In besieging a fortified place, the first parallel or line of batteries of the besiegers was habitually established at about six hundred yards from the enemy’s works, a distance then at long artillery range, but which would now be under an annihilating fire from infantry rifles. The cannon used solid shot almost exclusively, though early in the present century a projectile, invented by Lieutenant Shrapnel, of the British army, and which now universally bears his name, was introduced. This consisted of a thin cast-iron shell filled with round musket balls, the interstices between which were filled by pouring in melted sulphur or resin, to solidify the mass and prevent it from cracking the shell when the piece was fired. A hole was bored through the mass of sulphur and bullets to receive the bursting charge, which was just sufficient to rupture the shell and release the bullets, which then moved with the velocity that the projectile had at the moment of bursting. Shrapnel has at all times been a destructive missile, though in its early form it was insignificant in comparison with the “man-killing projectile” which now bears the same designation. [Illustration: CONGREVE ROCKET.] In the year 1806, the Congreve rocket was added to the weapons of war. It consisted of a case of wrought iron, filled with a composition of nitre, charcoal, and sulphur, in such proportions as to burn more slowly than gunpowder. The head of the rocket consisted of a solid shot, a shell, or a shrapnel. At the base was fastened a stick, which secured steadiness for the projectile in its flight. The range of the rocket was scarcely more than five hundred yards, though a subsequent improvement, which dispensed with the guide-stick and substituted three tangential vents, increased the range very considerably. Congreve rockets were used with effect in Europe in 1814, and against our raw militia at Bladensburg in the same year. They seem, however, to have depended more upon the moral effect of their hissing rush than upon any really destructive properties, and were effective mainly against raw troops and cavalry. The rocket is now an obsolete weapon, having made its last appearance in war in the Austrian army in 1866. [Illustration: U. S. RIFLE MUSKET, 1855.]