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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
want of mobility was consequently great, they were on the whole perhaps a 
shade better than the English and Prussian. 
I have searched so long and so vainly for books bearing on the state of 
the Austrian field artillery at the time I speak of, that I believe no such 
books exist. Judging, however, from the slender materials at my disposal, 
I am inclined to think that the Austrian field batteries were the best in 
Europe. “ Dass, die Osterreichische Artillerie.leichterist, 
und weniger als eine jede andere kostet, verstiehet sich von selbst,” says 
Scharnhorst, 1 2 who looked on the Austrians with by no means favourable 
eyes. But owing to the misapplication of true principles, the Austrian 
field artillery was far from being perfect. On the one hand, their light 
field artillery never did, and never could, rival the English, French, or 
Prussian horse artillery in elan or efficiency; because the Austrians adopted 
a clumsy form of the gun-carriage system, which I consider to be inferior 
to the detachment system for this service. On the other hand, the Austrians 
marred the efficiency of their field batteries by failing to develop to the 
utmost the gun-carriage system, on which they had wisely organised them. 
Still, owing to the absolute rejection by the Austrians of the preposterous 
principle of the interchangeability of field and garrison artillery, their 
medium field artillery escaped the dangers of that Slough of Despond in 
which the English, French, and Prussian were wallowing. 
Having described at length the forces which depressed the medium field 
artillery at the beginning of the century, it is now necessary to consider the 
counter-forces whose action saved the field batteries from extinction. 
I.—The first of these was the costliness of horse artillery. Had it been 
possible to equip batteries of light artillery on the detachment system at the 
same cost as field batteries, it is more than probable that an enormous 
increase in light, and a corresponding decrease in medium field artillery, 
would have taken place at once. The great expense of horse artillery, 
however, was a powerful bar to its extension beyond certain limits, and 
necessitated the retention of the cheaper batteries. 
This cause was of special importance at the period of which I am speaking, 
because every state in Europe was more or less impoverished by the in¬ 
cessant warfare of the French Devolution and Empire. 
The estimates that have been formed of the cost to England alone of the 
wars of the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1815, vary from 
£601,000,000, 3 to £780,000,000. 3 The Crimean war cost the powers 
engaged in it £340,000,000 ; the Italian campaign of 1859 cost £60,000,000; 
the American civil war cost the Federals £940,000,000, and the Con¬ 
federates £460,000,000; the war of 1866, which lasted only a few weeks, 
cost Prussia, Austria, and Italy £66,000,000. 4 Such were the sums of 
money spent on the wars of the present century, and spent unproductively; 
for, from the nature of the case, war expenditure must be unproductive. 
1 “ Handbueh der Artillerie.” Hanover, 1806. Band II. p. 546. 
2 “ Statesman’s Year Book.” 1870. 
3 Knight’s “Political Dictionary.” Art. “ National Debt.” 
4 “ Cotemporary Wars,” by M. Beaulieu. Translated from the French under the direction of 
the London Peace Society, 1869, p. 56. The Peace Society are not likely to under-estimate the 
cost of war, but their figures no doubt approximate to the truth. 
