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THE
GREAT SIEGES OF HISTORY.
BY
WILLIAM ROBSON,
AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE OF RICHELIEU,” ETC.
Illustrated by John Gilbert.
THE FOURTH THOUSAND.
LONDON: G. ROUTLEDGE & CO. FARRINGDON STREET; NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 1856.
PREFACE.
Late events have proved that, notwithstanding the dreams of visionary philosophers and the hopes of philanthropists, the Millennium is not yet arrived; the lamb cannot yet lie down in peace with the lion. Science has performed miracles to procure comforts and luxuries for man; literature and art have exerted their genial influence over his life and manners; and commerce has brought nations, geographically remote from each other, into the most intimate relations. And yet the roots of all evils--interests, passions, and ambitions--are as actively alive in promoting discord, as at the darkest periods of the world’s history.
Encouraged by the evident advantages arising from the absence of war, a kindly but enthusiastic body of enlightened men came forth to preach a new description of crusade, a crusade for universal peace; and yet, years after the promulgation of this holy mission, a nation, by far the largest in geographical extent, thinks its time arrived, throws off the mask, and boldly avows that, while other peoples have been fostering plans of universal amity and brotherhood, it has been ever insidiously working out its schemes for the subjugation of all the rest to its arbitrary power.
The way in which Great Britain has met this, has been attended by a lesson which I trust she will never forget. It has proved to her, that if she is anxious to maintain the proud station which her patriots, sages, warriors, and merchants have raised her to, she must not only be a producer, a manufacturer, and a carrier; she must not only be intelligent and wealthy; she must be physically as well as morally strong, able to assert her own rights and support those of the weak and oppressed. Most lamentably has she suffered from not attending to this. Like another Quixote, she has rushed upon the enemy of humanity with the nobleness of her nature, unprovided with everything but wealth, courage, and faith in a good cause.
In his eloquent history of the Peninsular war, Sir William Napier had pronounced an emphatic opinion upon the state in which England was ever found at the commencement of a new contest; that her parsimony always left her bare of _matériel_, men, and leaders. To the neglect of this warning from a practical soldier, may we attribute most of our disasters in the Crimea. We have gone headlong into a game of which we seem to have known neither the moves nor the chances. Our generation had little more real knowledge of war, than schoolboys who fight with wooden swords under the standard of a pocket-handkerchief tied to a stick. It is not necessary for England to be essentially a warlike nation; it is not her part in the world’s progress; she is far more a creator than a destroyer; but she must ever preserve a consciousness of strength about her, that she knows will secure her from aggression and insult. And let no one imagine that this sense of strength will make her quarrelsome or unduly sensitive; every observer must know that the brave and powerful man is always the most peaceful: he fears nobody, and therefore he is slow to take offence.
I by no means wish to convert Britain into a Lacedæmon; I would not have war to be the main business of our lives; but all should cheerfully contribute to the keeping up of such a military force as should make our country respected, even by those who are regardless of all but physical power. Then how commanding would be her march among nations! No people in the world is so morally strong; how divine then would be her influence, if others were made completely aware that she had the power to enforce right as well as to perceive it, to protect the injured as well as to pity them! Witness the advent of a good and strong man into a company of quarrelsome brawlers! it is like the appearance of Neptune above the waves when the storm was scattering and destroying the Trojan fleet.
