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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
batteries were exposed to the enemy's fire without any means of returning it. 
In 1732 the French king, infected with the prevalent spirit of reform, and 
desirous of putting a stop to the confusion which reigned in his arsenals, 1 * 
ordered M. de Yalliere to reorganise the artillery. The king could have 
hardly selected a man fitter to establish order and uniformity in his 
factories; he could not have chosen a man more incapable of carrying 
out the gigantic task of reorganising an artillery; for de Yalliere was 
emphatically a “safe man/' who could never achieve a brilliant success 
or make a signal failure, because he never dared to attempt what was 
great. His narrow, bigoted mind revelled in paltry and insignificant 
details, but shrunk from reforms of any magnitude as doubtful, if not 
dangerous. In any case, failure stared him in the face; for he had under¬ 
taken the impossible task of fusing the siege and field artillery services into 
one system. His work possessed the merit of solidity and simplicity, and 
many of his alterations were undoubted improvements; but his innovations 
were exclusively confined to matters of detail, and he introduced no new 
principle. He whited a time-worn sepulchre, he propped up a tottering 
house; but the storms would deface the one, and time would undermine the 
other. Efficacy of fire received no new impetus in his system, and mobility 
was completely neglected. 3 The changes he effected in the carriages were 
not important. The means of transport for the ammunition were deficient; 
the horses still worked in single file; the drivers were unorganised; and 
the harness was not thought of. De Yalliere lacked genius to sieze the 
splendid opportunity Fortune had thrust upon him. It is for genius to 
create, it is for mediocrity to arrange; and while he arranged everything, 
he created nothing. In accomplishing the task of reorganising the artillery 
he failed; he succeeded too well in staving off reform in the French artillery 
for a quarter of a century. 
Marshal Saxe's attempt to improve the artillery was neither a very 
trenchant nor a very happy one. No one had a higher opinion of that 
service, as it might be, 3 than he; but he seems to have despaired of any 
successful effort to confer greater mobility upon it, as it was. It is most 
unlikely that the artillery will ever move faster, thought the Marshal; it is 
impossible that it can ever move slower. 4 Having come to this conclusion, 
he virtually proposed to convert the existing guns into guns of position, and 
to create a light field artillery to supply its place, armed with a piece 
invented by himself, called an “amusette"—somewhat more than a blunder¬ 
buss, somewhat less than a cannon. The amusette carried a | lb. lead ball, 
1 Fav6, “Hist, et Tact, des Troia Armes,” p. 113. “ Conference sur l’Artillerie de campagne.” 
Paris. 1869, p. 12. “ La confusion dtait grande dans les calibres, les formes, les dimensions des 
pieces.” 
3 «. Complement negligee.”—“ Conference sur l’Art. de camp.” p. 12. It may be necessary to 
say that in the above remarks I speak only of M. de Yalliere as an organiser of artillery; for by 
all accounts be was a good soldier in tbe field. 
3 “ L’Artillerie de campagne feroit la principale force des armees aujourd’hui, si Ton y donnait 
plus d’attention.”—Marshal Saxe, quoted in tbe “ Esprit des Loix de la Tactique,” parde Bonneville, 
Tom. I. p. 40. 
4 “Combien de fois les equipages restent-ils en arriere, aussi-bien que le train d’artillerie, ce qui 
vous met dans la necessity de rester-la tout court!”—'“Reveries, &c.,” Tom. I. p. 147. 
