449 
MEMOIRS 
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL, 
THE BROME-WALTON FAMILY. 
BY 
MAJOR AND QUARTERMASTER R. H. MURDOCH, R.A. 
(Assistant-Superintendent of Records ). 
(Continued from p. 256, J5To. 5, Vol. XXI.) 
Chapter YI. — Conclusion. 
In the eternal cycles of rise, progress, culmination, decline, and replace¬ 
ment (by a higher organisation and enlarged environment), which have 
characterised all things mundane since the world began, Field artillery 
attained its climax in the Seven Years War , and acquired no further 
development of any importance—with the exception of the Congreve 
“ rocket,” and “ Shrapnel ” or spherical case shot—until the substi¬ 
tution of rifled for smooth-bore ordnance in 1859 : so that the artillery 
historian will have to chronicle Minden field guns and carriages at 
Waterloo, and Waterloo guns and carriages in the Crimea. 
The long peace that ensued upon the close of the Seven Years War 
presents an almost unbroken record of gradual starvation and decay 
of Field Brigades until the organisation in 1793 of “ Royal Horse 
Artillery” and the futile resuscitation, in 1806, of the “car brigade” 
of Gustavus Yasa ; while, in painful contrast to the combination of 
mobility, elegance, and power at Minden, we have the following spectacle 
depicted in his Diary of 1800 by General A. C. Mercer :— 
“At Woolwich, two brigades prepared for grand camp at Swinley Common, 
each drawn by six horses, with drivers mounted as postillions.The 
other was a brigade of 6-prs., under Lieut. Wallace, going as battalion guns to 
the Guards, drawn by three horses each, harnessed as a cart team and driven by 
contract carters in smock frocks.” 
We would fain pause to describe the expiring brilliancy of the achieve¬ 
ments of field and position artillery at Belleisle, the Havannah, and in 
the War of American Independence—under the most severe hardships 
and disadvantages—were not these episodes sacred to the Memoirs of 
the Tovey , Desaguliers, and Cleaveland families (should such ever be 
written). The most prominent individual in this last period was un¬ 
doubtedly the celebrated George Washington, “ grandson of John Wash¬ 
ington, a gentleman of the south of England, emigrant to America in the 
XYII. Century.” 1 —who, if the Livys of the American Commonwealth 
could permit their Romulus to have had an inferior origin, would no 
doubt prove to be identical with the gunner John Washington, who 
1 Chamber’s JEncyclopcedia, 1847 ed., art. Washington. 
9* VOL. XXI. 
60 
