4 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
The author points to the difficulties attending a proper employment of 
artillery, especially to a correct appreciation of the main requirements— 
viz., the recognition of the opportune moment, the correct choice of aim, 
and the increase of fire on the decisive points. 
The problem of the formation of masses of artillery met with still greater 
difficulties. The author illustrates this from works in military literature 
which occupy themselves essentially with the study of this problem. 
Period II. Transition.—Prom 1850 to 1860. 
The more highly perfected and improved system of tactics adopted for 
fighting in open order, as well as the employment of rifled small-arms, 
necessarily influenced greatly the uses and importance of artillery. The 
recognition of the changed conditions themselves, as well as the altered 
fighting conditions of the infantry, demanded many reforms in the artillery; 
consequently the ten years from 1850 to 1860 are the most important for, 
and indeed a turning point in, the development of modern field artillery. 
During this period, the artillery made the greatest efforts to introduce a 
new smooth-bore field gun, such as might restore to it the importance it 
had almost wholly lost since the adoption of rifled small-arms. At 
the same time, rifled cannon were slowly and quietly progressing in de¬ 
velopment as the representative of the new principle which small-arms had 
raised to so undreamed-of a height. The help which the smooth-bore gun 
could no longer supply, was furnished by the rifled gun, and this indeed at 
the moment of greatest need. The old principle was exhausted—had outlived 
its day. Pacts had long decided the question; the rifled gun, in its existing 
stage, had an undoubtedly great superiority over the smooth-bore. 
In the 1st Chapter of this part, the author compares the condition of the 
field artillery with the effects obtained from rifled small-arms about the year 
3 850, and arrives at the conclusion that the importance of artillery had 
changed to its disadvantage. Delvigne had already stated:—“The introduction 
of rifled small-arms for infantry will be the scourge of the field artillery. The 
superiority thereby afforded to the infantry, will assign to the artillery only a 
secondary role ” Though Paixhans pointed out as early as 1835 the necessity 
for the introduction of rifled gun-tubes, and in 1849 pronounced a still more 
positive opinion on the question, nothing was at that time done to carry out 
his idea. Matters, therefore, indeed took the course pointed out by Delvigne. 
The artillery retrograded to a mere secondary role. Billed small-arms fired 
up to 450 metres with the same accuracy that the smooth bore fired up to 225 
metres. The artillery consequently suffered in its power with respect to 
range, more particularly in the shorter and more effective ranges down to 225 
metres; and, moreover, the worst point was that this depreciation struck princi¬ 
pally at the case shot (up to the present time so highly esteemed), which sank 
very considerably in importance, for it became almost useless for the 
offensive. The fact of this depreciation became only gradually recognised. 
The illusions were disturbed by the experience of the wars between 1848 
and 1850. Many cases occurred in which batteries were compelled to abandon 
their positions by the fire of small-arms between the ranges of 300 and 525 
metres. The author brings forward a great number of arguments from 
thinking tacticians, which in the main all concur “ that, owing to the long 
