Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

14 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
Merry Christmas 1776 by Charles McBarron, depicting Continental
artillerymen firing during the battle of Trenton
The artillery experienced its greatest success in the south during the battle of
Yorktown in 1781. There the French and Americans conducted the siege in accordance
with accepted siege warfare techniques handed down during the previous
century by military engineer and fortification/siege-craft master Sébastien Le Prestre
de Vauban (1633–1707). Vauban had conducted numerous sieges, forty of which
he directed without a single failure. No innovator, he improved on and modified
existing ideas with such consummate skill that his system continued practically
unchanged into the nineteenth century. His most important work was in the attack
of fortified positions, which he reduced to a scientific method. The whole problem
of siege craft centered around artillery. The besiegers had to bring up enough cannon
to overpower those of the defense and breach the walls while protecting themselves
and their weapons. 39
Vauban’s methods introduced order into the previously chaotic methods used
in sieges. Although the effective range of artillery was 600 to 700 yards, it had
been customary to establish batteries at 1,000 yards from the objective. But at that
range cannon made little more than noise. Vauban’s first object was to establish
batteries within cannon range of the attacked fortification for enfilading fire. After
39 John W. Wright, “Notes on the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 . . . ,” William and Mary Quarterly
Historical Magazine, 2d ser. 12 (October 1932): 229–49.