Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"

Revolution and Empire the artillery of the field army by degrees became field artillery as we know it to-day. The development of musketry in the 16th century had taken the work of preparing an assault out of the hands of the gunners. _Per contra_, the decadence of infantry fire-power in the latter part of the Seven Years' War had reinstated the artillery arm. A similar decadence of the infantry arm was destined to produce, in 1807, artillery predominance, but this time with an important difference, viz. _mobility_, and when mobility is thus achieved we have the first modern field artillery. The new tactics of the French in the Revolutionary wars, forced upon them by circumstances, involved an almost complete abandonment of the fire-tactics of Frederick's day, and the need for artillery was, from the first fight at Valmy onwards, so obvious that its moral support was demanded even in the outpost line of the new French armies. St Cyr (_Armies of the Rhine_, p. 112) quotes a case in which "right in the very farthest outpost line" the original 4-pounder guns were replaced by 8-, 16-, and in the end by 24-pounders. The cardinal principle of massing batteries was not, indeed, forgotten, notwithstanding the weakness of raw levies. But though, as we have seen, the _materiel_ had already been greatly improved, and the artillery was less affected by the Revolution than other arms of the service, circumstances were against it, and we rarely find examples of artillery work in the Revolutionary wars which show any great improvement upon older methods. The field guns were however, at last organized in batteries each complete in itself, as mentioned above. The battalion gun disappeared; it was a relic of days in which it was thought advisable, both for other reasons and also because the short range of guns forbade any attempt at concentration of fire from several positions at one target, to have some force of artillery at any point that might be threatened. Though it was officially retained in the regulations of the French army, "officers and men combined to reject it" (Rouquerol, _Q.F. Field Artillery_, p. 121), and its last appearances, in 1809 and in 1813, were due merely to an endeavour on the part of Napoleon to give cohesion thereby to the battalions of raw soldiers which then constituted his army. But, with the development of mobility, it was probably found that sufficient guns could be taken to any threatened point, and no one had ever denied the principle of massed batteries, although, in practice, dispersion had been thought to be unavoidable.