RARE FRENCH 1732 ARTILLERY REGULATIONS WITH PLANS OF CANNON AND MORTARS.

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/10/2024

"Ordonnance du Roy portant règlement pour la fonte et l’épreuve des pièces de canons, mortiers et pierriers dessinées pour le service de l’Artillerie de terre. Du 7 octobre 1732, de par le Roy." An extremely rare copy of the official French 1732 regulations for casting and proving artillery of the new Valliere System, with a complete set of plates containing scaled plans of each caliber of cannon and mortar included in that system. Only a handful of these printed 1732 regulations exist today, as they were only issued to Royal Foundries, Artillery Schools and senior officers. This particular volume belonged to François-Marie d'Aboville, a career French artillery officer who entered service as a cadet in 1744, fought in the War for Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, coming out of the latter with the rank of captain and named a Knight of Saint Louis. From that until the beginning of the American War of Independence, d'Aboville worked as an assistant to Gribeauval in implementing improvements in the artillery and smallarms of the French army. He was assigned to the regiment of La Fère and he obtained the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1778. In 1779 he became lieutenant colonel of the Besançon Artillery Regiment and in 1780 he was sent with Rochambeau's expedition to America. Promoted to colonel, d’Abboville served as Rochambeau’s chief of artillery at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781. The 1732 Regulations and their importance: In 1726, Jean-Florent de Vallière (1667-1759) was appointed Director-General of the Battalions and Schools of the Artillery. Through the “Royal Ordonnance of 7 October 1732”, Vallière reorganized and standardized the French artillery. Whereas numerous calibers and designs had been in place, Vallière fixed the sizes in guns by allowing only the production of 24-, 16-, 12-, 8- and 4-pounder guns (the weight of the respective cannonballs), mortars of 12- and 8- and 15-“pouces” or French inches. The Vallière system used solid founding of bronze tubes, followed by core drilling of the bore, a method developed at that time by Jean Maritz, which allowed for precision of the bore shape and surface and therefore greater accuracy in firing. The Valliere guns were highly decorative and had numerous inscriptions, but most of these also had purpose as can be seen when viewing the plates in this volume. For example, a scroll near the muzzle of the gun contained the individual name the founder gave to a cannon, serving in lieu of an ID or issue number. The breech of the gun to cascabel was decorated with an animal face showing the rating of the gun, which allowed for easy recognition of a gun’s caliber upon sight: a 4-pounder would have a "Face in a sunburst", an 8-pounder a "Monkey head", a 12-pounder a "Rooster head", a 16-pounder a "Medusa head", and a 24-pounder a "Bacchus head" or a "Lion head". The location, date of manufacture and gun founder were inscribed, for example: "Strasbourg, 1745, Fondu par Jean Maritz, Commissaire des Fontes". During 1777-1778, nearly all of the Valliere system 4 pounders of the French Army, other field and siege artillery pieces, now outdated by the Gribeauval system, were deemed surplus and transferred to the Continental Congress or sold to agents of the various states, including Virginia, which acquired an entire train in 1778. The Continental Artillery employed these guns to great effect throughout the Revolutionary War.