MODERN WAR: ATTACK AND DEFENCE.
1 Adam Street, Adelphi, 25th December 1854. Sin—The question of projectile weapons has been Bo deeply mooted during the present war, and so many brains have been set to work, that it is probable nothing but a sudden peace could stop the changes that are in apparent pro- gress. The Lancaster cannon, the Colt's revolver, and what is called the Minie rifle i by a strange misnomer, constitute our present superiority of wea- pons. There s no Mink' rifle—there is a Minie bullet. About the year 1812, Staudenmayer, the gunmaker of Charing Cross, advocated a "thimble-bul- let." In 1827, M. Delvigne, of the Garde Royale, made some experiments, and in 1841 obtained a patent "for hollowing the base of a cylinder conical bullet" to expand at the base. This bullet from defective construction being found irregular, Captain Minie, of the School of Vincennes, applied an iron cap at the back of the bullet for the purpose of expanding it equally. This is all that Captain Mir& did, and his plan is not the most approved in the Eneish army. The rifle is the pattern produced in the Government works at Enfield; the bullet is the cylinder conical form perfected by Mr. Pritchett, an English gunmaker ; and therefore the "king of weapons" should be called, at least in the English army, the Pritchett rifle, and not the Minie rifle, seeing that it is Mr. Pritchett's bullet which constitutes its efficiency. ' But "what man has done man may do." If the war continue, the Czar also may get Pritchett rifles and Colt's revolvers manufactured at Liege or elsewhere. Our consolation is that he cannot improvise either Englishmen or Frenchmen to wield them—" an Englishman's abune his might ! " And though the newspapers say that Colonel Colt is about to do business with the Czar, we may hope that the Colonel has Anglo-Saxon leanings, and will supply revolvers analogous to Sam Slick's wooden clocks—with a screw loose—useless to the purchaser; in which ease there will be no need to call on King Leopold to stop the issue by his lieges. Still the Czar may, by hook or by crook, obtain rifles and revolvers ; and in a melee of revolvers, the battle may be to the dogged as well as the brave. We must not count upon the use of such weapons, further than while we retain their exclusive use. Our armies are not sent forth as gladiators or butchers, but as stern executors of the laws of nations, doing justice on the malefactor and his abettors and instruments. Our science and skill are more than a match for his brute numbers, and the revolver should be quite a useless weapon in the strife of modern science—good for incursions upon Indiana and Mexicans, but stills mere instrument of personal strife, and not the weapon of a scientific soldier. La truth, that which has won us so much reputation in the Crimea— the magnificent exhibition of ph3sic4l power and personal courage in hand-to- hand strife—is in one point of view a reproach to us. It is a waste of brave men, seeing that greater results could have been accomplished without waste, had our military mechanism kept pace with our civil mechanism. It would have been no reproach to Russia to be behindhand in machinery of war, for the stimulus of the energies of peace mechanism has been lacking to her ; yet she has procured Liege rifles and ship-gunsequal to our own; and though she may not be able to keep pace with us in artillery when her Se- bastopol stores are used up, we may be sure that rifles and revolvers she will have, for she can import, if needful, mechanicians with more intellect than morality to manufacture them for her. Our business, then, should be incessantly to surpass the present with our preparations for the future, to consider that any weapon which has attained perfection is an indication to us to seek a newer track with other improve- ments for which our manufacturing power gives us constant facilities denied to a barbarous power; and which facilities, when attained by barbarians, will take them out of the pale of barbarism and out of the guidance of despots. With his fabulous number of soldiers, the Czar cannot move them readily or cheaply without railroads; to maintain railroads, he must have commerce ; and with extensive commerce, the industrial and not the military portion of the nation must be the ultimate rulers, and their interests will not be war or aggression on their neighbours. England is at the head of manufac- turing power and the power of transport, and she seeks no aggression. France, daily becoming more manufacturing, also denounces mere wars of conquest ; and such will ultimately be the case with Russia.
Meanwhile, throwing revolvers out of the account as a mere weapon of pioneers of the wilderness, and regarding the existing rifle as a fragment of the hunter, chiefly useful to those possessed of superior skill, and giving no advantage when both sides possess it and are equally skilled in its use, we must turn our attention to weapons that will excel it, increasing the range while maintaining the same accuracy of flight. We may be sure that the practice of picking off Russian gunners by French chasseurs will be met by similar men on the Russian side, and that plans will be adopted on both sides of so guarding the embrasures that no shot will get in thereat, though they may get out. This point attained, the question will be, which side can produce and use the most destructive guns and projectiles.
The Russians have kept us out of Sebastopol, because, though inferior as soldiers, their numbers have been comparatively unlimited, and their guns and ammunition have been equal to our own in range, and long gathered together in enormous quantities, while we for want of fitting appliances have been unable to carry ours in sufficient amount to the camp. This difficulty is now about to be mastered by an efficient road, which may be moved when required in any desirable direction. For the first time the railway becomes part and parcel of warlike machinery, and the weight of guns ceases to be an impediment. Portable engines running on rails, and made fixtures in any place, can drag up any required load, and the materials of a fort as well as the artillery can be gathered together. A casemated gallery of iron plates, armed with heavy guns of five miles range, might by means of rails be made moveable like a land ship, and as incapable of being boarded as a three- decker, with the power of steam to concentrate a shower of continuous grape on all approachers. It would be aperfectlypracticable thing by means of a railway to push forward a kind of iron tortoise with a sharp front that would cause all shot to glance, and with .a sufficiently long and powerful gun rightly constructed and worked, to maintain a clear path within its range, and sweep down all obstacles, with the gunners sheltered from injury. Ere projectiles were used with gunpowder, it was a custom fer warriors to shelter themselves with eorslets and shields and ramparts. Our archers went to battle with a shield or pavisse as big as a door, behind which they stood, when it was planted by its spikes in the ground, sheltered from the foeman's shot. With the advent of powder-impelled bullets all defences were east aside save the Highland target, used with the sword; and that went also when the bayonet replaced the sword. The reason appears to have been the difficulty of transit with the requisite strength of shields. But modern appliances would permit of shot-proof moveable defences, behind which artillery of long range, guarded by infantry, could advance, render- ing ten men a match for a hundred. We know that a well-defended field- work is a formidable obstacle. A moveable testudo—a loopholed slanting wall of interlocking iron plates—would be more so; and we know, by the ex- perience of Inkerman' that had the defences been perfect, the slaughter of the Russians would have been multiplied with scarcely any loss to the de- fenders. If we can put a gun-boat into armour as a shelter from shot, so also by means of the railway can we do by a land battery, and in such ease a hundred men are worth a thousand. Nothing but similar means could prevail against such a system ; and such means are a puzzle to the bar- barians, while they are the every-day process of civilized men. There is much more to be said on this matter.
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