ORDNANCE, ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
Although the progress in the invention of fire-arms of all descriptions
seems slow during the ages preceding the 19th century, yet it will be
found on investigation that no art progressed faster. No other art was
spurred to activity by such strong incentives, and none received the
same encouragement and reward for its development. The art of war was
the trade of kings and princes, and princely was the reward to the
subject who was the first to invent the most destructive weapon. Under
such high patronage most of the ideas and principles of ordnance now
prevailing were discovered or suggested, but were embodied for the most
part in rude and inefficient contrivances.
The art waited for its success on the development of other arts, and on
the mental expansion and freedom giving rise to scientific investigation
and results.
The cannon and musket themselves became the greatest instruments for the
advancement of the new civilisation, however much it was intended
otherwise by their kingly proprietors, and the new civilisation returned
the compliment through its trained intellects by giving to war its
present destructive efficiency.
To this efficiency, great as the paradox may seem, Peace holds what
quiet fields it has, or will have, until most men learn to love peace
and hate the arts of war.
As to the Chinese is given the credit for the invention of gunpowder, so
they must also be regarded as the first to throw projectiles by its
means. But their inventions in these directions may be classed as
fireworks, and have no material bearing on the modern art of Ordnance.
It is supposed that the word “cannon,” is derived from the same root as
“cane,” originally signifying a hollow reed; and that these hollow reeds
or similar tubes closed at one end were used to fire rockets by powder.
It is also stated that the practice existed among the Chinese as early
as 969 A. D. of tying rockets to their arrows to propel them to greater
distances, as well as for incendiary purposes.
This basic idea had percolated from China through India to the Moors and
Arabs, and in the course of a few centuries had developed into a crude
artillery used by the Moors in the siege of Cordova in 1280. The
Spaniards, thus learning the use of the cannon, turned the lesson upon
their instructors, when under Ferdinand IV. they took Gibraltar from the
Moors in 1309. Then the knowledge of artillery soon spread throughout
Europe. The French used it at the siege of Puy Guillaume in 1338, and
the English had three small guns at Crecy in 1346. These antique guns
were made by welding longitudinal bars of iron together and binding them
by iron rings shrunk on while hot. Being shaped internally and
externally like an apothecary’s mortar, they were called mortars or
bombards. Some were breech-loaders, having a removable chamber at the
breech into which the charge of powder was inserted behind the ball. The
balls were stone. These early cannon, bombards, and mortars were mounted
on heavy solid wooden frames and moved with great difficulty from place
to place. Then in the fifteenth century they commenced to make
wrought-iron cannon, and hollow projectiles, containing a bursting
charge of powder to be exploded by a fuse lit before the shell was
fired. In the next century cannon were cast.
The Hindoos, when their acquaintance was made by the Europeans, were as
far advanced as the latter in cannon and fire-arms. One cannon was found
at Bejapoor, in India, cast of bronze, bearing date 1548, and called the
“Master of the Field,” which weighed 89,600 pounds, and others of
similar size of later dates. Great cast bronze guns of about the same
weight as the Hindoo guns were also produced at St. Petersburg, Russia,
in the sixteenth century.
Many and strange were the names given by Europeans to their cannon in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to denote their size and the
weight of the ball they carried: such as the Assick, the Bombard, the
Basilisk, the cannon Royal, or Carthoun, the Culverin, Demi-culverin,
Falcon, Siren, Serpentine, etc.
The bombards in the fifteenth century were made so large and heavy,
especially in France, that they could not be moved without being taken
apart.
When the heavy, unwieldy bombards with stone balls were used, artillery
was mostly confined to castles, towns, forts, and ships. When used in
the field they were dragged about by many yokes of oxen. But in the
latter part of the fifteenth century, when France under Louis XI. had
learned to cast lighter brass cannon, to mount them on carriages that
could be drawn by four or six horses, and which carriages had trunnions
in which the cannon were swung so as to be elevated or depressed, and
cast-iron projectiles were used instead of stones, field artillery took
its rise, and by its use the maps of the world were changed. Thus with
their artillery the French under Charles VIII., the successor of Louis
XI., conquered Italy.
