The United Service Magazine

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: smooth-bore iron mortars are conveyed on light travelling carriages, they are equipped a la Field Battery, and if they can really be worked in this fashion with any accuracy, it would be an invaluable addition to an army. I only saw one Mitrailleuse, which was protected by a bullet-proof mantlet. This...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: smooth-bore iron mortars are conveyed on light travelling carriages, they are equipped a la Field Battery, and if they can really be worked in this fashion with any accuracy, it would be an invaluable addition to an army. I only saw one Mitrailleuse, which was protected by a bullet-proof mantlet. This weapon has undoubtedly lost many of the terrors which were attached to it scarcely a year ago. Still it appears reasonable to decide that it possesses a balance of advantages. The French, one of whose faults certainly is not a slavish adherence to any system, have clung through every stage of defeat to their mitrailleuses, and in the final street-fighting every available piece was pressed into service. On arriving at the Pont de Sevres, the last arch of which had been temporarily reconstructed with woodwork, my papers are carefully examined by the officer commanding the post; my laissez-passer, without which my passport would have been but of little use, is considered satisfactory. Passez, Monsieur, says the lieutenant, courteously raising his cap to the Officier Anglais designated, and I drive past the guards into?prison. The sensation is not quite pleasant, and I sympathize sincerely with Sterne's historical starling, and his plaintiff cry: I can't get out only there is strong reason to suppose that Sterne's starling was not idiot enough to hop into his cage with his eyes wide open. HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. A work on this subject written by an American author for the very purpose, if we understand his Preface aright, of being published in England, will seem to most people singularly out of place. So it appeared to an English friend, to whom he mentioned his intention Few persons in England, he said, take any interest now in the American Civil 'War; a...