Product Description

This volume is the second half of the story of the French artillery during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It covers the howitzers, mortars and large siege (16- and 24-pdrs) and garrison (8- and 12-pdrs) guns, placing a special emphasis on their role, technical significance and operational use. The introduction of the Gribeauval system put in place a collection of mortars and large guns that were lighter and more manageable than those previously used, while offering first class hitting power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #798025 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

About the Author
Rene Chartrand was born in Montreal and educated in Canada, the United States and the Bahamas. A senior curator with Canada's National Historic Sites for nearly three decades, he is now a freelance writer and historical consultant. He has written numerous articles and books including almost 20 Osprey titles and the first two volumes of Canadian Military Heritage. He lives in Hull, Quebec, with his wife and two sons. Ray Hutchins was educated at the Duke of York's Royal Military School. He joined the Royal Artillery in 1950, serving in the Korean War and the Malaya Conflict. On demobilisation, he was manager for three major London studios before joining Rolls-Royce (Aero) Ltd as a senior illustrator. He then worked for the Ministry of Defence (Navy) and, later, with the MOD (Army) at Bovington, working on Shah and Challenger tanks. In 1980 he went freelance and has since illustrated over 200 publications.

Customer Reviews

Artillery
If you want to learn anything about the artilery used by Napoleon, then this book is not for you! The colour artwork is of the most basic standard, some of the plates are wrong or simply made up! The book says nothing news, relies heavily on tertiary sources, has multiple errors, compounded by the lack of original research.

Substandard
This book is essentially about Gribeauval's system although René Chartrand attributes certain innovations to Gribeauval which are not his. This results from limitations of the sources used.

It contains little new information, indeed, the Gribeauval system has probably received even more exposure than any artillery of the period and readers will find very little new in René Chartrand's offering. He gives credit to the Austrian Liechtenstein as the source of Gribeaval's inspiration but one cannot say that he has done much, if any, original research on his subject.

The author identifies the shortcomings of Gribeauval's system - the 8pdr, for example, being too heavy - but the description of the An XI system is too brief. On the other hand the An XI is often overlooked and, so, the coverage is of interest. The author's conclusions in this context are debateable and the weapons were not the failure he describes. By 1809 the An XI guns had almost eclipsed Gribeauval's. Here too is, perhaps, another symptom of inadequate sources.

The format is the familiar Opsrey one with a mixture of monochrome illustrations and tables. The coloured illustrations by Ray Huchins are generally adequate. Plate G, however, which shows a crew serving a 4pdr gun is quite dreadful.

There is no bibliography but that in Napoleon's Guns 1792-1815 (2) - Heavy and Siege Artillery (Osprey New Vanguard 76) is probably representative. It cites a mixture of secondary and primary sources.

A number of the latter are of questionable use and, for example, the author cites de Scheel as "the main source used". De Scheel's 'Mémoires d'Artillerie' was written in 1777 and is not representative of the Gribeaucal system as it had evolved 20 to 30 years later. Similarly du Teil's 'De l'usage etc' is outdated in a Napoleonic context and was written in 1789. Finally Tousard's 'American Artillerist's Companion' of 1809 is essentially a contemporaneous secondary source as far as the Napoleonic period is concerned. Tousard went to America in 1777 and his knowledge of European artillery developments is slight and often wrong. While useful in an American context Tousard has little diagnostic value as far as the Napoleonic period is concerned.

This book is an opportunity missed and could have been a lot better.