 1 1/2-, 2-, and 3-pounders. Instead of the usual trail it boasted a pair of shafts so that a single horse could be hitched directly to it. Colloquially this carriage was sometimes called a grasshopper to distinguish it from the light guns with limbers which were called butterflies. These terms, however, were used confusingly, and some officers at the time objected to them because of it.' See Muller's Treatise of Artillery, pages 115 and 116.

From Grasshoppers and Butterflies: The Light 3-pounders of Pattison and Townsend, pages 14 and 16:

'The Grasshopper was a light brass 3-pounder mounted on a carriage which had its own pattern of elevating screw, and its own pattern also of ammunition boxes, drag ropes, tampeon, spunge, wadhook, and cartouch. It could be carried either underhand or on men's shoulders or on pack saddles. The Butterfly had a limber, the Grasshopper was fitted for shafts or a limber, but it is not immediately clear whether the shafts were for horses or a means of carrying by the Detachment.

In short, both the butterfly and the grasshopper had conventional bracket or split trails and the shafts described above were fitted at the end of the gun carriage.

The overall appearance of both the butterfly and grasshopper was completely different from the galloper, as the latter had no bracket trails, but had two single trails which doubled as shafts for a draft horse.

Despite use of the term of 'galloper' and its association with the double-shaft trail guns of mid-century designed to be drawn without a limber, it seems that 'galloper' in India applied to single-trail pieces drawn with a limber, the name only relating to intended use, and putative speed and manoeuvrability.

Is a reference for this in one of the above sources?

Presumably, single trails were used for gallopers in India because they made guns lighter to pull. Indigenous state armies such as those of Mysore had gallopers as well.

Apparently, then, they had a gun carriage and a limber. Was the 'single trail' a block trail gun carriage? Seems to me that is usual for a field piece of the period and if it was attached to a limber for movement, despite what they called it, it wasn't an acutal galloper piece at all.

Is there a reference as well as an illustration?

The Danish Army of the Napoleonic period had a 1-pounder field piece, designed in 1766, which was a galloper. The two trails doubled as harness for the horse as did the British and American versions. It was not pulled by a limber.

An excellent illustration of it is on page 136 of Den Danske Haer I Napoleonstiden 1801-1814 by Hans Christian Wolter, Helge Scheunchen, Ole L Frantzen, and Christian Wurgler Hansen, published in Copenhagen in 1992.

The Norwegians used the Danish galloper (they were part of Denmark until promised to Bernadotte by the allies in 1813-1814-that was the payment Bernadotte wanted for his participation in the Coalition).

There is a drawing of the galloper, called an amusette in the book where it is pictured. The drawing, from the Norwegian Defense Museum, shows the piece from the rear and the left-front as well as an 'aerial' view of the piece and its two-horse in tandem harness.

The book is Between the Imperial Eagles: Swedens Armed Forces during the Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, published in Stockholm in 2000. There are nineteen authors listed who contributed to the volume.

Kevin, I appreciate the correction re:grasshopper and butterfly guns!

One of the HEIC histories has technical drawings for the guns and equipment used but I can't locate the pdf. It's an on and off project I have documenting the organization and equipment of the Company's artillery.

Enfant perdu, I don't know if this is what you were thinking of but the Buckle history cited above has drawings of guns and limbers in the appendix at the back, although, frustratingly perhaps, these are only side elevations.

('Memoir of the services of the Bengal Artillery' p 577)

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The light guns in service with Scandinavian and German forces L.C18th were of course gallopers neither in name or function.

In Germany and Scandinavia the pieces were generally referred as amusetter in a nod to Marechal de Saxes speculative drawings in his Reveries. The gun carriages were described as variously as limonlavetts or gabellbaum. (i.e. ‘shaft-mount' ‘bracket shaft').
Curiously, the French employed other names for guns in this category.

Deriving from designs by Hessian Col. H.W. Huth, these guns were intended predominantly for use with infantry. Moreover, the carriages were not robust and were liable to fracture under the stresses of recoil and travel on rough ground,  as well as proving unstable at speed, so the term 'galloper' is hardly applicable. In this context, (‘shaft trail' guns) it was effectively obsolete in English military useage by 1790 but, as we have seen, persisted in India, where it evidently described the function of pieces rather than the form of their construction.