In the sixteenth century Europe was busy in adopting these and other
changes. Cannon were made of all sizes and calibres, but were not
arranged in battle with much precision. Case shot were invented in
Germany but not brought into general use. Shells were invented by the
Italians and fired from mortars, but their mode of construction was
preserved in great secrecy. The early breech-loaders had been discarded,
as it was not known how to make the breech gas-tight, and the explosions
rendered the guns more dangerous to their users than to the enemy.
In the seventeenth century Holland began to make useful mortar shells
and hand grenades. Maurice and Henry Frederick of Nassau, and Gustave
Adolphus, made many improvements in the sizes and construction of
cannon. In 1674, Coehorn, an officer in the service of the Prince of
Orange, invented the celebrated mortar which bears his name, and the use
of which has continued to the present time. The Dutch also invented the
howitzer, a short gun in which the projectiles could be introduced by
hand. About the same time Comminges of France invented mortars which
threw projectiles weighing 550 pounds. In this part of that century also
great improvements were made under Louis XIV. Limbers, by which the
front part of the gun carriage was made separable from the cannon part
and provided with the ammunition chest; the prolonge, a cord and hook by
which the gun part could be moved around by hand; and the elevating
screw, by which the muzzle of the gun could be raised or
depressed,--were invented.
In the early part of the eighteenth century it was thought by
artillerists in England that the longer the gun the farther it would
carry. One, called “Queen Ann’s Pocket Piece” still preserved at Dover,
is twenty-five feet long and carries a ball only twenty-five pounds in
weight. It was only after repeated experiments that it was learned that
the shorter guns carried the projectile the greatest distance.
The greatest improvements in the eighteenth century were made by
Gribeauval, the celebrated French artillerist, about 1765. He had guns
made of such material and of such size as to adapt them to the different
services to which they were to be put, as field, siege, garrison, and
sea coast. He gave greater mobility to the system by introducing
six-pound howitzers, and making gun carriages lighter; he introduced the
system of fixed ammunition, separate compartments in the gun carriages
for the projectiles, and the charges of powder in paper or cloth bags or
cylinders; improved the construction of the elevating screw, adapted the
tangent scale, formed the artillery into horse batteries, and devised
new equipments and a new system of tactics.
It was with Gribeauval’s improved system that “Citizen Bonaparte, young
artillery officer,” took Toulon; with which the same young “bronze
artillery officer” let go his great guns in the Cul-de-Sac Dauphin
against the church of St. Roch; on the Port Royal; at the Theatre de la
Republique; “and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is
blown into space by it, and became a thing that was.”
It was with this system that this same young officer won his first
brilliant victories in Italy. When the fruit of these victories had been
lost during his absence he reappeared with his favorite artillery, and
on the threshold of the century, in May 1800, as “First Consul of the
Republic” re-achieved at Marengo the supremacy of France over Austria.
As to _small arms_, as before suggested, they doubtless had their origin
in the practice of the Chinese in throwing fire balls from bamboo
barrels by the explosion of light charges of powder, as illustrated to
this day in what are known as “Roman Candles.” Fire-crackers and
grenades were also known to the Chinese and the Greeks.
Among ancient fire-arms the principal ones were the arquebus, also
bombardelle, and the blunderbuss. They were invented in the fourteenth
century but were not much used until the fifteenth century. These guns
for the most part were so heavy that they had to be rested on some
object to be fired. The soldiers carried a sort of tripod for this
purpose. The gun was fired by a slow-burning cord, a live coal, a lit
stick, or a long rod heated at one end, and called a match. The
blunderbuss was invented in Holland. It was a large, short,
funnel-shaped muzzle-loader, and loaded with nails, slugs, etc. The
injuries and hardships suffered by the men who used it, rather than by
the enemy, rendered its name significant. Among the earliest fire-arms
of this period one was invented which was a breech-loader and revolver.
