Slipped in at the
back door or rammed home at the front, delicately stirred up by the
insinuating needle and its titbit of fulminate or bluntly ordered off
by the snappish percussion-cap, it is the same obedient and faithful
messenger, and goes on its appointed errand in much the same style.
Under the ancient regime of the musket it required the soldier's
weight in lead to kill him. Its point-blank range was about sixty
yards, but precision even at that short distance it by no means
possessed. At the battle of Fontenoy the English and French Guards,
drawn up in opposite lines, conversed with each other prior to firing,
like two groups of friends across the street. "Gentlemen of the French
Guards, fire!" was the courteous invitation of the British commander.
"The French Guards never fire first," was the reply. And not till then
did punctilio come to an end. Such a colloquy in our day would need
to be carried on with forty-horse power speaking-trumpets, or with the
thunderous articulation of that between the bellowing Alps and echoing
Jura. Even smooth-bore field-pieces, with point-blank of three hundred
and twenty yards and service range of one thousand, have to keep their
distance. It is a rare thing now for cannon to be captured by a charge
of cavalry or the bayonet. The rifle destroys _quantum suff._ of their
horses, and, their support overpowered, they remain a helpless prey.
For this default of the blustering cannon in the trying of conclusions
with its quiet little cousin, the natural remedy is to improve its
interior in the same manner.
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