Horizontal Batteries are such as have only a parapet and ditch; the platform being only the surface of the horizon made level.
Breach or Sunk Batteries are such as are sunk upon the glacis, with a design to make an accessible breach in the faces or saliant angles of the bastion and ravelin.
Cross Batteries are such as play athwart each other against the same object, forming an angle at the point of contact; whence greater destruction follows, because what one shot shakes, the other beats down.
Oblique Batteries or Batteries en Echarpe, are those which play on any work obliquely, making an obtuse angle with the line of range, after striking the object.
Enfilading Batteries are those that sweep or scour the whole length of a strait line, or the face or flank of any work.
Sweeping Batteries. See Enfilading-Batteries.
Redan Batteries are such as flank each other at the saliant and rentrant angles of a fortification.
Direct Batteries are those situated opposite to the place intended to be battered, so that the balls strike the works nearly at right angles.
Reverse Batteries are those which play on the rear of the troops appointed to defend the place.
Glancing Batteries are such whose shot strike the object at an angle of about 20°, after which the ball glances from the object, and recoils to some adjacent parts.
Joint Batteries, -
Camarade Batteries,
when several guns fire on the same object at the same time. When 10 guns are fired at once, their effect will be much greater than when fired separately.
Sunk Batteries are those whose platforms are sunk beneath the level of the field; the ground serving for the parapet; and in it the embrasures are made. This often happens in mortar, but seldom in gun-batteries. Battery sometimes signifies the guns themselves placed in a battery.
Fascine Batteries, -
Gabion Batteries,
are batteries made of those machines, where sods are scarce, and the earth very loose or sandy. For a particular detail of all kinds of batteries, see Toussard’s Artillerist, No. I. c. 1.
Battery.—Dimensions of Batteries.
1. Gun Batteries.—Gun Batteries are usually 18 feet per gun. Their principal dimensions are as follow:
Ditch— Breadth 12 feet.
Depth 8
Note.—These dimensions give for a battery of two guns 3456 cubic feet of earth; and must be varied according to the quantity required for the epaulment.