No. 144.] 575 



By this principle any old uncertain musket is immediately con- 

 verted into a close shooting rifle, of most extraordinary range, 

 before which no field artillery known to science could sustain 

 itself, and must therefore be restricted to siege operations and the 

 defence of fortified places, and heavy cavalry can no longer be 

 used with effect. To show the difference in power and execution 

 between the musket with round ball loaded at the breech, and 

 the improved musket with balle-a-tige, four French regiments 

 were required to fire three hundred thousand balls, one half out 

 of muskets with round balls, and the other half out of muskets 

 with balles-a tige and minie balls. At one hundred and fifty 

 yards the improved balls were twice as good as the round balls; 

 at two hundred yards thrice as good; at three hundred yards 

 seven times better; at five hundred yards the improved ball hit 

 nearly as often as at one hundred and fifty yards. But no round 

 ball hit at six hundred yards, when the improved ball hit nearly 

 a third as well as at one hundred and fifty yards distance. At 

 seven hundred yards it hit nearly the same as at six hundred 

 yards distance; at eight hundred yards it hit nearly one-fifth as 

 well as at one hundred and fifty yards distance. It will be ob- 

 served, therefore, from these experiments, that if one hundred 

 and fifty men of any of these four regiments were armed with the 

 improved gun and balle-a tige, or minie ball, that at the distance 

 of from three hundred to six hundred yards they would in one 

 minute do more execution than five hundred and twenty-five men 

 at a similar distance with round balls, consequently fifteen hun- 

 dred men can be made equal to five thousand two hundred and 

 fifty men, or fifteen thousand American soldiers can now be 

 drilled and armed to do as much execution as would have been 

 done by fifty thousand of the veterans of the revolution. 



Captain Minie lately hit a mark seven times out of ten at the 

 immense distance of eighteen hundred yards, with sufficient force 

 to pass through a cuirass and kill. He has likewise driven three 

 balls in succession into a mark the size of a man's hat at a dis- 

 tance of three-quarters of a mile off hand, and says he can do this 

 all day, and instruct any man of ordinary capacity to do the same. 



With the common musket now in use it is necessary to teach 

 the soldier that to hit a man at a certain number of yards off in 



