Friedrich Engels 
On Rifled Cannon 

On Rifled Cannon. 

I. 

The first attempts at increasing the range and precision of ordnance by rifling 
the bore, and thereby giving the shot a rotation vertical to the Une of propul- 
sion, date from the 17th century. There is a small rifled gun at Munich, 
manufactured in Nuremberg in 1694; it has eight grooves and a bore of about 
two inches diameter. During the whole of the 18th century, experiments were 
made, both in Germany and in England, with rifled cannon, some of them 
breech-loading. Though the calibers were smaU, the results obtained were 

very satisfactory; the English two-pounders in 1776, at a range of 1,300 yards, 

gave a lateral deflection of two feet only—a degree of precision which no 
other gun at the time was capable of approaching. In the same year, these 
rifled cannon were for the first time used for projecting oblong shot. 
These experiments, however, remained for a long while without any 
practical results. The current of military opinion at that time altogether went 
against rifled arms. The rifle itself was then a very clumsy instrument, its 
loading was a slow and tedious operation, requiring considerable skill. It was 
a weapon unfit for general warfare at a period when rapid firing, whether 
of deployed Unes, of heads of columns, or of skirmishers, was one of the 
chief desiderata in battle. Napoleon would have no rifles in his army; in 
England and Germany, a few battaUons only were equipped with them; in 
America and Switzerland alone, the rifle remained the national weapon. 
The Algerian war was the occasion to bring the rifle again into credit, and 
to cause improvements in its construction which were but the beginning of 
that colossal revolution in the whole system of firearms which is even now 
far from its conclusion. The smooth-bore muskets of the French were no 

match for the long espingardas of the Arabs; their greater length and better 
material, which admitted of a heavier charge, enabled the Kabyles and 
Bedouins to fire on the French at distances where the regulation musket was 
utterly powerless. The Duke of Orleans, having seen and admired the Prus- 

sian and Austrian chasseurs, organized the French chasseurs on their model, 

who soon, for armament, equipment, and tactics, became the first troops of 
their class in the world. The rifle with which they were armed was far superior 
to the old rifle, and it soon underwent further changes, resulting, finally, in 
the general introduction of rifled muskets in the whole of the infantry of 
Europe. 

The range of infantry fire having thus been increased from 300 to 800, and 
even 1,000 yards, the question arose whether field artillery, which hitherto 
had commanded all distances from 300 up to 1,500 yards, would still be able 
to hold its own against the new small-arms. The fact was, that the greatest 
efficacy of common field-guns lay just within that range which was now 
disputed to it by the rifle; canister was scarcely effective beyond 600 or 
700 yards; round shot gave no very satisfactory results, with the six or 
nine-pounder, beyond 1,000 yards; and shrapnell (spherical case-shot), to be 
very formidable, required a coolness and a correct estimation of distances 
which are not always to be found on the field of battle, when the enemy is 
advancing; while the shell-practice of the old howitzers against troops .was 
anything but satisfactory. The armies which had the nine-pounder gun for 
their smallest caliber, such as the English, were still the best off; the French 
eight-pounder, and, still more, the German six-pounder, became almost 
useless. To obviate this, the French introduced, about the beginning of the 
Crimean war, Louis Napoleon's so called invention, the light twelve- 
pounder, canon obusier, from which solid shot, with a charge of one-fourth 
instead of one-third its weight, as well as shell, was to be fired. This gun was 
a mere plagiarism upon the English light twelve-pounder, which had already 
been again abandoned by the English; the system of firing shells from long 
guns had been long in practice in Germany; so that there was nothing at all 
new in this pretended improvement. Still, the arming of the whole French 
artillery with 12-pounders, even of a diminished range, would have given it 
a decided superiority over the old 6 and 8-pounders; and to counteract this, 
the Prussian Government, in 1859, resolved upon giving heavy 12-pounders 
to all its foot batteries. This was the last move in the cause of the smooth-bore 
gun; it showed that the whole subject was exhausted, and the defenders 
of the smooth-bore driven ad absurdum. There could, indeed, not be anything 
more absurd than to arm the whole artillery of an army with those lumbering, 
stick-in-the-mud Prussian 12-pounders, and that at atime when mobility and 
rapidity of maneuvering is the greatest desideratum of all. The French light 

12-pounder having a relative superiority only to other artillery, and none at 
all as regarded the new small arms, and the Prussian heavy 12-pounder being 
a palpable absurdity, there remained nothing but either to drop field artillery 
altogether, or to adopt rifled cannon. 

