I just finished a couple of figures and a cannon which are painted as belonging to the Finnish artillery regiment. The figures are Perry Austrian artillerymen with Swedish heads. The gun is a Hessians AWI piece. The gun, a 4-pdr, is called “Swedish”, but it was really a French gun which was similar to the Swedish system of 1725 (Cronstedt). Similar guns were in use in the Swedish army in 1808, of the Cronstedt system, as well as the later Ehrensvärd, alongside the more modern Helvig system. From the sources it is clear that roughly half of the guns fielded in the battles in Finland were of the new (1804, Helvig) system, while the other half were of various older types. Some of the older guns were iron, some metal (bronze). The older guns were much heavier, partly because they had oak carriages. Many of them were 3-pounders (the Helvig guns were all 6-pounders).
I painted the gun as a bronze gun with a blue and yellow carriage. This was common in the 18th century, and it seems likely that some older guns would have still looked like this in 1808. Below is a late 18th century model gun in the collections of the Army Museum in Stockholm. The iron bars attached to the carriage were used when the gun was pulled by “action horses”, i e when the gun was moved around the field of battle, but not limbered. This practice was discontinued just prior to the war of 1808, and by then the gun was drawn by the men using ropes instead.
Pancratist 