Frederick Engels. Carronade
Carronade, a short piece of iron ordnance, first constructed at the Carron foundery, Scotland, in 1779, for the use of the British navy, and first employed against the United States.[297] The carronades have no trunnions, but a loop under the middle of the piece, by which they are fastened to the carriage. The bore has a chamber, and the muzzle is scooped out like a cup. They are very short and light, there being about 60 or 70 lbs. of the gun to 1 lb. of the weight of the solid shot, the length varying from 7 to 8 calibres. The charge, consequently, cannot but be weak, and ranges from [1]/l6 to Vs the weight of the shot. Carronades, on their first introduction, found great favor with naval men. Their lightness and insignificant recoil allowed great numbers of them to be placed on board the small men-of-war of those times. Their ranges appeared proportionably great, which was caused: 1, by a reduced windage, and, 2, by their great angle of dispart, arising from the thickness of metal around the breech, and the shortness of the gun; and the great weight of metal projected by them rendered them at close quarters very formidable. They were adopted in the U.S. service about 1800. It was, however, soon discovered that this kind of cannon could not compete with longer and heavier guns, throwing their projectiles with full charge and at low elevations. Thus, it has been ascertained that the common long guns of the British service have at 2° elevation, and the shell guns at 3°, the same range as the carronades of corresponding calibre at 5° (viz., about 1,200 yards). And, as the chance of hitting decreases as the elevation increases, the use of carronades beyond 1,200 yards and an elevation of 5° is completely out of the question; whereas, long guns may with considerable effect be used at ranges up to a mile, and even 2,000 yards. This was strikingly exemplified by the 2 contending squadrons on Lakes Erie and Ontario, during the Anglo-American war of 1812-'14.[298] The American vessels had long guns, while the British were mainly armed with carronades. The Americans manoeuvred so as to keep just out of range of the British carronades, while their own long guns told heavily on the hulls and rigging of their opponents. In consequence of these defects, carronades have now become almost obsolete. On shore they are used by the British, now and then, on the flanks of bastions and in casemates, where but a short extent of ditch is to be flanked by grape principally. The French navy possesses a carronade with trunnions (carronade à tourillons); but this is in reality a powerful gun.
can Cyclopaedia First published in The New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. IV, 1859
Endnotes
[297] A reference to the American War of Independence (see Note 60).
[1] In April 1857 Charles Dana, one of the founders of The New American Cyclopaedia, invited Marx to contribute to it. On Engels' advice, Marx agreed to write a number of articles, and Engels promised to help him with those on military and military-historical subjects. Subsequently Engels undertook most of these articles so that Marx could complete his economic research. Marx wrote primarily biographical essays on military figures and on politicians, for which Engels also helped him to elucidate the military aspect. Marx's and Engels' work together for the Cyclopaedia, like their joint reporting for the New-York Daily Tribune, is an example of the close collaboration between the founders of scientific communism. The New American Cyclopaedia was "a popular dictionary of general knowledge" prepared by a group of progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers on the New-York Daily Tribune editorial board and edited by Charles Dana and George Ripley. It was published in 16 volumes by D. Appleton and Company, New York, in 1858-63 and reprinted in 1868 and 1869. A number of prominent US and European scholars wrote for it. Despite the eclecticism typical of this and other bourgeois encyclopaedias, many articles in The New American Cyclopaedia reflected progressive democratic views. Marx and Engels wrote their articles from revolutionary-proletarian, materialist positions notwithstanding the editors' demand not to express their party point of'view. But because of this demand Marx limited the range of his subjects mainly to military problems and to the study of different countries, giving up the idea of writing essays on the history of German philosophy, the Napoleonic Code, Chartism, socialism and communism, which he thought it inadmissible to deal with even in a spirit of apparent neutrality. It may have been for this reason also that Marx did not contribute the article "Aesthetics" as originally planned. The articles in The New American Cyclopaedia were published anonymously, and only volumes II, V and XVI contained lists of the authors of major articles. Marx is also mentioned as the author of the articles "Army", "Artillery", "Bernadotte", "Bolivar", "Cavalry", "Fortification", "Infantry", and "Navy" (actually these articles were written by Engels, except for "Bernadotte" and "Bolivar"). Marx's and Engels' authorship of other articles has been established on the basis of the Marx-Engels correspondence, Charles Dana's letters to Marx, Marx's notebooks, where the dispatch of articles to New York was entered, and other material (conspectuses, extracts for articles, etc.). In all, the authorship of 81 articles has been established. Some of them may have been abridged by the Cyclopaedia's editors, who in some cases interfered with the text. Marx and Engels contributed to The New American Cyclopaedia from July 1857 to November 1860, and their articles (those known to us) were published in volumes I-V, VII, IX and XII. They were also included, unchanged, in the 1868-69 edition of the Cyclopaedia but were not reprinted any more during their authors' lifetime. A collection of them was not published until 1933 in the Soviet Union in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XI, Pan II. The most complete publication of these articles was in volumes 14 (1959) and 44 (1977) of the Second Russian Edition of the Works of Marx and Engels. However, this publication left out some articles—"Austerlitz", "Augereau", and "Badajos", of which Engels was erroneously regarded as the author. When preparing the Russian edition, the editors established the true authorship of a number of articles wrongly attributed to Marx and Engels by some biblio-graphers. Thus the articles "Abd-el-Kader" and "Chartism" were written by William Humphrey, "Austerlitz" by Henry W. Herbert, "Epicurus" by Hermann Raster, "Socialism" by Parke Godwin, and "Hegel" by Henry Smith. The article "Aesthetics" could not have been by Marx either, for it conflicts with the views expressed by Marx on the subject in his works. In the present English edition, the articles by Marx and Engels from The New American Cyclopaedia are published on the basis of research carried out during the preparation of the Second Russian Edition of their Works. p. XXIX
[298] See Note 35. p. 242.