Weaponry

“ What must be the dexterity of the arrangement by which a thousand men can be victualled, at the rate of three meals a-day, for four months; a thousand men housed, bedded, clothed, and accoutred; a battery of a hundred and twenty guns—the complement of an army of fifty thousand men, and two or three times the weight of field-guns—fought; this mighty vessel navigated through every weather, and the profoundest practical science applied to her management, through night and day, for years together? ”

“ Any officer who has been present at great operations of this nature will understand what it is for an army to land in narrow and widely separated creeks all its munitions of war—its shells, its cannon-shot, its heavy guns, mortars, its powder, its gun-carriages, its platforms, its fascines, gabions, sandbags, its trenching tools, and all the various matériel requisite for the siege of extensive and formidable lines of fortifications and batteries. ”

“ One of the old, glamorous features of war survives in these glowing braziers, spreading their genial rays among the little houses and lighting the faces of the men who stand or squat in encircling groups around the coals, which dry wet clothes, slake the moisture of a section of earth, make the bayonets against the walls glisten, and reveal the position of a machine-gun with its tape ready for firing. ”

“ We fight upon a collective plan nowadays. If we propose to engage in battle, we begin by welding a hundred thousand men into one composite giant. We weld a hundred thousand rifles, a million bombs, a thousand machine-guns, and as many pieces of artillery, into one huge weapon of offence, with which we arm our giant. ”

“ In early days the weapon of war was the sword; now it is the magazine rifle. Among the ancients, men fought with javelins and daggers; now they employ shells and bombs. Dreadnoughts are built, torpedoes invented, and every few days new ammunition is forthcoming. ”

“ Armament.—The guns for arming the place should be placed in position or in store within the works before the beginning of hostilities. There should be mounted in commanding positions a sufficient number of high-power guns to hold the enemy’s first works at a distance and to fire upon his camps, etc., if placed too near. In addition to these, a full supply of light guns, including machine and rapid-fire guns, should be at all times equipped and supplied for immediate use in meeting an assault or surprise. ”

“ All the efficient parts of an army that may be brought into action are called effective, and generally consist of artillery, cavalry, and infantry, with their necessary appendages, such as hospital staff, wagon-train, etc. Effective forces of a country; all the disposable strength, vigor, and activity of any armed proportion of native or territorial population. The navy of a country must be looked upon as part of the effective force of the country, to which is added the marines.
Forcing. The operation of making a bullet take the grooves of a rifle. ”

“ In a general sense, comprehend weapons both of an offensive and defensive character, but in the usual restricted sense they only embrace the former, and in modern warfare include the gun and bayonet, the rifle, the pistol, the carbine, the sword, the lance, cannon, etc., all of which are noticed under their respective heads. ”

“ Arrived at the guns, I alone will face the enemy, while all of you, paying no heed to the fighting, will harness yourselves to one gun and bring it in. We shall then, at least, have one gun less against us, and may perhaps be able to use the captured one in defence. ”

“ And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet ”

“ The war is remarkable in every way, primarily as the first instance, since the firearm was introduced, in which regular soldiers came under careful, well-directed, aimed, rifle fire, and were in every case beaten. ”

“ In a few places you can get out and stand on the open ground without much danger. The spectacle is curious—practically (p. 177) nothing visible to indicate that there is a war on. No soldiers in sight, only a lot of shell-holes and barbed wire, and a general sense of desolation, with an occasional crack of a rifle bullet, the whistle and crash of Boche shells and the bang of our own guns from just behind. ”

“ War is almost reduced to a mechanical interchange of volleys and salvoes, and to the intermittent fire of rifles and machine guns, with short rushes at the last, in which there is no place for the dignity and grace of the antique battle of the standard. ”

“ Zero time is 9 p.m., and exactly on the second hell breaks out. Guns in the rear roar out in fury. Trench mortars close at hand vomit forth their missiles of death, and even machine-guns and rifle batteries help to swell the crescendo of battle. The ranges are well known, and the guns do their work without harming our men, who are now crawling forward. ”

