their successors of to-day. Few and cumbrous they must indeed have
been, since Edward III. could only bring four into the field at Crécy;
and they did far less service than the twanging cloth-yard shaft in
deciding the event of that conflict.

It was not till centuries later that the rifle perceptibly exerted
its treble voice in the multitudinous debates of the _ultima ratio_.
Shrill as John Randolph's, its pipe, once set up, was very attentively
and respectfully listened to. Like his, it spoke from the woods
of America. "Stand your ground, my brave fellows," shouted Colonel
Washington under the sycamores of the Monongahela on the 9th of
July, 1755, "and draw your sights for the honor of old Virginia!"
The colonial rifle covered the retreat of the British queen's-arm, if
retreat such a rout as Braddock's could be called.

It is about the same time that we find a British writer, who had
witnessed the efficiency of the rifle as a companion implement to
the axe in pushing European settlement on this continent, saying,
"Whatever state shall thoroughly comprehend the nature and advantages
of rifle-pieces, and, having facilitated and completed their
construction, shall introduce into its armies their general use, with
a dexterity in the management of them, will by this means acquire a
superiority which will almost equal anything that has been done at
any time by the particular excellence of any one kind of firearms,
and will perhaps fall but little short of the wonderful effects which
histories relate to have been formerly produced by the first inventors
of firearms."

This was written in 1748, at which time the rifle was used only by
the hunters of the Alps and the hunters of the American backwoods;