"Every country had grenadiers thrown into the battlefield?" Topic

no written report found

plenty books I read a lot in books of the napoleonic battle

I don't understand what you are trying to ask. Are you asking if every country had grenadiers?

… or if they actually used grenades? I think that was 100 years earlier.

dear79epa was there hand granates thrown and when 1792 ?- ever1815

dear 79pa read the question beter please so when and where ?

18th/19th century grenades were siege (and occasionally naval) weapons. They rarely if ever appeared in open field battles.

sieges?

and in what sieges and streets?

Read the question better?!

No, hand thrown grenades were no longer a common thing on the Napoleonic battlefields. The name "grenadier" was no longer connected to, well, throwing grenades.

Fascinatingly for language nerds, grenade is the French word for "pomegranate". The hand-thrown thingies that soldiers used to chuck at each other were called grenades by the French because they looked like a pomegranate.

Pomegranate:

Grenade:
link

Thus a grenadier in French is a pomegranate tree.

French infantry battalions usually had an elite company of pomegranate trees. It is not known whether they threw fruit at their adversaries. They may have catapulted them at the enemy using bricoles tied to the branches.

The French "Guide de l'officier particulier en campagne" (1816) assumes thrown granades ("grenades à main") will be available for the defense of fortifications and buildings, giving instructions for their employment.
There are similar instructions for using grenades in assaulting buildings, "if one is lucky enough to have them".
They are also noted in the standards for surrendering a place on terms which permit the keeping of small arms : each grenadier of the garrison can march out with two grenades.

Bardin's dictionary (1841, T. 4) gives the standard French design as made of iron, with a fuze for ignition, roughly spherical, diameter of a 4-lb round shot or 81 mm / 3.2 English inches, weight about 1 kg / 2.2 English pounds, charged with up to 1/8th kg / 4.5 English ounces of fine powder and intended to be thrown roughly 25 to 30 m or English yards.
Thrown grenades were withdrawn from regular infantry issue after 1783, being held only by the sapeurs du génie except when issued to defend or attack a structure. They remain in standard use as a shipboard weapon.

Gassendi (1801, Vol. 1, page 448) calculates that 24,000 grenades are needed to supply a sallient manned by 2 men for 5 days and that 4 men for 3 days with over 5,000 grenades are needed to defend a breech.

Urtubie de Rogicourt (1795) writes in the same vein as Gassendi.

Carnot (1812, pages 334 et seq.) describes the benefits of thrown grenades in seige defense and (pages 558 et seq.) describes their design, essentially the same as per Bardin, but with twice the powder charge. The thrower is told to turn his back to the blast.

Bigot (1809, pages 887 et seq.) gives greater detail on fabrication of grenades and other devices in the context of the defense and attack of fortified places.

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The Russians had a лямка / lyamka to launch fruit at their enemies. But it was not so well designed nor well manufactured as a French bricole – and the Russian officers could not read the manuals for its use, being illiterate and/or blind drunk.

LOL @ Michman's last paragraph.

And of course the Russian army had no school of pomegranates either.

@ M. le 4e de cuirassiers

Exactly so. But of course the Russians didn't need a school. Their entire tactical doctrine was : "гранат дура, штык молодец" / "pomegranate – fool, bayonet – clever."

Cossacks in Paris :

It was a great party.

Of course the desire to hurl from the glacis, "about the enemies' ears" at a longer range have led to developments in the US. This entailed bigger charges and longer range. Pomegranates were replaced by pumpkins and thus Pumpkin Chunking was born.