ATTACK OF A MODERN LAND FORTRESS. 
469 
may be a wide level plain for miles round tbe fortress wbicb will afford 
no concealment for tlie batteries. The garrison of such a fortress would 
have to be a purely defensive one, as the nature of the surrounding 
country would not lend itself to any active offensive movements against 
an invading army, and a small corps of observation would be sufficient 
to frustrate any attempted operations of the kind. 
II.— Organisation of the Siege Train and uses of the various 
descriptions of Ordnance composing it. 
The latest recommendations on the organisation of our Siege Train 
are that there should be two descriptions :—heavy and light $ the for¬ 
mer to consist of 8-in. B.L. howitzers, and associated with them a few 
6-in. B.L. guns, if iron defences were to be encountered. The light 
train would consist of 6-in. B.L. howitzers only. 
A Siege Train will be divided into units, probably of four pieces each, 
and so many units will be told off to form it. 
In addition, there will be an Auxiliary Armament of 20-pounder B.L. Auxiliary 
guns, field howitzers, and quick-firing and machine-guns, besides the Arraament * 
field guns belonging to the Field Army. 
The reasons why guns (other than those of this Auxiliary Armament) Advantages 
have been practically eliminated from the Siege Train are that, owing to Howitzers, 
the increased accuracy of the fire of howitzers of recent years, there is 
very little that a gun can do which a howitzer cannot perform equally 
well, if not better; and that against earthworks and masonry the 
howitzer is far superior from the great angle of descent possible, and 
the large bursting charge in the shells, which have become specially 
formidable since the introduction of high explosives. 
Ordnance in concealed positions can be reached by curved howitzer 
fire, and behind earthworks and traverses can be destroyed without first 
cutting away the protecting earth. 
High-angle fire with high-explosive shell and delay-action fuzes is 
capable of destroying any casemate as at present constructed, and it is 
not too much to expect that the same fire with quick-action fuzes will 
be more likely to put out of action guns in cupolas and turrets than the cupolas and 
heaviest B.L. gun that can be taken with a siege train; for the projec- Turrets * 
tile from the flat-trajectory gun at long range has not the necessary 
velocity to be any match for the heavy armour of these structures, and 
would probably glance off a cupola; an accurate gun may obtain a hit 
on the muzzle of the gun in one of these mountings, but the 20-pounder 
B.L. would probably be sufficiently accurate for this purpose, and a hit 
prove as efficacious as one from the 6-in. B.L. gun. 
The howitzer shell can penetrate through the concrete round a cupola 
and, though General Brialmont observes that all that is necessary is to 
extend armour over this concrete, we have yet to learn what would be 
the effect on its mechanism of a 250 lb. shell containing 30 or 40 lbs. of 
high explosive dropping vertically on to the cupola itself. 
Guns in a Siege Train further labour under the very serious dis- Dj sa( j van . 
advantage of being unable, from the flatness of their trajectory, to 
secure the same amount of cover as howitzers which can be so placed siege Train, 
behind rising ground that, with the assistance of smokeless powder, it 
