THE EOYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
439 
onset of Prance, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of 
England.” 1 2 
When artillery first came into use, then, its influence depended almost 
entirely upon the moral effect produced by its feeble fire, delivered invariably 
from the worst of positions, 3 which it was impossible to change during the 
course of an action. The great increase of physical power, the vast accession 
of moral power, which results from a good position, and the imperative neces¬ 
sity of adapting the position of guns to the changing fortunes of a battle¬ 
field, were then unknown; because war is an experimental science, and the 
experience of ages was required to prove the primary truth, so well expressed 
by Marshal Marmont—“ le premier merite de Fartillerie, apres la bravourie 
des canoniers et la justesse du. tir, c'est la mobilite.” 
Under ordinary circumstances, the accumulated military experience of half 
a century, at a period when wars were frequent, 3 ought seemingly to have 
sufficed to establish this principle as the foundation stone of field artillery 
tactics; but there were many counteracting forces in operation when the 
arm first appeared in the field, which rendered this impossible. 
As early as the year 1139, the church, in the second General Council of 
the Lateran, forbade the use of military machines, as likely to cause un¬ 
necessary bloodshed. 4 Such a prohibition would avail naught in the 19th 
century; but the power of the church was so enormous in the middle ages, 5 
that the expressed will of the clergy was all but irresistible, and the oath 
prescribed by the Germans as a safeguard against the use of machines in 
war, was probably a consequence of this decree. Erom the terms of this 
oath, 6 and the denunciations of the Chevalier Eolard, centuries after, against 
the use of cannon in battle, 7 it would appear that, in common with other 
inventions, artillery was long looked on with suspicion, and that its intro¬ 
duction was regarded by some as a sign of that effeminacy and degeneracy 
which under the later emperors had made a large use of machines indis¬ 
pensable in the Boman armies. 8 
Metallurgy was in its infancy, chemistry did not exist, when artillery 
first appeared. The use of coal in the manufacture of iron was only 
1 The English under William III. defeated by the French under Luxembourg, 1693. Macaulay’s 
“ History of England,” Vol. VII. p. 33. 
2 That directly opposite the object fired at. “II ne faut jamais placer d’abord les batteries 
vis-a-vis des points qu’on voudra battre.”—De Ternay, “ Traite de Tactique,” Tom. I. p. 286. 
3 Buckle, “Hist of Civilisation,” Yol. I. p. 175. 
4 Fave, p. 9. By a slip of the pen, Colonel Fave has given the date as 1140, Mosheim’s 
“Ecclesiastical History,” p. 427, Reid’s Ed. This prohibition, like Alexander III.’s bull for the 
emancipation of slaves, .was no doubt rather a pious exhortation than a law. 
5 “ Those ages of darkness, or, as they have been well called, ‘ ages of faith.’ Those, indeed, were 
golden days for the ecclesiastical profession, since the credulity of men had reached a height which 
seemed to insure to the clergy a long and universal dominion.”—Buckle, Vol. II. p. 29, Leipsig Ed. 
6 By this oath men were bound to abstain from the use of inventions “ pouf la ruine ou la destruc¬ 
tion des homines, estimant ees actions autant injustes qu’elles sont indignes d’lm homme de coeur 
et d’un veritable soldat.”—Quoted from Fave, p. 9. 
” In his edition of Polybius. 
8 “ The use of military machines in the field became gradually more prevalent, in proportion as 
personal valour and military skill declined with the Roman Empire. When men were no longer 
found, their place was supplied by machines.”—Gibbon’s “ Decline and fall of the Roman Empire,” 
VoL I. ch. 1. 
