Arthur Thomas Malkin

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Medal struck after the siege of Ostend.

Siege of PlatÆa—Numantia—Tyre—Syracuse—Lines of circumvallation—Siege of Jerusalem—Of La RÉole—Effects of the invention of Gunpowder—Siege of Ostend—Magdeburg—Character of the mercenary troops of the seventeenth century—Siege of Zaragoza.

The cautious policy of Pericles, and the plague, combined to render the two first years of the war barren of incidents. The third campaign opened more energetically with the siege of PlatÆa, the old and faithful ally of Athens. This is the earliest siege of which we have any full and particular account; and some surprise may be felt at the rudeness and inefficacy of the means employed in prosecuting it by the most military nation of Greece. For this, however, all previous history prepares us. To the early Greeks fortifications of any strength appear to have presented insuperable obstacles. Not a city of any note can be mentioned which was taken by fair fighting. Troy was impregnable by force. Eira was taken in consequence of its being accidentally left unguarded.[1] Ithome held out for ten years, and at last obtained honourable terms of surrender. And when Cyrus marched against Babylon, the inhabitants, trusting in their walls and their magazines, “made no account at all of being besieged; but Cyrus became greatly puzzled what to do, having spent much time there and made no progress at all.”[2] The stratagem by which he took it at last is well known: he laid dry the bed of the Euphrates, and introduced a body of troops through the deserted channel; yet danger, even from this quarter, had been foreseen and guarded against, if proper caution had been used. Each side of the river was lined with walls, and gates were placed at the end of the streets which led down to the water side; so that, as Herodotus himself remarks, if the Persians had been on their guard the attempt might have been defeated by merely closing the gates, and the assailants might have been cut off entirely by missile weapons. But, to return to PlatÆa; the Spartans were notoriously unskilled, even among the Greeks, in this branch of warfare. Military engines they had none; a want arising probably from their national poverty; for the ram was known, and was employed, some say invented, by Pericles, at the siege of Samos, some years before the Peloponnesian war broke out. It is remarkable that from this time downwards to the invention of gunpowder, no material discovery was made in this branch of the military art, except the introduction of moving towers. Lines of circumvallation, as they were the earliest, continued to be the surest means of overcoming the pertinacious resistance of stone and mortar. Such was the case even at Rome, after the vast influx of wealth from conquered provinces had facilitated the construction of the largest and most expensive machines; and the vast scale upon which those temporary enclosures were completed, exhibits most strikingly the laboriousness of the Roman legionaries. This, however, is foreign to our present subject. If the reader has any curiosity respecting these works, he will find some remarkable ones described in CÆsar’s Commentaries.[3]

Just before war broke out between Athens and Sparta, the Thebans, always jealous of Athens, and more especially envious of its strict connection with PlatÆa, over which, as the head of the Boeotian confederacy, they claimed the same undefined but oppressive authority which was exercised by the Athenians and other leading cities over their allies, made an attempt to gain possession of PlatÆa, in concert with a party within its walls, consisting of citizens dissatisfied with the existing government. By the contrivance of the latter, a body of Theban troops was introduced by night, who without a struggle became, to all appearance, masters of the town, piled their arms in the market–place, and invited the inhabitants to place themselves under the protection of Thebes. But the Athenian party was greatly preponderant, and discovering the small number of their enemies they took courage and assaulted them. Almost all the Thebans were made prisoners, and subsequently put to death, in contravention of a promise of personal security implied, if not absolutely expressed in words. Immediate notice of what had occurred was sent to the Athenians, who, considering this as the commencement of war, removed the women and children, and all who were unfit for military duty, from PlatÆa, sending thither eighty of their own citizens to increase the garrison, and also probably to guard against any further attempts on the part of the disaffected.

No disturbance was given to PlatÆa during the two first years of the war. At the commencement of the third, Archidamus, the Spartan king and general, finding that the annual devastation of Attica was of no service to the Peloponnesian confederacy, and unwilling perhaps to incur the hazard of entering an infected country, marched to PlatÆa, which, in consequence of its exertions in the Persian war, had been invested by the general consent of Greece with privileges of an almost sacred character. The nature of these privileges, and the singular proposal to which they gave rise, will be best understood from the narration of Thucydides.

“The next summer the Peloponnesians and their confederates came not into Attica, but turned their arms against PlatÆa, led by Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the LacedÆmonians, who, having pitched his camp, was about to waste the territory thereof. But the PlatÆans sent ambassadors presently unto him, with words to this effect:—’Archidamus, and you LacedÆmonians, you do neither justly, nor worthy yourselves and ancestors, in making war upon PlatÆa. For Pausanias of LacedÆmon, the son of Cleombrotus, having (together with such Grecians as were content to undergo the danger of the battle that was fought in this our territory) delivered all Greece from the slavery of the Persians, when he offered sacrifice in the market–place of PlatÆa to Jupiter the deliverer, called together all the confederates, and granted to the PlatÆans this privilege: that their city and territory should be free; that none should make unjust war against them, nor go about to enslave them; and if any did, the confederates then present should use their utmost ability to revenge their quarrel.[4] These privileges your fathers granted us for our valour and zeal in those dangers. But now do you the clean contrary, for you join with our greatest enemies, the Thebans, to bring us into subjection. Therefore calling to witness the gods then sworn by, and the gods peculiar to your ancestral descent, and our own local gods, we require you, that you do no damage to the territory of PlatÆa, nor violate those oaths; but that you suffer us to enjoy our liberty in such sort as was allowed us by Pausanias.’[5]

“The PlatÆans having thus said, Archidamus replied, and said thus:—’Men of PlatÆa, if you would do as ye say, you say what is just. For as Pausanias hath granted to you, so also be you free; and help to set free the rest, who having been partakers of the same dangers then, and being comprised in the same oath with yourselves, are now brought into subjection by the Athenians. And this so great preparation and war is only for the deliverance of them and others: of which if you will especially participate, keep your oaths; at least (as we have also advised you formerly) be quiet, and enjoy your own, in neutrality, receiving both sides in the way of friendship, neither side in the way of faction. And these things will content us.’ Thus said Archidamus. And the ambassadors of PlatÆa, when they heard him, returned to the city; and having communicated his answer to the people, brought word again to Archidamus, ‘That what he had advised was impossible for them to perform, without leave of the Athenians, in whose keeping were their wives and children; and that they feared also for the whole city, lest when the LacedÆmonians were gone the Athenians should come and take the custody of it out of their hands; or that the Thebans, as being comprehended in the oath that they would admit both parties, should again attempt to surprise it.’ But Archidamus, to encourage them, made this answer: ‘Deliver you unto us LacedÆmonians your city and your houses; show us the bounds of your territory; give us your trees by tale, and whatsoever else can be numbered; and depart yourselves, whither you shall think good, as long as the war lasteth. And when it shall be ended we will deliver it all unto you again: in the mean time we will keep these things as deposited, and will cultivate your ground, and pay you rent for it, as much as shall suffice for your maintenance.’

“Hereupon the ambassadors went again into the city, and having consulted with the people, made answer: ‘That they would first acquaint the Athenians with it, and if they would consent they would then accept the condition; till then they desired a suspension of arms, and not to have their territory wasted.’ Upon this he granted them so many days’ truce as was requisite for their return, and for so long forbore to waste their territory. When the PlatÆan ambassadors were arrived at Athens, and had advised on the matter with the Athenians, they returned to the city with this answer: ‘The Athenians say, that neither in former times, since we where their confederates, did they ever abandon us to the injury of any, nor will they now neglect us, but give us their utmost assistance; and they conjure us, by the oath of our fathers, not to make any alienation touching the league.’

“When the ambassadors had made this report, the PlatÆans resolved in their councils not to betray the Athenians, but rather to endure, if it must be, the wasting of their territory before their eyes, and to suffer whatsoever misery could befal them; and no more to go forth, but from the walls to make them this answer: ‘That it was impossible for them to do as the LacedÆmonians had required.’ When they had answered so, Archidamus the king first made a protestation to the gods and heroes of the country, saying thus: ‘All ye gods and heroes, protectors of the land of PlatÆa, be witnesses that we neither invade this territory, wherein our fathers, after their vows unto you, overcame the Medes, and which you made propitious for the Grecians to fight in, unjustly now in the beginning, because they have first broken the league they had sworn; nor what we shall further do will be any injury, because though we have offered many and reasonable conditions, they have yet been all refused. Assent ye also to the punishment of the beginners of injury, and to the revenge of those that bear lawful arms.’

