2-913-978 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

9-pounder brass gun, 56-pounder iron gun, 1854. '9-pounder...weighing 13 cwt.; such a gun, with its carriage, limbers, ammunition (32 rounds), side-arms, and stores, weighs 38½ cwt., and six horses can, without distress, gallop with it a few hundred yards into position; march with it about 4 miles in an hour and a half, 8 miles in four hours, and 16 miles in ten hours, providing that the road is a tolerable one; but, since artillery must march in many instances where no roads exist, 8 horses are the service complement to each gun...56-pounder...gun, weighing from 97-98 cwt.; its carriage...weighs about 18½ cwt.; making the total weight to be moved 116 cwt. It would require 18 stout artillery horses to march...at the rate of 1½ miles per hour; and, when we consider the...miserable roads, their steepness, and the distance, the wonder is, not that such guns were so long in being brought up, but that they were ever brought up at all'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.