employment of ordnance, the men working the guns and the transport
drivers were still civilians. The actual commander of the artillery was
indeed, both in Germany and in England, usually a soldier, and Lennart
Torstensson, the commander of Gustavus' artillery, became a brilliant
and successful general. But the transport and the drivers were still
hired, and even the gunners were chiefly concerned for the safety of
their pieces, the latter being often the property, not of the king
waging war, but of some "master gunner" whose services he had secured,
and the latter's apprentices were usually in entire charge of the
material. These civilian "artists," as they were termed, owed no more
duty to the prince than any other employes, and even Gustavus, it would
appear, made no great improvement in the matter of the reorganization of
artillery trains. Soldiers as drivers do not appear until 150 years
later, and in the meanwhile companies of "firelocks" and "fusiliers"
(q.v.) came into existence, as much to prevent the gunners and drivers
from running away as to protect them from the enemy. A further cause of
difficulties, in England at any rate, was the age of the "gunners." In
the reign of Elizabeth, some of the Tower gunners were over ninety years
of age. Complaints as to the inefficiency of these men are frequent in
the years preceding the English Civil War. Gustavus, however, has the
merit of being the first to make the broad classification of artillery,
as mobile or non-mobile, which has since been almost universally in
force. In his time the 12-pounder was the heaviest gun classed as
mobile, and the "feildpeece" _par excellence_ was the 9-pounder or
_demi-culverin_. After the death of Gustavus at Lutzen (1632), his
principles came universally into practice, and amongst them were those
of the employment of field artillery.