The wars that ensued were not so different from the wars of the Egyptians and other ancient nations as one might carelessly suppose, because the weapons were not very different. The only weapon that was very novel was the gun; and the gun of the year 1800 was a contrivance so vastly inferior to the gun that exists today as not to be immeasurably superior to the bow and arrow. It had to be loaded slowly at the muzzle; and the powder was so non-uniform and in other ways inferior, that the gun's range was short and its accuracy slight. Even the artillery that Bonaparte used so skillfully was crude and ineffective, according to the standards of today. The cavalry was not very different from the cavalry of the Assyrians, and the military engineers performed few feats greater than that of Cæsar's, in building the bridge across the Rhine. There were no railroads, no steamships, no telegraphs, no telephones. There was less difference between the armies of 1800 A. D. and those of 1800 B. C., than between the armies of 1800 A. D. and those of 1900 A. D. The same remark applies to virtually all the material conditions of living. There was less difference, for instance, between the fine buildings of 1800 B. C. and 1800 A. D. than between the fine buildings of 1800 and 1900 A. D. The influence of the new inventions on the material conditions of living was only beginning to be felt; for the twin agencies of steam and electricity, that were later to make the difference, had not yet got to work. It was the power of steam that was to transport men and materials across vast oceans and across great continents at high speed, and place in the hands of every people the natural fruits and the foods and the raw materials and the manufactured appliances of other lands; it was the subtle influence of electricity that was to give every people instant communication with every other. It was the co-working of steam and electricity that was to make possible the British navy and the British merchant marine, and the relatively smaller merchant marines and navies of other countries, and to bring all the world under the dominance of Great Britain and of the other countries that were civilized. The opening of the nineteenth century, therefore, marks the opening of a new era. In 1800 the steam engine was already an effective appliance, but it was not yet in general use. Electricity was a little behind steam; and though Franklin and the others had proved that it possessed vast possibilities of many kinds, and also that it could be harnessed and put to work by man for the benefit of man, electricity had as yet accomplished little of real value.