Picture the moment before the order to fire. The gun captain sights along the barrel. A sponger swabs the bore. A loader holds the round ready. Behind them, ammunition men wait with the next charge, and somewhere to the rear a team of horses stamps in its traces. Everyone has one job. Miss a step and the whole gun slows down.
That small team changed European warfare. In 1494, a big gun was a siege weapon that arrived weeks after the army and left months later. By 1807, a French general could push thirty cannon forward in short bounds, halt sixty paces from the enemy and shred a Russian infantry attack with canister. Three centuries separate those two moments. The gunners made the journey.
It is a story told in small moments. Charles VIII's gunners cracked a reputedly seven-year obstacle in about eight hours. Sénarmont halted his batteries sixty paces from the enemy. Captain Ramsay charged out of encirclement with two guns at his back. Each moment is tiny on its own. Together they explain why battles stopped being decided by shock alone and started being decided by fire.
This article follows them the whole way. We start with the bronze guns of Charles VIII's invasion of Italy. We move on to Marlborough's batteries at Blenheim and the slow birth of Britain's professional Royal Artillery. Then we reach Gribeauval's standardised guns, Napoleon's massed batteries and the gun lines of the Peninsular War. Along the way we answer the questions people actually search for: what an artillery crew did, why the Royal Artillery mattered, and how horse artillery and shrapnel rewrote the rules of the battlefield.
Every stage has a counterpart on the tabletop. WoFun Games makes ready to play war minis: full-colour crews and guns printed on plexiglass sprues, covering the Renaissance, the War of the Spanish Succession and the Napoleonic Wars. No painting. No assembly. No glue. Press the figures from the sprue, set them on a base and the battery is in action.
So read on for the history first. The miniatures arrive exactly where the history puts them, and every set we mention is one you can field the moment it arrives.
From Siege Train to Field Gun
For most of the fifteenth century, a big gun was an event. Bombards threw heavy stone balls, needed oxen to move them and days to set up. Armies waited for them. Fortresses outlasted them.
Then, in 1494, Charles VIII crossed into Italy with something different. His bronze guns were lighter and sat on two-wheeled carriages that let crews aim them up, down and sideways. Horses drew them, where Italian armies still relied on slower oxen. They fired iron shot instead of stone.
The effect shocked Italy. At Mordano that year, about three dozen guns breached the walls in three hours. The fortress of Monte San Giovanni, reputedly a seven-year obstacle in earlier wars, fell in about eight hours. Naples surrendered in February 1495. The lesson travelled fast: speed beat stone.
Yet this was still a siege weapon. Guns were sited before a battle and rarely moved during one. The gunner was a craftsman hired for his skill with powder, not a soldier in the line. The next three centuries were about bringing him inside the army and pushing his guns onto the open field.
What did an artillery crew actually do?
An artillery crew loaded, aimed and fired one gun, then kept it supplied and ready to move. That sounds simple. It was a drill performed under fire.
The gun captain laid the piece. A sponger cleared sparks from the bore, because a smouldering scrap of cartridge could ignite the next charge in the loader's face. A rammer drove the charge home. Others carried powder and shot forward from the ammunition wagons. Round shot reached out across the field. Canister turned the gun into an enormous shotgun at close range.
Then there was the team behind the gun. Andy Callan's War of the Spanish Succession rules point out that horse teams often belonged to civilian contractors, who led them away before the fighting started. A heavy gun, once placed, stayed placed.
On the tabletop the same idea gets a clean shorthand. In our Peninsular War Starter Pack, a company of artillery is one cannon and a crew of four figures. Those four stand for the entire team, not a head count.
Marlborough's Guns
Blenheim, August 1704, shows artillery at an awkward stage of its growth. The Allies brought 66 guns and the Franco-Bavarian army 90. The French posted a six-gun battery close to Blenheim village and a great battery of 16 guns at the edge of Lutzingen, shielded by five Bavarian battalions. Colonel Holcroft Blood's allied batteries answered at about eight in the morning. Later they moved up to support the infantry fighting around Oberglau, and a nine-gun battery went forward to back the Dutch.
The result was a decisive Allied victory. Marshal Tallard was captured, and about 10,000 French infantry in Blenheim village laid down their arms. Blood's close-range guns and the infantry's platoon fire between them destroyed the last French battalions on the open plain.
Notice the pattern. Guns fought in batteries, close to the infantry they supported. They were powerful but clumsy, and a commander who moved them had to plan the move.
The War of the Spanish Succession collection puts that world on your table. The Dutch/Prussian Artillery set gives you 30 figures at 28 mm on a single 15 by 20 cm plexiglass sprue, a natural partner for Marlborough's allies. Across the field, the French and Bavarian Artillery set offers the same 30 figures for the Franco-Bavarian army, so both batteries at Blenheim can face each other. Each artillery base holds one gun and its crew, and the optional WoFun Standard Bases are 40 by 30 mm.
Andy Callan's rules take the clumsiness seriously. Light guns can be manhandled forward. Heavy guns cannot move at all, and they fire only on alternate turns, so you leave a smoke marker in place to show the gun is still reloading. It works the way the real thing did.
Why did Britain build a professional Royal Artillery?
Britain built a professional Royal Artillery because gunnery was turning into a science, and amateurs could not learn it between campaigns.
The story starts in 1716, when the first marching companies of artillery were formed. They became the Royal Artillery in 1720, and in 1722 the Royal Regiment of Artillery was formed. Woolwich became its home. In 1741 a cadet company there began training the young officers who would command the guns. The roots went deeper still: artillery had been organised under the Master-General and Board of Ordnance since 1540. For all that time the gunners answered to the Board of Ordnance rather than to the army's own commander, and they only joined the army proper when the Board was abolished in 1855.
