The Ml835 Mountain Howitzer's Roots Can Be Traced To France

Webmasters Note: This is an article that appeared in the Artilleryman magazine and is used courtesy of the author. We are hoping that an English translation will be available in this country. If it is we will provide ordering information. In any event this should provide interesting reading. There were illustrations with the article.

(Editor's Note: The following article on the M1835 12 pdr Mountain Howitzer is an excerpt translated by Stephen H. Siemsen of Bowie, Md., from a book on the subject which Heinrich Dietz is writing.)

The origins of the U.S. Army's M1835 Mountain Howitzer can be readily traced to France. This work goes a step further by incorporating a closer look at the howitzer's French development.

The history of artillery's use in mountainous terrain reaches back into antiquity. However, the history of the successful deployment of artillery in alpine regions where topography demands a smaller and lighter weapons system is another matter. Conventional artillery, given its weight, wide wheel-base, and gun-tube elevation limitations, proved to be unsuited for the narrow footpaths and steep slopes of the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenees.

As late as 1811 little had been done outside of Spain to develop an effective mountain artillery system, even though the necessity of an efficient system had been clearly demonstrated in the Alps and Pyrenees in 1789 during the early campaigns of the French Revolution.

Napoleon I instituted a reorganization of the French artillery that included a requirement for "mountain artillery." A hurried attempt to satisfy his edict found batteries of 3- and 6-pdr. guns alongside 24-pdr. howitzers in Le Gran Armee. These, however, failed to deliver the intended results.

During Napoleon's Spanish campaign (1810-1812), Spain deployed mule-borne batteries in the Pyrenees equipped with 12 cm (4.72 inches) bronze howitzers cast in Seville. These small howitzers proved to be far superior to the Spanish 2-and 4-pdr. guns, and the French 3-pdr.guns, which were also deployed during the conflict.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 temporarily stalled the development of mountain artillery. The task was not taken up again in earnest until 1821, when the French War Ministry directed the top artillery commanders to assemble the various artillery pieces, ordnance and gun crews at sites in the Pyrenees and Alps for comprehensive testing. Commissions were also established in Grenoble and Toulouse to oversee the results.

Besides their own weapons, British, Spanish, and Italian guns and howitzers of a variety of weights and calibers were also tested. The French not only tested artillery tubes, but carriages and packsaddIes. They then cast 50 prototype mountain artillery tubes~30 gun and 20 howitzer- and tested these alongside 10 existing systems. These in turn were modified and retested.

By 1825 the French had resolved the gun-versus-howitzer question in favor of the howitzer. Subsequently, 26 prototype howitzers were cast and subsequently tested, modified and retested. The research and development commissions were also reorganized, with a commission in Vincennes responsible for determining the final weight specifications for the tube and carriage. The result: a 100 kg 12cm-tube atop a 97 kg carriage.

Finally, on May 17, 1828, the French War Ministry formally placed the mountain howitzer, designated obusier de 12 de montagne, modele 1828, into its artillery inventory, even though it would take the three remaining commissions in Grenoble, Perpignan, and Bayonne two more years to complete field trials on the pack-saddle before settling on a standardized version. The new howitzer was produced at the French military foundries in Strasbourg, Douai, Ruelle and Toulouse.

[Translator's note: the preceding is a short summary of Dietz's history of the origins of the M1835 Mountain Howitzer. Herr Dietz also investigated how the gun came to the United States and how it was employed during the Mexican War, Civil War and Spanish- American War. Also included is the story of its use on a modified "prairie" carriage during the Indian Wars.]

Cyrus Alger & Company of Boston, Mass., received the first War Department contract to cast the American version of the mountain howitzer, designated the M1835. The first 12 pieces were delivered on May 6, 1837, at a cost of $225 each.

The carriages for the howitzers were manufactured by the Watervliet Arsenal, which continued as a source until at least the end of the Civil War.

Two of the howitzers were sent to the Artillery School at Fortress Monroe, Va., and the remainder to batteries in the field. Unfortunately, the results of tests conducted at Fortress Monroe could not be ascertained since the reports for that time period are missing from the National Archives.

