The famous bashi-bazouks are irregular troopers in the pay of the Sultan. Very few of them are Europeans; they are mostly Asiatics from some or other of the provinces in Asiatic Turkey. They are wild, turbulent men, brave enough if serving under some leader who understands them; they receive no regular pay. They may be either infantry or cavalry, and their usual weapons are a long lance, a sabre, several pistols and one or more daggers. The famous " Bulgarian atrocities" of 1876, which roused the indignation of Europe and ultimately cost the corrupt Turks their supremacy, were mainly due to the lawless brutality of these ruffians.

The use of the bow and arrow was probably known to man at a very early period of his history, and triangular flint arrow-heads, chipped into the requisite shape, are found in all parts of the world, showing that they must have been known and largely used at a period anterior to the discovery of the working of metals. The bow is mentioned in Scripture as having been used in patriarchal times, and we know that all the leading nations of antiquity were acquainted with it. No one country or continent can claim the bow exclusively as its own. The Hottentots, Bushmen, South Sea Islanders and a few tribes in North America are experts in the use of the bow.

Gendarmes (Fr., "men-at-arms") were originally mounted lancers, armed at all points and attended by five inferior soldiers, who were furnished by the holders of fiefs. These were replaced by Charles VII.'s compagnies d'ordonnance, which were dissolved in 1787, one company of gendarmerie being retained as the bodyguard of Louis XVI. Since the Revolution, except for a short interval at the Restoration, the gendarmes have constituted a military police, which superseded the old marechaussee, and comprise both cavalry and infantry. Divided into legions and companies, and these latter into brigades, the organization of the force corresponds to the territorial divisions of the army. The men receive much higher pay than the rest of the army, of which, however, the corps is a part, its members being drafted from the line for this service. Germany also since 1808 has had its gendarmen.

In 1478 Mohammed II., in forming the siege of Scutari, in Albania, employed fourteen heavy bombards, the lightest of which threw a stone shot of 370 pounds weight, two sent shots of 500 pounds, two of 750 pounds, two of 850 pounds, one of 1,200 pounds, five of 1,500 pounds and one of the enormous weight of 1,640 pounds, enormous even in these days, for the only guns whose shot exceed the heaviest of these are our 80-ton guns, throwing a 1,700-pound projectile, our 100-ton, throwing one of 2,000 pounds, and the 110-ton, throwing an 1,800-pound shot with a high velocity. The stone shot of Mahommed's guns varied between twenty and thirty-two inches in diameter, about the same height as a dining table; 2,534 of them were fired on this occasion, weighing, according to a calculation of General Lefroy's, about 1,000 tons, and were cut out of the solid rock on the spot. Assuming twenty-four inches as the average diameter of the shot fired at this siege, the total area of the surface dressed was nearly 32,000 square feet. At this siege the weight of the powder fired is estimated to have been 250 tons.

At the siege of Rhodes, in 1480, Mohammed caused sixteen basilisks, or double cannon, to be cast on the spot, throwing balls two to three feet in diameter.

Italy expends every year $96,000,000 for her soldiers, and less than $4,000,000 for schools. In Spain it costs $100,000,000 to maintain the army, and only $1,500,000 to educate the children, but then it is the exception to find a Spanish farmer who is able to read or write. Germany boasts of being in the foremost rank among the nations in the kultur-kampf of the world, yet she expends $185,000,000 on her army, while $10,-000,000 is deemed sufficient for the education of her children. France maintains an army at an expense of $151,000,000, and supplies her schools with $21,000,000. The United States expends $115,000,000 for public schools, while the army and navy cost only $54,000,000.

We apply the term blockhouse to a stockade roofed in and loopholed. The timber that forms the walls must be bullet proof and covered outside with earth up to the loop-holes to render them fire-proof. Where the country is well-timbered and no artillery attack is to be feared the blockhouse is a useful defense. The size and shape vary. It may be cruciform in plan, the second story may project over the first, or may be placed diagonally across the lower one. A ditch or moat is excavated around the blockhouse, to furnish the earth that covers the wood work and to provide a further defense. In the ditch stakes are planted as a hindrance to an attack by the enemy.

. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, often called the "Death Ride," took place October 25, 1854. In this action 600 English horsemen, under the command of the Earl of Cardigan, charged a Russian force of five thousand cavalry and six battalions of infantry. They galloped through the battery of thirty guns, cutting down the artillerymen, and through the cavalry, but then discovered the battalions, and cut their way back again. Of the 670 who advanced to this daring charge, not two hundred returned. This reckless exploit was the result of some misunderstanding in an order from the commander-in-chief. Tennyson has a poem on the subject, called "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Sir Edw. Creasy in "The Fifteen Decisive Battles" says, that for chivalrous devotion and daring "the Death Ride" of the Light Brigade will not easily be paralleled.

The Janissaries or Janezaries were a body of Turkish soldiers first organized about 1330 a. d. by Sultan Orean from the young Christian prisoners. The name is from the Turkish yeni askari, new soldiers. The janissaries formed the earlier standing army of Europe. They were at first highly privileged and soon attained great power both in war and politics. In 1512 they raised Selim to the throne and caused the death of the famous Bajazet; in 1808 they objected to the organization of any other army than their own body and massacred all the new troops they could. In 1826 Mahomet II. suppressed them; his new troops remembering the massacre eighteen years before slaughtered 20,000 of the obnoxious troops. This put an end to the body. The massacre lasted three days, June 14, 15 and 16. When it was ended Mahomet organized his new armies in comparative peace.

The wager of battle is a mode of trial which prevailed in mediaeval Europe, especially among the Teutonic nations, on writs of right and appeals of treason and felony. After the Conquest, in England, trial by combat superseded all other legal ordeals, which were abolished by Henry III. The wager of battle was claimed and allowed in the Court of King's Bench so late as 1818, but the appellant (the brother of the deceased) refused the challenge, and the appellee (a man named Abraham Thornton, accused of violating and murdering a maid named Mary Ash-ford) was discharged. In the following year (1819) the law of wager of battle was struck off the statute-book. The legal duel was the parent of the illegal private duel, which still exists, though in a languishing condition, in France and Germany.