nd 8-inch bronze
howitzers (fig. 14b), a 10-inch bronze mortar (fig. 14a), 12-, 18-,
and 24-pounder iron guns (fig. 14c) and later the 4-1/2-inch cast-iron
rifle. With the exception of the new 3-inch wrought-iron rifle (fig.
14e), field artillery cannon were bronze: 6- and 12-pounder guns, the
12-pounder Napoleon gun-howitzer, 12-pounder mountain howitzer, 12-,
24-, and 32-pounder field howitzers, and the little Coehorn mortar
(fig. 39). A machine gun invented by Dr. Richard J. Gatling became
part of the artillery equipment during the war, but was not much used.
Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating cannon of several
barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a minute from its
10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a crank. In Europe
it became more popular than the French mitrailleuse.

The smaller smoothbores were _effective_ with case shot up to about
600 or 700 yards, and _maximum_ range of field pieces went from
something less than the 1,566-yard solid-shot trajectory of the
Napoleon to about 2,600 yards (a mile and a half) for a 6-inch
howitzer. At Chancellorsville, one of Stonewall Jackson's guns fired a
shot which bounded down the center of a roadway and came to rest a
mile away. The performance verified the drill-book tables. Maximum
ranges of the larger pieces, however, ran all the way from the average
1,600 yards of an 18-pounder garrison gun to the well over 3-mile
range of a 12-inch Columbiad firing a 180-pound shell at high
elevation. A 13-inch seacoast mortar would lob a 200-pound shell 4,325
yards, or almost 2-1/2 miles. The shell from an 8-inch howitzer
carried 2,280 yards, but at such extreme ranges the guns could hardly
be called accurate.

On the battlefield, Napoleon's artillery tactics were no longer
practical. The infantry, armed with its own comparatively long-range
firearm, was usually able to keep artillery beyond case-shot range,
and cannon had to stand off at such long distances that their
primitive ammunition was relatively ineffective. The result was that
when attacking infantry moved in, the defending infantry and artillery
were still fresh and unshaken, ready to pour a devastating point-blank
fire into the assaulting lines. Thus, in spite of an intensive 2-hour
bombardment by 138 Confederate guns at the crisis of Gettysburg, as
the gray-clad troops advanced across the field to close range, double
canister and concentrated infantry volleys cut them down