{{Unreferenced, date=August 2010
Grand Battery (''Grande Batterie'', meaning big or great battery) was a French
artillery
Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...
tactic of the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
. It involved massing all available batteries into a single large, temporary one, and concentrating the firepower of their guns at a single point in the enemy's lines.
Substituting volume of fire for accuracy, a rate of fire and rapid movement, it was rarely used in the wars' early years. As the quality of artillery crews and their horses declined, it was employed more frequently during later (post-1808) campaigns.
The Grand Battery was often concentrated against the enemy's center. An early example of this is at
Austerlitz Austerlitz may refer to:
History
* Battle of Austerlitz, an 1805 victory by the French Grand Army of Napoleon Bonaparte
Places
* Austerlitz, German name for Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic, which gave its name to the Battle of Austerlitz a ...
in 1805, when Napoleon ordered a "''roar of thunder''" before the main assault upon the Pratzen Heights, which split the coalition's lines in half. Other notable uses of the tactic include: Alexandre-Antoine Hureau de Sénarmont's aggressive use of his guns at the
battle of Friedland
The Battle of Friedland (14 June 1807) was a major engagement of the Napoleonic Wars between the armies of the French Empire commanded by Napoleon I and the armies of the Russian Empire led by Count von Bennigsen. Napoleon and the French obtai ...
(1807), which was a major factor that won the battle, or the
battle of Wagram
The Battle of Wagram (; 5–6 July 1809) was a military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars that ended in a costly but decisive victory for Emperor Napoleon's French and allied army against the Austrian army under the command of Archduke Charles ...
in 1809, where a grand battery successfully halted an Austrian counterattack.
At
Borodino
The Battle of Borodino (). took place near the village of Borodino on during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The ' won the battle against the Imperial Russian Army but failed to gain a decisive victory and suffered tremendous losses. Napole ...
in 1812, it was again used to break a counterattack. It failed to break the strong Russian positions and earthworks in the center along the ''Rayevski Redoubt''.
At the Battle of Lützen (1813), it succeeded in breaking the Russo-Prussian center, ahead of the main assault by the
Imperial guard
An imperial guard or palace guard is a special group of troops (or a member thereof) of an empire, typically closely associated directly with the Emperor or Empress. Usually these troops embody a more elite status than other imperial forces, i ...
. In 1815 at Waterloo, the famous opening barrage of the Grande Batterie failed to break the center of Wellington's Anglo-allied army due to his deployment of most of his forces behind the reverse slopes of the rolling hillside and the fact that the ground was still wet and muddy, preventing the usual effects of the bouncing cannonballs.
Nearly half a century later, in 1863 on the third day of the
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg () was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. In the battle, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Po ...
, Robert E. Lee, formed a Grand Battery of his own in a desperate attempt to weaken the Union center in advance of
Pickett's Charge
Pickett's Charge (July 3, 1863), also known as the Pickett–Pettigrew–Trimble Charge, was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate General Robert E. Lee against Major General George G. Meade's Union positions on the last day of the ...
. The artillery overshot most of their targets and had to cease fire due to a lack of ammunition.