Austrian/prussian skirmishers and 3rd rank
Inspired by a going on discussion on TMP about skirmishing and 3rd rank, a question. When having eg an understrength austrian GDB battalion of 6 companies, each 6 men (or in reality 720 men) and I want to sent out the third rank skirmishers of 4 companies (or in reality 160 men or 8 figures), how can this represented in GDB as I think the battalion line should keep its full front, but now mostly in 2 ranks.

J, I'm not sure the TMP topic resolved anything very much - as the method and numbers regarding the deployment of skirmishers was never fixed. Also it was noted that Austrians, etc., would only deploy the third rank from one or two companies and not the entire third rank - so this is pretty consistent with deploying half a company as skimishers as currently permitted under the rules. DB

I wouldn't believe everything you read on TMP :-) - the entire third rank was available for use in a variety of roles under the 1769 regs and that is why you see orders from Generals telling the unit commanders not to use more than 1/3 of any unit in skirmishing. There was however a whole variety of ways of doing it in all armies. I did laugh at the suggestion that howitzer shell fuzes were placed in the barrel facing towards the muzzle and were ignited by the ignition gasses moving through the windage gap and around the shell! Then there was the 1600 yards from Teugn-Hausen (having been on that battlefield and walked from Hausen down the road as far as it crosses the end of the northern spur, I can assure you it is rather further!

DB, i don't believe everything I read on TMP, but I still believe that more 3rd rankers of Austrian and Prussian line battallion were able (and were used) to skirmish then probably you do. But in fact this doesn't change my question, how to represent in GdB the disappearing of a part of the third rank as the battalion front keeps intact. Must i give the line battallion some minusses in shooting or melee?? greetings jan

DB will obviously sort out the mechanics of this, but there were all kinds of problems with three rank fire, which is why it was abandoned. The kneeling front rank had a tough time with all the smoke and excess explosive charges, together with then having to stand to reload in an orderly fashion. As everyone went to 2 rank fire and the Austrian regs obviously make it clear that from 1769, there was no problem with detaching off the third rank, so I would suggest that the efect of 3 ransk was not that great.

Dave; "I did laugh at the suggestion that howitzer shell fuzes were placed in the barrel facing towards the muzzle and were ignited by the ignition gasses moving through the windage gap and around the shell!" I don't see why this is funny. I don't have the detailed sources to say for sure what the practice was in the various armies of the Napoleonic Wars, but I know for sure that this was the standard practice in the Civil War. "The waterproof cap was removed before loading to allow to permit the flame of the charge to lick around the ball and ignite the priming." This even worked for rifled shell; "Time fuse shell and case generally had longitudinal grooves which permitted acess of the discharge flame to the fuse..." Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War, by Warren Ripley I don't know when this practice was introduced, but I can't see how it would be practical to light the fuse on a Russian unicorn shell, a considerable distance up the barrel, any other way. Yours, James D. Gray

I cannot say I know much about ACW at all, but I gather one cannon type could handle both ball and shell. That implies a longer barrel than for Nap howitzers. The Austrian regs describe the long glove and how it was used to place the shell's fuze against the powder bag, so it would ignite. When the powder exploded, the shell would start moving to reach about 140 ft/s at the muzzle. The windage itself was reduced by about half with more accurate boring and round moulding in the mid-18th century. A Nap shell would not ignite if the fuze were at the point furthest away from the ammo bag, not least as you need heat and pressure for black powder ignition. I think you may have misread the rather flowery language in the first quote - if the shell was rammed down a longer barrel, the fuze would not necessarily be in the centre, so the flames would on ignition have to "lick" round a bit, but not the full circumference of the round. Likewise with rifled barrels - you would have to have some means for the heat and pressure to reach the fuze, which by then probably need less impact to ignite. On 3rd rank melees, there is much French mythology associated with Lodi, where the column charged across the bridge. The guys at the front had to keep going, but hand-to-hand fighting was pretty rare and outside of the Peninsular, the density of troops meant that formations were often rather more than 3 deep. The Austrian 1807 regs go into an elaborate firing drill for three ranks from the Masses which involved exchanging weapons with the 4th rank, but in practice, there was just one two-rank volley at 20 paces. In practice, any two rank line would have units behind if there were a breakthrough.

