THE STRATEGICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE—APPENDIX. 197 
bodies of troops within two months of the frontier battles. Had Paris 
and Metz possessed two months’ more food supply the fortunes of the 
war might have been changed. 
The French defences suffered from almost every conceivable 
disadvantage. Excluding the unfinished forts of Metz, the newest of 
the fortresses attacked, Paris, was thirty years old ; the average age of 
the rest must have been more than 150 years. Though initially ill-found 
in all respects, and almost as completely unprepared for war as our own 
defences at home, few of these fortresses were improved or strengthened 
in the available time after the outbreak of hostilities. Not many things 
are more difficult than to direct a defence, and, with few exceptions, 
France had not the men for the work. To meet a siege train thoroughly 
reorganized after the Danish war and brought fully up to date the 
fortresses had no armaments worthy the name. 
A number of men, even of disciplined troops, does not make a 
garrison, and in most cases the closely knit and carefully organized 
forces which a good defence requires were not available. Vitry, Toul, 
Laon, Schlettstadt, New Brisac, La Fere, Peronne, and Rocroy were 
garrisoned almost entirely by gardes mobiles, who at Yitry had not 
received their uniforms, and at Schlettstadt were engaged in looting 
their compatriots when the Germans entered ; add to this that the 
fortresses were in almost every case mere lines enclosing towns in 
which the civil population were exposed to the full effect of bombard¬ 
ment, and it seems clear that prolonged defences could scarcely be 
expected. 
Major G. S. Clarke on Fortification. 
The siege operations of the 1870-1 campaign will repay a careful 
study by all who wish to base fortification on the experience of war, and 
not on the promptings of the inner consciousness, supported by diagrams. 
The main characteristics on the side of the attack were heavy bombard¬ 
ments, and an excessive reluctance to assault, even in cases where an early 
capture was extremely important and where the conditions were 
theoretically favourable. A single assault was attempted against the 
provisional works of Belfort and failed altogether. On the side of the 
defence the Artillery was, as usual in the case of permanent fortification, 
nearly impotent. The effects of the fire of the attack were uniformly 
small, except where the design of the works themselves was such as to 
ensure the maximum advantage to the enemy. Even on the towns, 
exposed as they were, the affects appear to have been moderate in many 
cases. In Paris, the total number of killed and wounded is given as 
375, and the fires which broke out seem to have been easily 
extinguished. 
Defence of Frontiers. 
The defence of frontiers is a problem generally somewhat indetermin¬ 
ate. It is not so for those countries whose borders are covered by 
great and natural obstacles, and which present but few accessible 
points, and these admitting of defence by the art of the engineer. The 
problem here is simple, but in open countries it is more difficult. The 
Alps and the Pyrenees, and the lesser ranges of the Crapacks, of 
Riesengebirge, of Erzegebirge, of the Bohmerwald, of the Black Forest, 
