REQUIRED FOR THE ATTACK OF A MODERN FORTRESS. 
113 
before mentioned railway conveyance to be available up to a certain point, 
carriages have only to be supplied to bring tbe materiel from that point 
to tbe siege park and again, as required, from tbe park to tbe batteries 
an estimate of wbicb is readily formed upon tbe probable quantity 
necessary for first supply and daily consumption as basis, by allowing 
2 tons per transporting carriage for borse or traction engine* draught 
on road and 1 ton per truck if narrow gauge railf be used. J 
IV. MISCELLANEOUS STORES. 
Under tbis bead are included ground platforms and all other stores 
wbicb an artilleryman requires for the use and maintenance of bis guns, 
an attempt to estimate which would, for our purpose, be but going into 
unnecessary and uninteresting detail. We may mention that among 
tbe smaller stores should be means for telegraphic communication be¬ 
tween an observer sent forward from a battery and tbe battery itself, 
when it is necessary and possible to do so, for obtaining accuracy of fire, 
as in tbe case of breaching by curved fire and taking observations from 
tbe crowning; for tbis purpose Count Bylandt-Rheid tells us,|| “the 
employment of tbe, so called, clock telegraph, as used by tbe Military 
Committee and by some divisions of artillery when practising is to be 
r e commende dU § 
Whatever means are employed for tbis purpose a proportion of tbe 
artillerymen of tbe train should be skilled in using it, for a man of 
any other branch of tbe service, for example, an engineer, will lack tbe 
necessary technical knowledge to be able clearly and accurately to give 
to tbe battery tbe information required.^! 
CONCLUSION. 
Examining tbe results of tbe experiments, bearing upon tbe attack 
and defence of fortresses, made, at home and abroad of late years and 
considering what has been said upon tbe materiel of tbe siege train, it 
must be apparent to all that much yet remains to be done in this 
direction. 
# A traction engine, such as now adopted in Italy for the transport of the 2nd line, of 
6-horse power, weighing 7 tons, can draw 8 to 10 carriages, of 2 tons each, on a road in 
good state up ramps under 4 in 100. “ During the war of 1870-71, the Germans utilised 
between Manteuil, where the railway of l’Est had been cut, and their siege park established 
at Villacoublay, a traction engine to supplement the insufficiency of the columns of the 
park, and to aid the transport of the necessary materiel for the bombardment of Paris.”— 
Revue d’Artillerie, tome vii. 
f A locomotive for such could draw, allowing for curves and easy ramps, about 8 tons of 
load. 
X When the necessity arises for heavier siege pieces than those now in use, or exceeding 
the limit of 75 cwt. which we have laid down, there will not be much difficulty in doing it 
by the use of such mechanical means. 
|| On curved fire, by Count Bylaudt-Reidt, Major General in the Austrian service. 
§ Certainly the method of signalling by discs, &c., is impracticable for such purposes. 
"IF It might be said the engineer could work the telegraph, the necessary information 
being given him by the gunner, but this would be but introducing an unnecessary com¬ 
plication—a divided responsibility—which is always an evil; besides which, it would 
never answer for the artillery, or any other arm, to be dependent in any purely technical 
affair, upon another arm. 