The breech had four chambers and was rotated by hand on an arbour
parallel to the barrel. The extent of its use is not learned. To ignite
the powder the “wheel-lock” and “snap-haunce” were invented by the
Germans in the sixteenth century. The wheel lock consisted of a furrowed
wheel and was turned by the trigger and chain against a fixed piece of
iron on the stock to excite sparks which fell on to the priming. The
snap-haunce, a straight piece of furrowed steel, superseded the
wheel-lock. The sixteenth century had got well started before the
English could be induced to give up the cross-bow and arrow, and adopt
the musket. After they had introduced the musket with the snap-haunce
and wooden ramrod, it became known, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, as
the “Brown Bess.”
The “old flint-lock” was quite a modern invention, not appearing until
the seventeenth century. It was a bright idea to fix a piece of flint
into the cock and arrange it to strike a steel cap on the priming pan
when the trigger was fired; and it superseded the old match, wheel-lock,
and snap-haunce. The flint-lock was used by armies well into the
nineteenth century, and is still in private use in remote localities. As
the arquebus succeeded the bow and arrow, so the musket, a smooth and
single-barrel muzzle-loader with a flint-lock and a wooden ramrod,
succeeded the arquebus. Rifles, which were the old flint-lock muskets
with their barrels provided with spiral grooves to give the bullet a
rotary motion and cause it to keep one point constantly in front during
its flight, is claimed as the invention of Augustin Kutler of Germany in
1520, and also of Koster of Birmingham, England, about 1620. Muskets
with straight grooves are said to have been used in the fifteenth
century.
The rifle with a long barrel and its flint-lock was a favourite weapon
of the American settler. It was made in America, and he fought the
Indian wars and the war of the Revolution with it.
It would not do to conclude this sketch of antique cannon and fire-arms
without referring to Puckle’s celebrated English patent No. 418, of May
15, 1718, for “A Defence.” The patent starts out with the motto:
“Defending King George, your Country, and Lawes,
Is defending Yourselves and Protestant Cause.”
It proceeds to describe a “Portable Gun or Machine” having a single
barrel, with a set of removable chambers which are charged with bullets
before they are placed in the gun, a handle to turn the chambers to
bring each chamber in line with the barrel, a tripod on which the gun is
mounted and on which it is to be turned, a screw for elevating and
turning the gun in different directions, a set of square chambers “for
shooting square bullets against Turks,” a set of round chambers “for
shooting round bullets against the Christians;” and separate drawings
show the square bullets for the Turks and the round bullets for the
Christians. History is silent as to whether Mr. Puckle’s patent was put
in practice, but it contained the germs of some modern inventions.
Among the first inventions of the century was a very important one made
by a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Forsyth, a Scotchman, who in 1803 invented
the percussion principle in fire-arms. In 1807 he patented in England
detonating powder and pellets which were used for artillery. About 1808
General Shrapnel of the English army invented the celebrated shell known
by his name. It then consisted of a comparatively thin shell filled with
bullets, having a fuse lit by the firing of the gun, and adapted to
explode the shell in front of the object fired at. This fuse was
superseded by one invented by General Bormann of Belgium, which greatly
added to the value of case shot.
In 1814 Joshua Shaw of England invented the percussion cap. Thus, by the
invention of the percussion principle by Forsyth, and that little copper
cylinder of Shaw, having a flake of fulminating powder inside and
adapted to fit the nipple of a gun and be exploded by the fall of the
hammer, was sounded the death knell of the old flint-locks with which
the greatest battles of the world had been and were at that time being
fought. The advantages gained by the cap were the certain and
instantaneous fire, the saving in time, power, and powder obtained by
making smaller the orifice through which the ignition was introduced,
and the protection from moisture given by the covering cap. And yet so
slow is the growth of inventions sometimes that all Europe continued to
make the flint-locks for many years after the percussion cap was
invented; and General Scott, in the war between the United States and
Mexico in 1847, declined to give the army the percussion cap musket. The
cap suggested the necessity and invention of machines for making them
quickly and in great quantities.
The celebrated “Colt’s” revolver was invented by Colonel Samuel Colt of
the United States, in 1835. He continued to improve it, and in 1851
exhibited it at the World’s Fair, London, where it excited great
surprise and attention. Since then the revolver has become a great
weapon in both private and public warfare. The next great inventions in
small arms were the readoption and improvement of the breech-loader, the
making of metallic cartridges, the magazine gun, smokeless powder and
other explosives, to which further reference will be made.
