How Russians Invented the World's Best Artillery in the 18th Century
On July 23, 1759, the positions of the Russian troops were attacked by the Prussian army. A stubborn battle unfolded on the heights of the village of Palzig, located in the west of modern Poland, then it was the eastern borders of the Prussian kingdom.
For the second year, the Seven Years War flared up, in which all the major states of Europe took part. On that day, the Prussians went on the attack to prevent the Russians from crossing the Oder and entering the heart of Germany. The stubborn battle lasted 10 hours and ended in the complete defeat of the Prussian troops. The army, rightfully considered the best, most disciplined and trained in Western Europe, lost only 4269 soldiers and officers killed - almost five times more than the Russian troops! Our casualties that day amounted to 878 soldiers and 16 officers.
The defeat of the Prussians and the relatively small losses of our troops were predetermined by the Russian artillery - some of the enemy's attacks were repelled exclusively by its deadly and well-aimed fire.
"Newly Invented Tools"
On that day, July 23, 1759, for the first time in the history of mankind, the artillery guns of the Russian army unexpectedly for the enemy opened fire over the head of their troops. Previously, guns in field battles fired only with direct fire.
On the eve of the Battle of Palzig, our army was the first in the world to receive light field guns invented in St. Petersburg, capable of firing both direct fire with buckshot and explosive "grenades" and cannonballs with "mounted fire", that is, over the formation of our troops. It was this technical and tactical novelty that predetermined the defeat of the Prussians, despite their skillful and decisive actions.
Three weeks after the victory at Palzig, the Russian army clashed with the main forces of the Prussian king Frederick II at the village of Kunersdorf, just a few kilometers east of Frankfurt an der Oder. On August 12, 1759, the Prussian king, a brave and talented commander, managed to bypass the right flank of the Russian army and successfully attacked it. From 9 am to 7 pm a stubborn battle was going on - the first attacks of the Prussians were successful. But then, in the course of the battle, they broke the formation, and Friedrich's infantry crowded together at the Mühlberg Hill, where they fell victim to the well-aimed fire of the new Russian cannons.
The battle ended in an unconditional victory for Russia. The baptized Kalmyks from the Chuguev cavalry regiment even defeated the personal guard of the Prussian king, bringing the hat of the hastily fled Frederick II to the Russian command. This trophy is still kept in the Suvorov Memorial Museum in St. Petersburg.
Reporting on the victory over Frederick II at Kunersdorf, the commander of the Russian army, General-in-Chief Pyotr Saltykov, informed Empress Elizabeth that "our artillery, especially from newly-invented guns and Shuvalov's howitzers, had caused great enemy cavalry and batteries harm …"
"Inventing", "inventorying" - this is the term Russian people of the 18th century called inventive activity. "Newly Invented" - that is, recently invented tools. The howitzers are named "Shuvalov" after Pyotr Ivanovich Shuvalov, an associate of Empress Elizabeth and one of the most prominent statesmen of the Russian Empire in the middle of the 18th century.
Peter Shuvalov was among those who, in 1741, with the help of the Preobrazhensky regiment guards, elevated the daughter of Peter I to the imperial throne. In Russian history, those events are considered the only absolutely bloodless coup d'etat - despite the cruel customs of that time, no one was killed or executed during and as a result of the "Guards Revolution". Moreover, the new Empress Elizabeth, with the consent of her associates, abolished the death penalty in Russia. The Russian Empire became the only country in Europe where the state officially stopped killing its subjects.
Count Pyotr Shuvalov, being one of the closest to the empress (his wife was Elizabeth's friend from childhood), was rightfully considered the most influential politician of the Russian Empire. But unlike many "favorites" and "temporary workers", Shuvalov used these endless opportunities for the good of Russia. Having become the General Feldzheichmeister, that is, the commander of all Russian artillery, it was he who provided our army with the best guns in the world.
Count Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov. Reproduction from the book “Russian portraits of the 18th and 19th centuries. Edition of the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov"
A real scientific group was created under the leadership of Count Shuvalov. In fact, this is the first time in the history of Russia when not lone enthusiasts, not individual scientists, but a whole group of qualified specialists worked on the creation of technical innovations.
History has preserved their names for us. Among those who worked for the glory of the Russian artillery, three stand out: Mikhail Vasilyevich Danilov, Matvey Grigorievich Martynov and Ivan Fedorovich Glebov. All of them are officers of the Russian army, professional artillerymen. Then artillery was the most "scientific" branch of the military - the commanders of the cannon crews needed to know the basics of mathematics, physics and chemistry.
But Danilov, Martynov and Glebov were not just artillerymen. In the middle of the 18th century, Colonel Glebov was in charge of all garrison schools for training artillery specialists, Captain Martynov was the head of the St. Petersburg artillery school, and Captain Danilov in the same school headed a laboratory for the manufacture of fireworks and illuminations. Fireworks then demanded the most "advanced" knowledge in chemistry and pyrotechnics - Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I, wanted her fireworks to be better than European ones, and in fact it was so.