“Having made this protestation to the gods, he made ready his army for the war. And first having felled trees, he therewith made a palisado about the town that none might go out. That done, they raised a mound against the wall, hoping, with so great an army all at work at once, to have quickly taken it. And, having cut down timber in the mountain CithÆron, they built a frame of timber and wattled it about on either side, to serve instead of a wall, to keep the earth from falling too much away, and cast into it stones and earth, and whatsoever else would serve to fill it up. Seventy days and nights continually they cast up the mound, dividing the work between them for rest in such manner, as some might be carrying, whilst others took their sleep and food. And they were urged to labour by the LacedÆmonian officers, who commanded severally the contingents of the allied cities. The PlatÆans seeing the mound to rise, made the frame of a wall with wood, which, having placed on the wall of the city in the place where the mound touched, they built it within full of bricks, taken from the adjoining houses, for that purpose demolished; the timbers serving to bind them together, that the building might not be weakened by the height. The same was also covered with skins and leather, both to keep the timber from shot of wildfire and those that wrought from danger. So that the height of the wall was great on one side, and the mound went up as fast on the other. The PlatÆans used also this device; they broke a hole in their own wall, where the mound joined, and drew the earth from it into the city. But the Peloponnesians, when they found it out, rammed clay into cases made of reeds, which they cast into the cavity, with intention that the mound should not moulder, and be carried away like loose earth. The PlatÆans, excluded here, gave over that plot, and digging a secret mine, which they carried under the mound from within the city by conjecture, fetched away the earth again, and were a long time undiscovered; so that the earth being continually carried out below, it was no use to cast fresh stuff on the mound, which still settled down into the excavation. Nevertheless, fearing that they should not be able even thus to hold out, being few against many, they devised this further; they gave over working at the high wall against the mound, and beginning at both ends of it, where the wall was low, built another wall in form of a crescent, inward to the city, that, if the great wall were taken, this might resist, and put the enemy to make another mound, in the continuing of which further inwards they should have their labour over again, and withal should be more exposed on either side to missile weapons. And at the same time that they were raising the mound, the Peloponnesians brought to the city their engines of battery; one of which, by help of the mound, they applied to the high wall, wherewith they much shook it, and put the PlatÆans into great fear; and others to other parts of the wall, which the PlatÆans broke partly by casting ropes about them, and partly with great beams, which being hung in long iron chains by either end upon two other great beams jetting over, and inclining from above the wall like two horns, they drew up to them in a horizontal position, and when the engine was about to make a blow any where, they let go the chains and let the beam fall, which, by the violence of its descent, broke off the head of the battering–ram.

“After this, the Peloponnesians, seeing their engines availed not, and thinking it hard to take the city by any present violence, prepared themselves to draw an enclosure all around it. But first they thought fit to attempt it by fire, being no great city, and when the wind should rise, if they could, to burn it; for there was no way they did not think on, to have gained it without expense and long siege. Having therefore brought faggots, they cast them from the mound into the space between it and their new wall, which by so many hands was quickly filled; and then into as much of the rest of the city as at that distance they could reach; and throwing amongst them fire, together with brimstone and pitch, kindled the wood, and raised such a flame, as the like was never seen before, made by the hand of man. For it has been known that a forest in the mountains has taken fire[6] spontaneously from the friction of its boughs in a high wind, and burst into flames. But this fire was a great one, and the PlatÆans, that had escaped other mischiefs, wanted little of being consumed by this; for there was a large part of the town within which it was impossible to approach; and if the wind had blown the fire that way (as the enemy hoped it might) they could never have escaped. It is also reported that there fell uch rain then, with great thunder, and that the flame was extinguished and the danger ceased by that.

“Now the Peloponnesians, when they failed likewise of this, retaining a part of their army, and dismissing the rest, enclosed the city about with a wall, dividing the circumference thereof to the charge of the several cities. There was a ditch both within and without it, out of which they made their bricks; and after it was finished, which was about the rising of Arcturus,[7] they left a guard for one–half of the wall (for the other was guarded by the Boeotians), and departed with the rest of their army, and were dissolved according to their cities. The PlatÆans had before this sent their wives and children and all their unserviceable men to Athens. The rest were besieged, being in number of the PlatÆans themselves four hundred, of Athenians eighty, and one hundred and ten women to dress their meat. These were all when the siege was first laid, and not more, neither free nor bond, in the city. In this manner were the PlatÆans besieged.”[8]

The blockade continued for about a year and a half, during which the historian does not advert to it. At the end of that time, in the winter, B. C. 428–7, the garrison, after deliberation, being pressed by hunger and despairing of any help from Athens, resolved to abandon the city, and force a passage through the line of circumvallation. Half the number took alarm at the seeming rashness of the attempt, and declined to share it; but about two hundred and twenty persisted in their resolution. We now return to the historian’s narrative:—

“As for the wall of the Peloponnesians, it was thus built; it consisted of a double circle, one towards PlatÆa, and another outward, in case of an assault from Athens. These two walls were distant one from the other about sixteen feet; and that sixteen feet of space between them was disposed and built into cabins for the force that kept the works, which were so joined and continued one to another, that the whole appeared to be one thick battlements stood a great tower of the same breadth as the walls, and stretching across them from the inner to the outer face, so that there was no passage by the side of a tower, but through the midst of it. And such nights as there happened any storm of rain, they used to quit the battlements of the wall, and to watch under the towers, as being not far asunder, and covered beside overhead. Such was the form of the wall wherein the Peloponnesians kept their watch.

“The PlatÆans, after they were ready, waiting for a tempestuous night of wind and rain, and withal moonless, went out of the city, and were conducted by those men who had proposed the attempt. And first they passed the ditch that was about the town, and then came up close to the wall of the enemy, who through the darkness could not see them coming, nor hear them for the clatter of the storm, which drowned the noise of their approach. And they came on besides at a good distance one from the other, that they might not be betrayed by the clashing of their arms; and were but lightly armed, and not shod but on the left foot, for the more steadiness in the mud. They came thus to the battlements in one of the spaces between tower and tower, knowing that there was now no watch kept there. And first came they that carried the ladders, and placed them to the wall; then twelve lightly armed, only with a dagger and a breast–plate, went up, led by Ammeas, the son of CorÆbus, who was the first that mounted; and after him ascended his followers, to each tower six. To these succeeded others lightly armed, that carried the darts, for whom they that came after carried targets at their backs, that they might be the more expedite to get up, which targets they were to deliver to them when they came to the enemy. At length, when most of them were ascended, they were heard by the watchmen that were in the towers; for one of the PlatÆans, taking hold of the battlements, threw down a tile, which made a noise in the fall, and presently there was an alarm, and the army ran to the wall, for in the dark and stormy night they knew not what the danger was. And the PlatÆans that were left in the city came forth withal, and assaulted the wall of the Peloponnesians on the opposite part to that where their men went over; so that they were all in a tumult in their several places, and not any of them that watched durst stir to the aid of the rest, nor were able to conjecture what had happened. But those three hundred[9] that were appointed to assist the watch upon all occasions of need, went without the wall, and made towards the place of the clamour. They also held up the fires by which they used to make known the approach of enemies, towards Thebes. But then the PlatÆans likewise held out many other fires from the wall of the city, which for that purpose they had before prepared, to confound the meaning of the enemy’s signal–fires, and that the Thebans, apprehending the matter otherwise than it was, might forbear to send help till their men were over, and had recovered some place of safety.

“In the mean time those PlatÆans, which having scaled the wall first and slain the watch, were now masters of both the towers, not only guarded the passages by standing themselves in the entries, but also applying ladders from the wall to the towers, and conveying many men to the top, kept the enemies off with shot both from above and below. In the mean space the greatest number of them having reared to the wall many ladders at once, and beaten down the battlements, passed quite over between the towers, and ever as any of them got to the other side, they stood still upon the brink of the ditch, and with arrows and darts kept off those that came along the wall to hinder the passage of their companions. And when the rest were over, then last of all, and with much ado, came they also which were in the two towers down to the ditch. And by this time the three hundred, that were to assist the watch, came and set upon them, and had lights with them; by which means the PlatÆans that were on the further brink of the ditch discerned them the better from out of the dark, and aimed their arrows and darts at their most disarmed parts; for, standing in the dark, the light of the enemy made the PlatÆans the less discernible: insomuch as the last of them passed the ditch in time, though with difficulty and force; for the water in it was frozen over, though not so hard as to bear, but watery, and such as when the wind is at east rather than at north; and the snow which fell that night, together with so great a wind as there was, had very much increased the water, which they waded through, with scarce their heads above. But yet the greatness of the storm was the principal means of their escape.