To return to cannons:--In 1812 Colonel Bomford, an American officer,
invented what is called the “Columbiad,” a kind of cannon best adapted
for sea-coast purposes. They are long-chambered pieces, combining
certain qualities of the gun, howitzer and mortar, and capable of
projecting shells and solid shot with heavy charges of powder at high
angles of elevation, and peculiarly adapted to defend narrow channels
and sea-coast defences. A similar gun was invented by General Paixhans
of the French army in 1822. The adoption of the Paixhans long-chambered
guns, designed to throw heavy shells horizontally as well as at a slight
elevation and as easily as solid shot, was attended with great results.
Used by the French in 1832, in the quick victorious siege of Antwerp, by
the allies at Sebastopol, where the whole Russian fleet was destroyed in
about an hour, and in the fight of the Kearsarge and the doomed Alabama
off Cherbourg in the American civil war, it forced inventors in the
different countries to devise new and better armour for the defence of
ships. This was followed by guns of still greater penetrative power.
Then as another result effected by these greater guns came the passing
away of the old-fashioned brick and stone forts as a means of defence.
In an interesting address by Major Clarence E. Dutton of the Ordnance
Department, U.S.A., at the Centennial Patent Congress at Washington in
1891, he thus stated what the fundamental improvements were that have
characterised the modern ordnance during the century:
1. The regulation and control of the action of gunpowder in such a
manner as to exert less strain upon the gun, and to impart more energy
to the projectile.
2. To so construct the gun as to transfer a portion of the strain from
the interior parts of the walls which had borne too much of it, to the
exterior parts which had borne too little, thus nearly equalising the
strain throughout the entire thickness of the walls.
3. To provide a metal which should be at once stronger and safer than
any which had been used before.
In the United States General Rodman, “one of the pioneers of armed
science,” commenced about 1847 a series of investigations and
experiments on the power and action of gunpowder and the strains
received by every part of the gun by the exploding gases, of very great
importance; and in this matter he was assisted greatly by Dr. W. E.
Woodbridge, who invented an ingenious apparatus termed a “piezometer,”
or a pressure measurer, by which the pressure of the gases at the
various parts of the gun was determined with mathematical certainty.
Dr. Woodbridge also added greatly to the success of rifled cannon. The
success in rifling small arms, by which an elongated ball is made to
retain the same end foremost during its flight, led again to the
attempts of rifling cannon for the same purpose, which were finally
successful. But this success was due not to the spiral grooves in the
cannon bore, but in attachments to the ball compelling it to follow the
course of the grooves and giving it the proper initial movement. The
trouble with these attachments was that they were either stripped off,
or stripped away, by the gun spirals. Woodbridge in 1850 overcame the
difficulty by inventing an improved _sabot_, consisting of a ring
composed of metal softer than the projectile or cannon, fixed on the
inner end of the projectile and grooved at its rear end, so that when
the gun is fired and the ball driven forward these grooves expand,
acting valvularly to fill the grooves in the gun, thus preventing the
escape of the gases, while the ring at the same time is forced forward
on to the shell so tightly and forcibly that the projectile is
invariably given a rotary motion and made to advance strictly in the
line of axis of the bore, and in the same line during the course of its
flight. This invention in principle has been followed ever since,
although other forms have been given the sabot, and it is due to this
invention that modern rifled cannon have been so wonderfully accurate in
range and efficient in the penetrating and destructive power both on sea
and land.
Woodbridge also invented the _wire-wound cannon_, and a machine for
winding the wire upon the gun, thus giving the breach part, especially,
immense strength.
In England, among the first notable and greater inventors in ordnance
during the latter half of the century, a period which embraces the
reduction to practice of the most wonderful and successful inventions in
weapons of war which the world had up to that time seen, are Lancaster,
who invented the elliptical bore; Sir William Armstrong, who, commencing
in 1885, constructed a gun built of wrought-iron bars twisted into coils
and applied over a steel core and bound by one or more wrought-iron
rings, all applied at white heat and shrunk on by contraction due to
cooling, by which method smooth-bore, muzzle-loading cannon of immense
calibre, one weighing one hundred tons, were made. They were followed by
Armstrong, inventor of breech-loaders; Blakely, inventor of cannon made
of steel tubes and an outer jacket of cast iron; and Sir Joseph
Whitworth, inventor of most powerful steel cannon and compressed steel
projectiles.
