Nearly forty years elapsed after Waterloo before another European war broke out. Peace had been by no means undisturbed; the revolutions of 1848 in particular occasioned serious fighting, but there had been no sustained war on a large scale. England had been entirely exempt; and not a few persons in England had begun to dream that the age of peace had begun, while many more thought that England might and should stand aloof from all European entanglements, and follow the more profitable pursuits of peace. There is some reason to think that the latter class involuntarily helped to bring about war, that the Czar of Russia would never have adhered to the policy which led to the Crimean War, unless he had attached undue importance to their language, and believed that England would not fight. The period of peace had witnessed great discoveries which were destined to revolutionise the art of war, as well as the conditions of peaceful life. Railways had been developed, fully in England, to a greater or less degree in the other nations of western and central Europe. Steam navigation had spread widely, though the majority of trading vessels, and an even larger proportion of men-of-war, still had sails only. The telegraph had been invented, but was not very extensively in use. All these new agencies played some part in the Crimean War, the telegraph somewhat to the detriment of the military operations, though their effect was trifling compared to the influence exerted in the war of 1870 by railways and the field telegraph. Except in one respect, there had been no changes in the art of war: and this one exception, the introduction of the rifle, was only beginning, though it involved potentially the vast extension in the range and rapidity of fire which has since revolutionised tactics. The fundamental principle of the rifle, grooving the gun-barrel so as to produce a rotation of the bullet, was known in the seventeenth century, if not sooner. The early forms of rifle far surpassed the musket in accuracy of aim, and also though in a less degree in range; but the difficulty of loading them was great, so that they were not suited to be the ordinary weapon of infantry, though picked men were armed with them. In 1836 a form of bullet was invented which would expand on the rifle being fired, and fill the grooves in the barrel. This conquered the difficulty of loading, and the rifle was gradually substituted for the musket; the English infantry sent to the Crimea in 1854 had nearly all received the new weapon, and the French also, but among the Russians the rifle was still only in the hands of a few picked men. The range was far less than what all soldiers are now accustomed to, but the advantage over the musket was very real. No corresponding advance had been made with artillery; hence the conditions of a siege remained the same as during the Peninsular War. [Illustration: _Map XVII._ _The Crimea._ _1854-5._]