In 1812, the Russians constructed a huge balloon at Moscow, which was to hover over the French army and rain forth shells and explosives, but their expectations rose higher than their balloons, which refused to move off the ground.
The French soldiers found this in the Castle of Voronzoff bearing many thousand pounds of gunpowder, which were to have been launched upon them.
General Count Philip de Segur says:—“This prodigious balloon was constructed by command of Alexander, not far from Moscow, under the direction of a German artificer.”
In 1815 a balloon reconnaissance was made at Antwerp, and in 1826 the subject was again mooted by the French, and a balloon was sent to Algiers, but it was never disembarked.
The Russians are said to have tried experiments at Sebastopol in 1854.
The French again used balloons in the Italian campaign of 1859; they employed the civilian aëronaut Godard, and a useful ascent was made the day before Solferino in a fire balloon.
When the Civil War in America broke out several balloons were used in the operations. On October 4th, 1861, an aëronaut named La Montaine ascended from McClellan’s camp on the Potomac; he was enabled to make observation of their position and movements, and afterwards returned to his own lines and communicated results which were declared to be of the utmost importance.
Later on the Federals instituted a regular balloon corps, of which Colonel Beaumont, R.E., wrote an interesting account in the Royal Engineer Papers. The balloons were of two sizes, one of 13,000 cubic feet capacity, the other double that size, but the large size was found most suitable, a fact which our military balloonists should not overlook in their desire to possess very light and small balloons for easy transport.
The American balloons were made of the best silk, the upper part being composed of three or four thicknesses; this was capable of retaining sufficient gas for an ascent a fortnight after inflation, a statement which can more readily be credited than the French accounts about preserving it for three months.
Hydrogen was used for inflation, and generated in the old-fashioned way with scrap iron and sulphuric acid.