Napoleonic Artillery | 
 enlarge | Authors: Anthony L. Dawson, Paul L. Dawson, Stephen Summerfield
Publisher: Crowood
Category: Book
List Price: $49.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 314593
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 12.1
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 7.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1861269234
Dewey Decimal Number: 358.1209409034
EAN: 9781861269232
ASIN: 1861269234
Publication Date: May 15, 2008
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Product Description
The Napoleonic Wars gripped Europe, and beyond, for over ten years at the beginning of the Nineteenth century. Hundreds of battles were fought between the armies of France (and its allies) and all those powers that wished to see Napoleon Bonaparte stopped in his tracks and an end to the French Empire. The battles and sieges of the Napoleonic Wars, which cost the lives of between 3 and 6 million men, made unprecedented use of large guns, and every participating army possessed a range of artillery. With the wars covering such a long period of time, and with so many armies involved, the subject of Napoleonic artillery is a complicated one, and no work has attempted to examine all the weapons involved in a single, detailed volume. Until now. The product of years of research, this book presents most of what is known about the artillery pieces of the Napoleonic Wars. Including numerous drawings, contemporary illustrations and modern photographs of surviving guns, it will be an invaluable addition to the library of historians, modellers, wargamers and re-enactors.
Book Description
The Napoleonic Wars gripped Europe, and beyond, for over ten years at the beginning of the Nineteenth century. Hundreds of battles were fought between the armies of France (and its allies) and all those powers that wished to see Napoleon Bonaparte stopped in his tracks and an end to the French Empire.
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| Customer Reviews:
 unfortunate June 15, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
I was greatly anticipating this book, and sadly was greatly disappointed upon receiving it. I've purchased dozens of books through Amazon. Some I've loved, some I've hated. This is the only one I've ever returned. 'nuff said.
 a welcome disappointment May 25, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This title, although very disappointing overall, is a welcome addition to the Napoleonic scene. It is welcome because we need as many titles on Napoleonic topics as possible, although obviously, some will not rise to the level of classics, in the way I feel that Mikaberidze's book on Borodino will.
The title does contain a lot of information but sadly, it also appears to contain a major blunder concerning the description of canister. Forgivable in a general Napoleonic title perhaps, but I feel unforgivable in one on Artillery! And worse, considering that the book's hype boasts that 'years' of resarch went into it.
The book does contain a considerable amount of photos but many are clearly the work of an amateur photographer. Most are taken from too far away or just too dark to make out any real details. And many of them are photos of models, not the real thing (eg; p94, 95)
Worse still, many photos are so dark or small, it seems quite pointless to have included them (eg; p89, 106, 174, 176, 178)
And what is the point of squashing twelve photos on less than half a page (p14)that are supposed to display re-enactors in action, loading and firing a cannon? They should have been much bigger and each photo accompanied by text describing what was happening in each one.
Thankfully, there are some nice touches to counteract the endless amount of cold metal on display, such as images of artillery crews manning their guns (eg: p27,85,144,145,270) and I really liked the illustration of Italian mountain artillery p167)
However, even with these images, there is a definite lack of the human factor in this title, no feeling or heart for the actual mortals that had to move, load, fire and die with their guns; a factor that makes Mr. Kiley's title on the same subject so readable and welcoming.
If you have no Osprey Artillery titles and own a magnifying glass, then this could be considered a welcome title to your shelf. But the quantity of photos do not equal quality. They suggest a rush job, while the canister blunder suggests either bad editing or a lack of true research. Saying that, it will just about make an acceptable companion to other titles on the topic.
 The reference book on the subject May 24, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
There has been quite a lot of smoke around this subject recently, so it is worth noting that until recently, there was very little, especially in English, covering this important subject - the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars saw the change in warfare to a battlefield dominated by large batteries of artillery.
Then, a few years ago, Osprey produced 5 New Vanguards on napoleonic Artillery - a pair each of field and heavy guns for UK and France plus my single Austrian volume. While researching that, I began to find that the story was not as told in popular wisdom, so it was no surprise that the next book by Kevin Kiley (author of the above review) was a rehash of that popular wisdom based on secondary English material. That flags up the first outstanding aspect of this book by the Dawson brothers and Stephen Summerfield - they have actually gone out to do the research across the major and most of the minor states from the surviving artefacts and sources. The result is the first comprehensive and properly researched survey of the subject in any language. It demonstrates that contrary to popular myth, Gribeauval was nothing more than a siege engineer, who reformed the French artillery so poorly that almost the first act of Napoleon Bonparte on coming to power was to order a complete overhaul of the French artilelry. From there, as DD&S show in some interesting tables, the combination of captured Allied pieces and the new Year XI guns (essentially copies of Austrian and Piedmontese designs), allowed Napoleon to use proper lighter field guns to dominate the battlefield and blow his enemies away from 1805 onwards, while Gribeauval's guns were relegated to Spain and the depots. It renders the pop wisdom secondary potboilers like Kiley's own book and the claims of the likes of Graves obsolete and irrelevant overnight.