“From the ditch the PlatÆans in troop took the way towards Thebes, leaving on the right hand the shrine of the hero Androcrates, both for that they supposed it would be least suspected that they had taken the road leading to their enemies; and also because they saw the Peloponnesians with their lights pursue that way, which, by Mount CithÆron and the Oakheads, led to Athens; and for six or seven furlongs the PlatÆans followed the road to Thebes; then turning off they took that towards the mountain leading to ErythrÆ and HysiÆ, and, having gotten the hills, escaped through to Athens, being two hundred and twelve persons out of a greater number: for some of them returned into the city before the rest went over, and one of their archers was taken upon the ditch without. And so the Peloponnesians gave over the pursuit, and returned to their places. But the PlatÆans that were within the city knowing nothing of the event, and those that turned back having told them that not a man escaped, as soon as it was day sent a herald to entreat a truce for the taking up of their dead bodies; but when they knew the truth, they gave it over. And thus these men of PlatÆa passed through the fortification of their enemies, and were saved.”[10]

A bolder and more fortunate stroke for life and liberty has never been described. How deep must have been the mortification of those whose courage failed at the decisive moment, upon learning the brilliant success of their comrades’ attempt! Dearly did they pay for disgracing their brave resistance by a single moment of timidity. Forced at last by famine to yield up the town, which the besiegers could at any time have taken by assault, but that they had an ulterior object in wishing to obtain it by surrender, the only terms they could obtain were, that they should surrender themselves and their city to the justice of Sparta, so that none but the guilty should be punished. Commissioners were sent out to try them. The only question asked was this: Had they done any service to the LacedÆmonians or their allies in the present war? The PlatÆans requested that instead of merely answering this question they might reply at length; and having obtained it, commissioned two persons to plead their cause. They set forth the peculiarly hard situation in which this mode of trial, if such it could be called, placed them; which, setting aside the justice of their cause, required them to pronounce their own certain condemnation. They reminded the hearers of their services in the Persian war, of the privileges and immunities conferred on them by Pausanias and the Greeks, and the respect due to their territory, as the repository of the bones of those who fell in the great battle which for ever relieved Greece from the fear of Persia. They urged, that when they had sought alliance with Sparta, and protection against Thebes, the Spartans themselves had rejected their petition, and referred them to Athens; they suggested skilfully the high reputation of the Spartans for probity, and dwelt on the disgrace which they would incur, if, in a cause of such importance, they should commit injustice. But they pleaded in vain: the character which they ascribed to the Spartans, if ever deserved, was now deserved no longer, and their fate was predetermined. The question, Had they done any good to the LacedÆmonians? was repeated to them one by one; and as it could not be answered in the affirmative, they were led off to execution to the number of 200 PlatÆans and twenty–five Athenians. Nor was this a single instance of barbarity, for it was the practice of the Spartans to put their prisoners to death, even the crews of such merchant ships as they captured; an example too readily followed by their antagonists. One, and but one, such action may be cited in modern times, the massacre of the Turkish prisoners at Jaffa, the most hateful, and save one perhaps the most hated, of the remorseless actions of Napoleon. Yet for this there is some shadow of excuse, however insufficient to justify the deed to modern morals, in the broken parole of those who were put to death. To the Greeks such excuse would have been ample; nay, none such was required. Humanity has made no small progress, even in the midst of warfare. The town of PlatÆa was levelled with the ground by the Thebans.[11]

Similar was the fate, similar, but even more obstinate and remarkable was the resistance, of Numantia, the last stronghold of those gallant and generous Celtiberians, who, after the infamous murder of Viriatus, upheld the liberties of Spain against Rome. During five successive years, six Roman officers met with defeats, more or less signal, under its walls, and peace, twice offered and concluded by the unsuccessful generals to retrieve their safety, was as often disowned and violated by the unblushing perfidy of the senate. The circumstances of one of these treaties are so creditable to the barbarian Spaniards, as they were called by the Romans, that we will go somewhat out of the way to relate them.

The highest estimate of the Numantine force falls short of 10,000 men. C. Hostilius Mancinus, consul A. U. 615 (b.c. 139), succeeding to the command of 30,000 men employed in besieging them, found his army so dispirited by a long train of reverses, that he judged it best to retire to some distance from the town. He intended to effect this secretly by a night march, but the besieged, getting notice of his design, fell upon the Roman rear, killed 10,000, it is said, and surrounded the rest in such a manner that escape was hopeless. Anxious only for peace and independence, they readily accepted the terms offered by Mancinus as a ransom for his army. What these were does not appear, but they were sworn to by the consul and chief officers. Mancinus, on the first rumour of his defeat, was recalled to Rome, and deputies from Numantia accompanied him, to obtain the ratification of the treaty. But the haughty senate, as once before in the celebrated surrender at the Caudine Forks, refused to admit terms humiliating to the dignity of the republic, though not to profit by the release of their countrymen. The war was continued; but to satisfy their notions of equity Mancinus was given up to the Numantines, a voluntary testimony, to do him justice, to his own good faith in the transaction. Returning to Spain with his successor, Furius, he was led naked to the waist, his hands tied behind him, to the gates of Numantia. But the Numantines refused to take vengeance on an innocent man; saying, that the breach of the public faith could not be expiated by the death of one person. Let the senate abide by the treaty, or deliver up those who have escaped under the shelter of it.

At first perfidy did not seem to prosper. Furius and his successor Calpurnius Piso made no more progress than their predecessors, and so high grew the reputation of the besieged for valour, that no one, Florus says, ever expected to see the back of a Numantine. At last, A. U. 619, the Romans, weary of the war, and anxious above all things to bring it to an end, re–elected to the office of consul Scipio Æmilianus, celebrated as the final conqueror and destroyer of Carthage, and expressly assigned Spain to him as his province, instead of suffering the two consuls to draw lots for the choice of provinces, as was the usual course. Scipio’s first care was to restore discipline in his army, which he found corrupted by luxury. With this view he expelled all the idle and profligate followers of the camp; practised his troops in all military exercises, inured them to exposure and fatigue, and when he thought the ancient tone of Roman discipline was restored, led them, not against the formidable Numantines, but against a neighbouring people. Obtaining a trifling advantage over a party of the former who had attacked his foragers, he refused to prosecute it, thinking it enough that the reputed invincibility of the Numantines was disproved. On this occasion, says Plutarch, the Numantines being reproached on their return to the city, for retiring before an enemy whom they had so often beaten, replied, “The Romans might indeed be the same sheep, but they had gotten a new shepherd.”

In the ensuing winter, his army being increased to 60,000 men, Scipio determined to invest the town. Regardless of the disproportion of force, the besieged often offered battle, which he refused, preferring the slow work of famine to encountering the desperation of veteran and approved soldiers. With this view he proceeded to draw lines of circumvallation round the town; and it is said by Appian, that he was the first general who ever took that method of reducing a place, the garrison of which did not decline a battle in the open field. The town was about three miles in compass, and lay on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which ran the river Durius, now called the Douro. Around it Scipio traced a double ditch, six miles in circuit, with a rampart eight feet thick and ten feet high, not including a parapet strengthened by towers at intervals of 125 feet. The river, where it intersected the works, was effectually blocked up by chains and booms. The besieged often endeavoured to check the progress of the Romans, but the superiority of numbers, aided by restored discipline, was too much for them.

The blockade had lasted six months, and the Numantines were hard pressed by famine, before they condescended to inquire whether, if they surrendered, they would meet with honourable treatment. An unconditional surrender was required. Urged even to desperation, they still refused to consign themselves to slavery or mutilation, for the latter often was the fate of those whose strength and valour the Romans had found reason to respect. Rather than submit to such a fate, they consumed their arms and effects, and houses, in one general conflagration, and dying by the sword, or poison, or fire, left the victor nothing of Numantia to adorn his triumph but the name.[12]

Such was the unworthy fate of a city which had spared more Roman soldiers than itself could muster armed men. “Most brave,” says the historian, “and, in my opinion, most happy in its very misfortunes! It asserted faithfully the cause of its allies; alone it resisted, for how long a time, a nation armed with the strength of the whole world.”[13] It is an easy thing to write rhetorical flourishes, and very often mischievous as well as easy. Had Florus ever undergone one tithe of the sufferings inflicted on the miserable Numantines, we might possibly not have heard of their supreme felicity. It might have done him some good by quickening his moral sense, and might have prevented his beginning the next chapter with the assertion, that “hitherto the Roman people was excellent, pious, holy.” Verily, such history as this is a profitable study!

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Battering–ram, combined with tower, from Pompeii, vol. i. p. 78.

