DECEMBER 241 



relied on for the charge, and it is directed that they be 

 constantly trained with the musketeers. Their separate 

 exercise was an elaborate affair, far more so even than 

 the bayonet exercise of twenty years ago. The caution 

 ' Pikes ! take heed to your exercise ' ! is the prelude 

 to a profusion of commands filling, with corresponding 

 instructions, nearly fifty pages. 



It is remarkable that, though the wheel-lock, provid- 

 ing for ignition from flint and steel, was invented in 

 Germany in the latter half of the sixteenth century, 

 and the fire-lock or flint-lock was produced in Spain 

 some fifty years later, to come into general use during 

 our own civil war, at the close of the seventeenth 

 century British musketeers, as shown by the drill book, 

 were still fumbling with the old matchlocks. It is not 

 clear when these were finally discarded ; but it is 

 certain that the army was equipped with flint-locks 

 during the reign of William and Mary ; so that by the 

 time Marlborough became Captain- General of the 

 British forces at home and abroad (1702) his infantry 

 probably was all armed in that manner. These con- 

 tinued the regulation small-arm till 1840. In 1807 a 

 Scottish clergyman named Forsyth invented a ful- 

 minating priming ; yet Brown Bess with her flint-lock 

 held the field throughout the Peninsular and Waterloo 

 campaigns, wherein the British infantry became famous 

 for steadiness of fire. When Lord Salisbury asked 

 the Duke of Wellington why Souham did not press the . 

 British more closely during the critical retreat from 

 Burgos in 1812, he replied ' Because the enemy had 

 found out that our bullets were not made of butter ! ' 

 Q 



