"movement rate of arty vs infantry brigade" Topic

Hi!
i am just looking for some information on what the relative movement speeds/rates would be for a typical infantry brigade on the battlefield in comparison to a battery of foot artillery – of course horse artillery would be faster than infantry on foot, but could foot artillery move faster also, albeit not as fast as horse arty

They moved at about the same speed. Foot arty was hauled by horses and the crews walked, like the infantry. However, over broken terrain arty would be slow, if it could move through it at all.

(BTW, the difference between foot and horse arty is that all the arty crews in horse arty were mounted, whereas the crews walked in foot arty.)

thanks for the reply – yes i do know that with foot artillery the gun crew would walk while the drivers were on horse

I guess the thought in my head was whether an infantry division trying to maintain its formation might move slower than what just a foot artillery limber and crew on foot could do, – disregarding the aspect of possible difficult terrain
I have also seen depictions of foot artillery crews sitting upon the limber on the move too -

I pulled out my copy of "Napoleonic Artillery" by Anthony L. Dawson, Paul L. Dawson, and Stephen Summerfield. It's available on the USA and UK Amazon site, but I couldn't find it on the Australia web site.

Bottom line (pg 204): "A battery moved at the same speed over the same distance as the troops to which they were attached." I believe this sentence answers your question.

It goes on, "French horse teams could cover 2.6 miles (4.2Km) in an hour on a decent road and could travel a maximum of 20 miles (32Km) in a day, although a forced march of 50Km per day could be performed in an emergency."

As for infantry, Osprey's British Napoleonic Infantry Tactics 1792-1815, states, "The pace of a column of route was about 75 steps per minute or 2.5 miles (4km) per hour." This compares very closely to the 2.6 mph for French teams from "Napoleonic Artillery."

I think most wargames rules capture this especially when they take into account increased difficulty in crossing rough ground for artillery, and the difference in ground speed for infantry, depending on their formation and terrain.

Hope this helps,

Ray

Does it matter? Both will only move when somebody decides to tell them to do so.

And that somebody will make that decision after assessing the reasons to ask them.

So the limiting factor is not necessarily the nominal rate they move, rather the speed of information gathering and decision making of the person telling them to move.

thanks that all helps – i think to the point of whether it matters is reasonable to ask, as yes it is not a race of sorts, – but i guess it depends on the game in question
my reason for asking was because there are some rule drafts that i am reading and was just determining whether the foot artillery movement rate was correct
- as it turns out though there was an error in the print and the actual rates the creator has given do comport with what you have said Ray

i think along the way there have been some wrong ideas i picked up about movement rates in the past and had not really given it much thought until now – probably from some computer wargames/rts games where artillery rolls along very slowly compared to infantry, like in games like Napoleon Total War

What may be very specific to answering your question is to compare the data from Kriegsspiel rules, given the real world knowledge of the creators and users ,and the very explicit need it be as accurate as possible.

a partial extract

Marches
- Infantry, Foot Artillery and mixed columns (i.e. column and line) is the same movement rate for all terrain. With even ground up to 5 degrees = 200paces per 2 minutes.
- Heavy Cavalry and Horse artillery – ditto – at 300 paces per two minutes
- Light Cavalry at 400 paces per two minutes.

In Action, over even ground up to 5 degrees, in two minutes =
- Infantry 250 paces per two minutes
- Heavy Cavalry 600 paces deploying, 800 paces in attack
- Light Cavalry 900 paces deploying, 900 paces in attack
- 12pdr Foot = 250 paces usual, 400 as an exception (1 move in 3)
- 6pdr and How = 250 paces, 400 as an exception (2 moves in 6)
- These are for limbered – if "hauled by ropes" = 300 paces
- Horse Artillery = "as Cavalry" (unquote) – no explicit distinction between what, so presumably they keep pace with whoever they are attached to.

Is any of the information taken from Napoleonic Artillery sourced, and if so which page(s) from the book is the posted material from?