THE RIFLE IN COLONIAL TIMES

It is not known who first discovered the advantages of cutting spiral grooves in the bores of gun-barrels for shooting ball. The common story goes that one Caspar Zöllner of Vienna began to make a peculiar kind of weapon toward the close of the fifteenth century. His gun had straight channels cut in its bore from breech to muzzle, which received the burnt residue of powder and thus admitted a more tightly fitting bullet than could be used in other pieces. The windage was reduced by this contrivance, and the bullet was given a truer direction because it had no play in the barrel. Such weapons are said to have been used in public for the first time in 1498 at a shooting match in Leipsic. Spiral grooving, or rifling proper, is supposed to have soon followed from the endeavor of some smith to give a bullet the same whirling motion that steadies a wellfeathered arrow in its flight. Unfortunately the original authorities for this Zöllner story cannot now be traced, and there are other legends that would give the credit of discovery to other experimenters, though they agree in this—that the inventor of rifling was a German.

Most writers on the history of firearms are content to let the matter rest here, but better evidence than that of tradition points to a different origin for our first instrument of precision. In an inventory of the fortress of Guastalla near Parma, dated 28 July, 1476, there has been found the following macaronic entry:

"Iten sclopetus unus ferri factus a lumaga." The last word is Milanese dialect for lumaca, a snail, and the phrase a lumaga is applied to anything convoluted like the shell of a snail; hence the literal meaning of this entry is, "Also one iron gun made with a helix," or twist like that of a snail-shell.

Such a description is unmistakable, and whether the arm was made in Italy or elsewhere shows at least that Zöllner's straight grooves were behind the times. That it was made in Italy seems likely from the fact of its being there already a score of years before rifling is claimed to have been invented elsewhere. Moreover, we may remember that some of the finest specimens of sixteenth-century rifles surviving in museums are of Italian workmanship. Marksmen there were, too, on the southern slope of the Alps who were famous at an early day. Even a German prince, Frederick III. of Brandenburg, attached a corps of Piedmontese riflemen

to his army, and employed them at the siege of Bonn to pick off officers and prevent reconnoitring. So it may well be that the curious gun of Guastalla was made by some smith hard by, though it by no means follows that he invented the form of bore called a lumaga. From what we know of the history of inventions generally, and of the trade routes of the middle ages, it seems not improbable that rifled arms, like gunpowder itself, may have been introduced from the east, say by Venetian travelers. A like supposition crosses one's mind when handling one of those queer arms that are still made in Asia Minor, muzzle-loading, flint-locked, built upon a plan that was never suggested or modified by western ideas yet rifled.

However this may be, it remains true that rifle-shooting as an art has flourished first and last in Teutonic countries. From the time of its first appearance in Europe the rifle was seriously experimented with by German mechanics and sharpshooters, whose skill and perseverance combined to make it more than an interesting toy. It was peculiarly a mountaineer's weapon; and Germans, then as now, held the great highland fastnesses of central Europe.

But why was a grooved bore better than a smooth one for the chamoishunter's gun? If greater accuracy and efficiency are imparted to a bullet by causing it to spin like a top, why did not all whose trade was war or hunting take to rifled arms at once? It is time to state briefly the chief points of difference between the rival systems.

Down almost to our civil war the armies of Christendom were equipped with a smooth-bored musket known among English soldiers as “Old Brown Bess." Save for the alteration from flint-lock to percussion-lock there was no essential change in this gun for a century and a half. Brown Bess used a charge of one hundred and twenty-five grains of powder and a four hundred and ninety grain ball, so that eleven rounds weighed about a pound. The bullet was several sizes smaller than the bore, to facilitate loading, and hence the loss of power was excessive. For accuracy the arm could not be depended upon beyond sixty or seventy yards, comparing in this respect very unfavorably with an Indian's bow and arrow. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin went so far as to advise arming the continental line with bows instead of muskets. Yet the old smooth-bore had its good points too. Being strong and uncomplicated it was serviceable under almost any amount of hard usage or neglect; it was cheap and could be quickly made; the clumsiest dolt could make a noise with it or wield a bayonet from its muzzle.

A German rifle of the latter part of the seventeenth century used only about a fourth of the musket cartridge for a charge, not only economizing

ammunition but allowing more rounds to be carried on the person. The bullet fitted so tightly that but little gas escaped before it, thus utilizing almost the full power of the powder. The spinning bullet flew with such precision as to make sure of a man's hand at a hundred paces, of his head at a hundred and fifty, and of his breast at two hundred. But it took time and muscle to force the naked bullet down through the grooves, especially when the barrel was foul from repeated firing. It was necessary to keep the bore scrupulously clean when not in actual use, as a little rusting would ruin it. None but expert mechanics could make good rifles, which were always expensive and could not be turned out in large quantities to meet an emergency. Finally the rifle demanded a higher order of intelligence in its user than was needed to simply poke or stab.

In hunting timid game among the mountains, where a day's stalking might be rewarded by only one momentary glimpse of deer or chamois, accuracy of fire at long range was of the first importance, and any expedient for saving ammunition would be appreciated by him who had to carry it. So it would seem that rifled arms would commend themselves at first trial to the Alpine hunter, and we may be sure that he would not be the man to grudge the care needful to keep such instruments in order. One does not love the club with which he killed a snake, nor is it likely that affection was ever lavished upon old Brown Bess, but the son of famous bowmen could not find his skill coaxed by the rifle's latent powers without feeling for the weapon an artist's pride and attachment.

