Chapter XIV: Part 14

In besieging a fortified place, the first parallel or line of batteries of the besiegers was habitually established at about six hundred yards from the enemy’s works, a distance then at long artillery range, but which would now be under an annihilating fire from infantry rifles. The cannon used solid shot almost exclusively, though early in the present century a projectile, invented by Lieutenant Shrapnel, of the British army, and which now universally bears his name, was introduced. This consisted of a thin cast-iron shell filled with round musket balls, the interstices between which were filled by pouring in melted sulphur or resin, to solidify the mass and prevent it from cracking the shell when the piece was fired. A hole was bored through the mass of sulphur and bullets to receive the bursting charge, which was just sufficient to rupture the shell and release the bullets, which then moved with the velocity that the projectile had at the moment of bursting. Shrapnel has at all times been a destructive missile, though in its early form it was insignificant in comparison with the “man-killing projectile” which now bears the same designation.

In the year 1806, the Congreve rocket was added to the weapons of war. It consisted of a case of wrought iron, filled with a composition of nitre, charcoal, and sulphur, in such proportions as to burn more slowly than gunpowder. The head of the rocket consisted of a solid shot, a shell, or a shrapnel. At the base was fastened a stick, which secured steadiness for the projectile in its flight. The range of the rocket was scarcely more than five hundred yards, though a subsequent improvement, which dispensed with the guide-stick and substituted three tangential vents, increased the range very considerably. Congreve rockets were used with effect in Europe in 1814, and against our raw militia at Bladensburg in the same year. They seem, however, to have depended more upon the moral effect of their hissing rush than upon any really destructive properties, and were effective mainly against raw troops and cavalry. The rocket is now an obsolete weapon, having made its last appearance in war in the Austrian army in 1866.

The infantry of all the armies of Continental Europe, when deployed for battle, was formed in three ranks. On the eve of the battle of Leipsic, Napoleon, finding himself greatly outnumbered by the allies, ordered his infantry to deploy in two ranks, in order that his front might approximate in length to that of the enemy. This formation had, however, been adopted by the British some years before, and had been used with great success against the assaulting French columns, in many of Wellington’s battles in Spain, where the steadfast Anglo-Saxon soldiery was able to maintain the “thin red line,” and throw the fire of every musket against the denser formation of its foes. It was not until the British troops encountered, upon our own soil, an Anglo-Saxon opponent as steadfast as themselves, and better skilled in marksmanship, that they were unable to achieve a victory over their enemies. True, our raw militia was everywhere beaten when it encountered the disciplined soldiers of Great Britain, but our regular troops at Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane gallantly defeated the choice veterans of Wellington’s campaigns; and, at New Orleans, an army composed mainly of hardy backwoodsmen, trained in Indian lighting, and expert in the use of the rifle, hurled back, with frightful carnage, experienced British soldiers who had habitually triumphed over the best veterans of the French empire.

The battle of New Orleans marked the introduction of the rifle as a formidable arm for infantry. It was by no means a new weapon, for it had been invented in Germany in 1498; but it had not been used to any extent in military service, mainly because of the slowness of loading. The capabilities of the rifle in the hands of an army of expert marksmen were, however, made so manifest by Jackson’s great victory that the attention of military men was turned towards the weapon which had enabled a crude army to overwhelm the choicest troops of Europe.

Yet it was not until 1850 that a practically efficient military rifle appeared. This was the invention of Captain Minié, of the French army, and was the well-known “Minié rifle,” long familiar to troops on both continents. The weapon was a muzzle-loader, and its projectile, the “Minié ball,” was of a conoidal shape, as shown in the accompanying figure. The ball being slightly smaller in diameter than the bore of the piece, the loading was easily accomplished, and the shock of the explosion against the cavity at the base of the bullet forced the lead into the grooves of the bore and caused the shot to take up a rotary motion on its axis—in other words, “to take the rifling.”

Rifles, mostly constructed on principles similar to those on which Minié’s weapon was based, were soon in use in the armies of all great nations. The rifle musket, “model of 1855,” adopted by the United States, is shown in the accompanying figure.

In 1817 percussion caps were invented in the United States, but some time elapsed before they were introduced into military use; and though the “percussion rifle” was known in 1841, the victorious troops which went with Scott in the brilliant campaign from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, six years later, were armed with the flint-lock musket. In 1833, Colonel Colt invented the first practical revolving pistol. This weapon, especially in its present perfected form, is so well known as to need no description. The first pattern of Colt’s revolver used paper cartridges and percussion caps.

In the long period of peace which Europe enjoyed after the battle of Waterloo, but little change was made in the organization of the armies of the great powers; and in the Crimean war (1855–56) the composition of the English, French, and Russian armies did not differ materially from the constitution of the forces of the same nations in the Napoleonic wars. Marked changes had, however, been made in the nature of the weapons; most of the English and a part of the French infantry being armed with the rifle, though the Russian infantry, with the exception of a few selected regiments, were still armed with the smooth-bore musket. Though the extreme range of the rifle at this time did not exceed eight hundred yards, and was inaccurate at half that distance, it was, nevertheless, a formidable weapon in comparison with the infantry musket of Napoleonic times. Rifled siege guns were employed by the British at Sebastopol, but they were not a success, and were soon withdrawn from the batteries. A striking indication of the increased range of artillery was furnished at Sebastopol, when the besiegers established their first parallel at a distance of 1300 yards from the Russian works.

