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Updated: June 8, 2025
"But if it's a rifle, I never seed sich. It looks more like a two-year old cannon." It was, as the major had declared, a Prussian needle-gun then a new invention, but of which I had heard something. "Is it loaded, Major?" I asked, taking the piece from Lincoln. "It is." "Can you hit that man with the sponge?" said I, returning the piece to the hunter.
Reference may be made to the invention of rifled cannon, heavier ordnance, breech-loading guns, and shells and explosive bullets. It was the needle-gun of the Prussians, which gave them a signal advantage in their war with the French. The building of armored battle ships has been followed by the construction of small swift vessels from which to launch torpedoes at the battle ships.
The Prussian armies were stronger than their opponents by more than one-fourth and they were armed with the needle-gun against the Austrian muzzle-loading rifle.
Assailed on both flanks and pressed in the centre, the Austrians first began to slacken fire, then to waver, then to give way under the terrific concentrated fire of the needle-guns, then to retreat into ignominious flight. The contending forces were about equal; but science and the needle-gun won the day, and changed the whole aspect of modern warfare.
I took the harness from Brigham, mounted him bareback and started after the game, being armed with my new buffalo killer which I had named "Lucretia Borgia," an improved breech-loading needle-gun which I had obtained from the Government. As I was riding toward the buffaloes I observed five men coming from the fort. They, too, had seen the herd and had come to join the chase.
The ranks, as fast as they were thinned, closed up again, and their compact formation was not broken even under the leadership of young lieutenants and ensigns. As they got nearer to the enemy the needle-gun did good service. The French were driven from all their foremost positions, where, for the most part, they did not await the final struggle.
Blanched and agitated, with the needle-gun still in his fist, he brooded, erect before the counter.
He next spoke about the Crimean war, of the late contest between Austria and Prussia, of the needle-gun, and asked us if the Prussians had made the Emperor of Austria a prisoner, or seized his country. Mr.
I venture to affirm, that even with the needle-gun, the French army would not suffer the fate of the Austrian army;" and the conversation continued without the bystanders being able to follow it. But after the departure of the King of Prussia and his suite, Napoleon III., struck by these words, energetically busied himself in overhauling the equipment of the French army.
French spies overran the Rhineland, and German draughtsmen were busy in the cities and plains of Alsace-Lorraine. France had at last armed her soldiers with the breech-loading chassepot gun, by many thought to be superior to the needle-gun; and she had in addition secretly constructed a terrible and mysterious engine of war called mitrailleuse, a combination of gun-barrels fired by mechanism.
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