LAND AND WATEK 
December 19, 1&14. 
ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN 
SIEGE WARFARE. 
By COL. F. N. MAUDE, G.B. (late R.E.). 
THERE is no delusion more deeply rooted in the 
popular mind than that all gains in the efficiency 
and power of modern weapons tend to favour the 
defender rather than the assailant, and as we seem 
to be in for a succession of attacks upon fortresses 
and modern entrenchments the sooner this illusion 
is destroyed the better, for a national conviction of success, 
founded on knowledge, is the best of all support to the army 
fighting in the field, that those compelled to stay at home can 
possibly give. War is a pretty stern trial for the men at 
tlio front anyhow, and to know that one's people and depen- 
dents are suffering want and misery because business is dis- 
organised, and capital and enterprise are standing out for fear 
of the ultimate result, puts more on the shoulders of our 
defenders than they need be called upon to bear. 
It is not easy to prove my point by comparing any two 
modern instances of these two opposing forms of action, for 
so many factors are involved that it would need pages to dis- 
entangle them all and trace each one to its ultimate conse- 
quences ; but it can easily be done if we remember that war, 
like every other group of sciences, is in a state of constant 
evolution governed by laws which become apparent at once 
if we contrast extremes. 
Consider for a moment the following diagrams, which 
show the possible lines of attack by which the assailants might 
be surprised in the days of the old battlemented towers still 
to bo found in ruins aibout the country and the lines which 
now threaten a defender in his trenches, say, in Flanders. 
To break through the old castle walls the besiegers had 
to bring a battering ram weighing ten to twenty tons abso- 
lutely into contact with the walls ; to fill in ditches ; to master 
the defenders' bowmen behind the loopholes, and finally to 
endure the boiling oil or other abominations poured down 
upon them through the holes in the gallery flooring. Some- 
times also he was liable to be let down by a mine driven 
outwards from underneath the castle walls, but since he could 
also undermine the walls and let them down by firing the 
props used for underpinning them, we may take it that these 
two dangers fairly balanced one another. 
In all cases, however, in addition to the vertical direc- 
tions from whence he might be assailed, the besiegers had 
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also to reckon with flanking fire from the towers shown iri 
the plan, each of which would generally have several tiers of 
loopholes. 
To beat down this resistance they had first to smash in 
the woodwork galleries projecting over the face of the walls, 
and for this purpose the only instruments at their disposal 
were the various forms of catapult, very heavy to move, and 
almost impossible to erect until the enemy's bowmen had been 
driven away from their loopholes by superior accuracy of 
shooting, a process which might take months and generally; 
was only attained when the inroads of hunger and disease 
had so depleted the garrison that it could no longer man its 
available defences. 
The coming of artillery rapidly changed all this pro- 
cedure. The wooden galleries were soon shot to pieces from 
a range that crossbowmen could not attain to. Loopholes 
were shattered and blinded irretrievably, and unless a deep 
ditch intervened the walls themselves were breached from a 
distance. 
This process has been gradual, and vrith each fresh pro- 
gress in artillery and small arms the defender has had to 
sink his defences deeper into the ground, and thus sacrifice 
the advantages of command and of several tiers of fire. 
Thus in Vauban's time — 1650-1700 — all exposed masonry 
had been driven below the enemy's line of sight, and the ad- 
vantage of command having been largely reduced, it began 
to be possible to make shallower trenches of approach, and 
thus the course of the siege advanced more rapidly. 
There still remained the necessity of bringing heavy 
guns right up to the edge of the ditch to breach the retaining 
walls, and before this could be done tho fire from the various 
flanking defences had to be entirely destroyed— operations 
needing very considerable time and expenditure of ammuni- 
tion. But at length the advent of the rifled gun overcame 
even this obstacle. 
The result is that at the present moment the defender 
has been forced into a position the exact reverse of tho one 
he first started from. Instead of pouring boiling oil on the 
heads of the stormers the flying machine drops bombs on his ; 
instead of bringing tiers of arrow flights against his adversary 
SArap^tel' — 
1 
^cm Aeraptane 
"*<b ' ^'{j^^^^^^'H 
the shrapnel of the latter sends a far greater weight of missiles 
against him, and he cannot seriously delay his enemy by 
mining against him, because every time he explodes a mine — 
which may or may not do damage — of necessity he opens a 
crater which his opponent can occupy as cover yet closer up 
against his own defences. 
The Germans have not laid out miles of deep trenches 
all over Belgium because they liked the work but because it 
has been forced upon them by the nature of the arms in use. 
In tho old days three or four compact fortresses with a total 
garrison of perhaps 25,000 men would have held up the Allied 
Armies for the whole of the winter — perhaps longer — as, in 
fact, such fortresses in Belgium have repeatedly done, and 
the Allies would have needed at least a ten-fold numerical 
superiority to capture them. To-day the Germans will need 
certainly not less and probably far more than 250,000 
men to hold the same area ; and now that the Allies have 
established a definite superiority over their adversary, both 
in aircraft and in artillery power, they can safely count or^ 
driving the Germans out with equal numbers only. 
10* 