In the mean time, experiments with rifled cannon had continually been 
carried on in various countries. In Germany, the Bavarian Lieut.- 
Col. Reichenbach experimented with a small rifled gun and cylindro-conoidal 
shot, as early as 1816. The results were very satisfactory as to range and 
precision, but the difficulties of loading and extraneous obstacles prevented 

the subject from being followed up. In 1846, the Piedmontese Major Cavalli 
constructed a breech-loading rifled gun which attracted considerable atten- 
tion. His first gun was a thirty-pounder, charged with a cylindro-conoidal 
hollow shot weighing 64 pounds, and 5 pounds powder; at 14’/, degrees 
elevation he obtained a range (of first gauge) of 3,050 metres or 3,400 yards. 
His experiments (continued up to the latest period, partly in Sweden, partly 
in Piedmont) had the important result of leading to the discovery of the 
regular lateral deflection of all shot fired from rifled ordnance, which is 
caused by the pitch of the grooves, and which is always in the direction to 
which the grooves turn; this once being ascertained, its correction by what 
is called a lateral or horizontal tangent-scale, was also invented by Cavalli. 
The results of his experiments were highly satisfactory. At Turin, in 1854, 
his thirty-pounder, with 8-pound charges, 64-pound shot, gave the following 

results: 
Lateral irregular 
Elevation. Range. deflection. 
10° 2,806 metres 2.81 metres 
15° 3,785 metres 3.21 metres 
20° 4511 metres 3.72 metres 
25° 5,103 metres 4.77 metres 

giving a range, at 25 degrees, of above three miles, with a lateral deflection 
from the line of aim (as corrected by the horizontal tangent-scale) of less 
than 16 feet! The largest French field howitzer, at a range of 2,400 metres, 
equal to 2,650 yards, gave lateral deflections averaging 47 metres, or 
155 feet; ten times as large as those of the rifled gun at twice the range. 
Another system of rifled ordnance which created attention, a little after 
Cavalli's first experiments, was that of the Swedish Baron Wahrendorff. His 
gun was also breech-loading, and his shot cylindro-conoidal. The difference, 
however, in the shot was this; while Cavalli's shot was of hard metal, and 
had wings to fit in the grooves, Wahrendorff's shot was covered with athin 
layer of lead, and slightly larger in diameter than the bore of the rifled portion 

of the gun. After being introduced into the chamber, which was large enough 
to receive it, the shot was propelled by the explosion into the rifled bore, 
and the lead being pressed into the grooves effectually, did away with all 
windage, and prevented the escape of any portion of the gases formed by 
the explosion. The results obtained with these guns in Sweden and elsewhere 
were quite satisfactory, and if Cavalli's guns were introduced into the arma- 
ment of Genoa, those of Wahrendorff figure in the casemates of Wegholm 
in Sweden, Portsmouth in England, and in some Prussian fortresses. Thus, 
the introduction of rifled ordnance into practical use had begun, although 
only for fortresses. There remained only the one step to introduce them into 
field artillery, and this has been done in France and is now being done in 
all European artilleries. The various systems on which the rifling of field 
ordnance is now, or may be, profitably carried on, will form the subject of 
a second paper. 

u. 

The French were, as we said in our preceding paper, the first to introduce 
rifled cannon into practical warfare. For five or six years past, two officers, 
Col.Tamisier and Lieut.-Col. (now Col.) Treuille de Beaulieu, had ex- 
perimentalized on the subject by order of the Government, and the results 
arrived at were found satisfactory enough to warrant their being made the 
base of a reorganization of the French artillery immediately before the 
outbreak of the late Italian war. Without entering upon the history of the 
experiments, we will at once pass to a description ofthe system now adopted 
in the French artillery. 

In accordance with that desire for unity so characteristic of the French, 
they adopted one caliber only for field artillery (the old French four-pounder 
bore of 85V2 millimetres, or nearly 3'/, inches), and one for siege artillery (the 
old 12-pounder of 120 millimetres, or 4°/,inches). All other guns, except 
mortars, are to be done away with. The material selected is generally the 
common gun-metal, but also cast-steel, in some cases. The guns are muzzle- 
loading, as the French experiments with breech-loaders gave no satisfaction. 
There are six grooves in each gun, 5 millimetres deep and 16mm. broad, of 
a rounded form; the pitch of the rifling appears to be but low, but there are 
no details known respecting it. The windage on the body ofthe shotis about 
V2 to 1 mm.; that on the ailettes or warts which enter the grooves rather less 
than 1 mm. The shotis cylindro-ogival, and hollow, weighing about 12 pounds 

