At this point, the convention on the battlefield was to fight with artillery. The French Army, equipped with M1841 Napoleons, had ample confidence in its firepower. After all, they had the best artillery in the world.
The M1841 Field Gun was cast from bronze. Its technical specifications were as follows:
Caliber: 93 millimeters
Barrel length: 1.52 meters (16.3 calibers)
Weight: approximately 389 kilograms
Maximum range: about 1,500 yards (1,371 meters, though that was only its theoretical range.)
Ammunition: could fire solid shot, explosive shells, canister, and shrapnel shells.
Later generations often praised its advantages of easy transport and operation. In American Civil War circles especially, people claimed its mobility and speed had helped Robert Lee achieve greatness.
In reality, however, Robert Lee himself and the other Southern Army generals alike held this gun in contempt.
In the mid-nineteenth century, military experts were more often amazed by its extraordinary rate of fire and accuracy, which repeatedly gave the French Army the upper hand in artillery duels.
This time, however, they had miscalculated. In fact, when the French Army's Little Napoleon six-pound field guns were making a great show of themselves in colonial wars, military observers from other countries had already recognized their weaknesses and limitations.
The intensity and scale of warfare on the European continent far exceeded those in other parts of the world at the time. In the colonies, the six-pounder's power and range could almost be described as a god descending from heaven.
On the European continent, however, this advantage was not so pronounced. The M1841 was still an excellently designed gun, but the fortresses of every country were armed almost entirely with eight-, ten-, twelve-, or even twenty-four-pounders.
(It was a chaotic era, with no unified standards. Every country wanted to promote its own, so artillery calibers varied