THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
185 
and outworks, having more recently been girdled with an advanced 
glacis with permanent lunettes, and last of all having had the body 
of the place finished with large earthen traverses and raised 
batteries a l’Haxo,— all the ditches and the space between the 
inner and outer glacis being susceptible of alternate flooding and 
draining at the will of the garrison,-—well provisioned and armed 
with the newest cannon,—the place must be regarded, according to 
old methods of attack, as capable of a very protracted, and perhaps, 
considering the lateness of the season, (the besiegers opened fire on 
the 22nd of November), a victorious resistance. But it was reduced 
to capitulate by 2^ days’ easy firing from rifled guns placed on the 
neighbouring hills. 
T , j Thionville was first loosely invested on the 25th of August 
* by a regiment of lancers (about 600 troopers), assisted 
originabyby 12 pioneers, and afterwards by some 300 hussars: the 
garrison was supposed to contain more than 1,000 regulars and 
several thousands of the Garde Mobile, (the numbers at the 
capitulation were found to be about 2,000 regulars and 3,000 Mobiles); 
and the work on the hands of the lancers was very arduous. The 
country being much intersected, the line of communication joining 
the various posts round the place was about thirty miles long; and 
though at night the vedettes were pushed forward, occasionally as far 
as the foot of the glacis, the troopers were in reality little qualified 
to meet any active hostility on the part of the garrison, who ought 
undoubtedly to have driven them quite away. On one dark night 
the garrison did restore a part of the railway which had been torn 
up, and so receive a train of munitions from Luxemburg, but this 
seems to have been their only exploit; and the cavalry, armed with 
lance, sword, and old pistol, by means of intense assiduity, the 
maintenance of an imposing appearance, and extreme boldness, 
assisted always by the 12 pioneers, who fortified various farm¬ 
houses and were multiplied in effect by having a four-horse coach 
contrived for their conveyance to threatened points, succeeded in 
imprisoning 5,000 men armed with Chassepots and not without some 
cavalry and field-artillery. 
Infantry was added, during October, to the investing force, which 
increased during November to some 12,000 of all arms; and siege 
Sie e Train ar ^ ei T was brought up in large quantities by railway 
1 to a station about four miles from the town: so that on 
the morning of the 22nd the besiegers were prepared to open fire 
from about fifty heavy pieces (with a reserve of, apparently, about 
half that number, and ammunition which appeared to be about 500 
rounds a gun), which were to be assisted by some 30 field guns, 
to which various horse and field batteries of the investing force, 
though posted with regard to serious sorties, might be considered a 
reserve. 
The heavy pieces were all, (with the exception of two bronze 12-inch 
mortars of French construction brought from Metz), what the 
Prussians call 24-prs., throwing shells of 56 lbs. weight, breech- 