In the Italian war of 1859 rifled cannon appeared for the first time upon the field of battle. They were employed by the French, and to their use was largely due the victories of the French and Sardinians over the Austrians. For many years the attention of artillerists had been devoted to the production of serviceable rifled artillery, and as early as 1846 an iron breech-loading rifled cannon had been invented in France by Major Cavalli. This gun fired a shell not dissimilar in shape to the projectile employed in the Minié rifled musket. In 1854, experiments with a Cavalli gun gave very satisfactory results, both in range and accuracy; but the breech mechanism seemed dangerously weak, and the rifled guns, adopted by the French and used with such effect in Italy, were muzzle-loaders.

In 1854 a breech-loading rifled field-piece was invented by Sir William George Armstrong. It was made of wrought-iron bars coiled into spiral tubes, and welded by forging. The breech was closed with a screw which could be quickly withdrawn for loading and sponging the gun. The projectile was made of cast-iron, thinly coated with lead, and was (with its coating) slightly larger in diameter than the bore. The lead coating was crushed into the grooves by the force of the powder, the necessary rotation being thus given to the projectile. This gun gave excellent results in range and in rapidity and accuracy of fire, but it was not until some years after its invention that it was adopted in the British service. Other breech-loading cannon soon appeared; but in the United States army the 3-inch Rodman muzzle-loading rifled gun was preferred to any breech-loader then devised, and was used with great effect throughout the War of Secession. This gun was made by wrapping boiler plate around an iron bar, so as to form a cylindrical mass, the whole being brought to a welding heat in a furnace and then passed through rollers to unite it solidly. The piece was then bored and turned to the proper shape and dimensions. The projectiles for rifled guns were generally coated with soft metal, or furnished with an expanding base or cup of similar metal or _papier maché_; though in some systems they were furnished with studs or buttons which fitted into the grooves of the bore. In the case of the Whitworth gun, the projectile was made nearly of the exact size and form of the bore, so as to fit accurately into the grooves.

Breech-loading cannon were not, however, quickly adopted, owing, perhaps, to conservatism on the part of artillerists, and partly because the guns first produced did not seem to give appreciably better results in range, accuracy, or even in rapidity of fire than the muzzle-loaders. Not only were breech-loading cannon adopted with seeming reluctance, but rifled cannon generally were looked upon with disfavor by many artillerists of the old school. Hohenlohe tells of an old Prussian general of artillery who was so prejudiced against the rifled innovation that he requested, on his death-bed, that the salute over his grave should be fired with nothing but smooth-bore guns. It must be confessed, however, that the 12-pound smooth-bore Napoleon gun long held its own against the new rifled field-pieces, as many a bloody battle in our Civil War well attested.

In the manufacture of heavy guns the United States for some time led the world. In 1860, General Rodman, of the Ordnance Department, produced the first 15-inch gun ever made. This gun was made of cast-iron, and was cast on a hollow core, cooled by a stream of water passing through it, by which means the metal nearest the bore was made the hardest and most dense, and the tendency towards bursting was thus reduced to a minimum. General Rodman was also the inventor of the hollow cake powder, which consisted of cakes perforated with numerous small holes for the passage of the flame, thus enabling the powder to be progressively consumed, and causing the amount of gas at the last moments of the discharge to be greater than at the instant of ignition. A large-grain powder, known as “mammoth powder,” was afterwards devised by him to produce the same results. It will be seen later that this invention has rendered possible the powerful ordnance of the present day; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that Rodman is really thus the father of the modern high-power guns.

At the beginning of the War of Secession the heaviest gun in the United States was the 15-inch Rodman, the projectile of which weighed 320 lbs., the charge of powder weighing 35 lbs. Next to this was the 10-inch Columbiad, which fired a 100-lb. shell with a charge of 18 lbs. of powder. The effective range of these guns was a little less than three miles. The heaviest mortar was of 13-inch caliber, fired a 200-lb. shell, with a charge of 20 lbs. of powder, and had a range of 4325 yards. This mortar was, like all others then in use, manipulated by means of handspikes, and not only was much less powerful, but was much more clumsy than the admirable mortar of the present day.

The Crimean and Italian wars had foreshadowed the passing away of the old military conditions and the dawning of a new era of warfare. But it was in the gigantic struggle which rocked our own country for four years that the developments of modern warfare really commenced. At the beginning of this great conflict the ranges of 1000 to 1200 yards for field guns, and of 1500 to 2000 yards for heavy guns, were as great as could be secured with any degree of accuracy. The infantry rifle with which the Union and Confederate armies were armed had an extreme range of but 1000 yards, and a really effective range of only half that distance. The rifle was a muzzle-loader, which required nine distinct motions in loading besides those necessary in priming the piece with the percussion cap then used. The tactics employed at first in all arms of the service did not differ materially from the methods employed in the Napoleonic wars; and a line of American infantry deployed for battle in two ranks, shoulder to shoulder, scarcely differed in anything but the color of its uniforms from the “thin red line” of Wellington’s warriors. All this was to be changed; but it was not only in the matter of arms and tactics that a revolution was to be effected, for new forces hitherto untried were to be employed in the art of war.