The corps kept growing. Foot artillery marched beside the guns. In 1793 the Royal Horse Artillery arrived, built to give cavalry mobile fire support.
Our Royal Foot Artillery Gordon's Company set puts a named company on the table. It comes from the British Army 1815 range and provides 16 figures at 28 mm on one sprue, with artillery bases that hold a gun and its crew. That is the Royal Artillery tradition in miniature: a named company, a clear unit identity and a gun to serve.
Gribeauval and the Napoleonic Revolution
On 15 October 1765, Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval gave France a new artillery system by royal order. It changed everything.
His barrels were shorter and thinner. His carriages were lighter and narrower. The guns weighed about half as much as their predecessors of the same calibre, with no loss of range. Carriages were standardised and built from interchangeable parts. A rear sight and an elevating screw made aiming faster and more precise. Draft horses were harnessed in pairs instead of single file. The field guns came in three calibres, 4, 8 and 12 pounders, alongside howitzers. Smaller details mattered too: prepackaged flannel charge bags, quick-match tubes for firing, and artillery schools to train the gunners. Opponents delayed full adoption until 1776, but once the system settled, France had arguably the best artillery system in Europe.
Napoleon later adjusted the system, and from 1803 to 1805 his Year XI reforms partly replaced the Gribeauval field guns. Still, he began his career as an artillery officer, and it showed. He treated guns as a mass, not a scatter. At Friedland, on 14 June 1807, Brigadier General Sénarmont gathered thirty pieces into two batteries of fifteen. They advanced in 500-yard steps, covered by an infantry battalion and four dragoon regiments, and halted at sixty paces from the Russians. Then they fired canister. Attack after attack broke. When the Russians fell back across the river, Sénarmont's guns destroyed the bridges behind them. The price was real: four of his officers and 62 gunners were killed.
The Napoleonic Peter Dennis range gives you the gunners who made that possible. Our French Artillery set provides 33 figures at 28 mm for a battery that can anchor a whole French line, with the same sprue size and base format as the rest of the range.
How did horse artillery and shrapnel change the battlefield?
Horse artillery gave the guns legs, and shrapnel gave them a longer reach.
Britain formed its Royal Horse Artillery in 1793. Every gunner rode, so the guns could keep pace with cavalry and appear where a crisis was building. The tabletop rules model the difference exactly. A foot artillery gun moves five base widths when limbered, while horse artillery moves nine and limbers up in half the time.
Shrapnel did something else. Henry Shrapnel began developing his shell in 1784. The British army adopted it in 1803 as spherical case, and the first recorded use came in 1804 against Dutch forces in Surinam. Wellington's armies used it from 1808. The shell was a hollow iron sphere packed with musket balls and powder, with a timed fuse. Set correctly, it burst in front of or above the target, and the balls carried on with the shell's own velocity. A gun that once needed canister at close range could now hit formations well beyond it.
The Peninsular Gunners
Wellington's army leaned on skilled gunners. Alexander Dickson joined it in Portugal in 1809, commanding Portuguese artillery as a lieutenant colonel. In time he rose to command all of the allied artillery, with about 8,000 men under him. Wellington left him the detailed artillery work at the great sieges, and he commanded the reserve at Salamanca. Later he directed the artillery at Vitoria, in the Pyrenees and at Toulouse.
The most famous gun story of the war is smaller. At Fuentes de Oñoro, on 5 May 1811, Captain Norman Ramsay was on picket with two guns of Bull's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, when more than 4,000 French cavalry bore down on them. The guns were surrounded and everyone assumed they were lost. Then the French squadrons fell into confusion, and Ramsay charged out at the head of his mounted gunners with the guns behind him. The army cheered.
The French side faced its own limits. In Spain the lighter 8-pounder stayed in use because the terrain was unsuitable for the 12-pounder.
For the allied side, the British and Portuguese gunners set provides 33 figures at 28 mm. It fits the story: Portuguese and British crews working shoulder to shoulder, with the Royal Horse Artillery's dash and the foot gunners' patience.
Gunners on Your Table
How do you play artillery on the tabletop?
Start with the Peninsular War Starter Pack. It holds 387 figures in 28 mm on 10 sprues. The allied army has three infantry battalions, a cavalry regiment, a skirmisher detachment, a mounted general and two foot artillery companies, with the French organised the same way. The pack includes Andy Callan's rules as a PDF download.
The core mechanic is simple. An artillery company rolls three dice. Sixes hit at long range, and fives and sixes hit at short range. The advanced rules add the detail. Foot artillery fires at up to 24 base widths, with short range at four. Horse artillery reaches 16 at long range, rolling two dice there and three at short range. All guns can swivel up to 45 degrees to engage a new target without limbering.
The War of the Spanish Succession Starter Pack brings the older world. It contains 371 figures on 11 sprues, with one artillery regiment per army. The same rules author gives you the slow heavy guns, the lighter field pieces and one brutal clause: artillery that is attacked is automatically overrun. Protect your guns with infantry, or lose them.
Which gunners should you field first?
Pick by period. For Marlborough's wars, start with the Dutch/Prussian and French and Bavarian pair. For the Napoleonic age, begin with the French set and add the British and Portuguese gunners to face them. If the Royal Artillery is your passion, the Gordon's Company set is your starting point.
Every set comes in 18 mm and 28 mm versions, and the 18 mm version carries double the figures of the 28 mm one: 66 against 33 for the British and Portuguese set, for example. Pick the scale that matches the rest of your collection and you are ready.
Each of them carries the same promise. The guns are printed, the crews are printed, and the battle is ready to begin. History did the hard part. The gunners did the rest.