228 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[AUOI'ST, 



not kept pace with it; and now all that has to he done hy an ener- 

 getic commander is to burn the town with shells, and the eiireintc 

 falls into his hands, unhreached and unhurt, within eijttht-and-f'orty 

 liours. Tlie citadel of Antwerp held out, it is true, hut the tow n 

 was in other hands; and in the revolutionary wars now going on, a 

 honibardment replaces a siege as the means of getting hold of a 

 fortified town. It is very questionable, tlierefore, whether, in a 

 military point of view, it is worth while fortifying towns, and the 

 art of fortification must limit itself to intrenched camps, field 

 works, batteries, and harl)Our defenses. Anything which can be 

 shelled will he burnt, and no civil population « ill hear patiently 

 this process. When, however, the houses have been burnt out, a 

 town makes, as our writer says, a better defense for the invader 

 than the home garrison. 



We think it therefore perfectly useless to consider how an e7i- 

 ceiiite can be i)ut round a town, and shall limit ourselves to con- 

 sider the construction of a citadel, which will give the fairest ex- 

 am])le of the application of the several schemes of fortification. 



The defects of the bastion system, as established hy various au- 

 thorities in the last and present century, and summed up by our 

 author, with some additions of our own, are, that its works are 



1st. Liable to lie enfiladed. 



2nd. They want direct fire to their most exposed parts, the sa- 

 lients. 



3rd. Their flanking defenses are insecure. 



4th. A\'ant of combination and co-operation between the faces 

 after the besieger has reached the counterscarp of one, which 

 therefore becomes isolated. 



5th. Their entire e.xposure to vertical and plunging fire from 

 ricochet and sliells. 



6th. A\^int of security in communicating with the outworks. 



7th. The advantage of position each outwork taken gives to the 

 liesieger. 



sth. The insecurity and inconvenience of the covered way. 



Sth. The e.xposure of the reserve pieces to the tirailleurs in the 

 last stage of a siege. 



10th. The eff'ect of the earthworks in damping, rotting, and 

 forcing out the brick and stone revetements. 

 11th. The necessity for a disciplined and well-trained garrison. 

 12th. The small real service rendered in holding out against an 

 enemy. 

 13th. The moral discouragement of the soldiery. 

 1 Uh. The enormous expense. 



Fortifications of tlie first class are indeed of very little good, 

 and cost an enormous sum, and strategists make very little account 

 of them. They never materially delayed Napoleon s advance, and 

 ilid not delay his fall, although all that he could himself suggest, 

 and all that Carnot could do, was exerted for the improvement of 

 the internal fortresses of France. The student cannot fail to be 

 gratified by the sight of the cordon of first and second class fort- 

 resses on the French and Belgian frontiers; hut if he sets to work 

 to calculate how an army would be mo^ed among them, he receives 

 but a very moderate impression of their value, for they would only 

 be attacked w hen theii defense, politically s|)eaking, was no longer 

 l)ossihle. In fact, so strongly impressed does the strategist become 

 w ith these ideas, that he is ai)t to conceive hut a contemptuous 

 opinion of the resources of fortification,- — and none the less for 

 l<jiow ing its little merit as a branch of instruction. 



Mr. Fergusson has set himself to remedy the defects pointed 

 out, to get a cheaper system, works that shall hold out longer if 

 not entirely, and a superiority of material resources for the de- 

 fenders. 



He adopts a circular system, without outworks, with a wide wet 

 ditch, and an ciirehite of several ramparts, rising within and above 

 eacli other. Great part of the works is casemated, and the maga- 

 zines are put in greater safety. On the woi-ks is mounted a heavy 

 armament of guns and mortars, superior on each face (of construc- 

 tion) to any field-train which has yet been brought out. His 

 flanking works are kept low down, and beyond the reach of direct 

 fire. These works he proposes to construct on a cheap and simi)le 

 plan. Altogether, we think he has made out a good case, and one 

 which cannot well lie upset. 



This scheme was laid by him before the editors of the 'Profes- 

 sional Papers of the Royal Engineers,' hut, for some reason we 

 know not, they were refused. This is rather singular, for the 

 most valuable contributions in those volumes are on civil engineer- 

 ing works, and by civil engineers, and Mr. Fergusson's contribu- 

 tion was on military engineering. It is however stated, there was 

 an examination by an officer of the Royal Engineers, of high at- 

 tainments, who raised many objections to Mr. Fergusson's plans. 

 This could be no sufficient bar to the publication of the paper, 



which, if erroneous in some details, was of professional interest. 