In Germany, Friedrich Krupp at Essen, Prussia, invented and introduced
such improvements in breech-loading cannon as revolutionised the
manufacture of that species of ordnance, and established the foundation
of the greatest ordnance works in the world. The first of his great
breech-loading steel guns was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1867.
A Krupp gun finished at Essen in the 70’s was then the largest steel gun
the world had ever seen. It weighed seventy-two tons, and was thirty-two
feet long. The charge consisted of 385 pounds of powder, the shell
weighed 1,660 pounds, having a bursting charge of powder of 22 pounds,
and a velocity of 1,640 feet per second. It was estimated that if the
gun were fired at an angle of 43° the shell would be carried a distance
of fifteen miles. It was in the Krupp guns, and also in the Armstrong
breech-loaders, that a simple feature was for the first time introduced
which proved of immense importance in giving great additional expansive
force to the explosion of the powder. This was an increase in the size
of the powder chamber so as to allow a vacant space in it unfilled with
powder.
In the United States, Rodman, commencing in 1847, and Dahlgren in 1850,
and Parrott in 1860, invented and introduced some noticeable
improvements in cast-iron, smooth-bore, and rifled cannon.
In France General Paixhans and Colonel Treuille de Beaulieu improved the
shells and ordnance.
The latest improvements in cannon indicate that the old smooth-bore
muzzle-loader guns are to be entirely superseded by breech-loaders, just
as in small arms the muzzle-loading musket has given way to the
breech-loading rifle.
A single lever is now employed, a single turn of which will close or
open the breech, and when opened expel the shell by the same movement.
Formerly breech-loaders were confined to the heaviest ordnance; now they
are a part of the lightest field pieces.
As to the operation of those immense guns above referred to, which
constitute principally sea-coast defences and the heavy armament for
forts, gun carriages have been invented whereby the huge guns are
quickly raised from behind immense embrasures by pneumatic or hydraulic
cylinders, quickly fired (the range having been before accurately
ascertained) and then as quickly lowered out of sight, the latter
movement being aided by the recoil action of the gun.
It is essential that the full force of the gases of explosion shall be
exerted against the base of the projectile, and therefore all escape of
such gases be prevented. To this end valuable improvements in _gas
checks_ have been made,--one kind consisting of an annular canvas sack
containing asbestos and tallow placed between the front face of the
breech block and a mushroom-shaped piece, against which the explosion
impinges.
As among projectiles and shells for cannon those have been invented
which are loaded with dynamite or other high explosive, a new class of
_Compressed air ordnance_ has been started, in which air or gas is used
for the propelling power in place of powder, whereby the chances of
exploding such shells in the bore of the gun are greatly lessened.
The construction of metals, both for cannon to resist most intense
explosives and for plates to resist the penetration of the best
projectiles, have received great attention. They are matters pertaining
to metallurgy, and are treated of under that head. The strife still
continues between impenetrable armour plate and irresistible
projectiles. Within the last decade or so shells have been invented with
the design simply to shatter or fracture the plate by which the way is
broken for subsequent shots. Other shells have been invented carrying a
high explosive and capable of penetrating armour plates of great
thickness, and exploding after such penetration has taken place.
A great accompaniment to artillery is “The Range Finder,” a telescopic
apparatus for ascertaining accurately the location and distance of
objects to be fired at.
Returning to _small arms_,--at the time percussion caps were invented in
England, 1803-1814, John H. Hall of the United States invented a
breech-loading rifle. It was in substance an ordinary musket cut in two
at the breech, with the rear piece connected by a hinge and trunnion to
the front piece, the bore of the two pieces being in line when clamped,
and the ball and cartridge inserted when the chamber was thrown up. A
large number were at once manufactured and used in the U.S. Army. A
smaller size, called _carbines_, were used by the mounted troops. After
about twenty years’ use these guns began to be regarded as dangerous in
some respects, and their manufacture and use stopped, although the
carbines continued in use to some extent in the cavalry. A
breech-loading rifle was also invented by Colonel Pauly of France in
1812, and improved by Dreyse in 1835; also in Norway in 1838, and in a
few years adopted by Sweden as superior to all muzzle-loading arms.