when filled; it has six ailettes, one for every groove, three standing near the 
point, and three near the base; they are very short—about 15 mm. long. The 
fuse-hole passes downward from the point, and is closed by a fuse or by a 
piston, with a percussion-cap for shot filled with powder, and by an iron 
screw, when the shot is not to explode; in this latter case it is filled with a 
mixture of sawdust and sand, so as to give it the same weight as when f illed 
with powder. The length of bore of the gun is 1,385mm., or 16 times its 
diameter; the weight of the brass gun is but 237 kilogrammes (518 pounds). 
To regulate the line of aim by the deviation (lateral deflection) of the shot 
in the direction of the pitch of the rifling—a deviation common to all pro- 
jectiles launched from rifled barrels—the right trunnion carries what is called 
a horizontal tangent-scale. The gun, as well as its carriage, is reported to be 
of very elegant workmanship, and, from its small size and neatness, to look 
more like a model than a real engine of war. 

Armed with this gun, the French artillery entered upon the Italian cam- 
paign, where it indeed astonished the Austrians by its great range, but cer- 
tainly not by its accuracy of fire. The guns very often, indeed generally, 
overshot the mark, and were more dangerous to reserves than to first Unes—in 
other words, where they hit better than the common guns, they hit people 

at whom they were not aimed at all. This is certainly a very questionable 
advantage, as in nine cases out of ten it implies that the objects at which the 
guns were aimed were not hit. The Austrian artillery, with as clumsy a 
material as any in Europe, made a very decent appearance when opposed 
to them, and came up to close quarters (that is, 500 or 600 yards) with these 
formidable opponents, unlimbering under their most effective fire. There is 
no doubt that, great as the superiority of the new French guns is over their 
old smooth-bored ones, they did not perform anything like what was ex- 
pected from them. Their extreme practicable range was 4,000 metres 
(4,400 yards), and undoubtedly it was but an impudent Bonapartistexaggera- 
tion when it was said that they could easily hit a single horseman at 
3,300 yards. 

The reasons for these unsatisfactory performances, in actual war, are very 
simple. The construction of these guns is utterly imperfect, and ifthe French 
adhere to it, intwo or three years their artillery will possess the worst material 

in Europe. The first principle in rifled arms is that there must be no windage; 
otherwise the shot, loosely rolling about in the barrel and grooves, will not 
rotate round its own longitudinal axis, but rotate, in a spiral line of flight, 
round an imaginary line, the direction of which is determined by the ac- 
cidental position of the shot when leaving the muzzle, and the spiral rounds 
will increase in diameter with the distance. Now, the French guns have 
considerable windage, and cannot do without it so long as the explosion of 

the charge is relied upon to light the fuse of the shell. This, then, is one 
circumstance which explains the want of accuracy. The second is the ir- 
regularity of the propelling force created by the greater or less escape of gas 
through windage during the explosion of the charge. The third is the greater 

elevation, with the same charge, necessitated through this windage ; it stands 

to reason that where no gas at all can escape between shot and bore the same 
charge propels further than where part of the gas escapes. Now, the French 
guns appear to require not only a very great charge for rifled guns (one-fifth 
of the weight of the shot), but also a pretty high elevation. The greater range 
obtained by rifled bores over smooth ones, even with smaller charges, is 
chiefly obtained by the absence of windage, and the certainty of having the 
whole explosive force of the charge applied to the expulsion of the shot. By 
admitting windage, the French sacrifice part of the propelling force, and have 
to replace it by increased charges to alimited degree, and by greater elevation 
beyond that. Now there is nothing so contrary to accuracy at any distances 
as great elevation. So long as the line of flight of the shot does not, at its 
highest point, much exceed the hight of the object aimed at, so long a mistake 
in estimating the distance is of little importance; but at long range, the shot 
takes a very high flight, and comes down at an angle on an average twice 
as great as that under which it began its flight (this, of course, is confined 
to elevations up to about 15 degrees). Thus, the higher the elevation the more 
the line in which the shot strikes the ground approaches the vertical; and an 
error in estimating the distance of not more than ten or twenty yards may 
preclude the possibility of hitting at all. At ranges beyond even 400 or 
500 yards, such errors are unavoidable, and the consequence is the astonish- 
ing difference between the capital shooting on the practice ground, with 
measured distances, and the execrable practice on the battle-field, where the 
distances are unknown, the objects moving, and the moments for reflection 
very short. Thus, with the new rifles, the chance of hitting beyond three 
hundred yards on the battlefield is very small, while under three hundred 
yards, from the low flight of the ball, itis very great; in consequence of which, 
the charge with the bayonet becomes the most effective means of dislodging 
an enemy, as soon as the attacking body has come up to that distance. 
Suppose one army to carry rifles which at 400 yards give no higher trajectory 
than the rifles of their opponents give at 300 yards, the former will have the 
advantage of beginning an effective fire at 100 yards greater distance, and 
as but three or four minutes are required to charge through 400 yards, this 
advantage is not a mean one in the decisive moment of a battle. Itis similar 
with cannon. Sir Howard Douglas, ten years ago, declared that gun far the 
best which gives the greatest range with the least elevation. With rifled 
cannon the importance of this point is still greater, as the chance of error 