 Now it has come before another tribunal, it can he ascertained that 

 it is a work of particular merit. If the piecemeal objections of an 

 officer of engineers are to be thus authoritative, we may at once 

 dismiss from our studies Montalend)ert, Carnot, Choumara, Merkes, 

 Bordwine, Fergusson, and every innovator. In other words, we 

 close the way to discussion and improvement. The rejection was 

 the more ungracious, as there is no other professional serial in 

 which such a paper could be conveniently published. It is for- 

 tunate Mr. Fergusson's zeal and means overcame this impediment, 

 and led him to the publication of a sepai-ate hook, which, as mat- 

 ters turn out, is likely to prove much more influential. 



Mr. Fergusson assumes that the eff'ect of construction must, 

 under any ])roper armament, give an advantage to the fortress as 

 against the besieger. This he asserts on several grounds, as these 

 — the former works are better constructed; they have heavier guns, 

 more mortars, and are better covered in; they cannot be scaled. 

 Therefore a defending force must be able to contend with a greater 

 number of assailants. It is this condition which must be niain- 

 tained permanently. 



Our writer prefers wide and deep wet ditches, because they 

 defend themselves, and because he wants no outworks. Though 

 he provides the means of sortie for the purpose of keeping the 

 enemy constantly on the alert, and thereby diminishing their 

 working force, he justly deprecates sorties, as leading irreparably 

 to the diminution of the personnel of the garrison. He is speaking 

 of a normal system : of course he would want outworks to take in 

 positions necessary for defense, and would likewise want the means 

 of sortie in such cases, to delay their fall or to recapture them. 



It is in getting rid of the outworks that he does the most good, 

 for thereby he gets rid of a great source of harass and weakness. 

 The outworks must be defended from the place, and the place is 

 thereby made subservient to the outworks, instead of looking only 

 to its own defense. More men, too, are lost in outworks than they 

 could he in the body of the place, and thereby the strength of tl;e 

 garrison is impaired. Outworks can never adequately defend 

 themselves, for so few guns can be mounted on them; neither can 

 the place adequately protect them. Every face of the outwork 

 becomes a prolongation of an enemj's battery, and the whole work 

 is therefore taken in detail, and becomes a harbour for the enemy. 

 When the French did so at Antwerp, they had achieved a success, 

 for they got under cover. It is like unravelling a bit of knitting 

 — one mesh loose will undo the whole. An outwork is i-educed, 

 the enemy gets up to one face, reduces that, and the whole place 

 falls, with the smallest expenditure of means. To make an attack 

 on two or three faces harasses the garrison, and gives other chance 

 of success : but in truth it is hardly essential. 



The author has provided for dry ditches because there are situa- 

 tions where water cannot be got, and he is thereby driven into 

 greater expense; but he still resists the addition of outworks. 



On a face of 400 yards, Mr. Fergusson gets so much room that 

 he can mount 1,000 guns and mortars. This will appear monstrous 

 to the common school, but it is the right way and the only way. 

 What is to he done everywhere is to get the gi-eater number of 

 pieces and weight of metal. The system is particularly applicable 

 in England, as vve have such vast establishments; we could, in case 

 of need, cast 1,000 guns daily, besides iron shot. The author 

 allows for a field-train of 200 pieces being brought up, and against 

 one face; though the largest train yet brought up against a place, 

 and that tlirough a peaceful country, was the French train of 144 

 pieces, for the siege of Antwerp in 1831. From what we saw of 

 this we are sure it is a feat which could not he easily managed in a 

 hostile counti'y, and it is not likely to he paralleled for some time 

 in the state of warfai-e now going on. 



Assuming that 200 guns are brought up, it does not seem easy, as 

 our author says, to bring them all, or any considerable nundier, to 

 bear fnmi the first ])arallel on any one face. Their effect, too, 

 woiild be limited to that of direct fire; and it is difficult to con- 

 template what good they could do in a flat, open country, towards 

 the reduction of the place. It must be remend)ered here is no 

 enfilade work and very little chance of dismounting guns, while 

 the besiegers' guns are exposed, even under blindages. The fire of 

 the place cannot be reduced and silenced, and the place cannot be 

 reduced de vife force. The assumption tliat the besieger could sap 

 up to the edge of the ditch, and then establish his batteries and 

 silence the fort over a sufficient breadth of rampart to enable him 

 to eff'ect a passage across the ditch, seems quite untenable. In- 

 deed, by all the ordinary modes of superficial oft'ensive works, it 

 apjiears impossible to get near the place, unless by a casualty; nei- 

 ther does mining off'er greater promise. 



The author has devoted considerable space to revetements and 



