The cannoniers are so armed as to be capable of defending their pieces to the last extremity; they therefore cannot be easily captured by opposing columns of infantry.

"As to pretending to rush upon the guns," says Napoleon, "and carry them by the bayonet, or to pick off the gunners by musketry, these are chimerical ideas.

Such things do sometimes happen; but have we not examples of still more extraordinary captures by a _coup de main ?_ As a general rule, there is no infantry, however intrepid it may be, that can, without artillery, march with impunity the distance of five or six hundred toises, against two well-placed batteries (16 pieces) of cannon, served by good gunners; before they could pass over two-thirds of the way, the men would be killed, wounded, or dispersed.

* * * * A good infantry forms, no doubt, the sinews of an army; but if it were required to fight for a long time against a very superior artillery, its good quality would be exhausted, and its efficiency destroyed.

In the first campaigns of the wars of the Revolution, what France had in the greatest perfection was artillery; we know not a single instance in which twenty pieces of cannon, judiciously placed, and in battery, were ever carried by the bayonet.