"Skirmishers covering artillery" Topic

Gentlemen, I need your advice.
Was there a practice of covering friendly artillery positions with skirmishers? For examnple, to secure the flanks or rear of the artillery.
If yes, how close to the guns could the skirmishers be deployed?

I'm thinking of adding this possibility to my rules that have the scale of "1 artillery counter = 2 guns; 1 skirmisher counter = company".

I believe it was a common practice. Lieutenant Pratt of the 30th Foot quoted his orders from Halkett as "To cover and protect our Batteries. To establish ourselves at all times as much in advance as might be compatible with prudence. To preserve considerable intervals between our extended files for greater security from fire of the Enemy's Batteries. To show obstinate resistance against Infantry of the same description, but to attempt no formation or offer useless opposition to charges of Cavalry, but to retire in time upon the Squares in our rear, moving in a direct line without any reference to Regiments or Nations. When the charge was repulsed to resume our ground".

Based on the above comments, that would be a dangerous assignment.
Friendly batteries were often the target of counter battery fire. This means that enemy rounds would land in your deployment area a lot.
Skirmishing in front of a battery is fine when they are firing shot. However when they shift to canister friendly fire losses are possible.

Rules, that I have read, seldom have batteries performing a key function. They provided a secure point for units to reorganize during a battle. From a command point of view, commanders knew where forces were gathering during the battle. So aides are not scouting the area for troops but know where to go to rally and give new orders to troops.

I constantly read artillery higher command absolutely didn't want counter fire with artillery. Not that it didn't happen but it wasn't often.
Not reading much with Russians or Prussians other than infantry unit would be close at hand

My understanding – Higher ups did not want counter battery fire because it was *materially* ineffective, and less useful to the broader battle. I believe batteries did it because on one hand, it is human nature to target the one thing that can target you (technically often the closest personal threat). On the other hand, while it was not materially effective at destroying guns, many accounts of it silencing guns (as the crew take cover etc)

Happy to be corrected, but that is the understanding I have gleaned.

The French would have some infantrymen helping the gunners serve the guns so in a pinch they could help defend them since they had their muskets close by.

DevoutDavout, there wouldn't have been a constant stream of orders against counterbattery fire if it hadn't been happening fairly regularly.

As for the skirmishers being in front of a battery, I doubt it happened much. Even when firing ball, the guns were firing fixed ammo, and those sabots were going somewhere.

Thank you for your comments.
And I didn't mean "skirmishers being IN FRONT of a battery", I meant "skirmishers on the flanks of a battery or protecting its rear"…

It was pretty common practice to have infantry supporting artillery, they are terribly vulnerable to cavalry otherwise. Personally, if I was a gunner, I'd much prefer to have a couple of close order infantry regiments behind than a few skirmishers floating around.

But without covering skirmishers, your gunners are going to be terribly vulnerable to enemy skirmishers, unless you have friendly cavalry close by (not always a good idea to have cavalry in the front line, where it can catch all sorts of enemy artillery fire). The gunners aren't going to want to waste their limited supply of canister on the enemy tirailleurs, but solid shot would be a waste of ammunition.

This does remind me of a account in the Waterloo campaign a Prussian battery saw troops coming at them, I think at first they thought it was Prussians falling back until close enough the surgeon noticed the tufts of the shakos, so they kept a slow canister fire on them.

As noted, infantry was often assigned to support artillery. In those cases it was probably pretty common for the infantry battalion to deploy some skirmishers to keep opposing skirmishers from annoying the battery. I recall reading of an account during the battle of Cedar Mountain in 1862 where several companies of Union skirmishers who were NOT opposed by Confederate skirmishers managed to so annoy a Confederate battery that it was obliged to start firing cannister at the skirmishers to protect itself.

My impression is that a Napoleonic battery could protect itself from the front against skirmishers and there would generally be formed units on the flanks. (If not, the commanding officer had other problems.) It's with mass use of rifled muskets in the ACW that I first run into batteries forced out of position by skirmish fire as ScottWashburn describes.

On counterbattery, I think as a general rule a battery of a defending force should avoid it--more profitable to fire on formed troops exposing themselves to advance. But there's a good case for the batteries of the attacking force firing counterbattery trying to silence opposing guns before attacking infantry and cavalry got to canister range. The math gets tricky, though, and would presumably be different depending on how exposed the defending infantry were.

batteries were covered by infantry and or cavalry, usually behind the guns, and very often to reduce casualties at the flank, because yes, those guns were targets of other guns. In case guns were not covered they were at high risk to be overrun by attacking cavalry.

How much cannister did Napoleonic batteries carry? I know ACW guns carried relatively little cannister compared to shot and shell. They might not want to waste it against skirmishers.

I'd have to look up loads by country, gun type and year Scott. And then I'd ask what provision was made for resupply. I'm not going to. I'm down about six projects which actually interest me.

