CHAPTER XVI.

ORDNANCE, ARMS, AMMUNITION, AND EXPLOSIVES.

This Art Slow in Growth, but no Art Progressed Faster.--The Incentives to its Development.--The Greatest Instruments in the New Civilisation.--Peace and its Fruits Established by them.--Its History.--Chinese Cannon.--India.--The Moors.-- Arabs.--Cannon at Cordova in 1280.--The Spaniards and Gibraltar, 1309.--The Spread of Artillery through Europe.--Description of Ancient Guns.--Breech Loaders and Stone Cannon Balls.--Wrought Iron Cannon and Shells in 15th Century.--Big Cannon of the Hindoos and Russians.--Strange Names.--France under Louis XI.--Improvements of the Sixteenth Century.--Holland’s Mortar Shells and Grenades in the Seventeenth.--Coehorn Mortars and Dutch Howitzers.--Louis XIV.--French Artillery Conquers Italy.-- Eighteenth Century.--“Queen Ann’s Pocket Piece.”--Gribeauval the Inventor of the Greatest Improvements in the Eighteenth.-- His System Used by Bonaparte at Toulon, the French Revolution, and in Italy.--Marengo, 1800.--Small Arms, their History.--From the Arquebus to the Modern Rifle.--Rifle, the Weapon of the American Settler, and the Revolution.--Puckle’s Celebrated Breech-Loading Cannon Patent, and Christian and Turk Bullets.-- 1803, Percussion Principle in Fire-arms, Invented by a Clergyman, Forsyth.--1808, Genl. Shrapnel.--Bormann of Belgium.--1814, Shaw and the Cap.--Flint Locks Still in Use, 1847.--Colt’s Revolvers, 1835-1851.--History of Cannon again Reverted to.--Columbiads of Bomford.--Paixhan in 1822.--Shells of the Crimea.--Kearsarge and Alabama.--Requirements of Modern Ordnance.--Rodman One of the Pioneers.--Woodbridge’s Wire Wound Guns, Piezometer, and Shell Sabot.--Sir William Armstrong and Sir Jos. Whitworth.--Krupp’s Cannon and Works.--The Latest Improvements.--Compressed Air Ordnance.--Constructions of Metals and Explosives.--The “Range Finder.”--Small Arms again Considered.--History of the Breech Loader and Metallic Cartridges.--Wooden Walls and Stone Forts disappeared.--Monitor and Merrimac.--Blanchard and Hall.--Gill.--Springfield Rifle.-- Machine Guns.--Electric Battery.--Gatling’s, Hotchkiss’.-- Explosives.--Torpedoes.--Effect of Modern Weapons. 252