It was not without much reason that the general opinion throughout Europe attributed the extraordinary successes of the revolutionary armies of France to the admirable arrangement of the light infantry service. Napoléon may be said to have created the corps of _voltigeurs_ and _tirailleurs_, upon which model were subsequently formed the Carabineers and Rifles of the British service, and the Caçadores of Spain and Portugal. The Prussian General Bulow in 1795, stated his opinion that “l’emploi de l’infanterie légère est le dernier perfectionnement de la guerre, et qu’à la rigueur on pourrait désormais se passer d’infanterie de ligne dans les armées!” _Esprit du Système de Guerre moderne, par un ancien officier prussien._ We may laugh at the extravagant absurdity of the latter part of this statement, but it shows the effect which Napoléon’s new system had produced. An opinion nearly similar prevailed about the same time in England. “The continent has been subdued by the French _tirailleurs_, and battles are sought to be won by killing one after another the officers of the enemy’s army.” _Letter to a General-Officer on the Establishment of Rifle Corps in the British Army._ By Col. Robinson. These rifle corps were established, and became eminently successful, being detached in companies to the different infantry brigades. The coolness, however, of our ordinary infantry skirmishers in the Peninsula rendered an extensive introduction of rifle corps unnecessary. The rifle, as used in modern warfare, is the most terrible because most treacherous of weapons. It would have fallen especially under the ban of the Bayards and Montlucs of the sixteenth century, who chivalrously deprecated the use even of the common firelock, and formed vows worthy of _Don Quixote_, “pour qu’on abandonnât l’usage de ces armes traîtresses au moyen desquelles un lâche, tapi derrière un buisson, donne la mort au brave qu’il n’aurait pas regardé en face!”