In reading of such sieges as these, one of the first things which strikes a reader not familiar with ancient warfare, is the extreme rudeness of the methods employed, and the vast expense of time and labour; yet, compared with earlier times, even the siege of PlatÆa is of no extraordinary duration. Not to go back to the ten–year sieges of Troy and Eira, the Messenians in Ithome held out against the Spartans during nine years; and, in the Peloponnesian war itself, PotidÆa resisted for a still longer period than PlatÆa: such was the patience of a besieging army in waiting for the slow operation of hunger, or for some fortunate chance which, as at Eira, might give possession of the town at an unguarded moment. Before the battering–ram was invented, force could avail little against solid walls; and men soon found out, with Wamba, in Ivanhoe, that their hands were little fitted to make mammocks of stone and mortar. A well–conducted escalade might succeed; a skilful stratagem might deceive the vigilance of the garrison; an ingenious general might devise some method of attack which should render walls useless, as in the attempt to burn out the PlatÆans, and might derive some advantage from natural facilities, or even from natural obstacles, so as to convert what the besieged most trusted in into the means of their destruction; but to overthrow or pass the walls by violence was commonly beyond his power. But the introduction of the ram worked a material change in the relative strength of the besiegers and besieged, for few walls could be found strong enough to bear the repeated application of its powerful shocks. Next in importance to the ram were those huge moving towers which overtopped walls, and were provided with drawbridges, by means of which, the battlements being previously cleared of their defenders by missile weapons from above, a body of troops might at once be thrown upon them.

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Moveable towers, from Pompeii, vol. i. p. 80.

No material alteration in the methods of attack took place till the discovery of gunpowder gave force enough to projectiles to batter down the strongest walls, without exposing men and machinery to the hazard of close approach. The only improvements which did take place consisted in supplying means by which the assailants might approach with less danger to the foot of the walls, and there apply the powerful ram, or, in some instances, resort to mining.

In illustration of these remarks we may notice, very shortly, two of the most remarkable sieges in ancient history, those of Tyre and Syracuse, both resolutely sustained, both finally successful, both carried on by rich and powerful nations who commanded every thing that the best skill of the engineer, or the labour of numbers, could effect. The first was undertaken by Alexander soon after the battle of Issus, b.c. 333. From past ages the Phoenicians had been celebrated among Asiatics for their maritime skill, and Tyre was the most powerful of the Phoenician cities. Trusting in their naval strength to obviate blockade and famine, and in the height of their walls and strength of their situation to repel violence, the Tyrians refused admission to Alexander, remaining faithful to their engagements with Persia. Too weak at sea to assault the walls from his fleet, Alexander had no resource but to carry out a mole to the island. Near the walls there were three fathoms of water, which shoaled gradually to the shore. The mole was built of stone, heaped up, we may suppose, of rough uncemented blocks, like the Plymouth breakwater, and strengthened with piles; and the top was constructed entirely, or in part, of wood. At first it proceeded with despatch, but more slowly and more difficultly as it approached the walls, from which the besieged annoyed the workmen with missiles, and, at the same time, constantly harassed them from the sea. To protect themselves from these attacks the Macedonians built on the verge of the mole two high towers, armed with engines, and covered with raw hides as defence against darts armed with fire. These the Tyrians destroyed by a peculiarly constructed fire–ship. Having filled a large transport with dry twigs and combustible matter, they fixed two masts in the prow, heaped faggots high around them, and added pitch, sulphur, and every thing that was proper to feed the flames. To each mast they fastened two yard–arms, from the ends of which two cauldrons were suspended, filled with combustibles. The ballast they moved entirely to the stern, to raise her head as high out of the water as possible. Thus prepared, they took advantage of a favourable wind to run her up on the mole, and set fire to her, the crew escaping by swimming; and both mole and towers were speedily involved in the conflagration. Meanwhile the Tyrians, from ships and boats, assisted in the ruin, destroyed the piles, and burnt those engines which would otherwise have escaped the flames. The work therefore had to be recommenced, and it was rebuilt on a larger scale.[14]

While this labour was proceeding, Alexander’s fleet was reinforced in consequence of the submission of the Cypriots and Sidonians, to an extent which enabled him to command the sea, and compelled the Tyrians to block up the mouths of their harbours. Numerous mechanics were employed in constructing military engines; some of which were placed on board the largest ships of the fleet, and the rest were mounted on the mole. The Tyrians, still to have the advantage of height, built wooden towers upon their walls facing the mole. This would seem scarcely necessary if we credit Arrian’s assertion, that the city wall in that part was 150 feet high;[15] but it gives us a scale for measuring the altitude of Alexander’s towers, which we may assume, from this precaution, to have been as great or greater. On the side to the sea they cast fiery darts into the attacking ships, and showers of stones, which not only did much harm in their fall, but raised a bank which made it impossible to get close up to the walls. The Macedonians therefore were obliged to clear away these impediments; a work in itself of difficulty and labour, increased by the resolution of the Tyrians, who openly, by sending armed ships, and secretly, by means of divers, cut adrift from their moorings the vessels employed on this service. The Macedonians frustrated this method of defence by using chains instead of cables for mooring, and succeeded at last in clearing away the bank, and getting access to the wall. On the north side, and that next the mole, it resisted their efforts; but a breach was effected on the south side by battering from the ships, and an assault was made, but without success. On the third day afterwards, the breach being enlarged, a second assault was made under Alexander in person, and the town was carried. Eight thousand Tyrians were slain, and thirty thousand persons, natives and strangers, are said to have been sold for slaves.

The most remarkable feature of this siege is the battering in breach from the shipping, which would seem a most unstable base for the cumbrous and weighty engines which must have been used. It may be wished that Arrian had been more explicit on this subject, but he has given no explanation of the means employed. Quintus Curtius relates far greater wonders, and in the same proportion is less worthy of belief than the plain and unassuming statement of Arrian, which we have followed.

The siege of Syracuse, undertaken by the Romans under command of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, B.C. 213, is rendered most remarkable by the interposition of the celebrated geometrician Archimedes. Many extraordinary stories are told of the wonderful things done by him, which, if they rested only on the authority of Plutarch, and other compilers of stories, it would be the natural and simple course to reject; but some of the most singular are affirmed by Polybius, almost a contemporary, well skilled in war, and of undoubted credit for honesty and discernment; and one point, of which Polybius makes no mention, has been ascertained to be practicable by modern experiment. It is to be regretted that but a fragment of his account remains.

Syracuse was divided into five districts, the little island of Ortygia, Acradina, Tycha, Neapolis, and EpipolÆ. Marcellus directed his attack against Acradina, which adjoined the sea, with fifty quinqueremes, or vessels with five banks of oars, well filled with soldiers armed with all kinds of missile weapons to clear the walls. He had also eight ships fitted out in a peculiar way with machines called sambucÆ, from some fancied resemblance to a harp. They where thus prepared: two ships were lashed together, the oars being taken from the two adjoining sides, so as to form, as it were, one large double–keeled vessel, affording a broad and stable base. A ladder was then made, four feet broad, of the necessary height, protected at the sides and above with gratings and hides, so as to form a sort of covered way to the very summit of the walls. It was then so placed, the foot at the stern, the head projecting beyond the prow, that it could be raised by ropes run through pulleys at the mast–heads. At the top was a platform large enough to contain four men, with high sides which turned on hinges, and which being let down served as bridges to connect the ladder with the walls of the besieged town.

At the request of Hiero, king of Syracuse, Archimedes had in past years constructed a great number of machines for casting stones and darts; with which the walls were so well supplied, that the Romans were defeated in every attempt to approach: Marcellus ran his ships by night beneath the walls, hoping to be within the range of these destructive engines. Here, however, he was anticipated, for Archimedes had hollowed chambers in the walls themselves, with narrow openings, like the embrasures of a Gothic castle, from which archery, and the smaller sorts of missile engines, were directed against the Roman ships with destructive effect. Against the sambucÆ he had contrived machines, from which long beams or yards projected, when in use, far beyond the walls. These were heavily weighted with stone or metal to the extent of not less than ten talents, or 1250 pounds. A rapid circular motion being then given to the beam by machinery within the walls, this weighted lever was dashed against the ladder with such force as generally to break it, while the ship itself was exposed to considerable danger. This story not being good enough for Plutarch, he has told us, that when the sambuca was a good way off the walls, a stone ten talents weight was thrown into it, and then a second, and third, which destroyed the vessel; and in consequence considerable ridicule has been thrown on the tale. As told by Polybius it seems little open to objection. Weights, not of half a ton, but several tons, are constantly to be seen on our wharfs suspended on cranes, at a considerable distance from a centre of motion. Add to one of these the machinery requisite to give a rapid circular motion to the projecting arm thus laden, and we have the engine of Archimedes, as described by Polybius. The geometrician had also fitted out powerful cranes, with hooks and chains, by which he could lift a ship almost out of the water. When it was raised to the greatest practicable height, the chain was slipped, and the vessel usually was either upset by the fall, or plunged so deep as to fill with water. Marcellus is reported to have observed (it must have been a forced joke), that Archimedes used his ships for cups to draw water in. Finally he was obliged to abandon the attack by sea. Appius Claudius, who conducted the siege by land, fared no better: and it was resolved at last to give up all hopes of succeeding by force, and trust to the slow operation of blockade. “Thus,” says Polybius, “one man, and one art rightly prepared,[16] is for some matters a mighty and a wonderful thing; for the Romans, having such power by land and sea, take away but one old man of Syracuse, might have expected immediately to capture the city; but while Archimedes was there, they dared not even to attack it in that manner against which he was capable of defending it.”