The War of Secession was not only one of the most gigantic conflicts ever waged on earth, but was one which will always be of interest to the military student because of its remarkable developments in the science of warfare, and one which will ever be a source of pride to Americans because of the grim earnestness and stubborn valor displayed by the contending armies. From first to last, more than two millions of men were enrolled by the United States, and in the final campaign 1,100,000 men were actually bearing arms in the service of the Union. The infantry was organized in companies of one hundred men, ten companies forming a regiment. At first, three or four regiments constituted a brigade, though it was afterwards formed of a greater number when the regiments became depleted by the losses of battle. Three brigades generally composed a division, which also habitually included two batteries of artillery and a small detachment of cavalry for duty as orderlies and messengers. Three or more divisions constituted an army corps. The cavalry was formed into brigades and divisions, which in the later years of the war were combined to form, in each of the large armies, a corps of cavalry. It was in command of such corps of mounted troops that Sheridan, J. E. B. Stuart, Merritt, and Wilson achieved their great fame. The batteries first distributed to divisions, or even brigades, were afterwards assigned to the army corps, and all guns not thus employed were grouped into a corps of reserve artillery.

It is a curious fact that the two factors most important in warfare were found to be two inventions designed primarily for the interests of peace, namely, the railroad and the electric telegraph. Steam and electricity had both been used in the Crimean and Italian wars; but it was in the War of Secession that they received their first great and systematic application. The effect of the use of railroads in war not only enables armies to be more rapidly concentrated than was formerly the case, but renders it possible to supply them to an extent and with a certainty that would otherwise be out of the question. The difference between the supply of an army by wagon and by rail was clearly shown in the siege of Paris, in 1870–71, where six trains a day fed the whole besieging army, while it is estimated that nearly ten thousand wagons would have been required for the same purpose. Moreover, the force of troops necessarily detached to protect a line of railroad communications is not nearly so great as the force that would be necessary to guard the innumerable wagon or pack trains that would otherwise be required. In the opinion of the best military authorities, railroads, had they been in existence, would have enabled Napoleon to conquer Russia, and with it the world; while, without the aid of railroads, the successful invasion of the South by the armies of the Union would have been an impossibility. It is only while it keeps moving that an army can “live on the country.” It is like a swarm of locusts, consuming everything within reach; and if it be compelled to halt, whether for battle or from other cause, it must be supplied from bases in the rear, or it will speedily disintegrate from hunger alone. This fact was fully appreciated by General Sherman, when he left Atlanta in his famous “march to the sea;” for though he expected to, and did, live upon the country, he nevertheless took the precaution to carry with him a wagon train containing twenty days’ rations for his entire army.

In the War of Secession the electric telegraph first appeared on the field of battle. The telegraph train became a prominent feature of all our armies; and the day’s march was hardly ended before the electric wire, rapidly established by an expert corps, connected the headquarters of the army with those of each army corps, division, and brigade. But it was not in its employment on the actual field of battle that the telegraph found its most valuable military use. It enabled generals, separated by hundreds of miles, to be in constant communication with each other, and rendered it possible for Grant to control from his headquarters hut at City Point the movements of the armies of Sherman, Thomas, and Sheridan in combined operations, which enabled each to perform, in harmony with the others, its part in the mighty plan.

It followed as naturally as day follows night that a shrewd and intelligent people, engaged in a desperate struggle for self-preservation, would avail themselves of all means provided by military science for carrying out the contest in which they were engaged. Iron-clad vessels had been devised in both England and France, but they were merely frigates designed on the old lines and partly covered with a sheathing of armor. With characteristic energy and ingenuity the Americans, ignoring old traditions and seeking the shortest road to the fulfillment of a manifest want, produced simultaneously the Merrimac and the Monitor, the former resembling “a gabled house submerged to the eaves,” and the latter looking like “a Yankee cheese-box upon a raft.” These novel vessels met in their memorable combat at Hampton Roads, and the booming of their guns sounded the death knell of the old wooden navies.

As with war vessels, so with firearms. New conditions were met with inventive genius and mechanical skill. Though the great mass of our troops continued throughout the conflict to use the muzzle-loading rifle, breech-loaders were in the hands of many thousands of our soldiers before the close of the great contest. In 1864 the cavalry of Sheridan and Wilson and many regiments of infantry were armed with breech-loading carbines, which gave them a great advantage over their opponents. The effect of the breech-loaders upon the Confederates was unpleasantly surprising to them, and the Southern soldiers are said to have remarked with dismal humor that “the Yankees loaded all night and fired all day.”

