Of all the collisions between the members of the human race for the
furtherance of ambition, the maintenance of liberty, or the assertion
of disputed rights, we consider the prominent sieges of history to be
the most interesting and instructive. We know of no situation in which
the higher virtues have been put to a severer test; in which courage,
firmness, endurance, patriotism, fidelity, humanity, have shone with
purer and more unmitigated lustre. In the pages we are about to lay
before our readers will be found accounts of actions and sufferings of
which the uninitiated in history can scarcely suppose their fellow-men
to be capable: not brilliant actions of short-lived devotion performed
before applauding multitudes, not torments endured with hopes of
celestial recompense, but protracted, continuous exertions, amidst
privations, disease, famine, and death in every hideous shape, prompted
by love of country, or fidelity to a cause honestly embraced.
As throughout nature Providence has pleased to establish an antagonism
which carries on the great scheme in harmony, by setting creature
against creature, in no instance does man show his vast superiority
more strongly over the lower animals than in the defence or attack
of his great gregarious abodes. There are numerous animals who, like
man, draw up in battle array and dew fields with blood, but none
that can bring into play such high qualities as are exhibited in our
sieges, from one of a Scotch border tower to Sebastopol. In no case is
the difference between reason and instinct more evident. The beaver
of to-day constructs and fortifies his dwelling exactly upon the
same plan as the first beaver after creation, whereas the science of
fortification and siege has kept equal pace with man’s enlightenment.
There is no doubt this portion of the art of war attained perfection
in the seventeenth century: circumstances of time and place may modify
it, but the great principles were then established; the accessories
since obtained by scientific discoveries have only added power to
the means of destruction, they have not advanced the art itself. We
do not hesitate for a moment to say that a Turenne, Condé, Vauban,
Marlborough, or Eugene, would vindicate their genius for the great art
of war as proudly and successfully at the present time as they did
in their own glorious day: when knowledge of any kind has reached a
certain point, all the difference is in the men who employ it. The fate
of nations at that period depended upon sieges; soldiers of fortune of
highly cultivated intellect were engaged in the study and practice of
them; and though our readers will find many of these awful contests
much more set off with striking incidents and more replete with
horrors, they will meet with none so scientifically carried on, both as
to defence and attack, as those of the latter part of the seventeenth
century.
The historian of sieges has an immense advantage over the chronicler
of battles. The commander in a great battle can, after the contest
is over, give his own account of his views, manœuvres, expedients,
and impulsive perceptions, but no other person engaged can possibly
describe anything beyond what occurred at the point to which his own
individual exertions were confined. The brave soldier, with his blood
warmed by energetic action, his mind excited by a love of honour and
fame, and his heart, though true as his sword, throbbing with a natural
love of life, through the dun smoke sees nothing but the enemy before
him, and thinks of nothing but the means of destroying him. It is his
duty to execute, and not to contemplate; and the careful reader of
a Gazette can generally give a better description of the battle it
announces than any soldier engaged in it. Physical and material causes
out of number combine to produce this fact.
But the history of a siege is a very different affair. A place is
attacked scientifically and cautiously, to prevent discomfiture; it
is defended with watchful precaution, to avoid surprises, and loss
of husbanded means. Chess is not played with the rash spirit of a
Christmas round game. Both parties have leisure to note every event
that advances or retards their great object; and if the contest be a
protracted one, such calamitous circumstances are sure to arise as
will give to it the deepest feeling of human interest. As, in the
history of the world, the accounts of its periods of trouble occupy a
thousand times more space than its records of peace and prosperity, so
sieges, having given birth to more suffering than perhaps any other
cause attributable to man alone, we have, in greatest abundance, most
appalling descriptions of these frightful struggles, in which human
beings seem to have been gathered together into corners to prove all
they were capable of performing or enduring. That a great siege is
the sublime view of men acting in masses, is proved by two of the
most exalted poets of the world having each chosen one as the subject
most worthy of his genius. To us humble narrators, Homer’s “Siege
of Troy” and Tasso’s “Siege of Jerusalem” are of inestimable value,
as, independently of their poetic beauties, pointing out clearly the
different modes of carrying on a siege at periods so remote from each
other. Notwithstanding all the splendour bestowed by the presence of
gods, demigods, and heroes, Homer’s siege is of the most primitive
kind. Abortive attacks upon the walls, unsupported by machinery or any
attempt at art, not even the palpable one of escalade, together with
vain efforts to get into the city, and continual skirmishes and duels
with the besieged in their sorties, seem to have comprised all the
art of war exercised by the cunning Greeks in this their great early
invasion of a foreign territory, or rather of a city, as the expedition
to Colchis preceded it by a generation: the sires of Homer’s heroes
manned the Argo. All the strength of the defenders consisted of the
watchful and constant use of spear and shield in repulsing the attacks
of the enemy; and their courage was displayed in daily excursions, in
war-chariots and on foot, upon the plains surrounding the beleaguered
city. In Tasso we see the art of war as it was practised in his time
in Europe, and as it has been practised in Asia for several centuries.
To avoid an anachronism, there is no gunpowder; but he employs every
other accessory of machinery, towers, and the Greek fire, with missiles
of various kinds, unknown to the Homeric age. But we must not allow
general remarks to anticipate narration.
To attempt to give even a sketch of all the sieges of history, in
addition to involving a great chance of sameness, would require
many volumes; we shall therefore confine ourselves to accounts, as
intelligible and graphic as we can make them, of such of these great
human conflicts as have changed the fate of empires, forwarded or
impeded the progress of peoples, or have been illustrated by the
actions of men of world-spread celebrity. But, whilst only giving the
details of important sieges, we shall not pass by the innumerable
interesting incidents with which the accounts of minor sieges abound:
it is, indeed, not uncommon to meet, in contests unimportant to the
world, with the noblest and most extraordinary acts of devotedness or
courage of which individual man is capable.