Ram

down cartridge, a word of command used in the platoon exercise. See Manual. Battering RAM , in antiquity , a military engine used to batter and beat down the walls of places besieged. The battering ram was of two sorts, the one rude and plain, the other compound. The former seems to have been no more than a great beam, which the soldiers bore on their arms and shoulders, and with one end of it, by main force, a ailed the walls. The compound ram is thus described by Joseph us: it is a vast beam, like the mast of a ship, strengthened at one end with a head of iron, something resembling that of a ram, whence it took its name. This was hung by the middle with ropes to another beam, which lay acro two posts, and hanging thus equally balanced, it was by a great number of men drawn backwards and pushed forwards, striking the wall with its iron head. Plutarch informs us, that Mark Antony, in the Part hi an war, made use of a ram 80 feet long: and Vitruvius tells us, that they were sometimes 106, and 120 feet long: to this perhaps the force and strength of the engine was in a great measure owing. The ram at one time was managed by a whole century of soldiers; and they, being exhausted, were seconded by another century; so that it played continually, and without any intermi ion. The momentum of a battering ram 28 inches in diameter, 180 feet long, with a head of cast iron of one ton and a half, the whole ram with its iron hoops, . weighing 41,112 pounds, and moving by the united strength of 1000 men, will be only equal to that of a ball of 36 pounds, when shot point blank from a cannon.