The principal breech-loading arms in use in the Union armies were the Sharps and the Spencer. In the Sharps carbine the barrel was closed by a sliding breech-piece which moved at right angles with the axis of the piece, the breech being opened and closed by pulling down and raising up the trigger-guard. The Spencer carbine was a magazine rifle, and was greatly superior to the Sharps. The magazine of the rifle lay in the butt of the stock, and was capable of holding seven cartridges. As the cartridge was fired and ejected another was pushed forward into the breech by a spiral spring in the butt of the piece. The Spencer carbine used metallic cartridges. The introduction of these cartridges was one of the most remarkable advances in the art of war made during the present century. The cartridge in use in 1864–65 is shown in the accompanying figure; it consisted of a thin copper case firmly attached to the bullet containing the powder, and having at its base a small metallic anvil, in a cavity of which was placed the fulminate, which was exploded by means of a firing pin, driven in by a blow of the hammer. The advantages of the metallic cartridge can scarcely be overestimated; it rendered obsolete the percussion cap, and being water-proof it did away with the ever-present bugbear of damp ammunition. The old injunction, “Put your trust in God and keep your powder dry,” has consequently lost much of its force; for while it is to be hoped that the soldier will continue to place his reliance upon Providence, the latter part of the advice can now be safely ignored.

Among the many advantages possessed by the breech-loader over the muzzle-loader, the principal ones are greater rapidity of fire, ease of loading in any position, diminished danger of accidents in loading, and the impossibility of putting more than one charge in the piece at the same time. This last advantage is by no means slight. Among 27,000 muzzle-loading muskets picked up on the battlefield of Gettysburg, at least 24,000 were loaded. Of these about half contained two charges, one fourth held from three to ten charges, and one musket contained twenty-three cartridges.

The failure of the Americans to produce during the great war a practical breech-loading field-gun is doubtless due to the fact that the field artillery in use at that time answered fully all the requirements then existing. Owing to the nature of the country in which the armies were operating, the range of the 3-inch rifled gun was fully as great as could have been desired; and on the broken and wooded ground which generally formed our field of battle, the smooth-bore Napoleon gun, firing shrapnel and canister, seemed to have reached almost the acme of destructiveness. Moreover, the muzzle-loading cannon, both rifled and smooth-bore, were served with such celerity as to make it a matter of doubt for some years after whether the introduction of breech-loading field-guns would materially increase the rapidity of fire. It was not until infantry fire had greatly increased in range and rapidity that a further improvement in field artillery became necessary. In siege artillery, heavy rifled guns of the Rodman and the Parrott type appeared. The Parrott gun was of cast iron, strengthened by shrinking a coiled band of wrought iron over the portion of the piece surrounding the charge. The famous “Swamp Angel,” used in the siege of Charleston, was a Parrott gun. The sea-coast artillery consisted mainly of smooth-bores of large calibre, which were able to contend successfully with any armor then afloat. It is a curious fact that the war, so to speak, between guns and armor has been incessantly waged since the introduction of the latter, every advance of armor towards the degree of invulnerability being met with the production of a gun capable of piercing it. The sea-coast artillery of the United States in the Civil War met fully every demand to which it was subjected.

The War of Secession produced the first practical machine-gun,—the Gatling,—though such guns were not used to any extent. The machine-gun has, in fact, passed through a long period of gestation, and it is only in recent years that it can be said to have attained its full birth. Our great war was also noted for the introduction of torpedoes. These peculiar weapons had, it is true, been devised may years before; and Robert Fulton had, in the early part of the century, devoted his inventive genius to the production of a submarine torpedo, which, however, was never practically tested in war. It was not until the contest of 1861–65 that torpedoes were of any practical use. The high explosives of the present day being then unknown, these torpedoes depended for their destructive force upon gunpowder alone. Yet crude and insignificant though they were in comparison with the mighty engines of destruction now known by the same name, they accomplished great results in more than one instance. The destruction of the Housatonic off Charleston, the sinking of the Tecumseh in Mobile Bay, and Cushing’s daring destruction of the Albemarle, gave notice to the world that a new and terrible engine of warfare had made its appearance.

But it was not merely by the production of new weapons that the great American war was characterized. It marked the turning-point in tactics as well. The first efforts of our great armies of raw volunteers were as crude as the warfare of untrained troops always is, and it was fortunate that we were opposed to a foe as unpracticed as ourselves; but as the troops gained experience in war, acquired the necessary military instruction,—in brief, learned their trade and became regulars in all but name,—they displayed not only a steadfast prowess, but a military skill that placed the veteran American soldier at the head of the warriors of the world. The art of constructing hasty intrenchments on the field of battle grew out of the quickness of the American soldier to appreciate the necessity of providing defensive means to neutralize, in some degree, the greatly increased destructive effect of improved arms. In this respect he was thirteen years in advance of the European soldier, for hasty intrenchments did not appear in Europe until the Turco-Russian War. True, intrenchment on the field of battle was as old as war itself; but the American armies were the first that developed a system of quickly covering the entire front of an army with earthworks hastily thrown up in the presence of the enemy, and often actually under fire. Skirmishers were no longer used merely to feel and develop the enemy; but in many of our battles, notably in Sherman’s campaign in Georgia, the engagement was begun, and fought to the end, by strong skirmish lines successively reinforced from the main body, which they gradually absorbed in the course of the action. Here, too, the American soldier was fully six years in advance of the European warrior; for it was not until the Germans had been warned by the terrific losses incurred in their earlier battles with the French, in 1870, that they evolved from their own experience a system of tactics, the essential principles of which had already been demonstrated on the Western Continent.

