A more important thing, however, than the dress has been the armament of the Royal Horse Artillery. Its greatest deeds have been wrought with the 6-pounder; but that was not its invariable weapon. Talking merely of the pre-amalgamation days[4]--the days which belong to _history_ instead of _to-day_, when rifled ordnance was unknown in Horse Artillery--there were even then not unfrequent changes of armament. One troop, as we shall see hereafter, went on service with 12-pounders; on the eve of Waterloo, owing to the want of guns of position, three troops received 9-pounders, instead of the 6-pounders which they had brought from England; and coming to later days, at the commencement of the Crimean War, the two troops, C and I, which first left England were armed with 6-pounders; but, on reaching Varna, C Troop was ordered to exchange them for 9-pounders; and I Troop would have been left behind, for inability to do the same, had it not been that Lord Raglan yielded to the urgent entreaties of its commander, Colonel Maude, to allow it to accompany the expedition. During the Peninsular Campaign, the armament of a troop was as follows:--2 9-pounders, or 2 heavy 6-pounders; 1 heavy 5½-inch howitzer; 3 light 6-pounders; 6 ammunition [Sidenote: Lefroy.] waggons; 3 reserve waggons, and 4 other carriages. Compared with the simplicity of modern Horse Artillery armament, the presence of three different guns in the same troop, with the consequent necessity of a variety of ammunition, seems a very complicated and undesirable arrangement. This was frequently felt at the time; and at the change of armament made before Waterloo, a foreshadowing of the modern harmony of weapons might be detected in the arming of I Troop--Bull’s--with 5½-inch howitzers only. And right noble was the service done by that troop on the 18th of June. During the season of starvation between 1819 and 1848, the guns attached to the skeleton troops were 6-pounders. With the augmentations, a proportion of howitzers made its re-appearance.