But if it be necessary that we should always have a powerful armed force ready for action, it is equally important that that force should be acquainted with its trade. Lapped in peace, and surrounded by visions of wealth, Englishmen have said, “We fear not war, we know we are always in possession of the sinews of it.” But they have found themselves mistaken: a soldier can no more be made in a day by the influence of money, than a lawyer can; half a century of official duties will not make a general, nor will all the experiences of the hunting-field teach a dashing nobleman to lead on a charge of cavalry, with a due regard to human life or a judgment that may insure success. In all the disasters we have encountered in the Crimea, the courage and physical strength of our soldiers have signalized themselves, even beyond our hopes; but the readers of history--particularly that part of it which relates to war--perceive at once that our leaders have been wanting in that genius or knowledge which has distinguished great captains. With all our respect for the fine and gentlemanly qualities of the lamented Lord Raglan, we cannot subdue a conviction that if a Hannibal, an Alexander, a Cæsar, a Belisarius, a Turenne, a Condé, a Marlborough, or even a Suwarrow,[1] had been at the head of such a gallant band, Sebastopol would have been subdued long ago. I do not think that either Buonaparte or his conqueror was eminently distinguished in this branch of the art of war. It is not often that a man can, like Clive, go from the desk to the battle-field, and at once become a great general; or that so young a man as Wolfe can take a Quebec. In guerilla or partisan warfare, unprepared but enthusiastic men sometimes make successful leaders; but to handle great masses of troops, or to besiege strongly-fortified cities, whatever a general’s genius may be, he must have a training in the active practice of his profession.
It is not my place to write a dissertation upon the military art; I have only to draw attention to the knowledge of sieges, which form so prominent a part of it. Neither does it come within my plan, or the limits allowed me, to treat of the science of fortification; mine is but to employ “the philosophy which teaches by example,” and exhibit the “Great Sieges of History.” And valuable is the lesson to all,--to the student of the art of war, to the soldier at the cannon’s mouth, to the minister who plans expeditions, and to the people who furnish the means for them. There is scarcely a siege in this volume barren of instruction; the principal of all being, that little can be achieved in these mortal conflicts by either besieged or besiegers, without energy constantly strained to the highest pitch, sleepless watchfulness, keen and anxious observation, consummate prudence, undaunted courage, firmness that is proof against attack or accident, great physical powers of endurance, and MILITARY GENIUS. When armies are opposed upon the wide field of a country, the game of chess may be played out by tacticians, or by great chance, success may be obtained by a dashing _coup de main_; but in important sieges, man is like the stag brought to bay, every faculty is forced into intense action, and the slightest error, the faintest relaxation, may produce irretrievable ruin, with such consequences as no other event presents. In great battles, armies may be annihilated; but in captured cities peoples are immolated and humanity is degraded by the wild indulgence of its most brutal passions.
It is more than curious, it is wonderful, to observe how many sieges will be found in this volume, whose fate has been decided by means with which the art of war, as taught in the schools, had nothing to do; and it is always the captain of the greatest genius who seizes upon every unforeseen discovery, any extraordinary accident, any suddenly-perceived natural advantage, to defeat the best-concerted and most scientific plans of his adversary: in one instance the fortune of an assault is changed by suspending a pig over the walls by a string fastened to his leg.
To induce students of the military art to read this work, I shall satisfy myself with relating one fact. When Prince Eugene was before Belgrade, he was surprised by the appearance of an immense Turkish host in his rear, which commenced their intrenchments, and prepared to sit down comfortably to watch, annoy, and, with good opportunity, to attack him. But Eugene had been an abbé before he was a soldier, and had read “Cæsar’s Commentaries.” He recollected that Cæsar had once been circumstanced exactly as he then was, and he determined to act as Cæsar had done. He allowed his enemies all to come up, but before they had quite established themselves in their new abode, he led his whole force to a night assault, and though superior numbers and unforeseen accidents increased the difficulties, he defeated and dispersed the Turkish army, and the city in consequence surrendered. Had Prince Eugene not read Cæsar, it is more than probable he would never have taken Belgrade.
For my humble part in this eventful story, I have much indulgence to request. To give such an account of the Great Sieges of History as the subject deserved, in one volume, was a thing impossible; and yet that was my task. The details of most of the sieges I have been obliged to curtail, and to entirely omit some which, I fear, may be looked for by those who are locally interested in them. Nevertheless, I have spared neither labour nor research; and if earnestness of purpose and honesty of intention merit approbation, I may, I trust, hope for as much as such a work deserves.
In the arrangement of the sieges, after taking the first one to which each place had been subjected in chronological order, I judged it best to carry on the account so as to give a continuous sketch of the sieges, or, in other words, of the history of the country or city in question. After the first perusal, such a book as this will be considered a work of reference, and, in that view, this plan must be the best. For the same reason I have admitted many sieges that cannot be classed as “great,” because they formed connecting links between the large ones. Without them, the unlearned reader would be surprised, when next his attention was drawn to a city which had cost one power immense sacrifices to obtain, to find it in the possession of another.