The increased range of artillery again received a practical illustration; for at the siege of Fort Pulaski the Union batteries first opened fire at ranges varying from 1650 to 3400 yards from the Confederate fort. At the siege of Charleston shells were thrown into the city from a battery nearly five miles distant.

In 1866, the brief but bloody war between Austria and Prussia suddenly raised the latter nation from a comparatively subordinate position to the front rank of military powers. The greatness of Prussia was born in the sackcloth and ashes of national humiliation. Forbidden by Napoleon, after her crushing defeat in 1806–7, to maintain an army of more than 40,000 men, her great war minister, Scharnhorst, conceived the plan of discharging the soldiers from military service as soon as they had received the requisite instruction, and filling their places with recruits. In this way, though the standing army never exceeded the stipulated number, many thousands of Prussians received military training; and when Prussia declared war against Napoleon, after his disastrous Russian campaign, the discharged men were called back into the ranks, and there arose as if by magic a formidable Prussian army of trained soldiers. The principle of universal military service, thus called into existence in Prussia in time of war, had been continued through fifty years of peace, and enabled Prussia, with a population scarcely more than half as numerous as that of Austria, to place upon the decisive field of Königgrätz a larger army than that of her opponent.

The Prussian system, which has since been copied by all the great military nations of Europe, is, in its essential features, as follows: Every able-bodied man in the kingdom, upon reaching the age of twenty years, is available for military service; and each year there are chosen by lot sufficient recruits to maintain the army at its authorized strength. The great body of the male population is thus brought into military service. There are a few exceptions, such as the only sons of indigent parents, and a small number of men who are in excess of the force required. Any man who escapes the draft for three successive years, and all able-bodied men exempted for any cause from service in the regular army, are incorporated in the reserve. The term of service in the regular army is two years for the infantry and three for the artillery and cavalry. After being discharged from the regular army the soldier passes into the reserve, where he serves for four years. While in the reserve, he is called out for two field exercises of eight weeks’ duration each, and the rest of his time is available for his civil vocation. At the end of four years in the reserve he passes into the Landwehr, in which he is required to participate in only two field exercises of two weeks’ duration each. After five years in the Landwehr proper, he passes into the second levy of the Landwehr, where he is free from all military duty in time of peace, though still liable to be called to arms in case of war. From the second levy of the Landwehr he passes, at the age of thirty-nine years, into the Landsturm, where he remains until he reaches his forty-fifth year, when he is finally discharged from military duty. The soldier in the Landsturm is practically free from all military duty, for that body is never called out except in case of dire national emergency. By this system Prussia became not only a military power but “a nation in arms,” in the blaze of whose might the military glory of Austria and of France successively melted away in humiliating defeat.

The careful military preparation of Prussia in time of peace was by no means limited to measures for providing an army strong in numbers. Every year her troops were assembled in large bodies for practice in the manœuvres of the battlefield. This mimicry of war, at first lightly regarded by the military leaders of the other European nations, produced such wonderful effects in promoting the efficiency of the army that it has since been copied in all the armies of Europe, and is now regarded as the most important of all instruction for war.

Though breech-loading rifles were, as we have seen, used in the War of Secession, the Prussian army was the first that ever took the field completely armed with such weapons. The Prussian rifle was not new, for it had been invented by a Thuringian gunsmith, named Dreyse, about the time that the Minié rifle appeared. Dreyse’s arm was known as the “zundnadelgewehr,” or needle-gun, and its effect in the Austro-Prussian war was so decisive and startling as to cause muzzle-loading rifles everywhere to be relegated to the limbo of obsolete weapons. Yet the needle-gun was but a sorry weapon in comparison to those now in use, and was distinctly inferior to the Spencer carbine. Its breech mechanism was clumsy, it used a paper cartridge, it was not accurate beyond a range of three hundred yards, and its effective range was scarcely more than twice that distance. The German infantry fought in three ranks, and its tactics was not equal to that employed by the American infantry in the War of Secession. The Prussian field artillery was the most formidable that had yet appeared, and consisted mainly of steel breech-loading rifled guns, which were classed as 6-pounders and 4-pounders, though the larger piece fired a shell weighing fifteen pounds, and the smaller projectile used a shell weighing nine pounds. In the Austrian army the infantry was armed with a muzzle-loading rifle, and the artillery consisted entirely of muzzle-loading rifled guns.

