I need not go into technical details about the French gun, though naturally all its secrets, including that of the famous liquid substance in its hydropneumatic brake, are well known to the Germans. For English readers it is enough to say that its muzzle diameter (75 mm.) is a trifle more than 3 inches, or one-thirty-third of its length, which is therefore just under 9 feet, that it fires two kinds of shells, a shrapnel shell of about 16 pounds, containing 300 balls, with a muzzle velocity of 1735 feet, and a high explosive shell of 11 pounds, containing 30 ounces of melinite, with a muzzle velocity of 1915 feet. These shells can be fired at the rate of thirty a minute, or about twice the rate possible for the 77 mm. Its further superiority over the German gun the Soixante-Quinze owes, partly to the excellence of its _débouchoir_ (the instrument by which the bursting point of the fuse is automatically regulated before the shell is put into the breech) and partly to the control of its liquid brake, which causes the gun to return after the recoil as nearly as possible to its exact original position. The Germans use a hand-_débouchoir_, which takes longer to manipulate and gives less accurate results, and because of its less powerful brake the aim of the 77 mm. has constantly to be readjusted. The other chief French field guns are the 155 _court_, called the Rimailho after its inventor; the 120 _long_, a siege gun converted into a field gun; the 120 _court_; the 105, which is like a larger 75, and fires a shell of thirty-six pounds; and the 65, a mountain gun, which can be carried in four pieces on the backs of mules, and has done excellent work in the fighting in the Vosges. In English measurements the diameters of the shells fired by these different pieces are approximately: 65 mm., 2½ inches; 75 mm., 3 inches; 105 mm., 4¼ inches; 120 mm., 4¾ inches; and 155 mm., 6 inches.