The cost of an artillery piece?

[Jim Webster]

Does anybody have a source of financial figures for how much it cost to purchase an artillery piece/ or equip a battery/ or similar?
I’ve had a quick delve for figures and they’re not forthcoming 🙁

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Bandit]

Jim Webster wrote:

Does anybody have a source of financial figures for how much it cost to purchase an artillery piece/ or equip a battery/ or similar?
I’ve had a quick delve for figures and they’re not forthcoming 🙁

Hi Jim,

Not sure exactly what you’re asking – can you clarify?

Are you asking how much it might cost to have artillery related miniatures sculpted?

[Jim Webster]

Sorry I was unclear, it was more, if I was Napoleon, how much would I have to pay for the real thing back in, say, 1800.
(ignoring the fact that everybody seemed to take them off each other 🙂  )

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[Bandit]

Jim Webster wrote:

Sorry I was unclear, it was more, if I was Napoleon, how much would I have to pay for the real thing back in, say, 1800.

Gotcha!

Sorry, don’t have figures handy for that. Jim Dawson’s recent books do outline requisitions regarding uniforms and such, not sure if any of them cover cost or equipment, I haven’t needed to look for that yet – but might be a place to rule out.

[Tony S]

Found this, for what it’s worth –

“a 24-pounder iron cannon cost $21,614 in 2015 U.S. dollars; a bronze cannon would cost $46,374).”

From https://www.nps.gov/casa/learn/historyculture/arms.htm

I would have guessed it to be more, to be honest.

[Jim Webster]

Tony S wrote:

Found this, for what it’s worth – “a 24-pounder iron cannon cost $21,614 in 2015 U.S. dollars; a bronze cannon would cost $46,374).” From https://www.nps.gov/casa/learn/historyculture/arms.htm I would have guessed it to be more, to be honest.

Cheers for that, it’s the sort of thing I need 🙂
You know me, I don’t need a lot of data to start wildly extrapolating, but some data is always good 🙂

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[Whirlwind]

Bruce Quarrie gave some figures in his Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature.  These are British figures from 1815:

iron 12pdr – £25

bronze 12pdr – £67

bronze 12pdr howitzer – £40

iron 9pdr – £23

bronze 9pdr – £62

iron 6pdr – £18

bronze 6pdr – £58

bronze 3 pdr – £22

gun carriages averaged £20, plus the same again for full harness for the horse team.

[Jim Webster]

Thanks for that, given that £100 in 1815 is worth £9,487.20 today, (according to https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1815 ) the figures are not all that far adrift 🙂

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[MartinR]

The issue is less the financial cost of the items of equipment, but the capacity of industry to make the items in the required quantities. Panthers only cost 10% more than Pz IVs to make, despite being almost twice as heavy, yet the Germans never managed to build Panthers in large enough quantities to replace the Pz IV.

Ive no idea of the technicalities of making smooth bore cannon, but I imagine it was a fairly specialised job in the days before mass production techniques.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Chris Pringle]

Yes, it was certainly specialised. This is why the Hungarian artillery officer Aron Gabor is such a folk hero. He established a cannon foundry in the Szeklerland (the southeasternmost Hungarian corner of Transylvania) during the Hungarian War of Independence in 1848-1849. He cast some 70 guns from church bells, copper pans, etc. These did have a tendency to burst if they overheated from firing too much, but played an important part in sustaining the Szeklers’ resistance in a quite heroic historical episode.

In the same conflict, the Hungarians and the Romanian insurgents fighting them both used wooden cannon. (Sorry, Jim – no idea how much these cost!)

Some description of these in my books on the war.

[Jim Webster]

MartinR wrote:

The issue is less the financial cost of the items of equipment, but the capacity of industry to make the items in the required quantities. Panthers only cost 10% more than Pz IVs to make, despite being almost twice as heavy, yet the Germans never managed to build Panthers in large enough quantities to replace the Pz IV. Ive no idea of the technicalities of making smooth bore cannon, but I imagine it was a fairly specialised job in the days before mass production techniques.

 

Very much so, I found
An Analysis of the French economic industrial and military mobilization in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, 1789-1815 by Dr. Ioannis-Dionysios Salavrakos

French arms manufacture was initially more ‘industrialised’ than British, but during the Napoleonic wars they were overtaken.
All in all an interesting paper, one quote is, “In fact, the average actual supply of shells per artillery gun during the Russian campaign of 1812 was much higher, a indicator of immense industrial mobilization, between 670 and 1,100, a number which according to van Creveld: “figures, that do not compare all badly with those of an industrialized and highly militaristic Germany one hundred years later.””
I think this gives us a feel for the standard of the arms industry at the time.

Jim

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[Jim Webster]

Chris Pringle wrote:

Yes, it was certainly specialised. This is why the Hungarian artillery officer Aron Gabor is such a folk hero. He established a cannon foundry in the Szeklerland (the southeasternmost Hungarian corner of Transylvania) during the Hungarian War of Independence in 1848-1849. He cast some 70 guns from church bells, copper pans, etc. These did have a tendency to burst if they overheated from firing too much, but played an important part in sustaining the Szeklers’ resistance in a quite heroic historical episode. In the same conflict, the Hungarians and the Romanian insurgents fighting them both used wooden cannon. (Sorry, Jim – no idea how much these cost!) Some description of these in my books on the war.

 

wooden cannon are surprisingly popular. Here are Chinese guerrillas facing the Japanese during WW2

 

They used the wooden mortars in the American civil war.
https://www.starkvillecivilwararsenal.com/the-sweet-gum-mortar.html

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[Jim Webster]

Whirlwind wrote:

Bruce Quarrie gave some figures in his Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature. These are British figures from 1815: iron 12pdr – £25 bronze 12pdr – £67 bronze 12pdr howitzer – £40 iron 9pdr – £23 bronze 9pdr – £62 iron 6pdr – £18 bronze 6pdr – £58 bronze 3 pdr – £22 gun carriages averaged £20, plus the same again for full harness for the horse team.