The exalted military prestige gained by Prussia rendered it certain that she must soon enter the lists in a contest with France, whose commanding position in Europe was so seriously menaced by the rise of the new power. Foreseeing the inevitable conflict, Napoleon III. endeavored to prepare for a serious struggle. The French infantry was armed with the Chassepôt rifle, which had an effective range nearly double that of the needle-gun. A machine gun, known as the _mitrailleuse_, was also introduced into the French army. Much was expected of these new arms; but so superior was the organization, readiness, generalship, and tactical skill of the Prussians that the war was a practically unbroken series of victories for Prussia and the allied German States. Profiting by their experience in the course of the conflict, the Prussians formed their infantry for attack in three lines; the first consisting of skirmishers, the second of supports, either deployed or in small columns, and the third of a reserve, generally held in column until it came under such fire as to render deployment necessary. The skirmishers were constantly reinforced from the supports, and finally from the reserve as the attack progressed, the whole force being united in a heavy line, and opening the hottest possible fire when close enough to the enemy for the final charge. In its essential principles this attack formation is in use at the present day in the armies of all civilized nations. The Prussian artillery was handled with terrible effect both in battle and siege. A new demonstration of the increased power of artillery was given in the siege of Paris, in which shells were thrown from the heights of Clamart to the Panthéon, a distance of five miles.

The next European war was the contest between Russia and Turkey, in 1877. In this conflict the American system of hasty intrenchments was used with success by the Turks, who were also armed with an American rifle, the Peabody, which enabled them to inflict serious losses upon the Russians at a range of a mile and a quarter. Owing to the Turkish intrenchments and the inferiority of their own arms, the Russians won their victories over much smaller armies only with a gruesome loss of life. A further impetus was given to the development of the infantry rifle, and the German tactical experience was confirmed by the Russian General Skobeleff in the declaration that infantry can successfully assault only in a succession of skirmish lines.

The war in Turkey was the last great European conflict. Subsequent campaigns of the Russians in Central Asia, of the English in Egypt, the Soudan, and India, of the Japanese in China, of the Turks in Greece, and the Americans in Cuba, have emphasized the lessons already taught, and demonstrated the increased power of new weapons.

Having taken a retrospective view of the military forces and weapons employed in the wars of the nineteenth century, let us now turn to a consideration of the armies and arms of the present day. The adoption of the system of universal military service has increased the size of the standing armies of the nations of Europe far beyond the proportionate increase of their respective populations. In round numbers, the strength of the armies of the great powers is as follows: Russia, 869,000; Germany, 585,000; France, 618,000; Austria, 306,000; Italy, 231,000; Great Britain, 222,000.[3] Not only are the standing armies greater than in the early days of the century, but, owing to the improved methods of transportation and supply, the forces now brought upon the field of battle are vastly larger than in the days of Napoleon. The French army at Marengo was less than 30,000 strong. At Austerlitz it was only 70,000, which was its strength also at Waterloo. In only two battles, Wagram and Leipsic, was Napoleon able to place 150,000 men on the field; and in the latter battle the armies of all Europe opposed to him numbered only 280,000. In more recent times Prussia alone placed upon the field of Königgrätz 223,000 men with which to oppose the Austrian army of 206,000; and at Gravelotte the great French army of 180,000 men was outnumbered by the German host of 270,000. It is probable that in the next great European war more than a million men will be found contending on a single battlefield. A detailed description of the armies of all the great powers would prove wearisome to the reader, for their points of resemblance are many and their general characteristics are the same. The German army may be taken as the most perfect specimen of a highly organized military force, and a description of its organization would answer with slight modification for the other armies of Continental Europe.

[3] These numbers give the _peace_ strength of the armies. In
time of war they can easily be quadrupled.

The infantry of the German army is organized in companies of 250 men each. Four companies constitute a battalion, and three battalions compose a regiment. The brigade consists of two regiments, and the division is composed of two brigades of infantry, four batteries of artillery, and a regiment of cavalry. The army corps consists of two divisions, a body of corps artillery composed of twelve batteries, a battalion of engineers, and a supply train. In round numbers, the fighting strength of the army corps consists of 30,000 men and 120 guns. The cavalry is organized in squadrons of 150 sabres each, five squadrons forming a regiment, only four of which are employed in the field, the fifth remaining at the regimental depot. The cavalry brigade consists of three regiments; and the cavalry division, which is composed of two brigades, aggregates 3600 sabres. Thus a small part of the cavalry force is attached to the infantry divisions, while the bulk of it is organized into divisions composed of mounted troops alone, two batteries of horse artillery being attached to each cavalry division. The entire military force is divided into “armies,” each consisting of from three to six army corps and two or more cavalry divisions. The cavalry has about one sixth and the artillery about one seventh of the numerical strength of the infantry. The German cavalry is armed with sabre, carbine, and lance. The officers carry the sabre and revolver.

In the army of the United States the organization differs in many respects from that of the German army. The infantry companies each consist of 106 men, including officers. Twelve companies form a regiment, and three regiments constitute a brigade. A division is composed of three brigades, and the army corps is made up of three divisions. The number of batteries assigned to the divisions varies, as also the amount of corps artillery. In the army operating in Cuba, the artillery was all in a separate organization, and was distributed to the divisions only on the eve of battle. Experience and theory alike suggest four batteries for each division and eight batteries for the corps artillery. No cavalry is assigned to the divisions, but a regiment is supposed to be assigned to each army corps. The main force of the cavalry is grouped together into cavalry divisions. The cavalry is organized into troops of 100 sabres, four troops forming a squadron, and three squadrons constituting a regiment. Three regiments form a brigade, and three brigades a division. The American cavalry brigade is thus of the same size as a Prussian cavalry division. The cavalry is armed with the sabre, carbine, and revolver. The lance is unknown in the American army.