“ Trains of Artillery, cannon, ammunition—all that belong to our army fell into the hands of the enemy, for the dispersion was horrid. Our loss in dead, wounded and dispersed, is reckoned at six thousand men. The loss of the enemy is said to be greater, but you know that this way of expression among us is the fashion. ”

“ The vastly expensive armaments of the present—the rifled breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. ”

“ The suffering of years, the eternal waiting for a decision of arms that did not come, the increasing horror of confronting weapons unknown in the early months—heavy artillery, gas, liquid fire, aëroplane attacks—left their mark upon our soldiers. ”

“ Is it within your knowledge that those who make guns seek ever to make them powerful enough to penetrate the thickest armor; and that the men who make armor seek always to make it strong enough to resist the most powerful guns, so that first the guns are stronger, and then the armor, and then the guns and then the armor again, until nations groan beneath the burden of extravagance? ”

“ From a score of places, representing so many different points of the compass, rifles gushed fire, the sharp cracks of the weapons rang out in the stillness, and the thud and pingeing of rifle balls were everywhere. ”

“ The general sketch of the history and development of weapons of offence and defence is given under Arms and Armour; particular weapons are treated under such heads as Halberd, Lance, Spear, Sword, Gun, Pistol, Rifle, Ordnance and Machine-guns. ”

“ The two halves of society will then be fairly arrayed against each other; and for ruthless weapons—for sword, dagger, and pistol on one side, and bayonet, sabre, and carbine on the other—we shall have the more peaceful and courteous instruments, silvery words, blandest smiles, and the happiest self-possession, opposed by cautious interrogation, wary looks and silent heavy doubtings. ”

“ BY H. A. GWYNNE. II.—Artillery.
"When a battery comes under rifle fire it becomes worse than useless," once said a well-known foreign military expert. And if this statement is to be accepted, as we accept Euclid's axioms, then indeed I should be inclined to say that the art of war has become revolutionised completely. ”

“ And in all ages a certain barbaric warfare has been waged with soldiers of tin and lead and wood, with the weapons of the wild, with the catapult, the elastic circular garter, the peashooter, the rubber ball, and such-like appliances--a mere setting up and knocking down of men. ”

“ These sound tactics—the only tactics appropriate to modern firearms—cannot be hurried, for to charge men armed with the magazine rifle and not yet shaken is to sacrifice your troops to their own bravery. ”

“ The musket, the rifle, the pistol, the cannon were one by one evolved, to develop in the nineteenth century into the breech-loader, the machine gun, the bomb, and the multitude of devices fitted to bring about death and destruction by wholesale, instead of by the retail methods of older days. ”

“ Let us first consider the case of the soldier. As every one is aware, the chief feature in the military history of the past twenty years has been the vast improvements effected in firearms. We have passed, by successive stages, from smooth-bore muskets of short range, inaccurate firing, and slow loading, to rifles of long range, great accuracy, and rapid firing. In artillery the advance has been proportionate. ”

“ Day by day the pressure of armaments is growing greater, and we may almost hope that the very fiendish nature of modern weapons may bring about a blessed reductio ad absurdum, and leave war as a thing ludicrous, and not to be contemplated by sane men! ”

“ Here and there was an old sword or a pistol that had seen service in the Thirty years’ War; but most of the men carried very efficient axes,—an excellent weapon against a tree, and not a bad one with a bear in close conflict, if such a thing ever does take place in a skal; but the fact is, the beasts on these occasions are so completely cowed, that they rarely, if ever, show fight. ”

“ Then every cheek flushed crimson, and strong jaws set like steel, and the veins on the hands that clasped the rifle handles swelled almost to bursting with the fervour of the grip, and that look from those silent, armed men spoke more eloquently than ever spoke the tongues of orators. ”

