Frederick Engels. Carabine
Frederick Engels. Carabine[296]
Carabine, or carbine, a short barrelled musket adapted to the use of cavalry. In order to admit of its being easily loaded on horseback, the barrel ought not to be more than 2 feet 6 inches long, unless it be breech-loading; and to be easily managed with one hand only, its weight must be less than that of an infantry musket. The bore, too, is in most services rather less than that of the infantry fire-arm. The carabine may have either a smooth or a rifled bore; in the first case, its effect will be considerably inferior to that of the common musket; in the second, it will exceed it in precision for moderate distances. In the British service, the cavalry carry smooth-bored carabines; in the Russian cavalry, the light horse all have rifled carabines, while of the cuirassiers (1)/[4] have rifled, and the remaining [3]/[4] smooth barrels to their carabines. The artillery, too, in some services (French and British especially), carry carabines; those of the British are on the principle of the new Enfield rifle.[3] Carabine-firing was at one time the principal mode of cavalry fighting, but now it is principally used on outpost duty, and with cavalry skirmishing. In French military works, the expression carabine always means an infantry rifle, while for a cavalry carabine the word mousqueton is adopted.
can Cyclopaedia First published in The New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. IV, 1859
Endnotes
[296] The "Carabine" belongs to the second group of short articles beginning with C Engels sent to Marx after the dispatch of the first three articles of this group on January 7, 1858 (see Note 293). On January 22 Marx made an entry in his notebook about the dispatch of the following seven articles he had received from Engels by then: "Carabine", "Carabineers", "Carcass", "Carronade", "Cartouch", "Cartridge" and "Case Shot". The second article was not published in The New American Cyclopaedia and the manuscript is not extant. In The New American Cyclopaedia the article "Carabine" ends with the sentence: "Several improvements in breech-loading carabines have recently been made in the United States, and submitted for trial to an ordnance board at West Point (July, 1858)." The date quoted shows that this was added by the editors.
[4] Acre was captured by Richard Coeur de Lion in 1191 during the third cru-sade (1189-92). The crusades were military colonialist expeditions by the big West European feudal lords and Italian trading cities under the religious banner of recovering Jerusalem and other "Holy Lands" from the Mohammedans. Peasants also took part in the crusades, hoping thus to be freed from feudal oppression. History knows eight main crusades (1096-99, 1147-49, 1189-92, 1202-04, 1217-21, 1228-29, 1248-54 and 1270). Not only Mohammedan states in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia but also the Christian Byzantine Empire were the objects of the crusaders' aggressive strivings. The crusaders' conquests in the Eastern Mediterranean were not lasting, and were recovered by the Mohammedans. The Knights of St. John (also Hospitallers)—members of a Catholic military order founded by the crusaders in Palestine early in the twelfth century. After the defeat at Acre in 1291 they transferred their seat to Cyprus, then, early in the fourteenth century, to Rhodes and in 1530 to Malta (from that time on it was also called the order of Malta); since the nineteenth century its seat has been in Rome.
[3] The defeat of the Austrian army at Abensberg was an episode in the five-day battle of Regensburg (from April 19 to 23) during the Austro-French war of 1809 (a war waged by France against the fifth European coalition: Austria, Britain, Portugal and Spain). It was followed by the Austrians' defeat at Landshut on April 21 and at Eckmühl on April 22, and their retreat from Regensburg on April 23 under pressure from French troops. Nevertheless, the Austrian army retained its fighting capacity and put up a stubborn resistance to the French advance on Vienna.