Familiar as I am with the mountain howitzer's development and deployment in the high, rugged mountains of Europe, I was at first perplexed by the need for such a weapon in the United States, especially on the flat prairies of the west. I quickly discovered, as I'm sure artillery-men of the day did also, that when loaded with a charge of canister, the 12-pdr. mountain howitzer had the effect of a modern machine-gun on the tightly packed infantry formations of the day.

Due to its size and weight, the Americans found ways to employ the piece that its French developers had never even considered. During the Mexican War, U.S. Grant recalls in his Memoirs, the M1835 was hoisted up a church steeple and onto rooftops in order to discharge lethal canister down narrow streets into the ranks of advancing Mexican infantry.

John Cremony, a Union officer marching with the "Califomia column" through Arizona and New Mexico during the Civil War, tells us in Life Among the Apaches how the Ml835 was used to dislodge Apache warriors from their positions blocking access to a badly needed waterhole. These and other incidents underscored the M1835's versatility.

During the American Civil War, the Ml835 was present in almost every campaign and participated in almost every major engagement. I will leave you with two examples:

On Aug.29, 1862, during the Second Battle of Bull Run at a critical point in the engagement when Hooker's troops were being hard-pressed by the Confederates "...stubbornly contesting the ground, some one shouted, 'Pring up the shack-asses.' Sure enough, up there came, at a shambling gait, a battery' of M1835 mountaini howitzers mounted on the backs of those animals. Hooker's men hurried up, laughing and shouting at the operation of this quaint battery'.

"What battery' is that?' 'The shackass pattery, py Gott,' savagely came the answer Get out mit der way', or we plows your hets off~ ' That battery' with the other artillery', opened with canister at short range on the advancing line of rebels, from the fringe of woods, and checked their advance..." Warren Lee Goss (Goss, Recollections of a Private, pg. 85)

I'm sure most of us are familiar with the variety of artillery present during the Battle of Gettysburg, but how many know that M1835s were used to defend the base of Little Round Top during the fighting on July 2?

"The rebels came from all directions for the guns, and lost all formation. They waved their battle flags, a dozen being just in front of me. They came to where a number were shot down; then they recoiled, and retreated through the wheat field a~d woods. To my' right and rear; among the rocks, I could see a twelvepounder mountain howitzer at work. A soldier asked me what kind of a gun it was: he said it kicked over at every' discharge. " 1st Lt. Page, 3rd U.S. Infantry. (Quoted in Powell's The Fifth Army Corps, pp.535-36.)

So it was that this small howitzer, designed by the French for use in the high altitudes of the Alps, came to prove its greatest worth on the flat prairies of the Great Plains and the rolling hills of Vir ginia.

[Translator's note: Heinrich Dietz, a German citizen living in Bavaria, began collecting Civil War firearms in the 1940s. Since then his collection has grown to include virtually every firearm carried by a Federal Cavalryman during the war and is one of the most complete outside of the United States.

[In 1966 he became a charter member of the U.S. Cavalry Historical Club of Germany (USCHC), an organization dedicated to remembering the sacrifices made by the Union's approximately 750,000 German-American soldiers. The USCHC strives for authenticity in its uniforms, equipment and drill, and competes in blackpowder shooting competitions throughout Europe

[Following several years of research which brought him several times to the United States, Dietz began the year-long task of casting and finishing two M1835 12-pdr. mountain howitzers. Under German law the howitzers had to be inspected and successfully test-fired before Dietz could acquire a permit to keep them.

[The howitzers have signaled the opening of many parades and festivals at U.S. Army bases in Germany. Dietz continues his research on the history of the 12-pdr. mountain howitzer in preparation for the publication of a book.

[Heinrich Dietz is always interested in obtaining documentable information and verifiable historical anecdotes conceining the Ml 835 Mountain Howitzer, period photographs showing the M1835 and locations of existing original gun tubes. Contributors will be credited.

[He can be contacted at: Veit-Stoss Str. 25, D 91315 H~chstadtlAisch, Germany. Telephone from U.S.: 011-49-9193-1236; FAX: 011-49-9193-5676. Point of Contact in the United States: Stephen Siemsen, 13113 6th St., Bowie, MD 20720. Telephone: (301) 464-2461.