"TYW field artillery" Topic

In my reading on the TYW, I noticed field artillery is "emplaced" before several battles.

My interpretation of this, for miniature gaming, is to base the guns on wooden platforms, with gabions to the front etc.
Is this a fair enough depiction of their battlefield appearance?

The rules I use (FoG) allow the guns to be moved. I've duly built limbers & teams but the movement is so restricted & with minimal distances that I think guns will be rarely moved on the field of battle. This (as frustrating as a long-time Napoleonics player finds it) seems to be quite accurate, I believe.

Your informed comments are invited.

If I recall correctly, larger guns had special wagons for their barrels, and the carriages would be pulled separately. Basically, once set up it would take a very long time to break down and move a heavier gun. Smaller guns could remain on their carriages. So they could move, but just very slowly. That smaller movement range could either reflect the slow speed of horses, or the amount of prep work required to move an artillery piece. I do not think it was common for artillery to move during battle, except for light regimental guns.

Such advanced battery positions would only be seen when the army has had the time and resources to construct fortified positions. Earthworks would be more common than gabions since the later was more time consuming to make and required an ready supply of willow or other suitable wood. Gun platforms would usually only be seen as part of siege batteries or well built forified position like the entreched camps at Nürnberg in 1632. For most battles the guns would simply be postion in the open on suitable ground.

Mobility should indeed be limited, the lack of mobility is due a combination of factors. You still have truly heavy artillery (24-pounders) being used on the field while the smaller calibres are generally heavier than Napoleonic guns of the same caliber. The exception is the regimental cannon which were quite light but had short range due to their design.

The real problem is however not the weight of the cannon but the lack of mobile wagons and the way in which batteries were deployed. Munitons wagons were a modified versions of the standard four wheel wagon and had much poorer mobility than Napoleonic caisson & ammunition wagons. Deploying the guns into battery meant unloading powder barrels, roundshot and cannister and storing it next to the cannon for easy access. Horse teams would be unhitched and moved back to a safe position behind the army. Any movement would require the horse teams to be brought forward and the wagons loaded not to mention the work of limbering the cannon to get them ready for movement.

The only army which had both the ability to redeploy field & heavy artillery and was willing to risk doing so were the Swedes and even they chose to rely on static batteries most of the time. The most notable exception was the battle of Jankow 1645 where the Swedes redeployed their artillery 3 times. (Though the heaviest cannon were probably not in action in the first position)

Very interesting, Daniel.

So it's partly down to the lack of pre-prepared rounds & effective caissons.

I will keep the emplacements I've made & continue to make others for my field artillery as it sometimes was done this way….& they look so cool!

I think a 6 punder of the period weighed like 3 times as much as a 6 pounder from the napoleonic period

Hard to make such a comparisson for two reasons, the first is that we have very little information about the weight of the gun carriages in use during the 17th Century, the second is that in the 17th Century "6-pounders" were found in a wide range of sizes and designs. Swedish documents contain data on large number 6-pound cannon barrels either manufactured in Sweden or captured in battle. You have heavy long barreled culverines such as a Bavarian 6-pounder from 1619 that had a barrel weight of 1132 kilos but then you had short cannon like a Spanish 6-pounder that had a barrel that weighed only 361 kilos and the Danish 6-pound regimental cannon with a barrel that weighed only 158 kilos.

Thanks mr s, didn't know that, i had just read that. They might have referd to the 6 punder saker?

Civilian drivers also had something to do with it. Part of the true success of G.A.'s light regimental guns is not so much that they were small enough to be manhandled and were therefor mobile but the fact that they were crewed by soldiers who were willing to advance with their regiment.