170 Chapter Fire
Smaller amounts of gunpowder could thus accomplish equivalent
work even within a shortened gun barrel; and a smaller charge in turn
made it safe to reduce the thickness of metal around the chamber
where the explosion took place. Shortened barrels and thinner walls
meant lighter guns, easier to move and quicker to return to firing
position after recoil. Everything hinged on the accuracy of manufac
ture, and on systematic testing of sample weapons to find out how
short the barrel and how thin the gun walls could safely be made and
still achieve the desired velocity and missile throw weight.
Tests of this sort were carried through by French artillerists under
the direction of Jean Baptiste Vacquette de Gribeauval between 1763
and 1767. Gribeauval also presided over similarly systematic efforts to
redesign all the associated elements needed for field artillery: limbers,
ammunition wagons, horse harnesses, gunsights, and the like. His idea
was simple and radical: to apply reason and experiment to the task of
creating a new weapons system. He succeeded in creating a powerful
field artillery, able to keep up with marching infantry and capable,
therefore, of playing a major role in battle.
Careful attention to detail magnified the basic improvement. Thus,
for example, Gribeauval introduced a screw device for adjusting gun
elevation precisely, and a new sight with an adjustable hairline made it
possible to estimate accurately where a shot would hit before the gun
was fired. On top of that, by combining shot and powder into a single
package, rate of fire approximately doubled what had been possible
when powder and shot had to be separately thrust down the cannon’s
throat. Finally, Gribeauval developed different kinds of shot—solid,
shell, and canister—for different targets, thus assuring the guns’
versatility.^32
Sample models of Gribeauval’s new artillery became available as
early as 1765, but the new designs were not finally approved until
1776, owing to the quarrels and controversies which so distracted the
French army in these years. Even after the new guns had been ap
proved, manufacture to the new standards of precision was difficult,
and opposition within the army to Gribeauval’s artillery was not com
pletely stilled until the divisional reorganization was decided on in
- Hence, new mobile field artillery was not in hand until the very
eve of the Revolution. Gribeauval’s guns remained standard through
out the Napoleonic wars and were phased out only in 1829. They
- Very instructive diagrams illustrating how late eighteenth-century artillery
worked may be found in B. P. Hughes, Firepower Weapons’ Effectiveness on the Battlefield,
1630–1850 (London, 1974), pp. 15–36.
