6pdr Honvéd Artillery Battery - Finished Unit

 One main unit type which was missing from my 1848 Hungarian Honvéd Army was artillery. So because of this I have just painted a battery of three 6pdr cannons.

Artillery was the only branch of the Honvéd Army which was organized from completely nothing. Only one artillery unit of the Imperial Austrian Army joined the revolution - the 5th Artillery Regiment. But not with all it's manpower so it proved to be insufficient to serve a whole army. There was a great demand for the creation of the independent Hungarian artillery. It really was a greenfield-investment because even there were no cannon foundries or other industrial facilities in Hungary to build up artillery. Some factories of the heavy industry were selected and transformed to produce cannons. These factories were located in the big cities of Hungary like Pest, Nagyvárad and Kassa. The recruits of the artilleries consisted mostly of educated people like engineers, lawyers, university students and in some cases even clerics. This was very important because supporting of the cannons, making ammunition and repairing the equipment needed fast learning and good cognitive skills. Dénes Lukács - a former artillery expert in the Imperial Army - was one of the main organizers of the artillery in the Honvéd Army.

Dénes Lukács - the organizer of the Honvéd Artillery

A really interesting part of the revolutionary artillery was the cannon production in Háromszék which was led by a famous Hungarian artillerist: Áron Gábor. Háromszék is a region in Transylvania which was occupied by the Imperial Army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War (however it was a Hungarian territory). The bigger cities like Kézdivásárhely resisted the Austrian occupation and held up. General Josef Bem was arriving with his army to Transylvania to liberate the towns, but the lack of cannons was a huge problem for them. Áron Gábor organized a cannon foundry relying only on local craftmans and infrastrucure. With the help of Saxon bell casters, he could manage to supply the Trannsylvanian resistance and the Honvéd troops with 70 6pdr cannons!

Áron Gábor - the head of the cannon-making in Trannsylvania

In summary the Honvéd Artillery was a completely new, successfully organized unit which could keep up really well with it's counterpart: the Austrian Artillery. The Hungarian side had less cannons in overall. However, they could manage to maximise their firepower. They never kept bigger artillery reserves in battles (like the Austrians did), all batteries were in the frontline, detached to the brigades. Honvéd Artillery operated effectively in action, even the well organized limber teams and supply wagons provided extra mobility for them.

The figures are from Honvéd miniatures.