State of siege

“ I am quite certain that the use of mortars and howitzers in a siege, for the purpose of what —— calls general annoyance, answers no purpose whatever against a Spanish place occupied by French troops, excepting against the inhabitants of the place; and eventually, when we shall get the place, against ourselves, and the convenience we should derive from having the houses of the place in a perfect state of repair. ”

“ The example was deservedly thought of such importance, that the446 whole details of this little siege were published by the government in an extraordinary gazette. Whatever contributions were due to the state by the inhabitants of this townlet were remitted to them, and those persons who had taken the lead were rewarded by other privileges. “This,” said the government, “is the kind of war which our perfidious enemy feareth most, and which is the most advantageous for ourselves. ”

“ The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege. ”

“ Sometimes, too, the besiegers burrow underground till they are just below the wall, then fill the hole with gunpowder, and blow up all above them; in short, instead of, as in former days, a well- fortified city being almost impossible to take, except by starving out the garrison, a siege is in these times almost equally sure to end in favor of the besiegers. ”

“ The next year began with the two most splendid sieges of the war. A siege is proverbially the most difficult of all military operations, requiring the most costly preparations, and taking up the longest time. ”

“ But a regular siege, in which the digging of approaches and mines, the planting of guns in position, mean everything, might only weary the besieged, weaken their courage, and make them inclined to negotiation. ”

“ SIEGE WARFARE The kind of modern siege in which the Allies are engaged, unlike the bombardment of a modern fortress, but like the sieges of old times, is bound to be a protracted affair. Still it is not likely that Germany will hold out as long as Troy did. ”

“ If the place is worth holding, it should as a rule be held to the bitter end on the chance of a favourable turn in affairs; moreover, the maintenance of an important siege under modern conditions imposes a severe strain on the enemy and immobilizes a large number of his troops. ”

“ We now proceeded a considerable distance along the parallels and rifle pits, and visited the captured French lunettes, which seemed to be matters of intense interest to my military friends. A curious fact I learned about this siege was, that of the garrison in the town a comparatively smaller number were killed than of civilians, who met their death in the streets by the bursting of shells. ”

“ The extraordinary length of this siege ceases to surprise us, when we consider that a siege was nothing but a badly-guarded blockade, where that was expected from lassitude and famine which could not be obtained by either bodily strength, which necessarily failed against stone walls, or by military art, which had not yet learnt how to overthrow them, or even to scale them. ”

“ They built regular siege-works armed with catapults; the captives and peasants were forced to take part in the assault; the attack never ceased night or day; relief of troops keeping the garrison in perpetual terror. They employed Chinese and Persians to make their war engines. ... They rarely abandoned the siege of a place altogether, and would sometimes continue a blockade for years. They were bound by no oath, and however solemn their promise to the inhabitants who would surrender, it was broken, and a general massacre ensued. ”

“ A catastrophe, as we have before said, is not necessarily bound up with a siege. Even a general, devoid of either the spirit of enterprise or energy, who would never make up his mind to a battle, will proceed to undertake a siege with perhaps nothing but field artillery, when he can approach a fortress without risk. ”

“ Jones, in his ‘Sieges in Spain,’ says: ‘To ensure the reduction of a fortress, a fully equipped siege army is absolutely necessary; and any deficiency, especially in the engineer or artillery departments, must assuredly involve an unnecessary loss of life ”

“ Then loud shouts of victory! victory! resounded through the streets, and found its joyful echo in many hearts.
During this siege, five thousand men and officers had fallen; thirty-five hundred having lost their lives the night of the assault,—twenty-four hundred at the breaches alone. If any one would picture to himself the terrible scenes that occurred at this spot, let him imagine a lot of less than a hundred square yards, which, in the short space of little more than two hours, was deluged by the blood of twenty-four hundred men. ”

“ While our legislatures have been resolving and re-resolving the principles of the Declaration of Independence, our adversaries have pushed their trenches, parallel after parallel, against the very citadel of our political equality. A siege, if uninterrupted, is a mere matter of time, and must end in capitulation. Our only safety is in assuming the offensive. ”

“ A fortified town or place is said to be invested, when all the avenues leading to it have been seized upon by hostile troops, which are distributed and posted on the principal commands, to prevent any succour from being received by the garrison, and to keep the ground until the rest of the army with the artillery, can arrive to form a regular siege. To invest a place is, in fact, to take preparatory measures for a blockade, or a close siege. ”

“ They might, with Arab cunning, have decided that it would be a much better plan to maintain the siege, unseen and unheard, and lure the relieving force, by an appearance of peace and safety, into marching gaily into an oasis covered by hundreds of rifles lining neighbouring sand-hills. They could massacre the relief-column and then turn to the fort again. If no relief-force came, they could still assault the fort whenever they thought fit. ”

“ He instantly raised the siege, and filed his whole army in the night of the 21st under the walls of the castle and over the bridge, which was closely enfiladed by its artillery; a bold and unprecedented manœuvre, which military men adduce as a proof that the march of troops cannot be stopped by the fire of artillery in the night. The allies moved in silence and good order; but a party of Guerrillas, regardless of discipline, then, as at all times, put their horses to their speed, and the clatter which they made alarmed the garrison. ”

“ Adding a proportion of men for camp and other duties, he calculates, for the vigorous siege of an ordinary place situated in open country and containing 5000 men, a corps of 32,080 effectives, and remarks further that this force would be greatly exhausted after a month’s service. ”

