We shall now present our military readers with an extract from a French work, which has appeared since the Memoires D’Artillerie, par M. Surirey de Saint Remy, and which may put them more especially in possession of the French manner of marching their artillery, than Mr. Muller has afforded.—We must however, at the same time, refer them for more copious information to the third volume of Saint Remy, page 187 to 201.
In the last edition of the Dictionnaire Militaire, the following observations are made on this important operation.
When the troops in the advanced camp of the army begin to assemble, the commanding officer of the artillery repairs to head-quarters, and communicates with the commander in chief.—Utensils, stores, and ammunition, are forwarded to the camp, and every soldier is provided with ten or twelve rounds of ball cartridge, before he commences his march against the enemy.—These articles having been distributed, the waggons and horses return to the train of artillery, and proper dispositions are made to connect the whole line of march.
The horses belonging to the train are narrowly inspected by the lieutenant-general of artillery, who marks or rejects them according to his judgment, and sends one report of their actual state to government, and another to the master general of the ordnance. He gives directions to the captain-general of the waggon-train to arrange matters in such a manner with each provincial commissary belonging to the park, that the different captains may know what brigades fall under their immediate superinterdance. The latter must not on any account leave the brigades with which they are entrusted during the march.
The ammunition waggons having been loaded, and the horses harnessed in, they are distributed into different brigades, and put in motion to join the main army, according to the following order:—
The first thing that precedes the march of a regular train of artillery, is a waggon loaded with utensils, such as spades, pick-axes, shovels, mattocks, wooden spades, with iron bottoms; grapples, hatchets, &c. These are under the care of a waggon-master, who is attended by forty pioneers to clear and point out the way.
In the rear of this waggon follow four four pounders, mounted on their several carriages, with every necessary appendage on each side, loaded with ball, and the cannoneers ready, each having a lighted match in his hand, and two steel prickers or dégorgeoirs. Next to these is a waggon loaded with different articles of ordnance, containing likewise one barrel of gunpowder, one ditto of ball, a bundle of matches, weighing together about fifty pounds, about fifty balls of the calibre of the guns and five or six sets stout drag-ropes or bricoles.
The military chest, and the king’s or royal stores, generally accompany this small train, when the army consists of one column only.
The pontoons, with every thing belonging to them, follow next; and after them the crab with its appendages, accompanied by the captain of artificers, with a certain number of carpenters.
Next follow the heavy ordnance.