Alongside this, the much overused claim that a book is "lavishly illustrated" is actually justified in this book with photos of surviving guns on many pages 9shame on me - I misssed an Austrioan siege gun now in London!) alongside contemporary pictures of crews in action and the like. Properly indexed, you will find any ref you might need very quickly and the diagrams, contrary to Kiley's review above, are in fact perfectly clear. The Yr XI French bsystem is also well illustrated instead of being ignored by some authors as inconvenient to theior claims about Gribeauval. This is the new reference book and from there, you can add on whichever Ospreys you wish (or Zschmodikov & Zschmodikov on Russia) for more illustrations and those details DD&S simply could not fit in.
Certainly, the canister illustration is an unfortunate error, but it seems to be a mistranslation of how shell was fired, but I explain that in New Vanguard 72! It is essential reading for all enthusiasts, while Kiley's book is best used as a doorstop.
Another Near Miss... May 24, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
There is a dearth of information on artillery in military history, in particular from 1600-1815. The study of artillery is fascinating and rewarding, generally much of the material that is available is not in English and those interested in the study of artillery have to do a little digging. This new volume on artillery of the Napoleonic period should be a welcome addition to the literature on the subject. It is, and then again, it is not.
The authors of this profusely illustrated volume have made a Herculean effort to describe the entire gamut of European artillery systems of the Napoleonic period, from field artillery to siege, garrison, and fortress artillery, but what they have accomplished is assembling a wide range of material, mostly illustrated with photographs of period artillery pieces, but with little or no depth to it. Even the myriad photographs from museums and collections are crammed onto the pages of the book in almost too small a format to be useful.
In this flawed endeavor, the book fails in two areas: First, it is not well-sourced, or at least apparently is not. There are over four hundred reference notes in the volume, but about forty percent have no page numbers. This is a severe handicap for it limits the usefulness of this volume as a resource on artillery. Second, there are too many errors in fact in the text.
An excellent example of the errors that can be found is on pages 246-247. Here canister, an anti-personnel round, is described as bursting on impact with the ground after being fired instead of bursting when the round is fired as described in the artillery manuals of the period. This is a gross error and clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of both artillery and the ammunition of the period.
There is incorrect information on the French artilleryman Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval, who developed the artillery system that bears his name. He was a school-trained artillery officer of vast experience both in combat and in artillery development and his system was a milestone in the development of artillery, including artillery doctrine and employment. He was not, as stated in the text, an engineer. That information is readily available in the excellent biography of Gribeauval by Pierre Nardin.
There is contradictory information in the text, such as giving two dates for the development of the bricole-by the Prussians in 1722 and the Austrians in the 1750s. Other sources credit the development of this utilitarian artillery tool to Gribeauval and the French. Here, as in other places in the text, sourcing would have helped.
Reenactor photographs pepper the text, which is not a good idea as reenactors may or may not be accurate. One example of inaccuracy is a photograph of them supposedly using the bricole. What is pictured is not a bricole, which can be found in period artillery manuals. What is shown in merely looped rope. This is a fundamental error in the book and detracts from the overall reliability of the text.
Other errors in fact include French corps commanders being misidentified on pages 128-129. Also on page 128 the Sailors of the Imperial Guard are identified as manning the floating batteries in the Danube for the second Danube crossing before the Battle of Wagram. The Sailors of the Guard did not arrive in theater until after Wagram. the floating batteries were manned by the Battalion of the Danube and the 44th Bataillon de Flotille, two naval battalions commanded by Pierre Baste.
There is confusion on artillery classification on page 273. Field artillery of the period consisted of foot, horse, and mountain artillery, but the text suggests field artillery as `battalion guns...regimental...brigade artillery...position artillery...and horse artillery.' All field guns of 12-pounder caliber and below are classed during the period as light artillery, and the incorrect classification of light artillery is confusing. Classification of French artillery systems in the book between 1680 and 1827 is incorrect. Fourteen artillery systems are named for the French during this period when there were only four: 1732 (Valliere), 1765 (Gribeauval), AN XI (1803), and Vallee (1827-1829).
Artillerie legere (light artillery) and artillerie volante (flying artillery) are identified as two different types of horse artillery when they mean the same thing. On page 70 the Gribeauval 8-pounder is termed unsuitable (i.e. `too heavy') for close infantry support when it was the favorite field piece for French horse artillerymen.
The book's strengths are the photographs of artillery pieces and the line drawings done for the book (although why the originals were not used is puzzling as they are out of copyright), and the chapter on British artillery. The greatest weakness is the chapter on the French and the sections on horse artillery and artillery employment.
The flow charts in the text are confusing and further errors in the horse artillery section, the tactics section, command and control add to the errors in the text. There are statements in the text that are unsupported, such as on page 203 that `France was the only country that relied on the ammunition caisson' and on page 283 that the `French cavalry divisions...did not have permanently attached artillery.'
That being said, the book should be read by anyone interested in the artillery of the period, bearing in mind that there are better artillery references (many of them are listed in the bibliography for this volume). This book was a great opportunity to educate and enlighten, but the opportunity was missed; and opportunity lost is opportunity gone forever. The myriad errors in fact in the volume leave it deeply flawed, and to paraphrase a well-worn phrase, this volume smells of paper and printer's ink, and not of gun powder and high deeds done by the artillerymen of the period. The Napoleonic period was the era of the artillery battle, and these ideas are not captured in this volume. With that in mind, this book cannot be used as a reliable reference for much of the artillery of the period, especially for the French. The excellent photographs of the actual artillery pieces and ancillary equipment are not complimented by a mediocre and error-ridden text. The book, however, is recommended, if used with care.
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