The Crimean war afforded the first test, on a large scale, in
civilized warfare, of the issue between smooth and twist. How the
conoidal bullet and rifled barrel, opposed at Inkermann to the
antiquated Russian musket, tore through the dense columns which
had forced their way to the brow of the plateau, driving the stolid
Muscovites, "incapable of panic," back into the ravine pell-mell--how,
at many periods of the siege of Sebastopol, the rifle-pits did more to
cripple the defence than did the mortars and battering-guns--we need
not recount. These pits, and the rope mantlets wherewith they obliged
the Russians to cover their embrasures, were pronounced by Captain
(since General) George B. McClellan, in his report of the United
States Military Commission, about the only marked novelties of
the siege. Of both, _mutatis mutandis_, he and his opponents made
effective use in our civil war.

Nor shall we pick our perilous way among the Sniders, Chassepots,
Zündnadelgewehre, and Zündnadelbüchsen whose various charms absorb the
military mind at this day. The debate among them is but as to the best
utilization of the old arrow-theory. The oblong projectile, that goes
singing on its winding way, is common to them all. Slipped in at the
back door or rammed home at the front, delicately stirred up by the
insinuating needle and its titbit of fulminate or bluntly ordered off
by the snappish percussion-cap, it is the same obedient and faithful
messenger, and goes on its appointed errand in much the same style.

Under the ancient régime of the musket it required the soldier's
weight in lead to kill him. Its point-blank range was about sixty
yards, but precision even at that short distance it by no means
possessed. At the battle of Fontenoy the English and French Guards,
drawn up in opposite lines, conversed with each other prior to firing,