in estimating distance increases with the longer range, and as the ricochets 
of any other than spherical shot cannot be relied upon. This is one of the 
disadvantages of rifled guns; they must hit with the first impact, if they are 
to hit at all, while round-shot, if it falls short, will rebound and continue its 
flight in very nearly its original direction. Here, then, a low trajectory is of 
the very highest importance, as every degree more of elevation reduces the 
chance of hitting with the first impact in an increasing ratio, and therefore 
the high line of flight produced by the French guns is one of their mo st ser ious 
defects. 

Butthe whole of the deficiencies ofthese guns are crowned and enhanced 
by one defect, which suffices to stamp the whole system. They are produced 
by the machinery and on the principles formerly serving for the manufacture 
ofthe old smooth-bored guns. With the very great windage ofthese old guns, 
and the varying weights and diameters of the shot, mathematical precision 

in the manufacture was but a secondary consideration. The manufacture of 
firearms, up to a very few years ago, was the most backward branch of 
modern industry. There was far too much hand labor and far too little 
machinery. For the old smooth-bore arms this might be allowable; but when 
arms were to be manufactured which were expected to have great precision 
at long distances, this system became intolerable. To insure the certainty that 
every musket should shoot perfectly alike at 600,800,1,000 yards, and every 
cannon at 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 yards, it became necessary that every part of 
every operation should be performed by the most perfect and self-acting 
machinery, so as to turn out one weapon the mathematical counterpart of 
the other. Deviations from mathematical precision, inappreciable under the 
old system, now became defects rendering the whole weapon useless. The 
French have not improved their old machinery to any noticeable extent, and 
hence the irregularities in their firing. How can guns be made to give the same 
range at the same elevation, all other circumstances being alike, when none 
of them is identical with the other in every particular? But irregularities in 
manufacture which at 800 yards produce differences of a yard, at 4,000 will 
produce differences of a hundred yards in range. How, then, can such guns 
be expected to be true at long ranges? 
To recapitulate: the French rifled guns are bad, because they must have 

windage ; because they require, comparatively, great elevations, and because 

their workmanship is not at all up to the requirements of rifled long-range 
guns. They must soon be superseded by different constructions, or they will 
reduce the French artillery practice to the worst in Europe. 

We have purposely examined these guns a little in detail, as they gave us, 
thereby, an opportunity of explaining the chief principles of rifled ordnance. 
In a concluding article we shall consider the two systems proposed, which 

in England are now contesting for superiority—systems both of which are 
founded upon loading by the breech, absence of windage, and perfect 
workmanship—the Armstrong system and that of Whitworth. 

MI. 

We now come to the description of the two kinds of breech-loading rifled 
cannon which at the present moment contend for superiority in England, and 
which, both invented by civilians, certainly surpass in efficiency anything 
hitherto produced by professional artillerists—the Armstrong gun and the 
Whitworth gun. 

Sir William Armstrong's gun had the advantage of priority, and of being 
praised by the whole press and official world of England. Itis, undoubtedly, 
a highly effective machine of war, and far superior to the French rifled gun; 
but whether it can beat Whitworth's gun may well be doubted. 

