French Artillery of the Revolution and the First Empire

The term artillery in the Middle Ages refers to "all the machines an army makes use of". Originally, therefore, the artillery corps consisted of officers who created, operated and maintained these machines.
Several centuries and many vicissitudes had to pass before artillery was finally given an effective organisation: this would be the work of Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval.

It is this organisation, slowly put in place by Monsieur de Gribeauval, Inspector of Artillery, over nearly thirty years, that remained more or less in force until 1825 and that forms the subject of this work.
All the artillery pieces, the equipment used by the foot and horse artillerymen of the end of the Ancien Régime, the Revolution and the First Empire, as well as the pontoneers, the sedentary artillerymen and the coastal artillery gunners — heroes too often forgotten in the Napoleonic epic — are detailed in the hundreds of profiles and silhouettes presented here…

Two chapters are devoted to the artillery trains and transport corps which, with the First Empire, finally came of age… The age of regulation.

This work is the revised, expanded and amended new edition of works published some years ago by the authors.

Across 240 pages, nearly a thousand drawings develop the subject explored by these two enthusiasts of the period.