MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
m 
order; but during tbe first campaigns in a country where, as a general rule, 
it was difficult to move, 1 2 and where forage was scarce, 3 the British gunners 
had to fight at great disadvantages against the French, after their fifteen 
years’ experience in Italy and Germany. 3 
These remarks principally refer to the field batteries, for the horse 
artillery appears to have been excellent in every particular. Immediately 
before the battle of Waterloo, Marshal Marmont, 4 Duke of Ragusa, 
requested to be allowed to inspect a troop of Royal Horse Artillery, and the 
nearest troop, Lieut.-Colonel Webber Smith’s was paraded for him. He 
inspected it most minutely, and, after asking all the questions that might be 
expected from an Insjoecteur General d’Artillerie, he finished by saying that 
the “ equipment in every respect was very far superior to anything he had 
ever seen.” 5 
Although the services of the artillery were so distinguished throughout 
the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns, yet there was the best of reasons 
why no great exploit on a large scale was ever achieved by them, such as 
Senarmont’s advance with 30 guns en masse at Ocana, or the massing of the 
80 French guns during their retreat from Yittoria. That reason was the 
paucity of guns, and probably the 18 guns brought together at the passage 
of the Adour formed the largest battery massed in the field throughout the 
war. 6 Sir Augustus Frazer indeed says 7 that at Waterloo the artillery 
fought in masses as much as possible, particularly the horse artillery, but 
there is no record of the particulars, and the number of guns massed at any 
particular point could never have exceeded eighteen. These numbers sink 
into insignificance before those of the enormous masses used at some of the 
battles of Napoleon’s wars, such as, Wagram, Friedland, Borodino, and 
Leipsic. But yet twelve guns and Kellerman’s charge restored the battle of 
Marengo. 
Between Waterloo and the Crimea, the next occasion on which the Royal 
Artillery appeared in the field in any force, there elapsed a long interval; 
but from the beginning to the end of the latter war the materiel of the field 
artillery was excellent. 
Since that time rifled ordnance has been introduced and the importance of 
artillery has considerably increased, but without further experience it 
would be hazardous to say in what way the change will influence the arm 
at large. 
To illustrate the foregoing remarks and give a general view of the 
1 The horse artillery at S. Pe had to “ make fires to dry the roads j” and at the passage of the 
Bidassoa mounted officers were “ sometimes for a hundred yards together up to the horses’ bellies 
in thick mud stiffened by the frost.”—Frazer’s “Letters,” pp. 334-384. 
2 « Our horses have been starving.we have been for many days without hay or straw or 
any substitute.There is no grazing.Our horses are eating chopped furze.” J bid. 
375-388. 
3 “Aide-Memoire to the Mil. Sciences.” Art. “ Ordnance.” 
4 Marmont was an Artillery Officer, 
s Frazer’s “ Letters,” p. 502. 
6 Ibid. p. 430. 
7 Ibid. p. 547. 
