Antiquity, a military engine used before the invention of gunpowder, for beating down the walls of besieged fortresses. Generally speaking, it consisted of a long heavy beam of timber, armed at the extremity with iron fashioned something like the head of a ram, which being violently propelled with constant successive blows against a rampart or tower, shook the fabric of masonry, and in time caused it to tumble down.

Of this instrument there were several kinds. The first and simplest was a beam such as we have described, which the soldiers carried in their arms, and with one end of which they assailed the walls by main force. The second was composed of a vast beam, like the mast of a ship, shod with iron at one end, and suspended by the middle from another beam laid across two posts; and hanging thus equally balanced, it was successively drawn backwards and driven forwards with accumulated momentum against the wall or rampart. This is the kind described by Josephus as having been used at the siege of Jerusalem. The third description of battering-ram was covered over with a roof, shell, or screen of boards, to protect the men employed in working it from the stones, darts, and other missiles discharged by the besieged from the walls; whence it was called testudo arietaria. A fourth kind, mentioned by Felibien, was provided with wheels, which greatly facilitated its operations, and made it be considered the most perfect and effectual of all.

Plutarch informs us that, in the Parthian war, Mark Antony made use of a ram 80 feet in length; and Vitruvius states that this engine was sometimes 106, sometimes even 120 feet, in length; a circumstance to which we are to ascribe its prodigious force when vigorously worked. The battering-ram required a century of soldiers at a time to manage it; and as the working parties were regularly relieved as they became exhausted, it was kept in continual action, and from incessant iteration produced the most extraordinary effects. In fact, the momentum of Battering-ram 180 feet in length, 28 inches in diameter, armed with a head of iron weighing a ton and a-half; and moved by the united strength of a hundred men, must have been equal to the momentum of a thirty-six pound shot discharged point blank from a modern piece of heavy ordnance; and hence it is not difficult to conceive how effective the constant reiteration of such impulses would become in the work of demolition.

**Battering-Rams**, in Heraldry, a bearing or coat of arms resembling the military engine of the same name.

**Battery**, in the military art, any place where cannon or mortars are mounted, either to attack the forces of the enemy or to batter a fortification; and hence batteries have various names, according to the purposes which they are designed to effect.

**Gun-Battery** is a defence constructed of earth faced with green sods or fascines, sometimes of gabions filled with earth. It consists of a breast-work, epaulement, or parapet, about 8 feet in height, and 18 or 20 feet in thickness, with a ditch 12 feet broad at the bottom, 18 at the top, and 7 feet in depth. The open spaces through which the muzzles of the cannon are pointed are called embrasures, and the solid masses between the embrasures, merlons. The distance from the centre of one embrasure to that of another is 18 feet, and this is also the distance at which the guns are placed from each other; consequently the merlons are 16 feet within and 7 without. The **genouillères**, or those parts of the parapet which cover the carriage of the gun, are generally made 2½ feet in height from the platform to the opening of the embrasures; but this height must be regulated by the semi-diameter of the wheels of the carriage and the nature of the gun. The platforms are plank floors made to prevent the cannon from sinking into the ground, and they are generally 18 feet in length, 15 feet in breadth behind, and 9 feet before, with a rise of nine or ten inches from the parapet to check the recoil of the guns, and to render it more easy to bring them forward again when loaded.

**Mortar-Batteries** differ from gun-batteries in this, that the parapets have no embrasures, and the platforms have no slope, but are exactly horizontal; the shells being fired quite over the parapet, commonly at an elevation of 45 degrees.

**Open Battery** is a number of cannon, commonly field pieces, ranged in a row abreast, on some natural elevation of ground, or on an artificial bank raised for the purpose.

**Covered or Masked Battery** is when the cannon and gunners are covered by a bank or breast-work, commonly made of brushwood, faggots, and earth.

**Sunk or Buried Battery** is when the platform is sunk or let down into the ground, so that trenches must be cut in the earth opposite the muzzles of the guns, to serve as embrasures to fire through.

**Cross-Batteries** are two batteries which play athwart each other upon the same object, forming there an angle, and battering with more effect, because what one battery shakes, the other beats down.

**Battery d'Enfilade** is one that sweeps or scours the whole length of a straight line, or the face or flank of any work.

**Battery en Echarpe** is that which plays obliquely.

**Battery de Reverse** is one which plays upon the rear of the troops appointed to defend a place.

**Cameroide Battery** is when several guns are discharged upon one point at the same instant.

**Relent Batteries** are such as flank each other at the salient and re-entrant angles of a fortification.

**Ricochet Battery**, so called by its inventor M. Vauban, was first used at the siege of Aeth in 1697. It is a method of discharging cannon with a very small charge of powder, and with just elevation enough to fire over the parapet. When properly managed, its effects are most destructive; for the shot, rolling along the opposite rampart, dismounts the cannon and disperses or destroys the troops. Ricochet practice is not confined to cannon alone; small mortars and howitzers may be effectually employed for the same purpose.

**Fascine and Gabion Batteries** are batteries constructed of those machines where sods are scarce, and the earth very loose or sandy.

**Battery, in Law**, is the unlawful beating of another. The least touching of another's person wilfully, or in anger, is a battery, for the law cannot draw the line between different degrees of violence, and therefore totally prohibits the first and lowest stage of it; every man's person being sacred, and no other having a right to meddle with it, in any the slightest manner. Upon a similar principle, the Cornelian law de injuris prohibited pulsation as well as verberation; distinguishing verberation, which was accompanied with pain, from pulsation, which was attended with none. But battery is in some cases justifiable or lawful; as where one having authority, a parent or master, bestows moderate correction on his child, his scholar, or his apprentice. It is justifiable on the principle of self-defence; for if one man strikes another, or only assaults him, the latter may strike in his own defence, and if sued for it, may plead that it was the plaintiff's own original assault which occasioned it. It is likewise justifiable in defence of goods or possession, and in the exercise of an office, as that of church-warden or beadle; but the person pleading such justification in a civil suit, or in a criminal prosecution, must be prepared to instruct that he has observed the moderamen inculpate tutela. By reason of these and other grounds of justification, battery is defined the unlawful beating of another; and the remedy is, as for assault, by action of trespass or damages, in which the jury will or ought to give adequate compensation.

**Battle, or Battie.** See Battears.

**Battista, Franco**, a celebrated painter, born at Venice, was a disciple of Michael Angelo, whose manner he followed so closely, that, in the correctness of his outlines, he surpassed most of the masters of his time.

**Battle**, a market-town in the rape of Hastings and county of Sussex, 56 miles from London. It was the scene of the conflict in 1066 which insured to William the Norman the crown of England. The abbey founded by him forms a most magnificent pile of ruins, and the ancient gatehouse is still in good preservation. The place is now celebrated for its manufactories of the best gunpowder. There is a weekly market on Thursday, and a monthly market on the first Tuesday of each month. The inhabitants amounted in 1801 to 2040, in 1811 to 2531, and in 1821 to 2852.

**Battle**, an action or engagement between the forces of two armies. A battle is either general or partial; general, where the whole, or at least the greater part, of each army is brought into action; and partial, where only brigades, divisions, or corps d'armée are engaged. But, however the numbers may vary, the great principles to be applied in delivering battle are in almost every case the same.

It has indeed been said, by a high military authority, that there is nothing invariable in the art of combats; and, looking to the endless diversity of circumstances under which battles have been fought, as well as to the apparent results, which are often at variance with the profoundest calculations of science, the observation would seem to have some foundation in truth. But a closer examination will be sufficient to convince us that this is not the case, and that the maxim in question, like many others which pass