About 1841 the celebrated “Needle Gun” was invented in Prussia, and its
superiority over all muzzle-loaders was demonstrated in 1848 in the
first Schleswig-Holstein war.
_Cartridges_, in which the ball and powder were secured together in one
package, were old in artillery, as has been shown, but their use for
small arms is a later invention. _Metallic_ cartridges, made of sheet
metal with a fulminate cap in one end and a rim on the end of the shell
by which it could be extracted after the explosion, were invented by
numerous persons in Europe and America during the evolution of the
breech-loader. Combined metal case and paper patented in England in
1816, and numerous wholly metallic cartridge shells were patented in
England, France, and United States between 1840 and 1860. M. Lefaucheux
of France, in the later period, devised a metal _gas check_ cartridge
which was a great advance.
A number of inventors in the United States besides Hall had produced
breech-loading small arms before the Civil War of 1861, but with the
exception of Colt’s revolver and Sharp’s carbine, the latter used by the
cavalry to a small extent, none were first adopted in that great
conflict. Later, the Henry or Winchester breech-loading rifle and the
Spencer magazine gun were introduced and did good service. But the whole
known system of breech-loading small arms was officially condemned by
the U.S. Military authorities previous to that war. The absence of
machines to make a suitable cartridge in large quantities and vast
immediate necessities compelled the authorities to ignore the tested
Prussian and Swedish breech-loaders and those of their own countrymen
and to ransack Europe for muskets of ancient pattern. These were worked
by the soldiers under the ancient tactics, of load, ram, charge and
fire, until a stray bullet struck the ramrod, or the discharge of a few
rammed cartridges so over-heated the musket as to thereby dispense with
the soldier and his gun for further service in that field. However,
private individuals and companies continued to invent and improve, and
the civil war in America revolutionised the systems of warfare and its
weapons. The wooden walls of the navies disappeared as a defence after
the conflict between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and muzzle-loading
muskets became things of the past.
Torpedoes, both stationary and movable, then became a successful weapon
of warfare. Soon after that war, and when the United States had adopted
the Springfield breech-loading rifle, the works at Springfield were
equipped with nearly forty different machines, each for making a
separate part of a gun in great quantities. Many of these had been
invented by Thomas Blanchard forty years before. That great inventor of
labour-saving machinery had then designed machines for the shaping and
making of gun stocks and for forming the accompanying parts. Blanchard
was a contemporary of Hall, and Hall, to perfect his breech-loader, was
the first to invent machines for making its various parts. His was the
first interchangeable system in the making of small arms.
Army officers had come to regard “the gun as only the casket while the
cartridge is the jewel;” and to this end J. G. Gill at the U.S. Arsenal
at Frankford, Philadelphia, devised a series of cartridge-making
machines which ranked among the highest triumphs of American invention.
The single breech-loader is now being succeeded by the magazine gun, by
which a supply of cartridges in a chamber is automatically fed into the
barrel. The Springfield, has been remodelled as a magazine loader. Among
later types of repeating rifles, known from the names of their
inventors, are the “Krag-Jorgensen,” and the “Mauser,” and the crack of
these is heard around the world. Modern rifles are rendered more deadly
by the fact that they can be loaded and fired in a recumbent position,
and with smokeless powder, by which the soldier and his location remain
concealed from his foe.
The recoil of the gun in both large and small arms is now utilised to
expel the fired cartridge shell, and to withdraw a fresh one from its
magazine and place it in position in the chamber. _Compressed air and
explosive gases_ have been used for the same purpose. A small _electric
battery_ has been placed in the stock to explode the cartridge when the
trigger is pulled.
Sporting guns have kept pace with other small arms in improvements, and
among modern forms are those which discharge in alternative succession
the two barrels by a single trigger. Revolvers have been improved and
the Smith and Wesson is known throughout the world.
