Last functional "topkhana" with any Indian police unit

[mundaire]

Mysore police is probably the only police force in India with a topkhana consisting of 7 fully functional cannon.

You may want to turn on English captions to understand the narration.

Enjoy!

[sumbriavikramaditya]

Cannons and Mounted men, Wow!

[eljefe]

As a kid, i was lucky to see the Mysore Lancers parade

[Vikram]

Brilliant.

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

Great piece of history. Hope it will continue as same

[Shivakr]

Excellent video.. loved it. Especially to see the equipment so well preserved. Hopefully someday would love to see the tradition live.. thanks for sharing..

[timmy]

This is a wonderful thing to see! Beautiful horses, majestic elephants, and of course, historic cannon.

This is a rare glimpse of what running cannon batteries was like 150 years ago.

I can relate to this through two areas of study:

1st, there was Ringgold's flying artillery, used during the Mexican American War, famously at the Battle of Palo Alto. These artillery units were highly trained with smaller cannon, who could move and set up quickly around the battlefield. The guns were essentially big shotguns, loaded with cannister shot. As one can see from the video, the preparing, loading, firing, and reloading was no simple task, which had to be accomplished quickly and properly under deadly conditions, which is why these units were considered elite.

2nd, after World War 1, when Poland was reconstituted as a nation, they obtained a number of Putilov 76mm (actually, 76.2mm) light field guns, which were used during the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. Later, in 1926, these guns were rechambered to use the same 75mm rounds as the M1897 75mm French guns the Poles had obtained. As with Ringgold's flying artillery, these guns were drawn by crack teams for quick movement and deployment on the battlefield.

One often hears arguments about which sidearm should be adopted by the military, but it is a fact that in the major wars of the lat 100 years, artillery has caused the most casualties.

The video reminds us of the expertise and abilities of our soldiers from times past, and of their importance and sacrifices on our behalf.

Thanks for sharing this, Abhijeet!