Page 1 of 1

No Swedish heavy artillery after 1634?

Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 8:17 pm
by DanielS
I've noticed that the Late Swedish army list does not allow for any heavy artillery, I assuming this is a typo given that the use of heavy Swedish artillery (24-pounders) is well recorded even in english sources such as Guthrie. Perhaps a result of them sharing a list with the Weimarians which lacked the massivve artillery regiment fielded by the Swedes?

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 9:25 am
by nikgaukroger
Hell has obviously frozen over - Daniel has suggested using Guthrie ... :shock:

To answer the question (sort of) - there was a reason, however, for the life of me I can't recall what it was. Sorry :cry:

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:51 pm
by DanielS
Well more like using him as an example that the information was available in English, if you look purely at the order of battles and take a critical view of the main text and any notes & footnotes Guthries order of battles for the Swedes are at least 85-90% correct most of the time. This is because the Swedish army is well research so he only had to copy the information from the Swedish sources such as Mankell or Sveriges Krig.

With regards to the heavy artillery I must admit that I find it odd to disallow the use of heavy artillery as the Swedes deployed 24-pounders in every major battle between 1635 and 1648. The artillery lost at Nördlingen and the chaos afterwards did represent the low point of the Swedish artillery but this was remedied in 1635 when Lennart Torstensson arrived with two new artillery companies to reinforce the remnants of his old artillery regiment. The two new companies had a total of eight 24-pounders, fourteen 12-pounders and fortynine 3-pound regimental cannon. This became the core of the artillery of the Swedish main army until the end of the war while the remaining two companies supplied gunners & artillery to the minor armies) As a rule you found the 24-pounders at all times in the main army but only in the minor armies when engaged in siegework as they were cumbersome and required a huge support system. The minor armies & corps prefered the 12-pounder instead as it was highly usefull in battle and did sterling work against the kind of fortifications they were actually willing to take on.