|
发表于 2018-8-28 14:44:01
|
显示全部楼层
This was because in the stress of battle, human factors always figure more greatly than technical ones; and not just through loading and firing too quickly. By way of example, a Black Watch officer named David Stewart of Garth sagely recounted how the Caribs of St Vincent had a great reputation as marksmen; and to test it one day he had a prisoner successfully shoot an orange off the top of a bottle at 200yd (Garth 1822: II.278). On being questioned as to why he had not shot with such deadly aim against the soldiers who captured him, the Carib dryly replied that oranges did not shoot back or run at him with bayonets! Thus the great Maréchal Saxe acidly commented that ‘Powder is not as terrible as it is believed. Few men in these affairs are killed from in front or while fighting. I have seen whole salvoes fail to kill four men …’ (Saxe 1944: 32–33).
Reid, The Flintlock Musket Brown Bess and Charleville 1715-1865, p. 35.
|
|