Of course Gunners the world over could afford to be complacent; field artillery fought chiefly against infantry whose common muskets had an effective range of 200 yards - according to the optimists - but which in reality was no more than 80. They were not even fitted with sights!

On the other hand the effective range of field guns was 800 - 1000. Thus the artillery was Queen of the Battlefield as the saying went. Gunners were no more impressed with riflemen than they were with musketeers; early service rifles fired over-sized balls which had to be forced down the bore by hitting the hammer with a mallet to make them 'take' the rifling! Not only did this make the rate of fire extremely slow, but it distorted the balls, badly affecting their accuracy.

The full story of the development of the military rifle is beyond the scope of this paper, but it needs to be briefly addressed, first because it shows how hard it was to get new ideas accepted in those days, and secondly because it eventually obliged Gunners of all nations to switch from smooth-bore to rifled ordnance - as Robins had urged in 1742.