 

Does he give any comparable figures for paying and raising infantry and cavalry?

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[Chris Pringle]

I can’t tell you a price for infantry or cavalry, but Clausewitz offers a ratio:

“Cavalry is a very expensive arm. Allowing for both equipment and maintenance, one cavalryman costs as much as four infantry.” (Clausewitz, tr. Murray & Pringle, “Napoleon Absent, Coalition Ascendant“, p.135.)

Hope that helps!

PS enjoyed your Chinese wooden cannon too

[Not Connard Sage]

Jim Webster wrote:

Whirlwind wrote:

Bruce Quarrie gave some figures in his Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature. These are British figures from 1815: iron 12pdr – £25 bronze 12pdr – £67 bronze 12pdr howitzer – £40 iron 9pdr – £23 bronze 9pdr – £62 iron 6pdr – £18 bronze 6pdr – £58 bronze 3 pdr – £22 gun carriages averaged £20, plus the same again for full harness for the horse team.

Does he give any comparable figures for paying and raising infantry and cavalry?

There’s an entire chapter devoted to the economics of raising armies, including rates of pay, in Quarrie’s book. It was reprinted by The Wargames Project a few years back and is available on Amazon as a Kindle book for about a fiver.

When comparing historic prices with present day ones, it needs to be remembered that other factors need to be factored in, notably the cost of transport and labour.

Happy extrapolating 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Patrice]

Also, when you have the guns you need qualified manpower to fire them.

Artillery was already considered intellectual, the officers needed specialised study including mathematics, poliorcetics, etc. It has a cost and must be provided for, years in advance.

Ah, and when you have the guns and the gunners, you also need to buy horses and limbers and carts etc. to move them.

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Tony S]

Ah, and when you have the guns and the gunners, you also need to buy horses and limbers and carts etc. to move them.

I remember reading in Elting’s Swords Around a Throne, that horse artillery, although obviously much more mobile, was a lot more expensive, merely because of the extra horse and men required.  And in 1813, horse flesh was at a real premium, so it became inordinately so, even though the artillery piece itself would cost the same as any other foot artillery.

 

[Jim Webster]

Tony S wrote:

Ah, and when you have the guns and the gunners, you also need to buy horses and limbers and carts etc. to move them.

I remember reading in Elting’s Swords Around a Throne, that horse artillery, although obviously much more mobile, was a lot more expensive, merely because of the extra horse and men required. And in 1813, horse flesh was at a real premium, so it became inordinately so, even though the artillery piece itself would cost the same as any other foot artillery.

 

It struck me that as the man at the sharp end, you don’t want the bits to put together yourself, you want the full thing. You don’t want a gun, you want a gun, team and ammunition with officers to organise it.
So I’m trying to put together a formula which does this but without you having to do too many calculations.

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[OotKust]

Is any of this in the Summerfields books? I now have one but havent looked yet.

I think it’s a part of ‘science’ that as totalitarian states, doesn’t even get a mention coz no-one objects to the obvious. As for “Elting’s” well lets say that so much opinion isn’t healthy and lack of proof, profound. The artillerie volanté didn’t need more men overall, but yes they did decide horses were better than wursts.

cheers

[OotKust]

… well jim, It may have taken a while but I eventually got there. No, the Dawson, Dawson and Summerfield volume ‘Napoleonic Artillery’ has no trace of ‘costs’ or expense of artillery, anywhere in the establishment.

Of course it is not easy to follow specifics very easily in modern books- chaos theory seems to blight many. But not one ‘value’ was placed anywhere that I could see in a further ‘scan’ of the book. I thought I’d look up Russia as they’re topical for me, and I find rather disappointingly that nearly every ‘status’ revolves around 1812 and very few other campaigns. Not helpful when one is pursuing earlier periods; also I note the intractable ‘mixing’ of subjects, when one country is in the heading, is followed by paragraphs of padding?; but such and such did this, then another did that etc. Drives you bonkers trying to stay focused.

Of course the technical detail can’t be beaten by anything else I’ve read, the multitude of European photos and graphics giving a breadth to the subject no other has done.

But the cost of a ‘gun’, no sorry.

regards d

[Jim Webster]

Thanks for looking. I do wonder if there was something esoteric in the whole tendering/procurement process which meant that nobody ever merely bought a gun?

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[OotKust]

Jim,

Massive exercise in big govt and technology. I’d say no differet to the space race in many ways.

Only goverments/ empires could and did have the need; this is a process so embedded in the pre-industrial revolution cusp, etc. that the finances and tech and personnel were so entwined (not to forget the ultimate ‘financier’being some emperical autocrat and their egos …) I’d suspect not many accounts were rigorously kept and filed.

Although the very public creation/ expansion of the ‘artillerie volanté of Revolutionary France in ’92/93 may be documented as it was both created and debated in very short order.

I guess you’re stuck with Quarries quotes ~cheers dave

[Jim Webster]

Somewhat later, I remember reading an account of the Krupp family. When he produced Breechloading artillery for Prussia, (of which he was a citizen) he was also selling them to Austria who was the victim Bismarck had lined up to topple next.
Bismarck asked if the Austrian guns could be ‘delayed’
Apparently Krupp virtually exploded about the sanctity of trade and the law of contract, leaving the great Bismarck consoling himself that perhaps the Austrians would deploy their new guns on the Italian front
So yes very much an esoteric process 🙂

 

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