I’ve asked this question at the Napoleon Series discussion board, but no one stepped up to the plate to answer. Likewise, my Googling has led me nowhere. I’m counting on you guys to send me the straight dope.
How much were grenades used in Napoleonic warfare? I know that the term “Grenadier” had already lost its literal meaning of “a grenade-throwing soldier” in favor of “an elite soldier,” but surely such hand bombs were still in use. I have pics of flintlock grenade launchers from the Royal Armoury in Leeds, but there was no mention that I remember of whether they were oddities or saw substantial use.
Personally, I think that grenades would have been limited to use in attacks on fortifications. Either by the defender to chuck over the ramparts or by the attackers to lob into trenches. Open-field battles probably did not permit many opportunities to get close enough for grenades to be useful.
But that is the kind of thing that I’m trying to find out.
I too have not seen a cite for their actual use in field combats in the Napoleonic era (as opposed to by the defenders during sieges.)
One might think, though, that if Grenadiers did not throw grenades by the Napoleonic period, that their headgear might have evolved past the brimless hat they were given, since the function of that was to make it easier for them to throw grenades. But weirder things stay static in military traditions.
Certainly grenades were used. The idea of a hand-thrown bomb had been around for quite a while. In fact, I remember seeing them used in Master and Commander. Little, metal, baseball-sized bombs.
It’s just frustrating to find so little information about them.
Although Grenadiers existed, I don’t think that they threw many grenades during Napoleonic times. During the 17th century, firearms weren’t particularly effective, and many, if not most, infantary would be armed with pikes or spears. The predominant tactic in battle was the formation of a large infantary line and getting close enough to one of those with a grenade was going to be a dicy proposition. It was the advent of trench warfare that alowed soldiers to get close enough together to bring the grenade back into fashion.
Good site. Yeah, the designation Grenadier was purely titular by napoleonic times. In an infantry regiment, the grenadier regiment was the biggest and best men of the regiment and it held the right end of the line when the regiment was formed up in line for firing. But for my purposes I’m really only looking for info on the grenade as a weapon. I’m sure it was used by all troop types. In fact, it would probably be used more commonly by light infantry since they would be doing skirmishing and pickett duty. That put them into closer contact with the enemy and in a loose formation that permitted grenade use rather than firing by rank.
The thing about grenades, fuses, and gunpowder of those days was it’s lack of quality standards.
Each batch was unique, and had different (somewhat unpredictable) burning rates and power, depending on who made it, with what, and in what proportions.
So, while you may be told by the alchemist that the fuse is a five second one, and that the lethal blast radius is 10 paces, that may be in “ideal test” conditions. The powder can get old, wet, and so on. Old dry fuses may burn in half a second. This makes lighting and throwing a grenade, especially in combat conditions, something only the truly ballsy would like to play with. (Or maybe the truly desperate…)
that’s why Grenadiers were considered special, or elite. They had guts, and a mad gleem in their eye…
Absolutely right for land warfare - unfortunately I can’t find any cites on the internet but accounts of various sieges and assaults record this. (You have to take care as primary sources sometimes use “grenade” when they are talking about something like a shrapnel shell fired from a cannon.)
Grenades were also extensively used in naval warfare - I’m not sure I can accept Patrick O’Brien as the ideal source :dubious: (much as I love the books and although he is almost always accurate) - but there is an account from a French Captain captured at Trafalger of upwards of 200 hand grenades being thrown onto the Victory during the battle.
**Tapioca Dextrin’s ** reason for grenades not being used on an open battlefield is right - getting close enough to a line of infantry to throw the bomb without being killed would be a very dicy proposition - but this is because the enemy all had muskets, not pikes and spears. The Napoleonic Wars are at the start of the 19th centuary and things had moved on from the 17th.
On the point about their use by light infantry “doing skirmishing and pickett duty” I can’t find a source but I think this is unlikely. To be effective the bomb has to be thrown into a fairly static crowd and it helps if you have something to duck behind while you light the fuse and after you have thrown it - hence its use in sieges and on ships. The renewed use of grenades on the Western Front in WW1 was for the same reason - from 1915 to 1918 it was essentially one big siege.
Ah, but it’s light infantry that have the opportunity to “duck and cover” after chucking a grenade. And they’d often be fighting opposing skirmishers who similarly taking cover. That’s the right situation for using a grenade. Sure, it’d be nice to get a chance to lob a grenade into the tight-packed double-rank of the main firing line. But the enemy skirmishers were there to prevent that. So although a light infantryman was probably (again, just guessing) more likely to use a grenade, he was probably going to use it against an opposing skirmisher. Or in a fixed-position assault.
And yeah, Master and Commander is not the most accurate source of info. But I wanted one that people have actually seen. And you’re right about naval combat being good for grenades and vice versa. Grenades were great for clearing out enemy sailors whle leaving the valuable enemy ship relatively intact as a prize.
I remember reading that french account of Trafalgar before but don’t know if it was referenced from here or The Naploeon Series. I remember standing on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory and thinking about how packed and crowded it was with just twenty or so tourists. How anyone could have survived all those grenades, let alone WON, is unimaginable.
Yes, but sometimes it was a bit close! Again at Trafalgar:
On the light infantry using grenades. I can’t show that it didn’t happen but I can’t find any references to it. So far all I have got is their use during assaults on fortifications - both by defenders and attackers. I’ll keep looking
Henry VIII had an unsuccessful crack at Spain in 1512.
In 1513 he hired Austrian merceneraries who used guns with devastating effect on the French at the Battle of the Spurs.
In 1549 Kett’s Rebellion was put down by mainly German mercenaries
Although it does not say so here, according to ‘This Sceptred Isle’ BBC tapes, the mercenaries used guns.
It looks to me as if Medieval warfare was mutating, initially heavy artillery in the early 1300s, used as ‘castle busters’ and later some form of musket, which presumably replaced the bow and arrow.
According to one of my reference texts, How Weapons Work (edited by Christopher Chant), Grenades- up until the 1850s- were made of a variety of containers, including earthenware, metal, and glass, but not terribly practical outside sieges or defences until WWI.
Glass grenades would either inflict terrible wounds, or else shatter harmlessly, and until WWI fuses tended to involve the lighting of wicks and hoping that the fuse didn’t go out/the enemy didn’t pick the grenade up and throw it back.
ANZAC soldiers manufactured rather effective grenades using empty tins of jam (and similar containers), cordite, and bits of metal known as Jam Tin Bombs.
Anybody know if grenades were used during the American Civil War? And if they were, were they the Napoleonic “light the wick and pray” type or something a WW1 soldier would recognise with a reliable mechanical fuse?
Given the advances in technology and manufacturing by the 1860s I would have thought a basic hand grenade on modern lines would have been possible and there were certainly enough seiges or the equivalent to make them useful.
I’m fairly sure that the first grenades with reliable fuses didn’t appear until the end of the 19th century, but there were some in the 1860s-1870s which used percussion caps, and were much like those toy cap grenades you buy from $2 shops and flea markets nowadays, at least from a technological standpoint.
