This guy at work tells me that French emperor Napoleon I was the first to use artillery effectively in battle. I’m pretty sure that the French (and other European countries) had cannons on ships and used them in battle starting with the 16th century or something. I think he’s wrong but I don’t know enough military history to say for sure. Help!
Depends how you define ‘effective’ field artillery.
Cannon had been used in the field for hundreds of years before Napoleon, but the French Army was indeed famous for its artillery, the best in the world at that time.
I dont know exactly, of the top of my head, but I’m sure cannon were first used in the late 14th Century, they just didnt work very well and probably killed more of their own men than the enemy.
Perhaps he means that artillery was never before in history put to more effective use than by Napolean. As far as just plain being used to some degree of effectiveness, artillery was around for centuries before Napolean. The Japanese were using artillery they acquired from the Portugese since before the Tokugawa shogunate, long before Napolean was born.
If by artillery you mean “Cannon”, then definatly not. If by “Howitzers”, then I’m not sure.
Napoleon was an artillery officer before he became a world power. He really put a lot of emphasis on the artillery, spending tons of money to get more artillery pieces and the men to handle them full-time, and some of the things I’ve read imply that he’s the first to use massed artillery to break up infantry lines ( in prep. for a cavalry/infantry strike).
Napoleon was a superb tactician who made excellent use of artillery, but he didn’t invent it and he wasn’t the first general to use it effectively.
Artillery had been used as early as the 14th century, though at that time, its primary use was to break open city and fortress walls. But by the time of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), artillery was already well established as an important battlefield weapon.
The biggest drawback to artillery, in its early days, was technological- in the early days, a cannon was about as likely to explode and kill its operators as it was to shoot a projectile at its target. Once gunsmiths figured out how to construct big guns that wouldn’t self-destruct when used, it was only a matter of time before artillery became a key component of warfare. And that happened long before Napoleon.
Someone here has been playing Civilization III.
Artillery, being large and cumbersome, was not particularly mobile on the battlefield and was therefore primarily used as static defensive positions or, on attack, in pre-assigned positions for long range (and therefore less accurate) preperatory bombardment. One thing Napoleon did was increase the use of horse-drawn artillery and exploit that arm’s mobility for use in offensive tactics.
Napoleon perfected a long-evolving tactic of using horse artillery in conjunction with attacking infantry. The horse artillery would (comparatively) quickly mass at key points on the line and deliver devastating fire on a small segment of the enemy while troops advanced against them. This, I am led to believe, is one of the reasons why the French so adored attacking in column: it narrowed the front so that artillery deployed to the sides of the advancing column could continue to fire on the enemy position almost to the point of infantry-to-infantry contact.
It should be noted, however, that this tactic wasn’t particularly new or innovative in the broad sense, it was rather the result of the perfection of a number of techniques and technologies which allowed horsedrawn artillery to be used in the way Napoleon chose to employ them. These included the use of lighter barrels, the Gribeuval system of interchangeability and integration, and intensive tactical training. Over 150 years previously, the ingenious Gustavus Adolphus used light foot-drawn artillery for virtually the same purpose.
I’m sorry, that’s “Gribeauval.”
Bonaparte the first to use artillery effectively, no. The first to effectively use artillery in an offensive role, yes. The Russians had a well disserved reputation for the use of artillery in a defensive role at the turn of the 18th Century. Napoleon I, by virtue of training as a junior officer and the standardization of guns and the increased mobility of field artillery during the period just before, during and right after the French Revolution and the development of bigger and more hard hitting guns was able to transform the use of field artillery. His technique was to maneuver his guns and mass them to pound an enemy position to prepare for an infantry/artillery assault. In addition, Napoleon had the advantage of guns that were sufficiently mobile that the guns could actually go forward on the flanks of the assault to break up strong points. Prior to the Napoleonic Wars field artillery was restricted to fixed positions and defensive fire.
Note that Bonaparte’s training as an artillerist was an unusual trait for a general. Most large unit commanders were cavalrymen, as was Blucher, or had nominal experience as an infantry company and field officer, as in the case of Wellington. As a practical matter the experience that counted in reaching high command was as a courtier or the sprig of a family of middling nobility. The French Army of the Napoleonic Period was different because its commanders had actual experience lower down the pole.
It is also worth noting that the development of rifled muskets with their increased effective range pretty well put an end to the Napoleonic technique of massing field artillery at relatively close range to batter a hole in the opposing formations. For example, compare the attempt to bring up guns in support of Pickett’s Charge and Napoleon’s use of artillery at Jena. With the development of rifled muskets the gun crews could not remain alive long enough to lay effective artillery fire on the target, nor could the guns be brought into position because the horses that dragged the guns and ammunition carts around were even more susceptible to rifle/musketry fire than the gun crews.
This thread is really making me want to dig around for my Sharpe tapes.