Having viewed the composition of modern armies, let us now see how they are armed. A consideration of the powder now in use is a necessary preface to a description of the weapons employed in the warfare of the present day. The old fine-grained black powder familiar to every boy who has ever handled a shotgun has passed completely out of military use. The powders now employed usually have guncotton or nitroglycerine and guncotton for a base. They are practically smokeless, the product of their combustion is almost entirely gaseous, they leave no solid residuum, and are of the quality known as “slow-burning,” giving a constantly increasing pressure on the projectile from the moment of ignition to the time when it leaves the muzzle of the piece. These powders are manufactured in thin sheets or small tubes or cords, which, for small arms, are broken up into grains. They vary in color from light yellow to black.

Before the adoption of smokeless powder, the cake powder invented by General Rodman had been highly developed and improved in the form of “cocoa powder.” This was made in hexagonal prisms, each perforated longitudinally, so as to have a hollow core. These grains were carefully arranged in the cartridges so as to have this core continuous from one grain to another, in order that upon ignition the combustion would begin in the interior and produce a constantly increasing volume of gas as the exterior surface of the grain was reached. Though the time of combustion was too rapid to be appreciated by the ordinary senses, it was, nevertheless, quite different from the practically instantaneous combustion of the old small-grain powder, and was susceptible of accurate measurement. Much difficulty was experienced in overcoming the detonating tendencies of the smokeless powders, but at last the requisite slow-burning properties were obtained. The smokeless powder for large guns is made in cartridges composed of bundles of strips or cords, or in the same prismatic form as the cocoa powder, and the process of combustion is the same.

The form of the gun is dependent entirely upon the nature of the powder used. As the pressure of the gas constantly increases with the burning of the powder, the maximum force will be reached at the moment the combustion is complete. The length of the bore should, therefore, be just sufficient to enable the powder to be entirely consumed at the exact instant the projectile leaves the muzzle of the piece. A shorter bore would cause much of the powder to be thrown out unconsumed, while a much greater length would retard the projectile by subjecting it to the friction of the bore after the maximum force of the powder had been reached. This accounts for the greatly increased length of the modern cannon. A change in the method of gun construction has accordingly become necessary. Guns are no longer made of cast iron, but are “built up” of steel. The explosion of the powder is, of course, exerted in every direction, against the bore and sides of the piece as well as against the base of the projectile. This produces two strains; a longitudinal strain which is exerted in the direction of the axis of the piece, and a transverse strain which tends to burst the gun. It is necessary, therefore, to have the piece so strong, especially at the points of first explosion, as to counteract these strains, and thus cause the entire force to be exerted upon the projectile in the direction of the “least resistance.” This strength, or “initial tension,” is obtained by shrinking cylinders of steel over the original cylinder of the piece, each outer cylinder or jacket being a few thousandths of an inch smaller in its interior diameter than the outer diameter of the cylinder which it incloses, and being expanded by heating to a sufficient degree to enable it to be slipped over the latter. Upon cooling, the jacket exerts a constant and powerful force of compression, which counteracts the outward pressure of the force of explosion. The longitudinal strain is less dangerous than the other, and is usually counteracted by an interlocking of some of the cylinders or hoops, to which the strain is transmitted from the breech-plug. The art of building up guns has been of slow growth, the first efforts in this direction having been made by Sir W. G. Armstrong nearly half a century ago. The weight of the projectile of the present 16-inch gun in the United States service is 2370 pounds; the charge of powder weighs 1060 pounds, and the extreme range is more than 14 miles. The cost of each shot is $450, and when we consider that this does not include the wear and tear of the gun, it is evident that money has become more than ever before “the sinews of war.”

Not less remarkable than the improvement in cannon is the improvement in mortars. These mortars are very unlike the clumsy weapons of that name manipulated by hand-spikes, which were known in our great war. They are now mounted on a platform which turns on rollers. They are elevated or depressed by a mechanical appliance, are loaded at the breech, are accurately rifled, and can drop their projectiles on the decks of hostile vessels at a range of six miles. They are placed in groups of four, each in a separate pit, some batteries containing as many as four groups, or sixteen mortars. In all important sea-coast batteries both guns and mortars are so arranged as to be fired by electricity, either singly or in volleys.

A dynamite gun has been devised by Captain Zalinsky for the purpose, as the name implies, of throwing a projectile containing dynamite. Attempts to fire dynamite projectiles by means of powder have thus far failed. In the Zalinsky gun the propelling power is compressed air. The projectile contains from fifty to sixty pounds of gelatine dynamite, the explosion of which is terrific. Excellent results have been obtained with Zalinsky’s gun up to a range of 2000 yards, but as this is insignificant in comparison with the enormous range of high-power cannon using powder as a charge, the dynamite gun is still a weapon of limited usefulness. Although the dynamite gun has not as yet fulfilled the desired requirements as to range, promising experiments have been made in firing shells charged with high explosives from mortars using charges of powder, and it is probably a question of only a short time before means will be found for successfully firing dynamite in a similar manner.

