The officers of the artillery ought always to construct their own batteries and platforms, and not the engineers, as is practised in the English service; for certainly none can be so good judges of those things as the artillery officers, whose daily practice it is; consequently they are the properest people to direct the situation and to superintend the making of batteries on all occasions. _Mortar_-BATTERY. This kind of battery differs from a gun-battery, only in having no embrasures. It consists of a parapet of 18 or 20 feet thick, 7¹⁄₂ high in front, and 6 in the rear; of a berm 2¹⁄₂ or 3 feet broad, according to the quality of the earth; of a ditch 24 feet broad at the top, and 20 at the bottom. The beds must be 9 feet long, 6 broad, 8 from each other, and 5 feet from the parapet: they are not to be sloping like the gun platforms, but exactly horizontal. The insides of such batteries are sometimes sunk 2 or 3 feet into the ground, by which they are much sooner made than those of cannon. The powder magazines and piles of shells are placed as is mentioned in the article GUN-BATTERY. _Ricochet_-BATTERY, so called by its inventor M. Vauban, and first used at the siege of Aeth in 1697. It is a method of firing with a very small quantity of powder, and a little elevation of the gun, so as just to fire over the parapet, and then the shot will roll along the opposite rampart, dismounting the cannon, and driving or destroying the troops. In a siege they are generally placed at about 300 feet before the first parallel, perpendicular to the faces produced, which they are to enfilade. Ricochet practice is not confined to cannon alone; small mortars and howitzers may effectually be used for the same purpose. They are of singular use in action to enfilade an enemy’s ranks; for when the men perceive the shells rolling and bouncing about with their fuzes burning, expecting them to burst every moment, the bravest among them will hardly have courage to await their approach and face the havoc of their explosion. _Horizontal_ BATTERIES are such as have only a parapet and ditch; the platform being only the surface of the horizon made level. _Breach_ or _Sunk_ BATTERIES are such as are sunk upon the glacis, with a design to make an accessible breach in the faces or saliant angles of the bastion and ravelin. _Cross_ BATTERIES are such as play athwart each other against the same object, forming an angle at the point of contact; whence greater destruction follows, because what one shot shakes, the other beats down. _Oblique_ BATTERIES or _Batteries en Echarpe_, are those which play on any work obliquely, making an obtuse angle with the line of range, after striking the object. _Enfilading_ BATTERIES are those that sweep or scour the whole length of a strait line, or the face or flank of any work. _Sweeping_ BATTERIES. See _Enfilading_-BATTERIES. _Redan_ BATTERIES are such as flank each other at the saliant and rentrant angles of a fortification.