Attack of Fortified Places. Including Siege-works, Mining, and Demolitions. Prepared for the use of the Cadets of the United States Military Academy

A =blockade= consists in so surrounding a place and closing its communications as to keep the garrison from receiving reinforcements, provisions, and supplies sufficient to enab...

=9.= By a regular siege is meant a systematic and more or less deliberate attack upon a fortified place, in which the besieger aims to invest the place and capture its fortifica...

=12.= =Parallels= are trenches which take their name from the fact that they usually are located on lines approximately parallel to the general front of attack. In a regular sie...

When they are concealed from the view of the enemy by natural or artificial screens they are called “_screened_” or “_masked batteries_,” and when on sites which can be seen by...

=68.= Siege operations include all the steps taken from the first approach to the work up to its final capture. These taken in regular order are as stated in Chapter II: the _in...

=99.= =Preliminary Considerations.=--The defence of a fortified place is entrusted to a commanding officer, who, when the siege is established, is generally known as the “Govern...

=112.= =The Engineer and Artillery Parks and Depots= are located and arranged for security against the artillery-fire and the attack, by surprise or otherwise, of the defence, a...

=1.= =Military Mining= includes all the operations necessary for placing charges of explosive underground and exploding them at the time desired, for the purpose of destroying t...

=18. Tools and Appliances.=--The different operations of mining are carried on by the use of picks, shovels, bars, saws, axes, hammers (large and small), chisels, wheel and hand...

=76. Organization of Mines.=--Underground warfare is conducted in the dark, in bad air, with constant danger of caving earth, suffocation by noxious gases, destruction of men an...

These are steel bars sharpened to a chisel edge. The _drill-bar_ is usually held by one man and struck with a hammer by another; it is turned slightly after each blow in order t...