On the other hand, military conservatism could see nothing good in the new invention. Occasional exchange of missiles between regular troops and Swiss or Tyrolean hunters may have given the tacticians a new sensation, and ordnance boards, prodded by public opinion, may have carried out some half-hearted experiments to test the rifle's qualities as a military arm, but prejudice in favor of brute strength and cold steel was too deep to be easily uprooted. Gunpowder had never been in favor with the official class, which was lineally descended from those mediæval knights in armor who were thrown to the dust by firearms in the hands of peasants. The humiliation of that encounter was never forgiven, and may account in part for the fact that improvements in weapons of war have since been mostly the work of civilians. It was unprofessional to encourage such vile and democratic arts. So the rifle won no friends at court, and war continued to be a rather innocent amusement when fought beyond arm's length. It was enough to condemn it that the deer-stalker's gun was slow and hard to load or that common soldiers must be specially trained to use and care for it.

Yet the practical genius of American backwoodsmen had adapted the

rifle to military requirements a century before it came into general use. Our hunters were also soldiers, from boyhood to old age, and the same weapon that procured them food in the forest was their protection against the deadliest of human foes. Instead of forcing a naked bullet down through the grooves, they used a ball somewhat smaller than the bore and covered it with a greased patch of linen or thin buckskin, which cleaned the barrel and acted as a gas-check, increasing the accuracy of the piece while at the same time it prevented leading. When hard pressed the American would drop an undersized bullet into his gun without using a patch, a blow on the stock would prime the flint-lock, and he could deliver as many as five or six shots in a minute, all effective at short range.

On reflection it will not seem strange that the use of rifled arms did not spread gradually from central Europe outward, but skipped from the Alps to the Alleghanies. The same qualities that recommended the grooved barrel to German hunters, its superior accuracy and economy of ammunition, appealed with far greater force to our pioneers in the middle and southern colonies. It was required of these latter that they fight with tactics not laid down in books, and military precedents were no check upon their inventiveness. They struggled along without organization, often single-handed, under such conditions of forest war that generally everything depended upon the first blow, the first shot. The way to supply-stations was a weary one, and often impassable, while long expeditions were undertaken on foot with no outfit save what was carried on the person. Success was due partly to pluck, partly to gumption, partly to plasticity of habit; but also due in no small measure to the rifle, which in their hands was sparing of lead and prodigal in shedding blood.

The advantage of superior weapons came to our pioneers at a critical period in history, for the white man was not at home on this continent until he had won the Atlantic watershed. European colonists could hover along the coast, saved from extermination by their skill at sea; but commerce was peripheral, production stinted, and no separate nationality possible, until the rich valleys of the interior were opened to settlement and the long Appalachian frontier was picketed by a race that could hold its own. The first Americans were they who dared enter the wilderness, and could stay there and thrive without foreign aid. It becomes, then, of some consequence to learn how the rifle came to America, and when.

It may as well be said at once that recent histories of the colonial period are apt to be careless in the use of the term "rifle," making it a convenient synonym for "gun," and often commit startling anachronisms by putting rifles in the hands of men who never heard of such a weapon.

The only evidence of any use to us is that of contemporary documents, or of the few surviving rifles themselves that have an authenticated history running back into colonial times. The conquest of New England and of the Atlantic coast generally was accomplished with match-lock, wheellock, or flint-lock muskets. Guns used by the Puritans may still be seen in the museums of historical societies. They are ponderous tubes, six feet long or more in the barrel alone, and too heavy to fire from the shoulder without a rest. Rifles were practically unknown in New England before the Revolution. Perhaps here and there one may have hung above a Yankee fireplace, but, if so, they were as exceptional as the threeshot and five-shot repeaters which some of Frontenac's people used against the Iroquois in 1690.

It is true that British officers attributed their repulse at Bunker Hill to the American rifles, which were "peculiarly adapted to take off the officers of a whole line as it marches to an attack." Others declared that each provincial rifleman was attended by two men to load for him, so that the marksman had nothing to do but fire as fast as a piece was put in his hand; “and this is the real cause of so many of our brave officers falling, they being singled out by these murderers, as they must appear to be in the eyes of every thinking man." We have reasons, however, for not accepting such testimony in evidence. Friends in England were pressing for explanation, and it was no time for fine distinctions. There were sent home stories of poisoned bullets, of air guns, and of rifle-balls slit almost into quarters, which, when fired from grooved barrels, flew into pieces and did great execution. It was a British officer who fathered the report, gravely published in London newspapers, that "the reason why the royal army killed so very few of the rebels in proportion to the number his. Majesty lost at the battle of Bunker's Hill was entirely owing to an unfortunate mistake in some who had the care of the artillery; in the hurry of their proceedings they took with them by mistake a prodigious number of twelve-pound shot for six-pound field-pieces. Hence it naturally required a great while to ram down such disproportioned shot, nor did they when discharged fly with that velocity and true direction they would have done had they been better suited to the size of the cannon."

It goes without saying that many of our militia at Bunker Hill were excellent shots. Putnam exclaimed to his troops as the enemy approached: "Men, you are all marksmen!"-but coupled this with his famous order: "Wait till you see the white of their eyes," which would have belied his words had the men been armed with rifles. Stark's New Hampshire regiment was recruited from backwoodsmen who knew the