THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 221 
of cotemporary tactics, in everything required for the practical application 
of their arm in the field, the men, N.C. officers, and young officers were 
mere civilians. The horses and drivers, both quite untrained, joined the 
artillery only a few days before a march. The unfortunate drivers were 
wretchedly clothed, and commanded by some broken-down old cavalryman, 
under the title of Schirrmeister. Little attention was paid to the harness, 
and it was usually in the collar-maker’s hands after a few marches. The 
wheelers and shoeing-smiths were unskilled; no two wheels were matches; 
one gun would not fit the carriage of another, and frequently did not fit its 
own. The spare stores, 1 packed in an absurd way, were carried on a spare 
gun carriage; but they were of little use, as they bore little resemblance, in 
shape or dimensions, to those they were intended to replace. Furthermore, 
while there was an abundance of perfectly useless articles, the most necessary 
stores were wanting. The carriages were overladen with superfluous iron 
fittings, among which the drag-apparatus was conspicuous for badness. 
Thus clumsily equipped, meanly horsed, manned by unpractised gunners, 
and deficient in numbers, the batteries took the field, and found themselves 
brigaded with other troops as unaccustomed to the artillery as the artillery 
was to them. Utter strangers to each other to-day, to-morrow they 
would be fighting shoulder to shoulder for victory! Only two officers 
were attached to batteries of eight or ten guns; the fractions of which, 
when detached, were frequently entrusted to young officers or under-officers. 
Hence arose innumerable collisions with the other troops, in which the 
artillery invariably went to the wall. The safety of the guns in action was 
often compromised, because artillery tactics were not understood, and the 
defence of the guns was not made an affair of honour, as it is now. It 
would be hard, however, to blame the infantry and cavalry officers for their 
ignorance of field artillery tactics, when the artillery officers themselves were 
not agreed on the subject. In action, the batteries crawled from one lofty 
height to another—a venerable mode of manoeuvre, consecrated by the dust 
of ages, which one generation of artillerymen copied from another without 
asking the reason why. Looked upon in quarters, on the march, and in 
action, as a hindrance; considered by the wise as a necessary evil; re¬ 
luctantly called into the field; and neglected and despised when peace 
returned; such was the condition of the Prussian field artillery in 1806 and 
1807. Then it was that the malign influence of Scharnhorst was felt. He was 
now supreme, for Templehoff was dead. The field battery officers were only too 
willing to profit by the lessons of adversity; but there stood Scharnhorst, 
resolute to stop every improvement, determined to bar all progress. Eager 
to raise the horse artillery, he depressed the field batteries; and the foregoing 
description, originally intended to illustrate the condition of the Prussian 
medium field artillery before the peace of Tilsit, 2 was applicable to it for 
many years afterwards. 
The minute description I have given of the English and Prussian field 
batteries renders it unnecessary to dwell upon the French, which were under 
precisely the same circumstances. Suffice it to say that although they were 
bad in everything that related to their means of draught, 3 and although their 
1 “ Vorrathssachen.” 
2 C. von Decker. “ Gesehichte des Geschiitzwesens undder Artillerie.” Berlin, 1822, p. 13, et seq. 
3 General Lespinasse, “Essai svu* 1’organisation cle Far me tie l’Artillerie,” 1800. pp. 67, 68, 
