I need not dwell on the clubs, the spears, the bills, and battle-axes of former times; the slings, the bows and arrows, the cross-bows and the maces, that were accustomed to deal death around, are unknown to modern warfare, nor are the scythe-armed chariot, the battering-ram, the balista, or the catapulta, now ever used in the sea or land service of Old England.”
“Ay! gunpowder has put them all aside.”
“Artillery does not mean cannon only, but all the huge weapons, apparatus, and stores used in the field, or in garrisons and sieges. A train of artillery comprehends cannon, mortars, and howitzers of all kinds, properly mounted; with horses, carriages, mortar-beds, block-carriages, ammunition-waggons, stores, shells, shot, bullets, powder, and cartridges.”
“What a deal of room a train of artillery must take up!”
“Indeed it does, for beside what I have told you, it includes artificers’ tools, intrenching tools, and miners’ tools, with forges, capstans and gins, pontoons, pontoon-carriages, tumbrels, chevaux-de-frise, palisades, drag-ropes, platforms, harness, flints, powder-measures, fuze-engines, and tents, to say nothing of a hundred other things that I cannot remember.”
“What is meant by chevaux-de-frise?”
“Chevaux-de-frise are pieces of timber, about ten or a dozen feet long, stuck all over with wooden pins, six feet long, shod with iron. They are used to stop up a breach, or a pass, or to secure a camp, and are sometimes rolled down on the enemy in an assault. The sword, the musket, the pike, and the bayonet, the cannon, the howitzer, and the mortar, with granades, rockets, and shells, are the principal weapons of our present wars. There are some who still entertain the opinion that bows and arrows in English hands have been more destructive than muskets bristling with bayonets, and this seems to me to be very like the truth. The difference between the long-bow and the cross-bow, is this: the long-bow is only a bow and string, and its force depends on the power of the arm that draws it. The cross-bow, is a bow fastened on a stock, so that when it is once drawn ready to be let off, it has the same power whether let off by a strong man or a weak one.”
“Why, boys shoot with bows and arrows.”
“They do, but they must be men to draw an arrow to the head on the string of the long-bow of old times. Topham, one of the strongest men ever known, laughed to scorn an old archer, who boasted that he could draw a cloth-yard arrow to the head on the long-bow. Topham tried to do this, but could only half draw it, while the old archer, taking up the bow, performed the feat adroitly. But a word as to the power of the bow. A military man of experience says, ‘The accuracy and range of the arrow fully equalled the present most perfect practice of the rifle, and it greatly exceeded it with respect to rapidity of discharge.’ In the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. it was still the opprobrium of an archer if he shot a single shaft during a battle without killing or disabling his enemy. Some have compared this with Marshal Saxe’s calculations upon the efficacy of the musket. Marshal Saxe estimated that in no case did more than one ball in eighty-five take effect, and that at the battle of Tournay, not more than one half in four hundred was calculated to have killed an enemy; it must be left to military men to say whether the lead ‘shot from the deadly level of a gun,’ has been made more deadly since the tactics of Marshal Saxe. The disuse of the long-bow is hardly to be accounted for. An archer was deemed disqualified for service if he could not fire twelve unerring shafts in one minute. This, if we take the accuracy of their fire, for we must be allowed the term, into consideration, will make the practice of musketry very inferior.”