ELSEWHERE
THE NAPOLEONS
THE NAME: Known as the workhorse of the Civil War, the 12-pound field gun first appeared in the 1850s in France and was named in honor of French Emperor Napoleon III. Generically, its name is the 1857 was gun howitzer.
WEIGHT: The tube weighs about 1,300 pounds. Together with the carriage, the cannon weighed almost one-and-half-tons. It was pulled by a team of six horses.
SEE THEM IN ACTION: The Napoleons will be fired again Oct. 4-5 at Freezeout Hill in Emmett.
BY DAVID KENNARD - dkennard@idahostatesman.com
The sound of 12-pound Napoleons echoing across the hills and valleys of Virginia, Pennsylvania and the battlefields of the Civil War once signaled the approach of war.
During their use in the 1850s and '60s, the two-and-a-half-ton cannons struck fear among troops ordered to fight within their range.
They could fire a 12-pound cast iron ball or exploding shot about a mile and were accurate up to almost a half a mile.
For close-range fighting, their gunners filled the cannons' bellies with shrapnel and fired them like giant shotguns, cutting down wide swaths of enemy forces.
By the end of the war, factories in New England had manufactured more than 1,100 of the Napoleons. Confederate troops reproduced about 600 for battle.
But after 1865, the roar of these feared giants fell silent. Many found their way to scrap yards; other were kept by collectors.
NAPOLEONS IN BOISE
Two Napoleons turned up in Boise as sentinels at the entrance of the Old Soldiers Home built in 1893 west of Boise where Veterans Memorial Park now sits.
They remained resting silently on their massive wooden carriages as veterans of the Civil War passed away.
They later welcomed veterans from the Spanish American War and then World War I and World War II.
Sometime in the mid-1960s, 100 years after fire and smoke last belched from the solid bronze weapons, the Napoleons found a new home - presumably their final resting place - cast in cement as monuments on the Veterans Administration grounds in North Boise.
And there they sat for 30 more years. Waiting. Unnoticed. Silent.
RESTORING THE GUNS
Ken Swanson of Boise was a 13-year-old boy in 1963 when his family loaded up the family car for a summer trip to Gettysburg, Pa.
They didn't know it at the time, but the battleground, the bloodiest in Civil War history, was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Dressed in Union and Confederate colors, "soldiers" re-enacted the three-day battle credited as the turning point of the war.
The sound of drums and bugles competed over the drone of cicadas in the nearby locust trees. The smell of black powder from pistols and rifles hung in the muggy July air.
And cannons fired. Big ones, Napoleons.
Swanson grew up, served in the Vietnam War and came home with an appreciation for military history.
It wasn't long after he moved to Boise in 1978 that he first noticed the guns sitting in front of the veterans hospital.
Volunteer work frequently took him to the grounds and past the Napoleons, and he quietly began to hatch his idea.
It wasn't until 1999 that Swanson got permission from the state to break the cannons free from their cement home.
"They were green beyond green," Swanson said, describing the color of 150-year-old guns. "It didn't hurt them. They were filled with trash. Paper cups, bird's nests, bugs."
TNT Auto Salvage helped liberate the 1,300-pound guns and bring them into the possession of the Idaho Historical Society, where Swanson was working as special project manager.
State funding of about $20,000 paid for the replica wooden carriages made by Paulson Bros. Ordnance Corp. in Wisconsin.
With the tubes now back in place on top of authentic carriages, the guns looked as they did when they rolled out the factory.
From markings on the barrels, Swanson learned the guns were made in the late 1850s in Boston by Revere Copper Products, the manufacturing company founded by Paul Revere that is still in operation today.
Each gun was cast in solid bronze, and then the centers were milled to accept a 12-pound ball.
Each cannon carries a stamp with a manufacture date and the order in which the Army accepted them for use.
After Swanson had each gun X-rayed, he found no cracks or other imperfections in the casting work.
The guns could actually be fired.
FIRING THE NAPOLEONS
On June 5, 2001, the city of Boise issued an official proclamation approving the firing of a weapon "by the participants in the Civil War Skirmish and Cannon Firing at Veterans Memorial Park."
Swanson finally had clearance to fire his Napoleons.
That was a Tuesday. Then-Gov. Dirk Kempthorne was designated to pull the trigger on the following Saturday in front of the crowd gathered to watch the cannons roar.
On Friday Swanson and a small group of a folks from the Idaho Civil War Volunteers wrapped about one-and-a-half pounds of black powder in a bundle of tin foil and slid it down the throat of each cannon.
A priming wire pricked the package. The primer went into the vent at the rear of the canyon. And finally the gunner pulled the lanyard that sent a spark into the bowls of each cannon.
Fire and smoke shot from the muzzle of each gun.
"It was just a thrill to see them fire after 140 years," Swanson said.
The next day Kempthorne repeated the test, this time to the cheers of those watching the demonstration of the cannons that had once been almost forgotten.
Since that day, the Napoleons have become a regular part of Memorial Day ceremonies, school events and state celebrations.
"Nobody really appreciated them for what they were," Swanson said.
He said his goal with the cannons was always to let people experience them and relive history close up instead of in static displays or books.
"I'd rather see them like they were meant to be used," Swanson said.
David Kennard: 377-6436
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