of this war was a recrudescence of the idea of "dispersion." This will
be noticed later; the more material result of the Boer War, and of the
generally increasing specialization in the various functions of the
artillery arm, has been the reintroduction of heavy ordnance into field
armies. The field howitzer reappeared some time before the outbreak of
that war, and the British howitzers had illustrated their shell-power in
the Sudan campaign of 1898. During the latter part of the 19th century,
siege and fortress artillery underwent a development hardly less
remarkable than that of field artillery in the same time. Rifled guns,
"long" and "short" for direct and curved fire, formed the siege
artillery of the Germans in 1870-71, and with the reduction of the
old-fashioned fortresses of France began a new era in siegecraft (see
FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT). At the present time howitzers[2] (B.L.
rifled) are the principal siege weapons, while heavy direct-fire guns
(see ORDNANCE _passim_) still retain a part of the work formerly
assigned to the artillery of the attack. For an account of a siege with
modern artillery see Macalik and Langer, _Kampf um eine Festung_, which
describes an imaginary siege of Koniggratz. On the whole, it may be said
that modern artillery has caused a revolution in methods of
fortification and siegecraft, which is little less far-reaching than the
original change from the trebuchet to the bombard.
ORGANIZATION