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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
invention was received with universal approbation. It was met with decided 
opposition, and the opponents of change were again the officers of artillery. 1 2 
Again the upholders of stolid Conservatism were in violent collision with the 
champion of Liberalism, but on this occasion they were discomfited and 
overthrown; for the king, luckily for the artillery service, would brook no 
further opposition, and who could break down the fixed resolution of that 
iron will ? Instead of entrusting the trials of the new battery to some 
captious and dilatory committee, the king in person undertook the task, and 
an English officer “ saw him nearly every morning exercising this new corps 
himself, and directing its manoeuvres.” 3 The king was satisfied with what 
he saw, and horse artillery was assigned a permanent place in the unwilling 
ranks of the Prussian artillery. 
It was not in Prussia only that the artillery were opposed to the new 
invention; for so infatuated were all the gunners in Europe with the 
lumbering materiel of a by-gone time, that for thirty years the Prussian was 
the only horse artillery in Europe. 3 The artillery was in those times a far 
more isolated and a far less educated service than it is at the present day, 
and, buried in prejudices and the worship of the past, the artillery officers for 
a dreary succession of years slept a sleep that knew no waking. A German 
writer, who never writes sensibly when speaking of the horse artillery, but 
who seldom writes foolishly in treating on other subjects, describes the 
gunners of EredericL’s time as overwhelmed in ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, 
and self-conceit, both in his own country and in England, 4 and Gribeauval 
paints matters in Prance in even darker colours. 5 
1 “Die Officiere der Artillerie waren dagegem” Gen. von Kalkreutk, in the “Hist.-Biog. 
Nachrickten zur Gesckt. der Brandenburghisck-Preussischen Artillerie,” von. Schoning, 2 Tlieil. 
The opposition encountered in its earlier days by the horse artillery, which he regards with 
Superstitious veneration, calls forth unmeasured sympathy from the author of the “ Ueber reitende 
Art. &c.” p. 7;—“Herrliche Waffe,” he exclaims, “du hast eine freudenlose Kindlieit verlebt!” 
General Xalkreuth says, “much falsehood has been written about the horse artilleryhe might 
have added, much trash. 
2 “British Military Library,” Vol. I. p. 19. 
3 Yon Strotha.—Yorwort, p. YII. 
4 “ Ueber reitende Art. &c.” “Die Artilleristen der damaligen Zeit waren unglcich befangenei 4 
alsjetzt; die Laboratorienarbeiten, das meehanische Ausiiben einer Wissenschaft, die eben nicht 
seit langer Zeit erst dazu erhoben worden war, und deshalb einen ansehnlichen Antheil von 
zunft-und handwerksmassigem Stolf kinterlassen hatte,-ein gewisser unausbleibliclier Scklendrian, 
und endlich die zu hohe Meinung, welche die Nicktartilleristen vOn der Artilleriewissensckaft hatten, 
alle diese Dinge legten der Freiheit des Gedankens,” &c., &c.—$. 6; 
“Von den Offizieren” (of the English artillery) “wird fast gar kein Tkeorie, aber desto mehr 
Praxis gefordert. Die hohe commission in Woolwich versiigt iiber alles, was irgend nur zu dem 
theoretischen. Theile gehort. Der Artillerist weiss wenig mehr, als dass die Xugel bei dieser 
Riclitung so weit und bei jener so weit geht. Um alle iibrige Mysterien der Geschiitzwissenschaft 
kiimmert er sich nicht. Er halt fest an den Glauben, dass die in Woolwich es am besten wissen. 
‘Denn,’ sagt er, ‘ware diese, oder jene Einrichtung nicht gut, so hatten wir sie nicht.’ ”—p. 64. 
The state of the English artillery in the middle of the 18th century may be judged from this 
account of its condition in the beginning of the 19th. 
5 “ Un homme eclaire, sans passion, qui connoitroit bien les details, &c., prendroit dans ces deux 
artilleries ” (the French and Austrian) “ de quoy en composer une qui decideroit presque toutes les 
actions dans la guerre de campagne: mais l’ignorance, Tamour-propre, ou la jalousie s’en mdlent 
toujours; c’est le diable, et Ton ne peut changer cela comme la fapon des habits.”—Gribeauval 
to M. de Choiseul, French War Minister, 3rd March, 1762; in the Emperor Napoleon IIL’s 
“Etudes, &c.” Tom. IY. p. 96. 
