WI: Wagenburgs in the war of 1870

In 1868 (or 1869), general Mieroslawski presented to the French army a project of a rolling camp', a modernised version of the hussite tabor (adding of shield-bags, rolling blockhaus, protections against cannonball).
Napoleon III who liked inventions (he had supported the ironclad technology and made the French navy the first in world to launch a battleship with the 'La Gloire', a year before Great Britain) entrusted general Bourbaki with tests which took place in Lyon, but these tests were bungled and the project abandoned.


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What if France had adopted these wagenburgs and used them against the Prussians?
 
Shoot the horses.
Next question?

So it looks like these were modeled after ships of the time and intended to make primary use of the broadside. The horses were supposed to run parallel to the enemy lines, unprotected and not make it more than a couple yards before just becoming a roadblock to any following vehicles or the following infantry?
 
Shoot the horses.
Next question?
I have no precise details on the project but it seems to me obvious that Mieroslawski would have thought to the problem of horses.


N.B.: The pictured wagenburgs are reconsitution of hussite tabors of the 15th century.
Other pictures:

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I don't know how modern wagenburgs would be used by the French, but the 'Circle of wagons'; I guess that it would be used in a more offensive manner'.
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Those things were designed for defensive use, so they'd not have horses on them anyway. Of coures they wouldn't be moving, either. The tactic is familiar at least to every staff officer since such laagers were a common sight on sixteenth and seventeenth-century battlefields, usually as a position to retreat to if things went pear-shaped.

Now, the first time one of those showed up it might make a nasty surprise for the Germans. It's not, as it were, playing fair, and the planks will be tough enough to withstand infantry bullets until they are fairly close. It would give the French the ability to turn anywhgere into a defensible position (at the cost of a huge logistical tail for all the horses, the teamsters not otherwise employed, and the road capacity eaten up, so I don't think it's be worth the opportunity cost in extra cavalry and artillery). In the medium term, it would make artillery even more important early on. A light field gun could take these things apart at leisure, of course, but if we are assuming riflemen and mitrailleuses sheltering behind them, it's more a job for medium-caliber indirect fire.
 
Actually, thinking further about this, I remember once seeing a design for a similar concept whose use was allegedly proposed (for use in an invasion of Scotland, IIRC) back during the reign of either Henry VIII or one of his children. That had a carthorse walking inside a [roofed] cart whose floor had been mostly removed, with a narrow platform around that opening in the floor upon which a number of hand-gunners could stand to fire out through loopholes. I don't know whether a prototype was actually built and tested, though, but suspect not.
 
Actually, thinking further about this, I remember once seeing a design for a similar concept whose use was allegedly proposed (for use in an invasion of Scotland, IIRC) back during the reign of either Henry VIII or one of his children. That had a carthorse walking inside a [roofed] cart whose floor had been mostly removed, with a narrow platform around that opening in the floor upon which a number of hand-gunners could stand to fire out through loopholes. I don't know whether a prototype was actually built and tested, though, but suspect not.

Every other Renaissance engineer designed one of those. It's an old idea (the earliest surviving designs go back to a late Roman manuscript that proposes light torsion catapults mounted on a wagon drawn by an armoured horse), and they all had one thing in common: they wouldn't have worked. Leonardo's tank design was interesting in that it used cranks and gears to transmit the power to wheels, but a model built by the BBC proved it wasn't practical off paved roads). The typical 'horse inside/behind gun cart' setup simply lacks the motive power needed to traverse any kind of terrain other than perfectly flat and level.
 
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