Horse artillery

This was in contrast to other forms of field artillery which may also be horse-drawn but were heavier and whose gunners either marched on foot or were transported seated on the gun carriage, wagons or limbers.

[1] Once in position, horse artillery crews were trained to quickly dismount, deploy or unlimber their guns (detach them from their caissons), then rapidly fire grapeshot, shells or round shot at the enemy.

They could then just as rapidly limber-up (reattach the guns to the caissons), remount, and be ready to move to a new position, similar to the shoot-and-scoot tactics of their modern counterparts.

If the horse artillery was mistaken for cavalry, the enemy might receive an unpleasant surprise when the towed batteries wheeled around, unlimbered, loaded, sighted and opened fire.

Torstenson was the artillery expert of Gustavus Adolphus, and used them to provide cavalry with the fire support it needed to deal with massed infantry formations without sacrificing their speed and mobility.

Although they proved highly useful and versatile troops, whether they fired mounted or dismounted, they still had to slow down or at least stop temporarily, thereby losing their main advantages as cavalry.

French artilleryman, engineer and general Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval had served with the military mission to Prussia,[2] as well as fighting against Frederick in the Seven Years' War.

Later, the British army officer Henry Shrapnel invented a deadly new type of ammunition that was put to effective use by horse artillery units.

Hanover formed its first cavalry batteries in 1786 and the Hanoverian general Victor von Trew performed several trials in 1791 which proved the great speed and efficiency by which an all-mounted crew could operate.

[8] During the 19th and early 20th century, European-style horse artillery was used in South American countries such as Chile and Peru, quite prominently during the War of the Pacific.

France and the United Kingdom, however, used specialist horse guns (the Canon de 75 modèle 1912 Schneider and the Ordnance QF 13 pounder, respectively.