"French Cassions in Battle" Topic

Hello,

I've been looking at adding some Cassions to my French. A question I cannot seem to find an answer too is whether or not while supplying the guns were the Cassions kept attached to horses and all would stand around or would the cassion be brought up to replenish a Battery and be "dropped off" with the horses retiring to safety?

Thanks

I would suggest that unless the battery was in a static role all cassions and limbers would be hitched in order to expedite movement if required.

The cassions would be placed as close as possible to the guns but preferably under whatever cover there was to hand.

Best wishes,

Chris

Some info here:

TMP link

Ammunition was not fed to the guns from the caissons, but from the coffrets, the coffrets being resupplied from the caissons.

I don't have a French figure in the house, but do have lots of Prussian and Russian caissons, in my rules they are not needed but eye candy only and to clog up the game board. So have all mine with mounted horses. Would also be advisable to use in any convoy situation.

I have plenty of caissons for my artillery and infantry. Our house rules allow for their use if you wish to play ammunition resupply as an option in any game.

Tangent, but if you are looking for great rules that put Caisson models you have collected to great use, look at Et Sans Resultat.

Quite a few did explode due to the fact that is was French custom not to close the lids, the ammunition also was not delivered by the coffret, gunners went back and forth to the ammunition carriages with a leather bag, containing several cartridges according the the caliber.

If you take a look at the period crew drill, you can find where the coffret was placed when positioning the pieces. It was placed on the limber for ease of use.

And being close to the piece, that was where the gunner responsible for getting the ammunition went to feed the piece. And he did have a leather bag to carry the ammunition, but he did not feed the piece from the caisson, but the coffret mounted on the limber. The coffret itself was refilled from the caisson.

on the internet there are quite good contemporary pictures showing how those carrying the bag , where they stood at the gun and how they transferred the cartridge, the wooden box was for the first shots, when the cumbersome artillery waggons (see the remarks of Allix and others on this) ware unable to catch up with the guns. As soon as the waggons were there the usual bag method to feed the ammunition was established.

Le trait caractéristique de ce système d'artillerie, est, principalement, de transporter séparément, dans des caissons, à la su ite de chaque bouche à feu, les munitions nécessaires à son approvisionnement. Sans son caisson la pièce est nulle et ne peut combattre ( car nous devons compter pour rien quelques coups renfermés dans les coffrets ) : de-là la nécessité de ne jamais s'en séparer et de le traîner partout à sa suite ; et sur un champ de bataille, le nombre de bouches à feu qui combattent entraîne immédiatement, sur le même terrain, au moins un égal nombre de caissons ; par conséquent une double ligne de voitures et de chevaux ; et celles-ci offrent par leur construction le plus d'embarras

for more of this highly interesting observations

Source: Anonymous, "Observations sur les changemens qu'il paraîtrait utile d'apporter au matériel et au personnel de l'artillerie", in ‘Le Spectateur Militaire', Tome troisième (Paris 1827) pp. 129-159.

or

OBSERVATIONS
SUR LES CHANGEMENTS QU'IL PARAITRAIT UTILE D'APPORTER AU MATERIEL ET AU PERSONNEL DE L'ARTILLERIE 1).
Edited and composed by Geert van Uythoven

@von Winterfeldt
Intéressant!
Tu aurais un site internet pour ce livre?

Bernard

Cet article est très facile à trouver par Google, voici:

link

Merci!

The author of the article mentions (p. 137) "l'ingenieuse construction du caisson à flèche" (the ingenious construction of the arrow-style ammunition cart) of the British artillery.

What did this look like ?