A third souvenir is a grape shot found on an embankment on the Island of Capri, and believed to have been one of those used by the French in the siege of the island. Capri, it may be said, was held by the British under Sir Hudson Lowe from 1806 to 1808. In the latter year, King Murat of Naples sent a force of French troops, under General Lemarque, to besiege the island, and took it after thirteen days' siege.
Yet another souvenir which may be described as from the battlefield is an officer's memorandum book. Captain F. W. Lyons, of the South Staffordshire Regiment, had this book in his breast-pocket whilst attacking the stockade on the Tumbiling River, in Penang, in 1904, when it was struck by a bullet with no worse result to Captain Lyons than a severe bruise on the chest.
A fifth exhibit is a piece of the gate of Hougomont, which was riddled with bullets during the fighting at Waterloo.
The last to be mentioned here is a gun used in Mafeking during the siege. This gun, so the description added to the exhibit runs, was made in the railway workshops at Mafeking during the siege. The core is a steel steam-pipe, round which were lapped bars of iron, which were hammered and turned into their present condition. The trunnions and breech are castings of brass. For the castings, a blast furnace was improvised out of an iron water-tank lined with fire-bricks, the draught being forced through the pipe of a vacuum brake off a railway carriage.
The shells of the gun were similarly cast, and were loaded with powder, and exploded by a slow match which was ignited by the flame of the discharge. The powder was also manufactured in Mafeking.
On one occasion the breech blew out, and was repaired and fixed with the stout iron holding-bands which may be seen connecting the breech to the trunnion-block. The gun was nicknamed "The Wolf" after Colonel Baden-Powell, whose nickname this was among the people of the North.
Regimental Colours.—Under this heading a number of most interesting relics of the battlefield may be grouped. It is true that specimens are never available for the private collector of military curios, but as most cathedrals and many museums possess examples, we cannot pass them over without some mention.
The Royal United Service Museum houses a score or more of these trophies of war, but probably the most attractive are the following:—