AIR-BOMBING IN THE NAPOLEONIC WAR [To the Editor of THE
SPECTATOR.] Sin,—It would be interesting to know when the idea of bombing from the air first occurred. In The Letters of Napoleon to Marie-Louise, on pages 101 and 102, dealing with the burn- ing of Moscow, it is stated " New fires sprang up at various Points. Rostoptschin, the Governor, had had a number of fire-bombs made, intending to drop them from a balloon on the French troops ; now hundreds of incendiaries, splicing them between two strips of wood, began hurling these fire- bombs on to the housetops."
Three years later, according to the diary of a gunner-officer nt Quatre Bras, he kept himself and his subaltern dry through- out •thet stormy night owing to the fact that he had brought his umbrella with him, so they both sheltered under a hedge protected by that military instrument. Apparently, then, since we hear but little more of umbrellas in the Army, when umbrellas went out—air-bombing came in. And so the world
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