A dozen Russian artillery pieces, 8x 6 pounders and 4x10 pounder unicorns. The Russians had a lot of artillery so the heavy, horse and guard artillery still to come in future posts! The unicorn was the Russian alterantive to the howitzer, being something of a cross between a howitzer and a regular cannon, with longer muzzle, flatter trajectory and greater range. There was little practical difference in effect worth noting for the purpose of wargames rules by my reading though.
Russian line batteries had 12 pieces so at 1:1 scale this would be a single battery. In practice often only sections would be deployed, with other guns left in reserve.
Very fine park of artillery there, Mark! It seems that maybe the 12-gun 'battery' (company?) offered more flexibility - owing to a willingness to subdivide the unit to carry out specific tasks - than the smaller 6 or 8 gun units. Napoleon thought 4-gun batteries were ideal, and wanted to reorganise his ordnance in that way. The problem was the lack of logistic battery appurtenances sufficient for a wholesale reorganisation put rather a kibosh on that scheme.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Ion.