Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/504

490 Foot using the first crude attempt at a musket. A favorite type of cannon were then called "bombards," and he styled this diminutive copy a "bombardelle." Nothing could have been ruder and more primitive in design and construction. It was merely a tube—probably about as large as a section of two-inch gas-pipe, but not so well made—with one end closed, and near that a small hole for a vent. It was securely fastened to a stout stick, the end of which rested on the ground to receive the recoil. The Man on Foot, clad in light armor, held the bombardelle up, while a comrade touched a live coal to the vent. Powder was as yet very weak, and it was necessary to use a ball weighing about a pound, in order to do any execution, even at the range of a few score paces. Nothing illustrates so well the amazing slowness of the evolutions of the heavily armored men and horses as that this clumsy weapon, which probably never had an effective range of one hundred yards, and could not have been fired oftener than once in five minutes, could have rendered any service whatever. With no facilities for aiming, it was by the merest accident that it struck the cavalier, unhorsed him, and put him at the mercy of his enemies on the ground, but even this chance was much gained.

The power was now getting into the hands in which it belonged. Invincible infantry means democracy sooner or later, just as inevitably as the invincible Man on Horseback meant aristocracy, and artillery autocracy. The foot-soldier, even though he be the myrmidon of a king or the henchman of a lord, is, unconsciously perhaps, the enemy of noble and sovereign. He comes from the people and returns to the people. Whatever he may do at behest of liege or lord is an object lesson to his fellow-commoners as to what they may do in opposition. Every step taken by his masters to make him more formidable is

 "Bloody instruction, which, being taught, returns To plague th' inventor."

The first cavalier that was rolled in the dust by a bombard elle-ball reopened the era of the people which had closed when Rome's matchless infantry disappeared from the fighting world. Thenceforward the final overthrow of feudal and kingly despotism and the triumph of the people became merely a question of improvements in the bombardelle. In vain the Man on Horseback strengthened his armor and thickened his castle-walls. The stronger his armor, the more he was weighted down; the slower he moved, the longer he was within striking distance of the man with the "hand-gonne," Nor could the thickening of his walls keep pace with the improvement in cannon-making, the substitution of iron balls for stones, and the strengthening of gunpowder.

In those days the Germans called cannon "boxes" (Büchse), from the manner in which they were built up. They devised a fork or hook (Haken) to support the bombardelle and afford better aim, and called the improved arm a "hook-box" (Haken-büchse), whence the