THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
443 
Henry IV. of France, did great tilings with their artillery—especially the 
latter, who made a most masterly use of his guns, and manoeuvred them as 
frequently and as rapidly as might be but the more carefully one studies the 
military history of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, the more clearly one sees 
that the successive improvements of accuracy of fire were far more numerous 
and important than those of mobility. Nor is the matter incapable of 
explanation. The effect of fire was obvious to the thoughtless many; 
the value of mobility was only dimly imagined by the thoughtful few. 
Accuracy of fire stood forward with such striking prominence as to draw all 
eyes upon itself, to throw mobility into the cold shade, and to lead gunners 
to regard mere fire as the only attribute of their arm that was worthy of 
attention. Men were fascinated by the roar of the guns, and a century and 
a half rolled away after the introduction of wheeled carriages, before a man 
arose who had the genius to discern the supreme importance of mobility, and 
the power to break through the iron barriers which prejudice and dulness 
invariably erect to arrest the progress of new ideas. 
Tedious and painful were the movements of the ordnance when the Thirty 
Years' War broke out, and the father of modern field artillery, Gustavus 
Adolphus, appeared at the head of an army. 1 2 3 4 His clear, piercing intellect 
soon perceived the immense disadvantages of his cumbrous field artillery, and 
he resolved to increase its mobility at all hazards. He was deaf to the argu* 
ment w r hich stupidity has ever at hand, that what has existed for ages—what 
has been handed down to us by our fathers, ought not rudely to be set aside. 
Change had no terrors for him; he was not a man to reject an improvement 
because it was an innovation; and he was unshackled by the perversity or 
obstructiveness of superiors, for he was a king. At a stroke, therefore, he 
introduced leather guns , of superior mobility, although of inferior precision, 
to the ordinary iron guns of the time; whilst, at the same time, he drew a 
broad line of demarcation between field and siege artillery, by remanding 
all guns of a greater calibre than 12-prs. to the latter branch. 3 These 
vigorous steps form the second great landmark in the history of field 
artillery. 
The anticipations formed by the Swedish King of the advantages of 
increased mobility, gained even at the expense of efficacy of fire, were 
realised, and more than realised, at the battle of Leipsig, if there alone f but 
with his premature death at Liitzen, ended the brilliant career which he had 
opened for the artillery. As a gunner, he was far in advance of the times 
in which he lived, and when he was snatched away, there was none on whom 
his mantle could fitly descend. Like the poet Chaucer, Gustavus Adolphus 
1 Colonel Fave gives a detailed sketch of the principal battles fought by Francis I. and Henry IV. 
in his admirable work. 
2 He had previously served in Poland and Russia. Schiller’s “Hist, of the Thirty Years’ War,” 
Bohn’s Ed. p. 86. 
3 Fave’s “Hist, et Tact, des Trois Armes,” p. 80. 
4 No one who has studied the battle of Leipsig carefully, can doubt the justness of the Emperor 
Napoleon’s remarks on the tactics of Gustavus Adolphus, “ le nouveau Cesar —“ Jamais avant 
lui on n’avait fait mouvoir les troupes avec autant de promptitude et d’habilete sur le champ de 
bataille, jamais on n’avait fait un emploi aussi judiceus de l’artillerie, et nous croyons que les 
ecrivains militaires n’ont pas rendu a ces dispositions la justice qui leur est due.”-—Etudes sur le 
passe et l’avenir de 1’Artillerie, Tom. I. p. 330; 