It is also said that Archimedes set the Roman ships on fire by means of burning mirrors, composed of a combination of plane mirrors, adjusted so as to reflect all the incident rays of light to the same point. The possibility of this has several times been the subject of inquiry to modern philosophers. Kircher took so much interest in the subject, that he went to Syracuse expressly to inquire into the probable position of Marcellus’s fleet, and he arrived at the conclusion, that it might have been within thirty yards of the walls. Buffon’s experiments, made as well as those of Archimedes with a combination of plane mirrors, are conclusive as to the facility of setting tarred fir plank on fire at a distance of one hundred and fifty feet, and the possibility of doing it at considerably greater distances. Similar planks, and even more combustible materials, were precisely what Archimedes had to deal with. He is said to have operated in this way at the distance of a bow–shot, in which there may very probably be exaggeration.

The sequel of the siege contains no matter of interest. Syracuse was taken by surprise through the negligence of the guard, and Archimedes is said to have been slain by a soldier, as he was deeply intent on the solution of a problem.

Lines of circumvallation continued long to be the principal means employed by the Romans in the reduction of strong places. Even the inventive genius of CÆsar does not appear to have devised the means of dispensing with this tedious and most laborious process. In his Gallic wars he had frequent recourse to it, though the Gallic fortifications, it might be thought, could not be of the most formidable description; and the siege of Alesia furnishes one of the most remarkable instances of it on record. The town stood on an eminence, surrounded on three sides by hills of equal height, at a moderate distance: in front extended a plain, three miles in length. Round the foot of this eminence he dug a trench, twenty feet in width; and again, at an interval of 400 feet, two more, of which the inner one was filled with water: behind them he built a rampart twelve feet high, crowned with battlements, and strengthened with towers at intervals of eighty feet; and, more effectually to confine the besieged, and enable a smaller force to guard the works, the space between them and the inner ditch was filled with three distinct rows of obstacles. The first consisted of a sort of abattis, made with large branches of trees, with the ends squared and sharpened, set firmly in the earth (cippi). The next were called lilies (lilia), from their resemblance to the calix of that flower, with its upright pistil: these were circular cup–shaped cavities, three feet deep, with a sharpened stake in the centre, projecting about four inches above ground, and covered over with brushwood to deceive assailants. Still nearer to the town iron hooks (stimuli, like the Scottish calthrop, often used with effect against the English cavalry) were scattered, to lacerate the feet of the advancing enemy. The whole circuit of these works was fourteen miles, and a similar series protected the troops from attack from without.[17]

To come down to a period more interesting to modern readers, we find, in the middle ages, the same principles of operation followed, but in a ruder way, since neither men, nor money, nor science were so abundant among the nations who established kingdoms on the ruins of the western empire, as among the Romans; and, moreover, the turbulent independence of a feudal army, whose term of service was usually limited to a certain time, was unfitted for the severe labour, or the patient and continued watching, which the Roman legionaries cheerfully underwent. Still such skill as our ancestors of the middle ages had was borrowed from the Romans; they employed the same species of machines, towers, rams, and moveable galleries called cats, and the same or similar projectile engines, mentioned under the same names of catapultÆ, onagri, scorpiones, &c., in the Latin authors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and mangonels, trebuchets, war–wolfs, &c. in the vernacular tongue. The first defence of a castle or city was usually a strong wooden palisade called the barriers; and at these many of the most obstinate contests and remarkable feats of arms recorded by Froissart and other chroniclers of the times took place. These being carried, the next step was to level the ground, drain or fill up the ditch, and prepare for bringing up the battering–rams or towers, or scaling–ladders, if it were thought fit to attempt an escalade. In the first crusade the headlong valour of the Christian knights endeavoured in vain to overleap the walls or force the gates of Jerusalem: time was required to construct two moving towers, and on the difficulty of procuring wood the fiction of the enchanted forest of Armida, in Tasso’s poem, is founded. The leader of the Genoese, one of the great maritime states of Italy, was the architect.

This man begunne with wondrous art to make
Not rammes, not mighty brakes, not slings alone,
Wherewith the firm and solid walls to shake,
To cast a dart, or throw a shaft or stone;
But, framed of pines and firres, did undertake
To build a forteresse huge, to which was none

Yet ever like, whereof he clothed the sides
Against the balles of fire with raw bulls’ hides.

In mortisses and sockets framed just
The beames, the studdes, and punchions joyned he fast;
To beat the cities wall, beneath forth burst
A ram with horned front; about her wast
A bridge the engine from her side out thrust,
Which on the wall, when need required, she cast;

And on her top a turret small up stood,
Strong, surely armed, and builded of like wood.

Set on a hundred wheels, the rolling masse
On the smooth lands went nimbly up and downe,
Though full of armes, and armed men it was,
Yet with small pains it ran as it had flowne;
Wondered the camp so quick to see it passe,
They praised the workmen, and their skill unknowne;

And on that day two towres they builded more,
Like that which sweet Clorinda burnt before.[18]

•

•

•

•

•

•

The archers shotte their arrowes sharpe and keene,
Dipt in the bitter juyce of poyson strong;
The shady face of heaven was scantly seen,
Hid with the cloud of shafts and quarries long;
Yet weapons sharp with greater fury beene
Cast from the towres the Pagan troops among;

For thence flew stones, and clifts of marble rocks,
Trees shod with iron, timber, logs, and blocks.

A thunderbolt seemed every stone; it brake
His limmes and armour so on whom it light,
That life and soule it did not only take,
But all his face and shape disfigured quight:
The lances staid not in the wounds they make,
But through the gored body tooke their flight

From side to side; through flesh, through skin and rinde
They flew, and flying left sadde death behinde.

But yet not all this force and fury drove
The Pagan people to forsake the walle,
But to revenge these deadly blowes they strove
With darts that flie, with stones and trees that fall;
For need so cowards oft courageous prove,
For liberty they fight, for life, for all,

And oft with arrows, shafts, and stones that flie,
Give bitter answer to a sharp replie.

This while the fierce assailants never cease,
But sternly still maintaine a threefold charge,
And ’gainst the cloud of shafts draw nigh at ease,
Under a pentise made of many a targe;
The armed towres close to the bulwarks prease,
And strive to grapple with the battled marge,

And launch their bridges out; mean while below
With iron fronts, the rammes the walls down throwe.

(68–71.)

Rinaldo, according to the romancer, raises a ladder, and scales the walls single–handed; but Godfrey of Bouillon, who is present in one of the towers, finds greater obstacles:—

For there not man with man, nor knight with knight
Contend, but engines there with engines fight.

For in that place the Paynims reared a post
Which late had served some gallant ship for mast,
And over it another beam they crost,
Pointed with iron sharpe, to it made fast
With ropes, which as men would the dormant tost
Now in, now out, now backe, now forward cast;

In his swift pullies oft the men withdrew
The tree, and oft the riding balke forth threw.

The mighty beame redoubled oft his blowes,
And with such force the engine smote and hit,
That her broad side the towre wide open throwes,
Her joynts were broke, her rafters cleft and split;
But yet, ‘gainst every hap whence mischief grows
Prepared, the piece (’gainst such extremes made fit),

Lanched forth two sithes, sharpe, cutting, long, and broade,
And cut the ropes, whereon the engine roade.

As an old rocke, which age, or stormy winde
Teares from some craggy hill, or mountaine steepe,
Doth breake, doth bruise, and into dust doth grinde
Woods, houses, hamlets, herds, and folds of sheep;
So fell the beame, and down with it all kinde
Of arms, of weapons, and of men did sweep,

Wherewith the towers once or twice did shake,
Trembled the walls, the hills and mountains quake.

(80, 81, 82.)

The Turks attempt to burn the tower with wildfire, but are prevented by a providential tempest, and it approaches so close that the besiegers throw their drawbridge on the walls. The courage of Godfrey was animated by a divine vision of all those princes who had been slain in the sacred war, bearing arms in behalf of the crusaders.