Sir Wm. Armstrong constructs his gun by wrapping, round a tube of cast 
steel, two layers of wrought-iron tubes in a spiral form, the upper layer laid 
on in the opposite direction to the lower one, in the same way as gun-barrels 
are made from layers of wire. This system gives a very strong and tough 
material, though a very expensive one. The bore is rifled with numerous 
narrow grooves, one close to the other, and having one turn in the length 
of the gun. The oblong—cylindro-ogival—shot is of cast-iron, but covered with 
a mantle of lead, which gives it a diameter somewhat larger than the bore; 
this shot, along with the charge, is introduced by the breech into a chamber 
wide enough to receive it; the explosion propels the shotinto the narrow bore, 
where the soft lead is pressed into the grooves, and thus does away with all 
windage while giving the projectile the spiral rotation indicated by the pitch 
of the grooves. This mode of pressing the shot into the grooves, and the 
coating of soft material required for it, are the characteristic features of 
Armstrong's system; and if the reader will refer to the principles of rifled 
ordnance, as developed in our preceding articles, he will agree that, in princi- 
ple, Armstrong is decidedly in the right. The shot being larger in diameter 
than the bore, the gun is necessarily breech-loading, which, to us, also seems 
a necessary feature in all rifled ordnance. The breech-loading apparatus 
itself, however, has nothing whatever to do with the principle of any particu- 
lar system of rifling, but may be transferred from one to the other; we leave 
it, therefore, entirely out of our consideration. 

The range and precision attained with this new gun are something wonder- 

ful. The shot was thrown to some 8,500 yards, or nearly five miles, and the 
certainty with which the target was hit at 2,000 or 3,000 yards much exceeded 
what the old, smooth-bore guns could show at one-third of these distances. 
Still, with all the puffing of the English press, the scientifically interesting 
details of all these experiments were studiously kept secret. It was never 
stated with what elevation and charge these ranges were obtained; the weight 
of the shot and that of the gun itself, the exact lateral and longitudinal 
deviations, etc., were never particularized. Now, atlast, when the Whitworth 
gun has made its appearance, we learn some details of one set of experiments 
at least. Mr. Sidney Herbert, Secretary of War, has stated in Parliament that 
a 12-pounder gun of 8cwt, with 1 to 80z. of powder, gave a range of 
2,460 yards, at7 degrees elevation, with an extreme lateral deviation of three, 
and an extreme longitudinal deviation of 65 yards. At eight degrees elevation, 
the range was 2,797 yards; at nine, above 3,000 yards; the deviations remain- 
ing nearly the same. Now, an elevation of seven to nine degrees is a thing 
unknown in the practice of smooth-bore field artillery. The official tables, 
for instance, do not go beyond four degrees elevation, at which the 
12-pounder and 9-pounder give a range of 1,400 yards. Any higher elevation 
in field guns would be useless, from giving too high a hne of fhght, and 
thereby immensely reducing the chance of hitting the mark. But we have 
some experiments (quoted in Sir Howard Douglas's Naval Gunnery) with 
heavy ship guns of smooth bore at higher elevations. The English long 
32-pounder at Deal, in 1839, gave ranges, at 7 degrees, of 2,231 to 2,318; at 
9 degrees, from 2,498 to 2,682 yards. The French 36-pounder in 1846 and '47, 
gave ranges, at 7 degrees, of 2,270; at 9 degrees, of 2,636 yards. This shows 
that, at equal elevations, the ranges of rifled guns are not so very superior 
to those of smooth-bored cannon. 
The Whitworth gun, in almost every respect, is the opposite of the Arm- 
strong gun. Its bore is not circular, but hexagonal, the pitch of its rifling is 
very near twice as high as that of the Armstrong gun; the shot is of a very 
hard material, without any coating of lead; and, if it is breech-loading, it is 
not necessarily so, but merely as a matter of convenience and of fashion. 
This gun is of a recently-patented material, called "homogeneous iron," of 
great strength, elasticity, and toughness; the shot is a mathematically exact 
fit to the bore, and cannot, therefore, be introduced without the bore being 
lubricated. This is done by a composition of wax and grease being inserted 
between charge and shot, which at the same time tends to decrease whatever 
windage there may be left. The material of the gun is so tough that it will 
easily stand 3,000 rounds without any damage to the bore. 
The Whitworth gun was brought before the public in February last, when 
a series of experiments were made with it at Southport, on the Lancashire 