As no two historians or chronologers agree about ancient dates, I have had much trouble in settling the periods at which sieges out of the regular pale of history took place. In such cases my best plan was to adopt the opinion of the highest authority, and, wherever there was a doubt, and his name was available, I have followed Archbishop Ussher.
In accordance with my plan, I have in no instance considered myself a scientific instructor. I have said that the perusal of this book might be beneficial to military students, but I have not contemplated that all young men of that class were to become only engineers. It is the part of the engineer to carry on his operations in accordance with the rules he has been taught; but it is the higher duty of the CAPTAIN to be alive to the CHANCES of the siege, as well as observant of its scientific progress. It has been my business to relate the events, and, to a commander of genius, these are as rich in instruction as the mere school-rules of his awful art.
W. R.
LIST OF SIEGES.
_Page_ Abydos 215 Acre, St. Jean de 399 Agrigentum 157 Aï 5 Alexandria 262 Algiers 463 Antioch 317 Antwerp 490, 595 Argos 188 Arras 511 Athens 131 Azoth 87
Babylon 116 Bactra 4 Badajos 569 Bagdad 422 Barcelona 534 Beauvais 447 Belgrade 434 Bergen-op-Zoom 502 Bommel 532 Burgos, Castle of 578 Byblos 130 Byzantium 159
Cahors 479 Carthagena 208 Carthage 223 Cassel 423 Cassovia 432 Castillon 444 Ciudad Rodrigo 575 Constantinople 572 Corinth 192 Corioli 123 Cremona 218
Damascus 397 Dover 421
Edessa 365
Falerii 126 Frederikshall 521
Gaza 184 Gibraltar 536 Grenada 449
Ismaïl 525
Jerusalem 12
Kaibar 371
Lacedæmon 187 Leyden 475 Liége 445 Lisbon 397 Livron 478 Lyons 169
Mæestricht 482 Magdeburg 505 Malta 498 Marseilles 259 Messina 189 Milan 287
Naples 357 Nineveh 85
Orleans 297 Ostend 501
Palmyra 278 Paris 237 Pavia 309 Persepolis 185 Platææ 127
Ravenna 315 Rhodes 162 Rimini 258 Rochelle, La 426 Rome 58 Romorantin 425
Samaria 55 Saragossa 561 Sardis 111 Schweidnitz 522 Sebastopol 600 Sebastian, St. 585 Seringapatam 559 Sinope 236 Stralsund 517 Syracuse 138
Tarentum 196 Thebes, Bœotia 6 Thebes, Palestine 9 Toulouse 233 Tournai 289 Troy 10 Troyes 433 Tunis 197 Turin 507 Tyre 90
Utica 210
Vachtendonck 500 Valenciennes 469 Veii 124 Vienna 451 Verchères 516
Weinsberg 395
THE
GREAT SIEGES OF HISTORY.
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.
BACTRA.
A.C. 2134.
In all arts the East has led the van, and has evidently been as far advanced before the Western nations in the great one of fortifying its cities as in most others. The first siege we can obtain any account of is that of Bactra, and we are told it was so fortified by nature and art, that Ninus, at the head of four hundred thousand men, would never have been able to take it, if a stratagem had not been suggested to him by Semiramis, the wife of one of his officers. This account proves that fortifying cities was not then a new invention, for it is not likely that such a degree of perfection could have been attained by a first attempt. Everything in the East seems to have been upon a gigantic scale: the cities were immense in extent, the height of the walls and towers, and the depth and width of the surrounding moats or ditches, almost incredible. And yet, modern research is stamping the astounding accounts of historians and topographers with the broad seal of truth--everything in the East _was_ on a gigantic scale: where human life and human labour, in densely-populated countries, were without restriction at the command of vain and ambitious despots, the Pyramids, the walls of Babylon, and the palaces of Baalbec cease to be miracles.