And on the bridge he stept, but there was staid
By Soliman, who entrance all denied;
That narrow tree to virtue great was made
The field, as in few blowes right soon was tried.
Here will I give my life for Sion’s aid,
Here will I end my days, the Soldan cried;

Behind me cut, or breake this bridge, that I
May kill a thousand Christians first, then die.

But thither fierce Rinaldo threatening went,
And at his sight fled all the Soldan’s traine;
What shall I do? if here my life be spent,
I spend and spill (quoth he) my blood in vaine;
With that his steps from Godfrey back he bent,
And to him let the passage free remaine,

Who threatening followed as the Soldan fled,
And on the walls the purple crown dispred:

About his head he tost, he turned, he cast
That glorious ensign with a thousand twines;
Thereon the wind breathes with his sweetest blast—
Thereon with golden rays glad Phebus shines:
Earth laughs for joy, the streames forbeare their hast,
Floods clap their hands, on mountains dance the pines;

And Sion’s towres and sacred temples smile
For their deliv’rance from that bondage vile.

(xviii. 98–100.)

We originally meant only to introduce Tasso’s description of the towers, and have been led on to protract the quotation to far greater length, from finding not only so lively, but there is all reason to believe so accurate, a description, making allowance for a little poetical exaggeration, of the mode of combat then in use. The poet has at least the merit of being true to the facts related by the historians. Two towers were constructed, one of which, intrusted to the charge of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was burnt by the besieged; the other, directed by Godfrey in person, was brought safely up to the walls. Large beams were applied to prevent its close approach, as described by the poet, and these being cut away, were taken possession of, and proved very serviceable to the crusaders. The walls were cleared, not only by archery, but by a much less warlike and romantic device. The wind blowing into the town, the assailants set on fire a mattress stuffed with silk (culcitram bombyce plenam), and bags of straw, so that “they who were appointed to defend the wall, unable to open eyes or mouth, besotted and bewildered with the eddies of the smoky darkness, deserted their post. Which being known, the general with all haste commanded the beams which they had captured from the enemy to be brought up, and one end resting on the machine, the other on the wall, he ordered the moveable side of the tower to be let down; which being supported on them, served in the place of a bridge of suitable strength.”[19] This, it must be confessed, is a less romantic way of gaining entrance than fighting hand to hand with Solyman: but it is true, for the valour and personal prowess of Godfrey of Bouillon were unsurpassed, and there is no reason to suspect that flattering historians have perverted the fact, that Godfrey, noblest of the crossed chiefs in character as in station, was the third man to enter that holy city, for the delivery of which he longed so ardently, and had sacrificed so much. Two brothers named Letold and Engelbert, otherwise unknown to fame, were the first who won their way to these contested walls.

For reasons above given the strong fortresses of feudal pride were more frequently carried by a sudden and vigorous attack, than by the tedious and expensive process of regular siege. Of such attacks some remarkable instances occur in the wars between England and Scotland, which at some future period we may perhaps notice; at present it is more to our purpose to quote from the graphic pages of Froissart this short passage, which is so completely ancient in character that change the names and it might pass for the act of a Roman army:—

“The Englysshemen, that had lyen long before the Ryoll[20] more than nyne weekes, had made in the mean space two belfroys of grete tymbre, with four stages, every belfroy upon foure grete whelys, and the sydes toward the towne were covered with cure boly,[21] to defend them fro fyre and fro shotte; and into every stage there were poynted a C archers: by strength of men these two belfroys were brought to the walles of the towne, for they had so filled the dykes, that they might well be brought just to the walles; the archers in these stages shotte so holly togyder, that none durst apere at their defence, without they were well pavysshed,[22] and between these two belfroys there were a CC men with pic–axes to mine the walles, and so they brake through the walles. * * * When sir Agous de Ban, who was captain within, knewe that the people of the towne wolde yelde up, he went into the castell with his companye of soudyers, and whyle they of the towne were entretyng he conveyed out of the towne gret quantyte of wyne and other provisyon, and then closed the castell gates, and sayd how he wolde not yeld up so sone. Then the erle (of Derby) entred into the towne and layde siege round about the castell as nere as he mighte, and rered up all his engynes, the which caste nyght and day agaynst the walles, but they dyd lytell hurt, the walles were so strong of harde stone; it was sayd that of olde tyme it had been wrought by the handes of the Sarasyns, who made their warkes so strongly that ther is none such now a dayes. When the erle sawe that he colde do no good with his engynes, he caused theym to cease; then he called to hym his myners, to thyntent that they shuld make a myne under alle the walles, the whiche was nat sone made.”[23]

In the time of Froissart the invention of gunpowder had already begun to work a change in the art of war: still, then and for some time afterwards, the imperfection of the artillery in use rendered them of little real service.[24] Usually of immense and unwieldy size and weight, the difficulty of transporting them from place to place was extreme, and they could not be fired more than three or four times in the day, at great expense and with uncertain execution. Even so late as the siege of Magdeburg, in 1631, it is said that 1550 cannon shots where fired against one wall with but little effect. But as the art of gunnery advanced, the battering train was found to be an overmatch for the strongest fortresses that had yet been constructed, and a new system of fortification came gradually into use. Low bastions and curtains took place of the lofty towers and walls of former castles; and still the advantage is so entirely transferred from the besieged to the besiegers, that the termination of a siege pursued according to the rules of art is reduced almost to certainty as to the time and method of its issue. This has diminished the interest of modern sieges, by making ultimate capture almost a certainty, and rendering it the interest of the garrison rather to make terms while they have something to give up, than to hold out to those extremes of difficulty and distress, of which ancient history abounds in striking examples. It has also rendered both the attack and defence matters more of combination and science, and less of individual gallantry. There is, however, one war in the transition stage, as it were, from ancient to modern tactics, distinguished especially by the number and length of its sieges, and by the constancy and desperate valour shown by the beleaguered party in every instance. Even were we indifferent to the parties, the narrations would in themselves be deeply interesting, but the nobleness of their cause renders the sufferings of the brave defenders doubly affecting—their triumphs doubly glorious. The reader will readily conclude that we refer to the desperate struggle of the Netherlands for civil and religious liberty against the mighty despotism of Spain. Three sieges which occurred in this war are especially worthy of the reader’s attention, those of Leyden, Haarlem, and Ostend. That of Leyden has been already noticed in the first volume; and after some hesitation we have selected the siege of Ostend for relation here, as being more full of incident, not of interest, than that of Haarlem. We give it from the contemporary historian, Bentivoglio:—

“We will now come to the siege of Ostend, which, being one of the most memorable of this our age, doth certainly challenge, that, as much brevity and diligence as may be being joyned together, it be duly considered and represented with all clearness. It was above three years before it was brought to an end; and it was almost as uncertain at the last day as at the first to which side the victory did incline. The besieged never wanted fresh succours by sea, nor did the besiegers at any time cease advancing by land. Infinite were the batteries, the assaults infinite; so many were the mines, and so obstinate the countermines, as it may be almost affirmed as much work was done under ground as above ground. New names were to be found for new engines. There was a perpetual dispute between the sea and land: the works on the latter could not operate so much as the mines made by the former did destroy. Great store of blood ran every where, and men were readier to lose it than to preserve it, till such time as the besieged wanting ground, and rather what to defend than defence, they were at last forced to forego that little spot of ground which was left them, and to yield.

“Ostend stands upon the sea–shore, and in the midst of a marish ground, and of divers channels which come from the continent; but it is chiefly environed almost on all sides by two of the greatest of them,[25] by which the sea enters into the land, and grows so high when it is full sea, as you would rather think the town were buried than situated in the sea. In former times it was an open place, and served rather for a habitation for shepheards than for soldiers. But the importancy of the seat being afterwards considered, the houses were inclosed with a platform instead of a wall, and from time to time the line was so flank round about it, as it proved to be one of the strongest towns of all the province of Flanders. It is divided into two parts, which are called the old town and the new. The former, which is the lesser, stands towards the sea; the latter and greater lies towards the land. The old town is fenced from the fury of the sea by great piles of wood driven into the ground, and joined together for the defence of that part, and there the waves sufficiently supply the part of a ditch. The channels may be said to do the like on the sides; and, especially at full sea, of channels they become havens, being then capable of any kind of vessels, and by them at all times the middle size of barks enter into the ditches, and from the ditches in diverse parts into the town itself; to boot, with the chief wellflanked line on the outside of the ditch, towards the land side is a strada coperta raised, which is so well furnished with new flanks, and with a new ditch, as this outward fortification doth hardly give way to any of the inward ones. The town is but of a small compass, and is ennobled rather by its situation and fortifications than by any splendour either of inhabitants or houses. The United Provinces caused it to be very carefully kept at this time, wherefore it was largely provided of men, artillery, ammunition, and of whatsoever else was necessary for the defence thereof. In this condition was the town when the Archduke resolved to sit down before it.”

