[2] The Congreve rockets, the effect and direction of which it
is said the Austrians can now regulate,--the shrapnel howitzers, which
throw a stream of canister as far as the range of a bullet,--the Perkins
steam-guns, which vomit forth as many balls as a battalion,--will
multiply the chances of destruction, as though the hecatombs of Eylau,
Borodino, Leipsic, and Waterloo were not sufficient to decimate the
European races.
If governments do not combine in a congress to proscribe these
inventions of destruction, there will be no course left but to make the
half of an army consist of cavalry with cuirasses, in order to capture
with great rapidity these machines; and the infantry, even, will be
obliged to resume its armor of the Middle Ages, without which a
battalion will be destroyed before engaging the enemy.
We may then see again the famous men-at-arms all covered with armor,
and horses also will require the same protection.
While there is doubt about the realization of these fears, it is,
however, certain that artillery and pyrotechny have made advances which
should lead us to think of modifying the deep formation so much abused
by Napoleon.
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