Grand Battery
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Grand Battery(Grande Batterie,meaning big or great battery) was a Frenchartillerytactic of theNapoleonic Wars.It involved massing all availablebatteriesinto a single large, temporary one, and concentrating the firepower of their guns at a single point in the enemy's lines.
Substituting volume of fire for accuracy, a rate of fire and rapid movement, it was rarely used in the wars' early years. As the quality of artillery crews and their horses declined, it was employed more frequently during later (post-1808) campaigns.
Napoleonic wars[edit]
TheGrand Batterywas often concentrated against the enemy's center. An early example of this is atAusterlitzin 1805, when Napoleon ordered a "roar of thunder"before the main assault upon the Pratzen Heights, which split the coalition's lines in half. Other notable uses of the tactic include:Alexandre-Antoine Hureau de Sénarmont's aggressive use of his guns at theBattle of Friedland(1807), which was a major factor that won the battle, or theBattle of Wagramin 1809, where a grand battery successfully halted an Austrian counterattack. AtBorodinoin 1812, it was again used to break a counterattack. It failed to break the strong Russian positions and earthworks in the center along theRayevski Redoubt.
At theBattle of Lützen (1813),it succeeded in breaking the Russo-Prussian center, ahead of the main assault by theImperial guard.In 1815 atWaterloo,the famous opening barrage of the Grande Batterie failed to break the center of Wellington's Anglo-allied army due to his deployment of most of his forces behind thereverse slopesof the rolling hillside and the fact that the ground was still wet and muddy, preventing the usual effects of the bouncing cannonballs.
American Civil War[edit]
In 1863 on the third day of theBattle of Gettysburg,Robert E. Lee,formed a Grand Battery of his own in a desperate attempt to weaken the Union center in advance ofPickett's Charge.The artillery overshot most of their targets and had to cease fire due to a lack of ammunition.