Английский военно-исторический глоссарий. Том 2. B.

Durtubie estimates, that a battery of 4 or 5 guns, well posted, will be a match for a first rate man of war.

To estimate the materials for a battery.

Fascines of 9 feet long are the most convenient for forming a battery, because they are easily carried, and they answer to most parts of the battery without cutting. The embrazures are however better lined with fascines of 18 feet. The following will be nearly the number required for a fascine battery of two guns or howitzers:

90 fascines of 9 feet long.

20 fascines of 18 feet—for the embrazures.

This number will face the outside as well as the inside of the epaulement, which if the earth be stiff, will not always be necessary; at least not higher than the soles of the embrazures on the outside. This will require five of 9 feet for each merlon less than the above.

A mortar battery will not require any long fascines for the lining of the embrazures. The simplest method of ascertaining the number of fascines for a mortar battery, or for any other plain breast work, is to divide the length of work to be fascined in feet, by the length of each fascine in feet, for the number required for one layer, which being multiplied by the number of layers required, will of course give the number of fascines for facing the whole surface. If a battery be so exposed as to require a shoulder to cover it in flank, about 50 fascines of 9 feet each will be required for each shoulder.

Each fascine of 18 feet will require 7 pickets.

Each fascine of 9 feet will require 4 pickets.

12 workmen of the line, and 8 of the artillery, are generally allotted to each gun.

If to the above proportion of materials, &c. for a battery of two guns, there be[39] added for each additional gun, 30 fascines of 9 feet, and 10 of 18 feet, with 12 workmen, the quantity may easily be found for a battery of any number of pieces.

The workmen are generally thus disposed: one half the men of the line in the ditch at 3 feet asunder, who throw the earth upon the berm: one fourth upon the berm at 6 feet asunder, to throw the earth upon the epaulement, and the other quarter on the epaulement, to level the earth, and beat it down. The artillery men carry on the fascine work, and level the interior for the platforms. This number of workmen may complete a battery in 36 hours, allowing 216 cubic feet to be dug and thrown up, by each man in the ditch in 24 hours.

Tools for the construction of the battery.

Intrenching—1?/? times the number of workmen required; half to be pick axes, and half shovels or spades, according to the soil.

Mallets—3 per gun.

Earth Rammers—3 per gun.

Crosscut Saws—1 to every two guns.

Axes or Hatchets—2 per gun.

This estimate of tools and workmen, does not include what may be required for making up the fascines, or preparing the other materials, but supposes them ready prepared. For these articles, see the words Fascine, Gabion, Platform, &c. and for the construction of field magazines for batteries, see the word Magazine.

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