THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
305 
SHELLS FOR RIFLED FIELD GUNS. 
BY LIEUT. J. T. BABBINGTON, B.A. 
The object of this paper is to discuss, however feebly, the relative 
advantages of common and shrapnel shell as projectiles for modern field 
artillery, with respect to the influence of rifled guns and breech-loading 
small arms upon military tactics, and the modifications which may, in 
consequence of their use, be introduced in the dispositions of troops. 
Some years have now elapsed since the introduction of rifled artillery, 
and opportunities have not been wanting, of testing its action and judging 
of its effect on the field of battle. The experience hitherto gained, has 
however, taught but little more than the bare fact of the superiority, in range 
and precision, of this description of ordnance, over smooth-bore guns and 
howitzers, an amount of knowledge which it was not necessary to go to the 
battle field to obtain. The probable effects of the introduction, when it 
should become general, on the tactical formations, and dispositions of troops, 
have been freely discussed and foretold, but until the events of the recent 
war in central-Germany startled Europe, a practical test, under favourable 
circumstances, of the soundness of the predictions, has been wanting. This 
has chiefly resulted from the gradual adoption of the new principle by 
military states, and the consequent existence of a period of transition, 
during which, rifled and smooth-bored ordnance have been unequally pitted 
against each other on the field of battle. 
A notable instance of this is afforded by the Eranco-Austrian campaign of 
1859, which served principally to shew the important advantage conferred 
upon the Erench army by the superior range of its rifled artillery. This 
one-sidedness has also been a marked feature in our own recent colonial wars, 
and,, added to the general inferiority of our opponents, it has detracted much 
from the value of the experience gained, and perhaps tended rather, from 
the certainty of victory, to an over-estimation of the advantage possessed in 
rifled ordnance per se } and to a depreciation of precautionary measures, which 
become of great importance, when the advantages in arms are equally balanced. 
The late great American civil war, in which the contending armies learned 
to a great extent the art of war in fighting, has added little to the military 
knowledge of Europe, as regards the effects of the use of arms of precision 
and rapidity of fire, upon the established tactics of highly disciplined armies. 
This has resulted from the general crudeness of the operations, the untried 
character of the organizations, and the prevailing wildness of the country. 
"We learn however, that the art of rapidly creating entrenchments was a 
daily study, as regularly practised as the lighting of the bivouac fire, or the 