"Twins" and "secret howitzers"
In 1753-1757 on the Vyborg side of St. Petersburg there was continuous cannon fire. “A great multitude of gunpowder and other supplies were shot,” as Captain Mikhail Danilov later wrote in his memoirs.
At the initiative of Count Shuvalov, various samples of guns were tested. A quarter of a century has passed since the time of Peter I, the artillery of European countries has stepped forward, and the guns of the Russian army still remained at the level of the Northern War with the Swedes. But a war with Prussia was imminent, and the artillery commander strove to quickly overcome the emerging lag.
Over the past few years, Shuvalov's team has created and tested many different types of weapons. Science then was still far from theoretical calculations and subtle experiments, so work on improving the Russian artillery was carried out by trial and error. They experimented with different shapes and cross-sections of cannon barrels, to the extent that they even tried to make rectangular ones. Some samples of guns, invented by Shuvalov's team, were immediately rejected, some tried to be adopted, despite doubts and difficulties. And only one sample turned out to be almost perfect in all respects.
Initially, Matvey Martynov and Mikhail Danilov created an artillery installation in the form of two barrels on one carriage - such a gun was immediately called "twins". It was assumed that when firing buckshot, and especially "rods", that is, finely chopped iron rods, the striking effect would be greater than that of a conventional cannon. However, experiments have shown that the effectiveness of such a twin gun is not higher than that of conventional, single-barreled guns.
With all the variety of samples and projects, Count Shuvalov was especially carried away by the short tool, whose inside of the barrel was a smoothly expanding oval cone. That is, the bore was not round, as usual, but oval, parallel to the ground (the horizontal diameter is three times the vertical one). According to Shuvalov's plan, with such a section, the buckshot flying out of the barrel should have scattered horizontally, while with a conventional cannon, a significant part of the bullets went up when fired, that is, above the enemy, or down into the ground.
In fact, General Feldzheichmeister Shuvalov dreamed of a kind of "machine gun" capable of sending a mass of lead bullets neatly along the horizon and mowing down the slender ranks of the Prussian grenadiers. The invented gun with an oval cross-section of the barrel immediately received the name "secret howitzer". Outwardly, such a gun was no different from the previous ones, and so that no one outsider could see the oval bore of the barrel, by a strict order of the General Feldzheichmeister, under pain of death, the artillerymen were obliged to always put on a cover on the barrel of such a gun and remove it just before firing.
The first tests seemed successful, and in a fit of enthusiasm, Count Shuvalov ordered the production of 69 such guns. However, further exploitation and combat use showed that with a slight improvement in the lethality of canister fire, such a "secret Shuvalov howitzer" has a number of significant drawbacks: it is expensive to manufacture, difficult to load, and most importantly, due to the section of the barrel it can only shoot canister.
As a result, the most successful of the projects of Shuvalov's team was the artillery gun, outwardly much simpler and more common than the exotic "twins" and "secret howitzer".
Russian "Unicorn"
The result of the most successful experiment, carried out in March 1757, combined the best properties of mortars and guns. The newborn weapon was adorned with the Shuvalov family coat of arms - the image of the mythical unicorn beast. Soon, all guns of this type were forever nicknamed "Unicorns" - not only in army slang, but also in official documents.
The cannons of that time fired cannonballs or buckshot along a flat trajectory - parallel to the ground or with a slight elevation. Short-barreled mortars were used for mounted shooting with a high elevation angle, so that the cannonballs and explosive bombs would fly over the fortress walls and fortifications. The unicorn became a versatile weapon: it was shorter than conventional cannons and longer than mortars.
Shuvalov "Unicorn" 1-pounder on a mountain (landing) gun carriage - Sample 1775. Photo: petersburg-stars.ru
But its main difference from the previous guns was the design of the "charging chamber" - the bore in the breech rear of the gun ended with a cone. In the old guns, the end of the barrel bore was flat or semicircular, and in mortars, the wide bore, intended for bombs and cannonballs, ended in a narrower one, where the powder charge was placed.
A cannonball, a bomb or a tin "glass" with buckshot, when loaded into the barrel of the Shuvalov "Unicorn", rested against a tapering cone, tightly sealing the propelling charge of gunpowder. And when fired, the powder gases gave all the energy to pushing the projectile, while in the previous guns, part of the powder gases inevitably broke through into the gaps between the core and the barrel walls, losing energy.
This allowed the "Unicorns" with a shorter barrel than conventional cannons to shoot at an impressive distance for that time - up to 3 km, and when the barrel was raised by 45 ° - almost twice as far. The short barrel made it possible to double the loading speed and, accordingly, firing.
