This is a curious story, but it shows how exceedingly short the range of firearms in those days, and even up to the Crimean War, was. General Mercer, whose memoirs, apparently from fear of the duke, were not published until after his death, gives in his account of Waterloo a similar curious story. He says, that after a charge of the Grenadiers à Cheval and Cuirassiers against his battery, “they prepared for a second attempt, sending up a cloud of skirmishers who galled us terribly by a fire of carbines and pistols at scarcely forty yards from our front. We were obliged to stand with port-fires lighted, so that it was not without a little difficulty that I succeeded in restraining the people from firing, for they grew impatient under such fatal results. Seeing some exertion beyond words necessary for this purpose, I leaped my horse up the little bank and began a promenade (by no means agreeable), up and down our front, without even drawing my sword, though these fellows were within speaking distance of me. This quieted my men; but the tall blue gentlemen, seeing me thus dare them, immediately made a target of me, and commenced a very deliberate practice, to show us what very bad shots they were, and verify the old artillery proverb, ‘The nearer the target, the safer you are.’ One fellow certainly made me flinch, but it was a miss; so I shook my finger at him and called him _coquin_. The rogue grinned as he reloaded and again took aim. I certainly felt rather foolish at that moment, but was ashamed, after such bravado, to let him see it, and therefore continued my promenade. As if to prolong my torment, he was a terrible time about it. To me it seemed an age. Whenever I turned, the muzzle of his infernal carbine still followed me. At length bang it went, and whiz came the ball close to the back of my neck and at the same instant down dropped the leading driver of one of my guns (Miller), into whose forehead the cursed missile had penetrated.” This forgotten effect of the range of firearms, before rifles were, is interesting to follow. In a drill-book, dated 1829, occurs the following. It is a book of questions and answers, and in it occurs Question 65, which asks, “When firing them (the men) at ball cartridge, do you increase or decrease their distance in proportion to their confidence?” To which the answer is, “I increase or decrease the distance in proportion to their confidence, making the diffident strike it at all events; as I find his or their confidence increase, I increase the distance accordingly.” So in Question 66 occurs that of “And how is this done?” to which the reply is, “If a man do not strike the target at forty yards, I decrease the distance to thirty yards, and so on till he hits it.”