Dave; I have no doubt of your understanding of the Austrian regulations, and if you say that was the way the Austrians did it, I'm sure it was. I disagree that the shell could have rolled so that the fuse was in a different position during ramming. In the Civil War, it was the standard practice to bind the shell to a sabot with metal bands, which would preclude rolling. Black powder does not, in fact, require both heat and pressure to be ignited. Gunpowder can be ignited by heat or pressure or even static electricity. A spark is sufficient, as is indeed proven by flintlocks; sparks from a flint fall into loose powder in the pan, which ignites without the application of any pressure. B.P. Hughes, in British Smooth-Bore Artillery, states; "By 1700, however, it had been established that the windage was such that the flash of the propellant charge would ignite a fuze beyond the projectile..." Yours, James D. Gray

I stand corrected - looking at Dawson, Dawson and Summerfield "Napoleonic Artillery", you are right that the other nations used a sabot in the Nap Wars, which does then force you to have the fuze pointing towards the muzzle end. How odd - the barrels are only 95cm/3ft long in total. I see from Terry Wise's old Osprey on artillery on Google books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=H8PIWputuRIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=wise+napoleonic+artillery on p.29-30 that fuze reliability was the big problem. He says a lot of them went out - well, I wonder how many ignited? If you place the fuze against the charge, ignition is a cert and it is not affected by the wind created by flying through the air at 140 ft/s. Powder however is different as musket powder is ground much more finely, so there is a greater surface area relative to the powder grain volume. Artillery powder is thus more of a "bang". I suppose part of this is down to the powder bag, which the Austrians greased, so in theory, the barrel could be fired one humnfdred times before it needed cleaning and only then with a 6-line bristle brush. The bag picked up all the embers, when the bag was rammed in. The ramming would indent the bag and the shell would sit happily on it. I suppose this adds to the explanation about French crews moaning about Austrian ammo at Wagram - they were sponging the barrels, which caused a rubbery gunk to form and now, they seem to be loading the shells wrongly.

J, But I still believe that more 3rd rankers of Austrian and Prussian line battalion were able (and were used) to skirmish then probably you do. I'm certain that they were able and certain they did use it. The big question of course is how many of the third rank they used. I'm far from certain that they regularly deployed the entire third rank or anywhere near it - otherwise the French voltigeurs would be theoretically heavily outnumbered in every engagement - and they were not. The major issue is translating this into a wargame rule were it will not be abused - otherwise we will see every Austrian/Prussian player send out thousands of third rank skirmishers to overwhelm their French counter-parts - which is not particularly historicaly accurate. Therefore if you decide that you must practise this I would represent the depletion of the third rank not by a reduction in firepower but by a reduction in morale. how to represent in GdB the disappearing of a part of the third rank as the battalion front keeps intact. Must i give the line battallion some minusses in shooting or melee?? So if you decide to deploy the third rank as skirmishers your basic battalion morale drops by one grade to reflect this along with the reduction in manpower. (I would simply remove the appropriate number of bases to reflect this and to worry too much about maintaining an exact battalion frontage.) Thus if your Line Austrian battalion deployed its third rank of skirmishers its morale grade drops to 2nd Line. DB

Sorry, we got a bit OT with the howitzers. I think you are not considering the structure of the two sides. The mistake made by the guy on TMP, who said only part of the third rank was involved was to rely on the 50-60 figure, but this is screen established right up front as the Austrians used two lots of supports under the 1807 design, in order to rotate the troops. In the 1790s of course, the Generals were sending out specific instructions that 1/3 of any unit was the upper limit - in line with the 1769 regs. If you look at the skirmishing plates in my Warrior and Terry Crowdy's French Inf 1803-15 Warrior, you can see the plates overlap (which was deliberate). The French only send out one company but commit half of that to the actual screen, while the Austrians have two blocks of supports. Of course, the French had no regs, except Davout's 1811 instructions, while we know from Varnhagen von Ense that his unit at Wagram sent one company out ahead, which was not how the regs set it out. In addition, the theory related to a unit deployed in line - once you get into masses and deep columns or just the general density of the battlefield (esp. the two Austrian Treffen battlelines), it is not practical to despatch a group of men from the third ranks of many parts of the formation - hence VvE.

Dave; The books I've got say that there was a concern with facing the fuse towards the breech, that the fuse might be driven in by the ignition of the propelling charge and cause the shell to explode in the barrel. This may be one of those tradeoff things; the Austrians took a slightly higher chance of a premature detonation in exchange for a slightly lower rate of duds. However, this is just speculation on my part. Yours, James D. Gray

Many things were a trade off, such as the charge sizes for the ordinary ball, so that is probably the reason. I as interested to see in Wise's Osprey that Shrapnel was reported not to be effective against anything apart from enemy batteries and that the Prussians were devising tactics for firing shell over reverse slopes in 1811.

oops, I have misunderstood what the regs say about the shells. I suppose the thicker bottom was a clue really - yes, the Austrians did the same, ie: with the fuze in the middle pointing up the barrel. They tackled the ignition problem by sprinkling loose powder around the fuze and on the upper side of the shell, so it is actually ignited powder, which is taking the flame round, not the flames sweeping through the windage gap.