434 
li.A.I. PEIZE ESSAY, 1876 . 
writing under tlie pseudonym of Robert Becker, given in Homers 
“ Modern Tactics ” : and so on, many others, in the evaluation of 
recent actual experiences. 
Then we have deductions from the same, and from the general 
character of the arm. Major Rosinich, even in 1867, reviewing the 
war of 1866, wrote :—“The pre-eminent advantage of rifled artillery 
consists in its affording the means of directing a concentric fire on 
any desired point of the line of battle.” The Austrian Captain Muller 
wrote in 1868 :—“ The employment of artillery in the deciding role 
comes out now more prominently than heretofore; and the application 
of this arm, even in the sense of support and protection, will frequently 
bear a character little differing from that of the deciding action.” In 
an essay in the Berlin “ Archives for Artillery and Engineer Officers ” 
for 1870, occurs the prophecy:—“In the next war the infantry and 
cavalry will probably be evenly matched; but success is assured to 
him who has the superiority in artillery.” And the Badener Major 
Muller, in his important work, the “ Evolution of Field Artillery,” in 
1873, deduces that “the future will bring with it artillery combats of 
vast extent and formidable almost beyond conception, and in them, 
under otherwise equal circumstances, the victory will fall to the more 
effective system |” and, i .11 his conclusion, that “ one is justified in 
taking it for certain that faults in the employment of artillery in action 
will either absolutely never, or at any rate very seldom, be possibly 
to be made up for. Once your artillery is worsted, you have small 
chance of a success. Neither the attack nor the defence have a 
prospect of attaining their end without the fullest and most powerful 
assistance from the artillery.” 
These transcendent views, moreover, base themselves in the most 
respectable manner on foundations established amongst the received 
apothegms of the past. Okounef s :—“ Shrapnel must give to artillery 
such a destroying effect that it will decide the fate of future battles.” 
“ It will become the scourge of mankind.” “ The day cannot be much 
longer delayed when the artillery shall raise itself, from being auxiliary, 
to the rank of a principal arm.” Prince Augustus's :—“The artil¬ 
lery has given” (at Gross-Gorschen) “the most convincing proofs 
that it, when worked with steadiness and judgment, is irresistible.” 
Napoleon's:—“ The artillery constitutes now the true fate of nations 
and armies;” together with the decisive achievements of artillery at 
Gross-Beeren, Liitzen, Bautzen, Friedland, Borodino, &c.— all instances 
of what value the arm had attained to in the old smooth-bore days— 
are brought forward as material only needing the new life conferred on 
it by rifle-power to establish for artillery a leading, an independent, 
a deciding character. 
The general theory thus raised is of importance to the particular 
combined arms mainly owe the changed results.”—"Die Erfolge der preussischen Feld-Artillerie in 
der Campagne 1870-1,” p. 24. 
But the extract, in the form in which it has been set in Major Home’s precis, must be regarded 
as attaining to greater prominence in the literature of the day than the original sentence, which 
occurs only in a special and limited essay. 
