Napoleonic Artillery

Book excerpt: 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.