Revolution and Empire the artillery of the field army by degrees became
field artillery as we know it to-day. The development of musketry in the
16th century had taken the work of preparing an assault out of the hands
of the gunners. _Per contra_, the decadence of infantry fire-power in
the latter part of the Seven Years' War had reinstated the artillery
arm. A similar decadence of the infantry arm was destined to produce, in
1807, artillery predominance, but this time with an important
difference, viz. _mobility_, and when mobility is thus achieved we have
the first modern field artillery. The new tactics of the French in the
Revolutionary wars, forced upon them by circumstances, involved an
almost complete abandonment of the fire-tactics of Frederick's day, and
the need for artillery was, from the first fight at Valmy onwards, so
obvious that its moral support was demanded even in the outpost line of
the new French armies. St Cyr (_Armies of the Rhine_, p. 112) quotes a
case in which "right in the very farthest outpost line" the original
4-pounder guns were replaced by 8-, 16-, and in the end by 24-pounders.
The cardinal principle of massing batteries was not, indeed, forgotten,
notwithstanding the weakness of raw levies. But though, as we have seen,
the _materiel_ had already been greatly improved, and the artillery was
less affected by the Revolution than other arms of the service,
circumstances were against it, and we rarely find examples of artillery
work in the Revolutionary wars which show any great improvement upon
older methods. The field guns were however, at last organized in
batteries each complete in itself, as mentioned above. The battalion gun
disappeared; it was a relic of days in which it was thought advisable,
both for other reasons and also because the short range of guns forbade
any attempt at concentration of fire from several positions at one
target, to have some force of artillery at any point that might be
threatened. Though it was officially retained in the regulations of the
French army, "officers and men combined to reject it" (Rouquerol, _Q.F.
Field Artillery_, p. 121), and its last appearances, in 1809 and in
1813, were due merely to an endeavour on the part of Napoleon to give
cohesion thereby to the battalions of raw soldiers which then
constituted his army. But, with the development of mobility, it was
probably found that sufficient guns could be taken to any threatened
point, and no one had ever denied the principle of massed batteries,
although, in practice, dispersion had been thought to be unavoidable.