Page:Criticism on the Declaration of independence, as a literary document (IA criticismondecla00seld).pdf/46

 It may not be amiss to contemplate that process in detail. When in the progress of human affairs, it is deemed necessary by some general in the field, to reduce a fortress of the highest order; his first operations are to clear away all enemies without the fortress, who can give the beseigers trouble, or the beseiged assistance. If he is not able to do this, he is wise to abandon the project before he commences the investment. If he succeeds in suppressing all enemies from without, so that he can invest without molestation; he begins to draw his forces towards the devoted place, and proceeds to level all out-works and lesser defences, reducing the beseiged to the smallest possible space. Having done all this, he begins to reconnoitre. If he finds the strong-hold to be a work of nature, as for instance a lofty ledge on all sides, too high for escalade, and too hard for the mine; he understands there is no alternative, but to draw ont his lines of circumvallation, and cutting off the beseiged from all communication with others, leave them to surrender when their resources for subsistence fail. On the other hand, if the ramparts are walls of stone, wholly or in part artificial, he understands what man is able to build up, man is able to pull down. For there has never been a strong-hold; in point of space from the Gualior rock in India to the fortress of Quebec; or in point of time from the siege of Tyre (which occupied the Chaldees thirteen years) to the reduction of the citadel of Antwerp, but what has surrendered. The next business of the beseigers, is to find that place in the rampart most feasible for their operations. This done, the chief by no means expects to halloo the walls down; or to bring the beseiged to terms by threats or insults, or by calling them "man-stealers." No, he considers next, whether his implements of war are adequate to the work—whether his guns are of a calibre to carry a shot of sufficient weight to produce a vibration in the wall: if this point is settled to his satisfaction, then for the first time he orders the approaches to be made, the mounds to be cast up, and the battering train to be brought into position; namely, into a place, where the shot when they smite upon the wall, do it at that moment of time when their momentum is greatest. The next object is to adjust the time, so that the crash of each successive shot shall come upon the rampart in the same spot where its predecessor