Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/485

 FORTIFICATION 455 sont li des mesures & prendre de longue main, qui doiveut etre dirigees i loisir ; et apres tout cela, quand on croit les avoir bien prises souvent tout echappe ; car 1 ennemi, qui n est jamais d accord avcc vous, pourra vous interrompre. ... 11 faut bien peser tontes ces considerations, avant que de se determiner ; et preudre toujours si bien son terns, que Fennemi ue puisse vous tombcr sur les bras avant vos etablissemens.&quot; 1 A siege, therefore, being one of the most arduous under takings in which an army can be employed, one in which the greatest fatigue, hardships, and personal risk are en countered, and in which the prize can only be won by com plete victory, it is obvious that upon the success or failure of such an enterprise may depend the fate of a campaign or of an army, and perhaps the existence of a state. Of this the failures before Pavia in 1525, before Metz in 1552, before Prague in 1557, before St Jean d Acre in 1799, and before Burgos in 1812 present instructive examples. By the first, France lost her monarch, the flower of her nobility, and all her Italian conquests ; by the second, she was saved from destruction, whilst 30,000 of her enemies perished ; by the third, the greatest warrior of his age, Frederick the Great, was brought to the very brink of destruction ; by the fourth, the most successful general of France, and per haps the greatest commander that any age or country has produced, was stopped short in his career of victory ; and by the last, a beaten enemy gained time to recruit his forces, concentrate his scattered corps, and regain that ascendency of which the victory at Salamanca had for a time deprived him. It is therefore of the greatest importance to a state that the sieges undertaken by its armies should be carried on in the best and most efficient manner possible, or, in other words, that by a due combination of science, labour, and force these operations should be short and certain, and without excessive expenditure of life. But the sieges undertaken by the British have seldom, if ever, united^these three indispensable conditions ; and with regard to those which took place during the contest in the Peninsula, it is well known that defects of organization, particularly the want of a body of men, such as sappers and miners, trained to the labour required at sieges, and an inadequate supply of material, necessitated a partial departure from esta blished principles and rules of attack, which led to a waste of life unprecedented in modern sieges. Till late in 1813 tha army had not a single sapper or miner; regular approaches were therefore difficult if not impracticable. It was necessary, in almost every case, to take the bull, as the saying is, by the horns ; the last operation of a siege scien tifically conducted, namely, battering in breach, was amongst the first undertaken : and the troops, marched to the assault whilst the defences remained nearly entire, were ex posed to every species of destruction which the unreduced means of the besieged could bring to bear against them. The army of a country which has outstripped all others in the useful arts and in mechanical improvements was left wholly unprovided with those appliances which at once economize life and labour, and serve to render both most effectual for the purposes to which they are applied. Never theless, it may be observed that, in all periods and in all countries, the means employed for the reduction of fort resses have generally increased and become more overwhelm ing and irresistible in proportion to the advancement of knowledge and to the improvement of the useful arts; and that in Europe during the last two centuries, the extension of wealth and knowledge, accompanied by an unprecedented development of talent, directed towards military movements, has caused the results of sieges, and indeed of almost all the operations of war, to depend much less on individual 1 De VAttaque et de la Defense des Places, pp. 1 and 2. 1737, 4to. Hague, exertion or casual displays of heroism, than on combina tion and expenditure. This may be made apparent by a slight retrospect of the sieges of the 16th century. At the period referred to, the art of disposing the several works of a fortress so as to cover each other, and to be covered by their glacis from the view of an enemy, was un known ; whilst the limited supply of artillery, its uuwieldi- ness, and the great expense and difficulty in moving it rendered it so little available for sieges, that the chief object in fortifying towns was to render them secure against escalade and surprise, by means of lofty walls or altitude of situation. All places fortified prior to the IGth century are invariably of this construction. And as the simplicity of the fortresses to be attacked necessarily gave the same character to the operations directed against them, so, in those days, much was effected by daring courage, without the aid of science ; and gallantry in individual combat, or fearlessness in confronting danger, were esteemed the highest qualities of a besieger. Thus con tests dragged on for months, in petty b,ut sanguinary affairs, and the most persevering or the most hardy troops, however ill organized or supplied, were the most dreaded, and not unfrequently the most successful. But when artil lery became more movable, and large quantities were em ployed in sieges, lofty and exposed walls nc longer opposed an adequate barrier ; large breaches were speedily effected ; places which had formerly resisted for months were carried in a few days ; and so, in order to restore an equality to the defence, it became necessary to screen the ramparts from distant fire. The attempt to gain security by conceal ment rapidly advanced, whilst the means of the besiegers remained the same; and between the middle of the IGth and commencement of the 17th century works were so skilfully disposed and so well covered that the defence of towns obtained a temporary superiority over the attack. Of this the obstinate and successful defences made by the Dutch against the Spaniards during the reigns of Philip II. and Philip III. may be cited as remarkable examples. 2 The pre-eminence of the defence over the attack was mainly due to the great difficulty of dragging up heavy ordnance with a besieging army, so that, the weight of metal being generally in favour of the besieged, the fire of the fortress was able to subdue that of the batteries of attack. Vauban, however, in the reign of Louis XIV., restored the preponderance of power to the attack by the invention of ricochet fire, as the guns of the besieged were thereby dis mounted or disabled at an early stage of the siege, and tho besiegers being relieved in great measure from the effects of a direct and powerful fire of artillery, were enabled to push forward their approaches by the sap. Vauban also matured into a system the attack, by laying down rules for the establishment of parallels, for the position of enfilade and other batteries, and for the general conduct of the ap proaches. The real type of an attack is a moving parapet, the besieger carrying forward with him his cover, and thus depending for his success not so much on his offensive as on his defensive arrangements. It was by this combination of science and labour, aided by the steady advances of brave and well-trained sappers, that the reduction of fortresses which would have resisted for ever the rude assaults of the most determined enemy was rendered comparatively easy and certain, These increased means of attack, to which it was found impossible to oppose a successful resistance, caused the art of concealment or covering to be further studied, till at length, in well-constructed fortresses, not a single wall re mained exposed to view, and the sap and the mine became 2 Journals of Sieges in Spain, by Colonel Sir John T. Jones; Pre liminary Observations on the Attack of Fortresses.