The great improvements in field artillery make the cannon of the early battlefields of the century seem, in comparison, almost like harmless toys. The modern field gun is made of steel, is rifled, loads at the breech, and has great rapidity and accuracy of fire. The extreme range of the 3.2-inch field gun in the United States service is about four miles. This, in fact, is beyond the ordinary range of human vision, and it is but rarely that the ground for so great a distance is free from features that obstruct the view. For these reasons the fire of field guns can seldom be utilized beyond a range of two miles. The projectile of the 3.2-inch field gun weighs 13½ pounds, and the charge of powder 3½ pounds. The 3.6-inch gun is a still more powerful weapon, the weight of the projectile and charge being 20 and 4½ pounds respectively. Shells are used against inanimate objects, such as earthworks or buildings; but the great artillery projectile for the battlefield is shrapnel. It is now very different from the crude projectile known by the same name in the early years of the century. The bullets are assembled in circular layers and held in position by “separators,” which are short cast-iron cylinders with hemispherical cavities into which the bullets fit. The bottom separator fits by means of lugs into recesses at the base of the shrapnel, and prevents independent rotation of the charge of bullets. The top separator is smooth on its upper side, and is kept firmly in place by the head of the projectile, which screws against it. The separators prevent movement or deformation of the bullets under shock of discharge, and being weakened by radial cuts, increase the effect by furnishing additional fragments of effective weight. The shrapnel for the 3.2-inch gun contains 162 bullets one half inch in diameter and weighing 41 to the pound. The total number of bullets and individual pieces in the shrapnel is 201.

The heavy sea-coast guns are now mounted either in armored turrets, _en barbette_, or on disappearing gun-carriages. The first system is very costly and is not generally used in the United States. The second system, in which the guns are fired over a parapet and are constantly exposed, is used only in rare cases. The third has been perfected in the United States in the Buffington-Crozier and the Gordon disappearing gun-carriages. These carriages enable the gun to be loaded in safety under cover of the carriage pit, and then to be raised by means of counterweights or compressed air to a position from which it can fire over the parapet. With trained cannoneers, the gun can be raised and fired in twenty seconds, and this brief period of exposure, especially when smokeless powder is used, renders it almost impossible for the enemy to locate the gun with any degree of accuracy. The shock of the recoil, taken up by pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders, brings the piece back, quickly but gently, to the loading position, whence it is again raised for firing.

The siege artillery of the United States army consists of the 5-inch gun, the 7-inch howitzer, and the 7-inch mortar. They all use shell, and their effective range is from three to four miles.

When the enemy is sheltered behind entrenchments it is difficult to reach him with shrapnel fired from field guns. Field mortars have accordingly been devised for this purpose and have given excellent results. The United States 3.6-inch field mortar is rifled, and carries a shrapnel weighing twenty pounds. The weight of the field mortar is only 500 pounds, and it can be easily carried in a cart drawn by a single mule.

But great as the improvements have been in artillery, they are less important than the changes effected in the infantry rifle; for upon the quality of the infantry depends, more than upon anything else, the efficiency of an army. There are many kinds of rifles now in use in the different armies of the world, but in their essential principles they are very similar. All use smokeless powder, and all are provided with a magazine which admits of firing a number of shots without reloading. The Springfield rifle formerly in use in the United States army has been replaced by the Krag-Jorgensen, which has a magazine holding live cartridges, and is provided with a cut-off which enables the piece to be used as a single-shooter. When an emergency demands rapid fire, the opening of the cut-off enables the cartridges in the magazine to be fired in rapid succession. The range of the Krag-Jorgensen is 4066 yards, being practically equal to that of the Mauser, which, in the hands of the Spaniards, inflicted casualties upon our men when they were more than two miles from the hostile position. The difference in the penetrating power of the Krag-Jorgensen and the Springfield is shown in the accompanying illustration, taken from the report of the chief of ordnance for 1893. The Springfield lead bullet was fired with 69 grains of black powder, and penetrated 3.3 inches of poorly seasoned oak, the bullet being badly deformed. With a bullet covered with a German silver jacket the penetration was 5.3 inches, the bullet being again deformed. The Krag-Jorgensen used a bullet consisting of a lead core and a cupronickeled jacket, which was fired with 37 grains of smokeless powder. The bullet penetrated well-seasoned oak to a distance of 24.2 inches and was taken out in perfect condition. The new rifle, at short ranges, has an almost explosive effect and produces a shocking wound; but at ordinary ranges the wounds inflicted by it may be almost characterized as merciful, for the bullet makes a clean puncture, and unless a vital organ is struck the wound heals easily and quickly. The old expression of “forty rounds,” so familiar to veterans of the Civil War, is now obsolete; for no soldier now thinks of going into action with less than 150 cartridges on his person. Not only is the firing more rapid than was formerly the case, but the lighter weight of the cartridge enables a greater number to be carried.

SPRINGFIELD, CAL. 45 (GERMAN SILVER JACKET).

KRAG-JORGENSEN, CAL. 30 (NICKEL STEEL BULLET).]