Swedish Regimental Gun

Origins

Field artillery around 1600 was heavy and slow. Guns such as the Culverin were dragged into position before a battle and usually stayed there, so they could do little once the armies were locked together. Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden from 1611, wanted guns that could keep up with his infantry. His first attempt was the leather gun. Its thin barrel of copper was wrapped in cord, mastic and leather, which made it very light. The design is linked with the Austrian officer Melchior von Wurmbrandt, who entered Swedish service in the 1620s, and such guns were used during the Swedish campaigns in Polish Prussia in 1628-1629. They proved a disappointment. The thin barrel heated quickly and could only take small charges, and the guns wore out fast. By about 1629 the Swedes had turned instead to a light cast-bronze gun, the regementsstycke or regimental piece.

Design & Construction

The regimental gun was a short bronze barrel firing a ball of about three pounds. It was mounted on a light two-wheeled carriage and was light enough to be drawn by a single horse or pushed along by a few men, so it could move with the brigade it supported. Different figures are given for its weight, but it was a fraction of the weight of a conventional field gun. The Swedes are often credited with using prepared cartridges for these guns, with the charge in a paper or cloth bag attached to the shot, which allowed a faster rate of fire than loading loose powder with a ladle. The gun could fire solid round shot, but its most valuable load was canister or case shot, a container of musket balls that spread out like a giant shotgun blast at close range. Each infantry regiment was normally given two of these guns, served by a small crew. Because the guns belonged to the regiments, their crews worked alongside the infantry officers instead of waiting on orders from a distant artillery train. The artillery arm as a whole was organized from around 1629-1630 by Lennart Torstensson, a young officer who later became one of Sweden's leading generals.

Combat Use

After Gustavus landed in Germany in 1630, the regimental guns went with his infantry brigades on campaign. At the Battle of Breitenfeld in September 1631 the Swedish army fielded several dozen light regimental pieces as well as heavier guns. They were positioned in front of and between the brigades, and their quick fire supported the musketeers with the Matchlock Musket and the pikemen as the Imperial tercios and cavalry attacked. Contemporary accounts stress that the Swedish artillery fired much faster than the Imperial guns during the opening cannonade. Regimental guns were used again at the crossing of the Lech and at Lützen in 1632, and remained part of the Swedish army for the rest of the Thirty Years War.

Legacy

Other armies soon adopted light guns attached to infantry units. Under various names, such as battalion guns, they served in European armies for more than a century and a half. The British and Prussian armies of the eighteenth century gave light guns to their infantry battalions, and the practice lasted until the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, when artillery was grouped instead into batteries. Historians of the so-called military revolution often cite the Swedish regimental gun as an example of how Gustavus Adolphus combined firepower and mobility. The leather gun, though a failure, is remembered as a bold experiment, and a few examples survive in museums in Sweden and elsewhere.