210 
MINUTES OF PKOOEEDINGS OF 
field batteries were as instable as the sea, as changeable as Proteus. In 
ancient Borne the temple of Janus was only open, in modem Europe the 
field batteries were only in existence, in time of war. The fortuitous atoms 
of which these batteries consisted were attracted and held together by 
the force of Necessity while the storms of war lasted; but when the sun of 
peace burst again through the clouds, the spell which had evoked the field 
batteries was broken, and they silently dissolved into their original elements, 
which separately disappeared into the hundred garrisons and arsenals from 
the depths of which they had been called forth. 
The collapse of Gribeauval's own artillery—the field batteries—only a few 
years after his death, was produced by the joint action of three causes :—Eirst, 
the change of tactics brought about by the French Revolution; secondly, 
the peculiar organisation of the horse artillery; and thirdly, the disorder 
and confusion that prevailed in the field batteries themselves, owing to their 
being organised upon the principle that field and garrison artillery are 
convertible. 
I.—Gribeauval constructed his system with a view to enable his batteries 
to act with troops moving at the pace of the Prussian infantry. 1 But before 
men had ceased to mourn for the great reformer's death, the French Bevolu- 
tion burst forth; the formal and respectable tactics of the good old times 
were .cast, as they deserved, to the winds, and a new system of tactics was 
introduced bv the French, which enabled them to conquer almost the whole 
of Europe. The chief characteristic of the new tactics was the extraordinary 
mobility they conferred upon the infantry. By radical and extensive changes 
in its organisation, which it is not my business to describe, this arm was 
enabled to manoeuvre with a rapidity hitherto unknown. 2 An artillery, 
therefore, constructed with the express intention of supporting the “ pro¬ 
cessional movements " 3 of the Prussian tactics, was plainly unequal to the 
requirements of the French division, the tactics of which were at once 
“ leste, elastique, et osee.'' 4 Now, Gribeauval's carriages were heavy; his 
guns had to be shifted from the travelling to the firing trunnion holes before 
they could be discharged; the gunners followed the gun on foot, which de¬ 
prived the system of any little mobility it might otherwise have possessed; 
the guns were intended to be manoeuvred by drag-ropes when under fire ; 6 and 
before limbering up, the guns had to be shifted back from the firing to the 
travelling trunnion holes. In fine, while the fire of Gribeauval's guns was 
sufficiently powerful to meet all the demands of the new tactics, the mobility 
of his batteries was so defective as to render them almost useless in all cases 
1 “ Le but que Gribeauval se proposait, e’etait Uue mobilite assez grande pour pouvoir, dans toute 
espece de terrain, suivre les ruouvemens d’une infanterie attssi mobile que l’etait l’infanterie 
Prussienne.”—Fave, " Hist, et Tact, des Trois Armes, 5 ’ p. 148. 
2 “ Die Infanterie wil’d in einzelne Massen, Bataillone, zerlegt und gewinnt dadureli eine friiber 
niclit geabnte Manovrirfabigkeit und Selbstandigkeitf ’—“ Militarisclie Gedanken und Betraclit- 
lingen iiber den Deutsck«Franzosiseben Krieg, 1870-71;” Mainz, 1871, p; 226. 
3 Gen. Trocbu, | L’Armee Fran 9 aise en 1867,” p; 247; 
4 Ibid. p. 254. 
3 To save the trouble of limbering-up, the prolonge was used for long movements beyond the 
effective range of tbe enemy’s fire. If every great mau has his hobby-horse, surely the drag-rope 
theory was Gribeauval’s; 