“ She is training Arabs and negroes to handle machine-guns with great efficiency, to throw the latest type of bombs, to be familiar with field guns and heavy artillery, to shoot straight with the rifle and stab straight with the bayonet. ”

“ Under the general term ordnance and ordnance stores are included all guns, howitzers, mortars, rockets, and projectiles of every description, the explosives used in warfare, all gun-carriages, limbers, caissons, mortar-beds, battery-wagons, and traveling-forges with their equipments, and all other apparatus and machines required for the service and manœuvres of artillery at sieges or in the field ”

“ Every man was armed with sword, pistol, and rifle, and almost before the boys had recovered from the first gasp of astonishment, the bulwarks were lined with rows of fully armed, determined looking men, who stood silently at their posts awaiting further orders. ”

“ Weapons were so nearly divine, so full of the warlike temper of their owners, and so often endowed with powers of their own, that it seemed as if they themselves were living agents in the deeds wrought with them. ”

“ All the attempts of the enemy, therefore, to induce our soldiers to part with their ammunition proving fruitless, the French, irritated at their obstinacy, attacked our squares sword in hand, but were always forced to make a precipitate flight, leaving the ground around each square, covered with their killed and wounded. ”

“ While vigor leaps in great tidal pulses along your veins, you stand in the thickest of the fray, and broadsword and battle-axe come crashing down through helmet and visor. When force has spent itself, you withdraw from the field, your weapons pass into younger hands, you rest under your laurels, and your works do follow you. ”

“ We purpose to trace a brief sketch of the progress of invention in offensive weapons, and more particularly in that class of fire-arms used either in hunting or war, by a single individual, and generally denominated small-arms, in contradistinction to artillery. ”

“ They are used to stop up a breach, or a pass, or to secure a camp, and are sometimes rolled down on the enemy in an assault. The sword, the musket, the pike, and the bayonet, the cannon, the howitzer, and the mortar, with granades, rockets, and shells, are the principal weapons of our present wars. ”

“ But in the greatest war that the world has yet seen this idea received a rude shock. The skill with which huge guns can be loaded, ranged and trained upon a moving target rather more than equalised matters. ”

“ The light training which we carried out each day now included a very considerable amount of bomb throwing, and it seemed as though the bomb was to be made the chief weapon of the infantry soldier, instead of the rifle and bayonet, which always has been, and always will be, a far better weapon than any bomb. ”

“ Another great section of the community, the military element, will also fall within the attraction of this possible synthesis, and will inevitably undergo profound modification. Of the probable development of warfare a later chapter shall treat, and here it will suffice to point out that at present science stands proffering the soldier vague, vast possibilities of mechanism, and so far he has accepted practically nothing but rifles which he cannot sight and guns that he does not learn to move about. ”

“ Once more we are led to contrast the ancient conditions, under which the weapons of a large army could not be brought to bear, with modern conditions, where it is physically possible for the weapons of ten thousand to be concentrated on one. ”

“ When the four had been drawn and their limbs lay o'er the field, then the attack begins; but all their toil is vain; for howsoever they may hurl and throw their missiles, they can avail nought. And yet they try hard; they throw and hurl a thick cloud of bolts and javelins and darts. ”

“ Indeed, our military law makes it the duty of every man, not exempted by law, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, to arm himself with a musket, rifle, or some firelock, with a certain quantity of ammunition, etc. ”

“ You have got to move obvious necessaries, such as food and fuel and housing-timber and spare clothes; and human frames—that to marching men are heavier at the end of a long day than anything in the world; and rifles, bayonets and bombs, the ultimate ratio decidendi of all operations; and shells that look like death, and weigh as much as a model bungalow; and frowning Frankensteins of guns that look like the Day of Judgment, and weigh as much as a small foundry; and the wounded who come back with the Cross, steeped in blood, to stand as a fit symbol of their sacrifice. ”