Musketry of every kind is represented in the Museum of Artillery, from the earliest to the latest patterns, including, in particular, the flint locks used in the wars of the Empire, percussion locks, by which they were replaced, the rifles adopted just before the Crimean war, and the quick-firing muskets of the most recent models, including the chassepot, associated with the war of 1870 and 1871, and the “fusil Gras,” which replaced it. The word artillery was formerly applied to every implement of war, though since the introduction of musketry it has been used only to designate guns of large calibre drawn by horses, as distinguished from portable fire-arms. Nevertheless, the first specimens of artillery, in something like the modern sense of the word, were of small bore, and the projectiles were the balls used in connection with the crossbow. The French employed artillery of this kind as far back as the battle of Crécy (1346). Gradually the bolts of the crossbow were replaced, for artillery fire, by leaden balls, called plummets (“plommées”), of about three pounds’ weight; these were used in cannons of modern shape, and by degrees the size of the balls was increased until soon the artillery of an army was divided into light and heavy. The discoveries of the monk Berthold Schwartz belong to the middle of the fourteenth century; and though this learned, but not perhaps beneficent, inventor revolutionised the art of war, he cannot be accused, in pursuing his studies, of having had any deadly purpose in view. The earliest fire-arms were loaded at the breech by means of a box which was received in a strong stirrup and fastened with a key; and with the use of breech-loading pieces the history of artillery begins, and up to the present time ends. Soon after the introduction of artillery a rapid augmentation took place in the size of the guns employed, and cannon-balls of stone were used. These were replaced by smaller balls made of cast iron, but even to the present day the weight-carrying power of a gun is estimated on the supposition that the ball is of stone. Stone cannon-balls were used by the Turks long after they had been abandoned in European armies; so also were pieces of immense calibre. In Western Europe cast-iron balls were found to be more effective than the larger balls of stone.