coast. There were three guns—a 3-pounder, 12-pounder and 80-pounder ; from 
the long reports we select the 12-pounder as an illustration. This gun was 
7 feet 9 inches long, and weighed 8 cwt. The common 12-pounder, for round 
shot, is 6 feet 6 inches long, and weighs 18cwt. The ranges obtained with 
Whitworth's gun were as follows: At 2 degrees elevation (where the old 
12-pounder gives 1,000 yards), with a charge of 1’/,1b, the range varied from 
1,208 to 1,281 yards. At 5 degrees (where the old 32-pounder gives 
1,940 yards), it ranged from 2,298 to 2,342 yards. At 10 degrees (range of old 
32-pounder, 2,800 yards), it averaged 4,000 yards. For higher elevations a 
3-pounder gun was used, with 8 oz. charge; with 20 degrees, it ranged from 
6,300 to 6,800, with 33 and 35 degrees, 9,400 to 9,700 yards. The old 
56-pounder, of smooth bore, gives, at 20 degrees, a range of 4,381 yards, at 
32 degrees, of 5,680 yards. The precision obtained by the Whitworth gun was 
very satisfactory, and at least as good as that of the Armstrong gun in lateral 
deflection; as to longitudinal variations, the experiments do not admit of a 
satisfactory conclusion. 

IV. 

The Whitworth gun is constructed upon the principle of reducing windage 
to the utmost minimum, by a mathematical fit of the shot to the bore, and 
doing away with what little may remain by the effect of the lubricating 
composition. In this respect it is inferior to Armstrong's gun, which has no 
windage at all; and this we consider its principal defect. The polygonal bore, 
however, would be impossible without this defect, and at all events it de- 
serves to be acknowledged that with such an originally defective system, 
such great results have been obtained. Whitworth has undoubtedly brought 
to its highest perfection the system which gives hard, unyielding shot and 
allows windage. His gun is immensely superior to the rough empiricism of 
the French rifled ordnance. But while Armstrong's gun, and other guns 
depending on soft-coated shot to be forced into the grooves by pressure, may 
be perfected ad infinitum, Whitworth's gun will have no such future; it has 
already attained the highest perfection compatible with its fundamental 
principles. 

To recapitulate: 

We find that at the practicable elevation of field-artillery, the best rifled 
guns known give a range but very little superior to the old smooth-bored 
gun. There is, however, some advantage, and this remains an item in their 

favor. But the great advantages of rifled ordnance for field-artillery are 
these: 

1. The same weight of shot can be projected by a gun having a much 
smaller bore, and with a much smaller charge than with the old smooth-bored 
gun, which was only fit for spherical shot. Consequently, the weight of the 
gun is considerably reduced. The old 12-pounder had a bore of about 
4'/, inches, and weighed 18 cwt. ; its charge was four pounds of powder. The 
new 12-pounder has a bore of about 3V2 inches, or nearly that of the old 
9-pounder; its weight, 8cwt.; charge, from IV2 to V/4 pounds. The French 
new 12-pounders, with the old 4-pounder's bore, are still lighter. This is an 
immense advantage. It gives to the field-gun a mobility hitherto unknown, 
and renders it almost as fit to go over any ground as infantry. More than four 
horses to a gun will henceforth be useless. 

2. At the distances hitherto practicable for field-artillery, it gives a far 
greater chance of hitting; it lowers the trajectory, and reduces to a minimum 
both lateral and longitudinal deflections. At an exchange of round shot and 
sheUs with percussion fuses, a rifled battery will always beat a smooth-bored 
one of equal weight of shot. 

As to heavy ordnance, it will be all-powerful against stone walls, especially 
by shell-practice with percussion fuses. This has already been proved by 
experiment, bothin France and Germany. It will give ships and siege batteries 
a chance of bombarding towns at distances from 4,000 to 9,000 yards. In 
every other respect it will not alter materiahy the hitherto existing relations 
of besiegers and besieged, and of ships against batteries on shore. 

On the other hand, the disadvantages of rifled ordnance are: 

1. The common case-shot becomes either impossible or ineffective from 
the irregular line of flight imparted to the balls by the spiral rotation. 

2. Firing with shell with time-fuses (and shrapnell shot with ditto) becomes 
almost impracticable, as the absence of reduction of windage prevents the 
flame of the explosion from communicating with the fuse which necessarily 
must be at the point of the oblong shot. 

In spite of these drawbacks, rifled ordnance has now become a matter of 
necessity for every army. The question now is only, how these drawbacks 
can be obviated. That they will be so there can be no doubt. But it is certain 
that the same rules obtain in rifled ordnance which regulate the construction 
and use of rifled small arms. The exaggerated ideas of five-mile ranges in 
the-one are as ridiculous as the notion of hitting a man with the new rifles 
at 800 or 1,000 yards; and still the advantages given by rifled bores in either 
case, are so great that it is imperative upon every army which may ever be 
called upon to fight with civilized foes, to do away with all smooth-bored 
barrels, both in small arms and artillery.