The terms 'amusette' and 'curricle' are being used to describe what is essentially a galloper gun which was used by both the Americans and the British in the War of the Revolution.

Except, of course, there is nothing particularly essential in the label ‘galloper.’

Marechal de Saxe or Comte de Rostaing, if they’d been around, might well have written, “ ‘Galloper' and ‘curricle’ are being used to describe what is essentially an ‘amusette’.”

In this particular instance, I don’t believe the term ‘galloper’ or ‘curricle gun’ (NB ‘curricle’ is the single-axle civilian gig from which the name derives) crop up on the Danish sites.

None of these terms are definitive. They refer to different guns and different carriages, and different functions depending on the context.

What most of these guns have in common, as we know, is a gun carriage with the trail formed by two shafts into which a horse could be harnessed, obviating the need for a limber. On occasion, foot soldiers might man the shafts instead, converting the gun into a kind of ' barrow gun'. It appears that the intended function and actual success of the various designs we know of also depended on the context.

For instance, ‘galloper’ guns in British service are unlikely to have ever galloped, as is most evident in the illustrations of Lord Townshend’s 1776 ‘Light 3-pdr’ fitted up with shafts in order to travel ‘as a Galloper.’ An extreme example, perhaps, but it points up the fact that the term ‘galloper’ represented function as much as form. The ‘Light 3-pdr’ had a conventional bracket frame carriage. The shafts attached were to enable it to perform ‘as a galloper’ (see below), which meant in this case merely the means of being harnessed directly to a horse, rather than moving at speed (How much service ‘gallopers’ with either integral shafts, or adapted bracket carriages, saw in America seems not to be entirely clear. Our own Messrs Summerfield Dawson and Dawson have referred to light 6-pdr guns designed by Major Griffiths Williams for a Horse artillery brigade which, ironically, may have been mounted on what are described as ‘Flemish curricle carriages.’

In the case of curricle guns, the term may have been adopted by the British authorities at Woolwich to provide a more specific (and arguably more accurate) term to describe this type of gun carriage. They were also in general of larger caliber than earlier ‘gallopers’ and therefore of more robust construction, which when drawn by two horses instead of one would also have allowed faster travel. 6-pdr curricle guns underwent trials with Horse Artillery in the 1780s and 1790s but nonetheless, while they proved able to keep up with Light Dragoons as they manoeuvered on Bagshot Heath, this did not involve charging home so, while these pieces may have moved at some pace, 'galloper' would have still been something of a misnomer. It's easy to see, though, why they weren't known as 'Trotters'. ‘Curricle gun’ seems to have been the preferred term by about 1790, if not considerably earlier. We see them on active service in the Low Countries 1794-95 (3-pdrs) and in Ireland in 1798 (6-pdrs).

In India between 1750 and 1820, the story is somewhat different.