On the east of the town there was a detached fort called St. Alberto, on the west another called Bredene, both which had been abandoned by the garrison. These were occupied by the besieging army, which proceeded to surround Ostend on the landward with a chain of works, not without sharp fighting, for the governor, Sir Francis Vere, had raised redoubts in front of his fortifications, and hotly contested every inch of ground. It seemed also necessary to cut off the communication with the sea, and with this view a bank was run out on the eastern side from St. Alberto to prevent barks from entering by the channel on that quarter. But it was also expedient to block up the channel on the side of Bredene, and in doing this greater difficulties were to be overcome.

The siege began in the summer of 1601, and the autumn had been consumed in these works, when, towards the end of December, a terrible storm at sea so shattered the town, that the inhabitants, despairing to resist an assault, began to parley; but their spirits were recruited, and the negotiations broken off by a seasonable reinforcement both of men and all manner of provisions. The Archduke, being thus deluded of his hopes, gave order that a battery should be raised on the side of St. Alberto, which played so furiously upon the sea bulwark, that a practicable breach was soon made, and an assault ordered. To divert the enemy, directions were given that Count Bucquoy, who commanded at Bredene, should pass the channel there, and fall with his men on the wall where it was beaten down, and that upon the land side there should be alarms given every where. “When they came to the assault the assailants behaved themselves gallantly, and used all means to get upon the wall; and though many of them fell down dead and wounded, and that the horror of night, which already came on, made their dangers the more terrible, yet did it serve rather to set the Catholics on fire, than to make them cool in their fight. But there appeared no less resoluteness of resistance in those within: for opposing themselves valiantly on all sides, and being very well able to do it, as having so many men, and such store of all other provisions, they stoutly did defend themselves on all sides. Upon the coming on of night they had set up many lights in divers parts of the town, whereby they the better maintained the places assigned to them, did with more security hit those that assailed them, and came the better to where their help was required. They also soon discerned that they were all false alarms that were given without, and that the true assault was made only in one place. To this was added, that Count Bucquoy, not finding the water of the aforesaid channel so low as he believed, he could by no means pass over them. Yet the Catholics did for a long time continue their assault, but the defendants’ advantages still increasing, the assailants were at last forced to give over with great loss; for there were above six hundred slain and wounded. Nor did those within let slip the occasion of prejudicing yet more the Catholics as they retreated: for plucking up some of their sluices, by which they both received the sea–water into their ditches and let it out again, they turned the water with such violence into the channel, which the Catholics had passed over before they came to the assault, and which they were to pass over again in their retreat, as many of them were unfortunately drowned.”

The year 1602 set in with such severe cold that the Archduke was advised to abandon the siege. But he would not be persuaded thereto, thinking the King’s honour and his own engaged in its success. He ordered therefore a great platform to be raised in the quarter of St. Alberto, which might command the town as much as possible, and gave new orders that Bucquoy should advance, with all possible speed, the great bank which was designed to obstruct the channel of Bredene. Having given these orders, he retired to Ghent, and left the campmaster, John di Rivas, in command of the siege, who employed himself diligently in forwarding these important works. “To the first and largest foundation, which was well incorporated with wet sand and other condense matter, others of the like sort were added, till the dyke was grown to the height it ought to be; and the breadth thereof was very extraordinary great. To boot with the ordinary plain thereof, upon which two great cannons might stand abreast, there was a great parapet raised in it against the town to shelter the soldier; and which, being in divers places furnished with artillery, did greatly endamage the enemy likewise on that side. This work was made in a sandy and low situation, and whither the sea at full tide came; so as it cannot be said with how much expense, labour, and loss of blood, this work was advanced.” Still the town continued to receive succours as plentifully as ever, and the works proceeded so slowly from without, that the hopes of bringing the siege to a happy end did daily rather decrease than increase. Yet Rivas was very diligent in discharging his duty; the platform was completed and mounted with cannon, and the besieged were driven from some of their outer works: these were then furnished with artillery, which he turned against the fortifications which sheltered the town on that side.

“Some progress was likewise daily made on Bredene’s side in the advancing the great dyke. Bucquoy had the chief charge thereof, and it was called by his name. And he used all possible diligence to infest the town and the entrance of the channel on that side. But there appeared no less vigilancy in the besieged; their courage abounded, according as the town did abound with all sorts of provisions. There was hardly any one day in which they did not sally out; nor did the besiegers do any thing which cost not much labour and blood. The platform was made chiefly of bavins and other wood, and the great dyke was composed of the like materials. Two furious batteries were therefore levelled from the town, with artificial fire–balls against these two works, to set them on fire, and indamage them by that means. Nor did they fail in their design: for by long battery they at last took fire, and were thereby so torn and spoiled, as it cost much time and the death of many men to remake them. Nor was the enemies’ loss less either in number or quality.

“Pompeio Torgone, a famous engineer, was at this time come from Italy to Flanders, drawn thither by the fame of this siege. He had a very ready wit, which made him apt for inventions in his calling; but having never till then passed from the theory to the practical part in military affairs, it was soon seen that many of his imaginations did not, upon trial, prove such as in appearance they promised to be. He began to build a castle of wood upon boats fastened together. The castle was round, high, and large proportionably. On the top thereof it was capable of six great pieces of artillery on one side, and on the other side there was place enough for those soldiers who were to attend them. Torgone intended to bring this machine into the mouth of the channel, and to firm it there, where succour was brought into Ostend, hoping hereby to keep the town from relief. But this could not so soon be done, but that it was preceded by the other work of drawing the great dyke to the same channel, whereupon to raise afterwards a fort, by which that passage might be so much the more impeded. To accelerate this work likewise, Torgone bethought himself of other engines, by which that so great quantity of materials, whereof the dyke was made, might the more easily be brought to employment. The said materials being put together in manner as they ought to be, he put a certain number of little barrels under the hollow of the middle thereof, and on the sides, by which at full sea the engines floated, and were afterwards brought by cranes to joyn with the dyke in that part where the work was continued on. These engines were called flotes. But such was the tempest of the enemies’ cannon–shot, which incessantly fell upon them, when they rested upon the sand; and then again they were so prejudiced by the sea–storms, as oft–times the work of many days was destroyed in a few hours. And really it was a pitiful case to see how much blood was there shed, and how little the meaner sort of people who were employed therein did out of a desire of gain value it.”

This was the condition of Ostend when the Archduke bethought himself to give the care of the siege to the Marquis Spinola. Great certainly was the honour of such an employment, yet there seemed so little prospect of success that Spinola hesitated for some time; but, finally, being persuaded there was more of hope than fear in the offer that was made him, he resolved cheerfully to accept it.

“The first thing the Marquis did was to make great store of provision of all such materials as were necessary, as well for the work of the great dyke on Bredene’s side, as for the other works which were to be made on the side of St. Alberto, on which side the town was chiefly intended to be straitened and forced: the ground over against it was all sandy, and full of several channels and little rivulets, besides those two greater channels which fell into the sea, as you have often heard. The same sea likewise, at the flood, did so whirl about every place thereabouts, as ground was not any where to be found to make trenches, which were therefore to be supplied with the above said materials. These were chiefly brought by the flotes invented by Torgone; and though the great dyke did daily advance, yet it was known that such a work would prove too long and too uncertain. The hope of keeping out succour growing there every day less and less, Spinola bent all his endeavours to take the town by force. We told you before that all vessels were hindered from coming into the lesser channel, on St. Alberto’s side, which falls there into the sea by a fort. Yet the channel itself was of great advantage to the enemy on that side, for it served for a great ditch to their counterscarp, which was strong of itself, and yet made stronger by many flanks by which it was defended. Before the Catholics could come to assault the counterscarp, they must first pass over the channel, which was so hard to do with safety or shelter in any place thereof, as it was evidently seen that many of them must perish, being exposed to be injured by the enemy. The oppugnation was led on, on four sides, from St. Alberto’s quarter. The Germans wrought nearer the sea; then followed the Spaniards; after them the Italians; and on the outmost side, more towards land, the Walloons and Burgonians. Great was the fervency of all these nations; and such a contention there was among them in striving which of them should most advance the works, as the soldiers’ emulation seemed rather a contest between enemies than between rivals. The channel was narrower and more shallow where the Burgonians and Walloons wrought. They were therefore the first that passed over it, and afterwards the other nations did the like. To pass over it, a great quantity of the aforesaid materials were thrown into every part thereof, where the aforesaid nations wrought. Those materials were reduced to dykes or banks, upon which the soldiers advanced towards the town. But very many of them were slain and wounded. For the defendants, with their hail of musquet–shot and tempest of greater artillery, charged with little bullets and murdering shot in great quantity, and oft–time with artificial fire, made the Catholics’ work on all sides very bloody. The soldiers, that they might go the best sheltered that they could, invented many fences: some consisted of gabions filled with earth, well joined and fastened together; others of long bavins, which stood upright, and stood so thick as they were musket proof; and others, of several forms, made of the aforesaid materials. Torgone invented likewise a great cart, from which a bridge made of cloth and cords might unexpectedly be thrown over the channel, and so the enemies’ defences might the easier be assaulted. The cart stood upon four very high wheels; and upon the fore–part thereof rose up, as it were, the mast of a ship, which served chiefly to let down and to take up the bridge. But the whole bulk proved to be of so cumbersome a greatness, and so hard to be managed, that, before it was undertaken, it was known it could work no effect. The aforesaid fences were wrought where the artillery of the town could not reach; and, at the flowing of the sea, they were brought upon the floats, to the places where they were made use of. Great was the mortality likewise of those that wrought here; the enemy making usually such havock of them with their muskets, artillery, and sallies, as oft–times hardly one of them could be saved. But money still got new men, and oft–times the soldiers themselves wrought. Nor was Spinola wanting in being in all places at all times, and in exposing himself as well as any of the rest to all labour and danger; encouraging some, rewarding others, and behaving himself so, as his imitating, without any manner of respect unto himself, the most hazardous works of others, made the rest the more ready to imitate his.

