INFLUENCE OF GUNPOWDER

A1nother invention also tended to deprive the nobility of the ascendency which they owed to their accoutrements--that of gunpowder. Humanity needed it, and it made its appearance forthwith. It was one of the chief instruments in freeing the world from the dominion of physical force and placing the various orders of society on a level. With the distinction between the weapons they used, vanished also that between lords and serfs. And before gunpowder, fortified places were no longer impregnable, so that strongholds and castles now lost their importance. We may indeed be led to lament the decay or the depreciation of the practical value of personal valour--the bravest, the noblest may be shot down by a cowardly wretch at safe distance in an obscure lurking-place; but, on the other hand, gunpowder has made a rational, considerate bravery, spiritual valour, the essential to martial success.

2[Illustration: EARLY TYPE OF MORTAR]

3Only through this instrumentality could that superior order of valour be called forth--that valour in which the heat of personal feeling has no share; for the discharge of firearms is directed against a body of men--an abstract enemy, not individual combatants. The warrior goes to meet deadly peril calmly, sacrificing himself for the commonweal; and the valour of civilised nations is characterised by the very fact that it does not rely on the strong arm alone, but places its confidence essentially in the intelligence, the generalship, the character of its commanders, and, as was the case among the ancients, in a firm combination and unity of spirit on the part of the forces they command.