The idea of _Machine Guns_, or _Mitrailleuses_, was not a new one, as we
have seen from Puckle’s celebrated patent of 1718. Also history mentions
a gun composed of four breech-loading tubes of small calibre, placed on
a two-wheeled cart used in Flanders as early as 1347, and of four-tubed
guns used by the Scotch during the civil war in 1644. The machine gun
invented by Dr. Gatling of the United States during the Civil War and
subsequently perfected, has become a part of the armament of every
civilised nation. The object of the gun is to combine in one piece the
destructive effect of a great many, and to throw a continuous hail of
projectiles. The gun is mounted on a tripod; the cartridges are
contained in a hopper mounted on the breech of the gun and are fed from
locks into the barrels (which are usually five or ten in number) as the
locks and barrels are revolved by a hand crank. As the handle is turned
the cartridges are first given a forward motion, which thrusts them into
the barrels, closes the breech and fires the cartridges in succession,
and then a backward motion which extracts the empty shells. The gun
weighs one hundred pounds and firing may be kept up with a ten-barreled
gun at one thousand shots a minute.
The _Hotchkiss_ revolving cannon is another celebrated American
production named from its inventor, and constructed to throw heavier
projectiles than the Gatling. It also has revolving barrels and great
solidity in the breech mechanism. It has been found to be of great
service in resisting the attacks of torpedo boats. It is adapted to fire
long-range shells with great rapidity and powerful effect, and is
exceedingly efficient in defence of ditches and entrenchments.
_Explosives._--The desire to make the most effective explosives for
gunnery led to their invention not only for that purpose but for the
more peaceful pursuit of blasting. _Gun Cotton_, that mixture of nitric
acid and cotton, made by Schönbein in 1846, and experimented with for a
long time as a substitute for gunpowder in cannon and small arms and
finally discarded for that purpose, is now being again revived, but used
chiefly for blasting. This was followed by the discovery of
nitro-glycerine, a still more powerful explosive agent--too powerful and
uncontrollable for guns as originally made. They did not supersede
gunpowder, but smokeless powders have come, containing nitro-cellulose,
or nitro-glycerine rendered plastic, coherent and homogeneous, and
converted into rods or grains of free running powder, to aid the
breech-loaders and magazine guns, while the high explosives, gun-cotton,
nitro-glycerine, dynamite, dualine, etc., have become the favorite
agencies for those fearful offensive and defensive weapons, the
_Torpedoes_. From about the time of the discovery of gunpowder,
stationary and floating chambers and mines of powder, to be discharged
in early times by fuses (later by percussion or electricity), have
existed, but modern inventions have rendered them of more fearful
importance than was ever dreamed of before this century. The latest
invention in this class is the _submarine torpedo boat_, which, moving
rapidly towards an enemy’s vessel, suddenly disappears from sight
beneath the water, and strikes the vessel at its lowest or most
vulnerable point.
To the inquiry as to whether all this vast array of modern implements of
destruction is to lessen the destruction of human life, shorten war,
mitigate its horrors and tend toward peace, there can be but one answer.
All these desirable results have been accomplished whenever the new
inventions of importance have been used. “Warlike Tribes” have been put
to flight so easily by civilised armies in modern times that such tribes
have been doubted as possessing their boasted or even natural courage.
Nations with a glorious past as to bravery but with a poor armament have
gone down suddenly before smaller forces armed with modern ordnance. The
results would have been reversed, and the derision would have proceeded
from the other side, if the conditions had been reversed, and those
tribes and brave peoples been armed with the best weapons and the
knowledge of their use. The courage of the majority of men on the
battle-field is begot of confidence and enthusiasm, but this confidence
and enthusiasm, however great the cause, soon fail, and discretion
becomes the better part of valour, if men find that their weapons are
weak and useless against vastly superior arms of the enemy. The
slaughter and destruction in a few hours with modern weapons may not be
more terrible than could be inflicted with the old arms by far greater
forces at close quarters in a greater length of time in the past, but
the end comes sooner; and the prolongation of the struggle with renewed
sacrifices of life, and the long continued and exhausting campaigns,
giving rise to diseases more destructive than shot or shell, are thereby
greatly lessened, if not altogether avoided.