“ They had abundance of provisions,562 and all the munitions of war,—even its sinews, money,—that could be required in a long protracted siege. But above all this was the cause; every man might be said to be a volunteer, fighting for all he held dearest in life. ”

“ On the first approach of the enemy, all the buildings in the suburbs of a town are demolished, and all the trees in gardens and public walks are cut down, lest they should afford shelter to the besiegers. As the siege goes on, bombs, hot balls, and cannon-shot, are continually flying about ”

“ This siege warfare is a war of force against force, the force of machinery dealing ponderous, mighty blows against a wall of steel, smashing, smashing, smashing, always in the same place, until the line is bent, then broken, then the force of man coming into play in a wild onrush of storming infantry, with their primitive passions aflame, surging forward amid clouds of green and yellow and red smoke, bombing and slashing their way through the breach their machines have made. ”

“ It may naturally be presumed that the whole progress of the siege had interested the fleet and army of England in the highest degree. There had been nothing like the defence of Acre in all the history of European war. A siege is pronounced, by military authorities, to be the most certain operation in war; with a fixed number of troops, and a fixed number of guns in the trenches, the strongest place must fall within a prescribed time. ”

“ Now all armies come to the siege of a town with great advantages; for first the besieged cannot but be less confident than the assailants; they are a few against a many, and being on the defensive, are also an excised portion of their own army, and without news, which damps the fiery spirit. They are obliged to await their adversary’s time and attack, their losses seem more numerous, in proportion to their forces, because they are more concentrated, and then the wounded are not safe even in the hospitals. ”

“ And now to return to the siege of Weinsberg, to which Conrad returned after having disposed of the army of relief. The garrison still were far from being in a submissive mood, their defence being so obstinate, and the siege so protracted, that the emperor, incensed by their stubborn resistance, vowed that he would make their city a frightful example to all his foes, by subjecting its buildings to the brand and its inhabitants to the sword. Fire and steel, he said, should sweep it from the face of the earth. ”

“ But to the great astonishment of Europe, which looked on with keenly pitched excitement at the mighty struggle, the siege continued for months without any special progress being observable from without or any lessening of resistance from within. On account of the extension of the forts, the Germans were compelled to remain at such a distance that a bombardment of the town at first appeared impossible; a storming of the outer works would, moreover, be attended with such sacrifices, that the humane temper of the king revolted from such a proceeding. ”

“ The standards of the king107 of Jerusalem and the doge of Venice floated together over the walls of Tyre; the Christians made their triumphal entrance into the city; whilst the inhabitants, according to the terms of the capitulation, with their wives and children, departed from it. On whichever side our sympathies may be, the end of a great siege is a melancholy object of contemplation; nothing can convey a sadder idea to the mind than this compulsory exodus of a people. ”

“ To the technical mind, the siege no doubt seemed a beautiful creation of human intelligence. To the honest student of history, to the lover of human progress, such a manifestation of intellect seems a sufficiently sad exhibition. Given, a city with strong walls and towers, a slender garrison and a devoted population on one side; a consummate chieftain on the other, with an army of veterans at his back, no interruption to fear, and a long season to work in ”

“ There are few who have not heard something of the sufferings of a siege. Whether within or without, it is the most terrible of all the experiences of war. I am old enough to recollect the trenches before Sebastopol, and all that my countrymen and the English endured there. ”

“ The French passion for rule and formula also found a happy outlet in the conduct of a siege, for while there is no nation more brilliant or more original, particularly in military affairs, there is also none that is more conceited or pedantic. The craving for sieges among the French was so great that the King took pains, by the grant of extra pay and rations, to render this species of warfare popular with his soldiers. ”

“ But General Philippon has informed me that it consisted of 5,000 men at the commencement of the siege, of which 1,200 were killed or wounded during the operations; besides those lost in the assault of the place. There were 5 French battalions, besides 2 of the regiment of Hesse Darmstadt, and the artillery, engineers, &c.; and I understand there are 4,000 prisoners. It is impossible that any expressions of mine can convey to your Lordship the sense which I entertain of the gallantry of the officers and troops upon this occasion. ”

“ With only a single wall between them and the enemy’s trenches, they had endured a siege of nearly two months by forty thousand men, and continued to resist after famine and pestilence began to slay faster than the enemy. Thirty thousand cannon-balls and sixty thousand bombs had fallen in the city, and fifty-four thousand of the inhabitants had perished. ”

“ Here we have an important fortress, threatened with siege for the last sixty days, suffering the assailants of the flag it defends to amass battery upon battery, and string the whole coast of low hills opposite with every variety of apparatus for its own devastation, without throwing a timely shell to prevent their establishment. ”

“ It was a siege the miseries of which to the besieged have never been exceeded in the history of the world. All the wonted terrors of a multitudinous enemy without, of a feeble garrison and scant shelter within, of the burden of women and children and sick people, with little to appease their wants or allay their sufferings, were aggravated by the burning heat of the climate. ”

“ If the sudden assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants were likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little food could be carried that a siege meant starvation for the besiegers. ”

“ The history of the siege for the next few months is a record of hardships and privations nobly borne. The officers and men of the naval brigade, the artillery and infantry, who had to take their turn of duty in the trenches for twenty-four hours at a time, were the chief sufferers; having to lie in muddy ditches and batteries, without shelter, with scanty clothing, and very indifferent food. There were officers and men, however, in all branches of the service who, in spite of hardships, went through the whole siege and never missed a tour of duty. ”