To the modern reader, this will seem unexpected, but the shorter barrel than that of the cannon gave a noticeable advantage in accuracy. Indeed, at that time the production of artillery barrels was not yet perfect, the inner surface of the barrel bore had inevitable microscopic irregularities, which, when fired, imparted unpredictable rotation and deviation from the specified trajectory to the charge. The longer the barrel, the greater the impact of such irregularities. Therefore, the relatively short "Unicorn" had better accuracy and accuracy than conventional cannons.
Shuvalov's team sought not only to increase the destructive power and accuracy of the artillery, but also to reduce the weight so that the new guns could maneuver faster and easier in field battles. "Unicorn" turned out to be very light and maneuverable. The Russian 12-pound cannon, model 1734, fired 5, 4 kg cannonballs and had a barrel mass of 112 pounds, and the semi-pound Unicorn, which replaced it, fired at the same range with more powerful 8 kg cannonballs, had a barrel almost four times lighter. To transport the cannon of 1734, 15 horses were required, and the "Unicorn" - only 5.
Centenary of the Unicorn
It is significant that all the creators of the best artillery gun in the 18th century were the sons of Peter I's associates. Count Shuvalov's father fought the entire Northern War and ended it as the commandant of Vyborg, which was recaptured from the Swedes. Ivan Glebov's father, as a boy, entered the "amusing troops" of Tsar Peter and during the war with the Swedes rose to the position of chief of supplies for the Preobrazhensky regiment, the first in the Russian guard.
The father of Mikhail Vasilyevich Danilov ended up in the same Preobrazhensky regiment at the very beginning of its creation and, despite the rank of an ordinary soldier, he fought more than once alongside Peter I. “My father, serving in the guard as a soldier, was on campaigns with the sovereign in 1700, when the city of Narva was taken by storm from the Swedes - this is what Mikhail Danilov wrote in his memoirs. - During that assault, my father was seriously wounded: three fingers were shot off from his left hand with buckshot, half each, thumb, index and middle. The Tsar himself, examining the personally wounded soldiers, cut off my father's shot fingers hanging from the veins with scissors, he deigned to say, as a consolation to the one suffering from the wound: It was hard for you!"
In fact, the creators of "Unicorn" were the second generation of Peter's reforms, when the deeds of the first Russian emperor finally bore impressive results, turning Russia into the most powerful state on the continent.
"Unicorn 12-pound" - Sample of 1790 Photo: petersburg-stars.ru
Prototypes of artillery pieces created by Mikhail Danilov, Matvey Martynov, Ivan Glebov and other specialists from the "Shuvalov team" were cast in metal by fifty St. Petersburg artisans under the guidance of the cannon master Mikhail Stepanov.
The mass production of new weapons for the 18th century was developed very quickly. By the beginning of 1759, 477 different "Unicorns" of six calibers with weights from 3.5 tons to 340 kg had already been made.
The steel plants in the Urals, founded by Peter I, had already turned into a gigantic industrial complex at that time, and Russia began to smelt more metal than any of the states of Western Europe. Therefore, for the implementation of the experiments of Count Shuvalov, there was a powerful industrial base - hundreds of "newly-invented tools" were cast in just a few years, whereas earlier it would take more than a decade to manufacture such a quantity.
The first combat use of "Unicorns" and the world's first shooting over the head of its troops in a field battle was commanded by one of the creators of the new weapon - General Ivan Fedorovich Glebov, who received the Order of Alexander Nevsky and the rank of Governor-General of Kiev as a result of the war with Prussia.
In the second half of the 18th century, Russian "Unicorns" turned out to be the best field implements in the world. The victories over the Turks, which gave our country the Crimea and Novorossiya, were provided precisely by perfect field artillery, which was head and shoulders above the Turkish. Until the wars with Napoleon, Russian artillery was considered the strongest in Europe. The best European gunsmiths then imitated the Russians.
Already during the Seven Years War in 1760, the Austrian allies asked Russia for blueprints for new guns. Wanting to show off to Europe, the simple-minded Empress Elizabeth sent 10 "Unicorns" and 13 "secret howitzers" to Vienna. There they were carefully studied by Jean Baptiste Griboval, a French officer then in the Austrian service. Returning to his homeland after the Seven Years War, Griboval set about reforming French artillery on the Russian model - later Napoleon himself would call him "the father of French artillery".
But even half a century after the work of Shuvalov's team, in the era of the Napoleonic wars, Russian "Unicorns" were still superior to their European counterparts, making their considerable contribution to the victory of 1812. "Unicorns" were successfully used in the course of the Crimean and Caucasian wars. These guns were in service with the Russian army for a whole century, until 1863, when the transition to rifled artillery began. And for another half a century, the old "Unicorns" were kept in warehouses in fortresses as the last mobilization reserve in case of a big war. They were officially written off from storage only in 1906.