But I will stand by my observation that it's only with the advent of rifled muskets in the ACW and 1866 in Europe that I start seeing accounts of batteries unable to cope with skirmishers. Can anyone cite instances driven off or otherwise silenced by skirmish fire pre-ACW?

ammunition initially available for one French Napoleonic piece according to the type of gun

-4 pounder cannon : 18 balls placed on the gun carriage, 150 more from one caisson of which 50 canister shots/à mitraille
-6 pounder : 12 more 156 of which 24 canister shots from one caisson
-8 pounder : 15 more 184 of which 60 from two caissons
-12 pounder : 9 more 204 of which 60 from three caissons

-6 howitzer : 6 shells more 147 shells and 9 canister shots from three caissons
-5 howitzer : 6 shells more 144 shells and 8 canister shots from two caissons

near the artillerymen serving their piece the infantrymen taken from the unit placed in protection also helped to provide the artillery ammunition or to move the piece
3 (6-pounder) 5 (8-pounder and howitzers) to 7 (12-pounder) infantrymen as purveyors to each piece according to the type of cannon except for the 4-pounder cannon who had none

Skirmishers were the bane of artillery. For instance, at Salamanca, a large contingent of British skirmishers were deployed alone to drove off a gun line of 20+ French guns.

So, it wouldn't be strange to use skirmishers to drive off skirmishers. A Prussian battery at Ligny spent a good portion of their time shooting at skirmishers with little success while taking casualties. However, the skirmishers didn't charge the guns and were finally driven off with cavalry.

indeed, I just read how French skirmishers, crawling around on all 4s caused Russian guns to retire from the musket range, artillery needed protection on its own it couldn't defend itself and would loose guns or had to retire and retreat. However I wonder how effective own skirmishers would be – they would have to operate in front of their own guns as well.

WV: I imagine skirmishers defending artillery would have to skirmish in front of the guns. As long as the guns didn't try to fire through their own skirmishers, I would think it would be 'alright.'

Yes, but how would the skirmishers know in what direction the guns would fire, they would have to switch targets, in my view – a very dangerous positions to be placed in fron of your guns or in their shooting perimeter.
In my view they would operate – if – necessary at the flanks.

I'm with Robert on this one generally cannister can outrange musket balls, but rifles outrange cannister. Obviously there will be 'Battle of X' exceptions, but if guns were ~15-20 yards apart, which I believe was pretty much the norm then you could have platoons of skirmishers in the gaps in the firing line thus giving you cover without risking friendly casualties.

why then did they attack guns successfully in the Napoleonic times, causing them to retreat? Muskets outrange canister due to be able to elevated. It is a general misconception that they did not do any harm on artillery.

Decker : Die Artillerie für alle Waffen – Erster Theil – Die reine Artillerie, Berlin 1816
 
„Wenn das Infanteriegewehr horizontal oder auf den halben Mann gehalten wird, so schlägt die Kugel auf 200 – 250 Schritt des erstemal auf die Erde, machen auf ebenen Boden 2 bis 3 Aufschläge, und bleibt auf 400 – 500 Schritt liegen. Wird aber die Kugel im Bogen geschossen, so kann sie mit der gewöhnlichen Ladung über 1000 Schritt weit getrieben werden. Die Franzosen sind Meister darin, und daher kam es auch, daß sie uns zuweilen Leute blessierten, wenn sie wir sie nicht einmal entdecken könnten, woher der Schuß gekommen war. Doch sind das meist nur Prellschüße, welche wenig Schaden thun."
S. 267
When the infantry guns is held horizontally or at the man's half, the bullets hits first time the ground at 200 – 250 paces, bounces of even ground two to three times and stops on the ground at 400 – 500 paces. Is the bullet shot in an arc, it is possible to propel it with a usual charge over 1000 paces. The French are masters in that, and therefore it occurred that sometimes they wounded our men, when we didn't even discover from where the shot did have come. However those are mostly one contusion shots which cause little damage.

(Gecht bei Saalfeld)
S. 95
Here the observations of the artillery officer von Hiller who commanded the regimental artillery of regiment von Churfürst, at the clash at Saalfeld
To close a big gap between the regiment Churfürst and Xavier, the regiment Churfürst was drawing itself to the right, by that as also in the advance we were always under fire from light infantry. They wounded me men at a distance of 7 to 800 paces, were placed behind hedges and fences, where I couldn't do any harm with grape shots, which I tried to use with high elevation but didn't feel the slightest effect

In battle, lots of things happen, but skirmishers can watch where cannons are being pointed and 'dodge' to some extent. The other thing is that canister doesn't spread out as much as game templates would have you believe scale-wise. The closer the skirmishers are to the guns, the less spread of the canister. Here is a couple of examples of canister fire:

YouTube link

YouTube link

Rorie Muir gives a couple of examples of the frustrations artillerists had in firing at skirmishers in his book Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon. Twenty skirmishers could do a lot of damage to a crew of ten artillerists regardless of how fast they loaded and fired. Also remember that there were very few canister load compared to sold shot. I think something like 4 to 8 in an caisson of fifty or more rounds.

I don't know if you were ever in front of a cannon firing, it causes head aches due to the noise, I cannot see that skirmishers would sort of cover those guns being behind their backs, they would have to worry about their own guns and the enemy – they would always have to look into the rear.