“When each nation had passed the channel, each of them began with like emulation to force the ravelins and half–moons which sheltered the counterscarp. And the Walloons and Burgonians, by reason of their quarter, were the first that did it, but with much effusion of blood, even of the noblest amongst them; for amongst the rest, Catris, a Walloon campmaster, was lost; a valiant and greatly experienced soldier, and whom Spinola highly esteemed, both for his deeds and counsel. With the like progress, and no less loss of blood, did the other nations advance. So as the enemies at last lost all the fortifications which they had without their principal line; about which a great ditch ran, but not so hard to pass as was the channel which fenced the counterscarp. The easier doing of it made the Catholics hope better in the effecting thereof; wherefore, full of fresh courage, they prepared to continue their labours more heartily than ever, that they might the sooner end the siege; but the winter being already come on did much injure their works, and the sea did then more destroy them by her tempests. The enemy did likewise make very fierce opposition; they set up batteries within against the batteries without; mines opposed countermines; they repaired themselves on all sides, and as fast as one rampire was lost they set up another. So as the Catholics were to advance by inchmeal; and yet they did so advance, as by the spring they were got well forward into the ditch.

“These already progressions of Marquis Spinola, together with his still daily proceedings, made the United Provinces shrewdly afraid that they should at last lose Ostend. It was therefore consulted amongst their chief commanders how the town might be best preserved: which might be done by two ways; either by some important diversion, or by raising the siege by main force. The second affair brought with it such difficulties, as the first was embraced. Wherefore they resolved to besiege Sluce; a town which likewise stood upon the sea, and of so great consequence, as did rather exceed than come short of those of Ostend.”

Sluys was accordingly besieged and taken, to the great satisfaction of the Flemish, that, in three months’ time and with the loss of so little blood, they had made a greater acquisition than that of Ostend, which would cost above three years’ expense of time, and an infinity of Spanish gold and blood, if it could hold out no longer. But though Spinola made an unsuccessful attempt to relieve Sluys, he could not be prevailed on to break up the siege of Ostend, and his troops were inflamed the more by a desire of counterbalancing that loss. So that at last, after much slaughter, they won the ditch and the first line of fortifications; but meanwhile a new one had been raised by those within.

“Sluce was just then lost: and it was feared that Count Maurice would come to the relief of Ostend. The Catholics being therefore so much the more moved, and Spinola being again returned, it is not to be expressed with what fervour they fell to their works on all sides. The greatest progress was made towards the old town of Ostend; and because when they should have won that, they might easily hinder the entrance into the channel, by the mouth whereof succour was brought from the sea; and for that the new town was much commanded by the old, therefore Spinola did the more reinforce his batteries, assaults, mines, and all his other most efficacious works on that side than on any other; nor was it long ere the Catholics had almost wholly taken it.

“They likewise advanced after the same manner against the new fortifications, so as now the besieged had no where whither to retreat; wherefore, wanting ground to defend, when they most abounded in all things for defence, they were at last forced to surrender the town; which was done about the midst of September, upon all the most honourable conditions that they could desire. Count Maurice was often minded to attempt the succour by main force; but considering that he was to enter into an enemy’s country, amongst strong and well–guarded towns, and that he should meet with men that were very ready to fight, he thought it not fit, after his prosperous success at Sluce, to hazard falling into some misfortune, as upon such an occasion he might peradventure do, and therefore he forebore to do it. It was a remarkable thing to see so many soldiers march out of a town; for there were above four thousand of them, all strong and healthful, they having enjoyed great plenty of all things in Ostend, by reason of their continual succours. So as besides great store of artillery, there was found in the town such abundance of victuals, ammunition, and of whatsoever else may be imagined for the defence of a royal town, as the like was never known to be in any other place.

“Thus ended the siege of Ostend; very memorable, doubtless, in itself, but much more in consideration of the so great expense of monies and time which the winning and losing of it cost. The siege continued above three years; in which time the constant opinion was, that there died, what by the sword, what by sickness, above a hundred thousand men between the one and the other side; whereby it may be conceived what proportionable monies and other things were therein spent. The town being yielded up, the Archduke and Infanta had the curiosity to go see it, and went from Gaunt thither, where they found nothing but a misshapen chaos of earth, which hardly retained any show of the first Ostend. Ditches filled up; curtains beaten down; bulwarks torn in pieces; half–moons, flanks, and redoubts so confused one with another, as one could not be distinguished from another; nor could it be known on which side the oppugnation, or on which side the defence was; yet they would know all, and receive the whole relation from Spinola’s own mouth. He represented at full the last posture of the siege: he showed the Spaniards’ quarters, and that of the Italians, as also those of each other nation. He related how stoutly they contended who should outvie one another in painstaking; on which part the greatest resistance was made within: where the dispute was most difficult without; where they wanted ground to retreat unto; where the enemy used their utmost power; and where at last the town was surrendered. The Archduke saw the great platform, the great dyke, and whatsoever else of curious might be suggested by the unusual face of that siege; but not without the Infanta’s great compassion, and even almost tears, by looking upon the horror of those parts where the sword, fire, sea, and earth may be said to have conspired together in making so long and so miserable a destruction of Christians. They both of them did very much commend Spinola, and did also thank the rest of the commanders who had deserved well in that enterprise. Nor did they less gratulate the inferior officers and soldiers, who had exposed themselves most to those dangers.”[26]

Remarkable in modern history is the siege and storm of Magdeburg in the thirty years’ war by the Imperial troops, commanded by Tilly, when that general blighted the laurels acquired in thirty–six successful battles, and fixed an indelible stain upon his reputation. Even poetical justice might be satisfied by the events of his after–life, which, from a series of victories became one of reverses, produced in part, at least, by his own act, if it be true that the excesses perpetrated on this occasion produced a lasting bad effect on the discipline of his army. But, on the plains of Leipzic, in the person of Gustavus Adolphus, he met at length with his superior in the art of war.

“I must now arm my breast with sternness, my heart with impenetrability, while I relate the events which broke in foaming billows over this wretched city,—events, for their magnitude, extraordinary: for their mournfulness, but too calamitous; for their importance, rarely known in former ages; and for their rarity, easily unheard of. So may this mind be able to recite the reverses, the tragic incidents which in this our age, by inevitable destiny, have oppressed Magdeburg, a city of the empire, powerful and strong as ancient,—this pen endure through the description of such horrid destruction. But whence to commence the tempests of so pitiable an event? whence seek those dreadful varieties of punishment, for the relation of which all Germany is scarce sufficient? I am far from thinking that with this pen I can do justice to so mournful, so extraordinary a calamity. For he who would worthily express a catastrophe, which will amaze furthest posterity, must needs be qualified by an iron memory, a strong and unconquered style, since it is his duty to find words answerable to actions.”[27]

The modest doubts expressed in the above rather pompous passage have not restrained the historian, from whom we quote, from proving, in a long and tedious narrative, that he justly estimated the relative extent of his subject and his powers. We purpose to take warning by his example, and act upon the diffidence which he expresses. The reader is as capable of imagining, as the author, unless an eye–witness, of describing, the behaviour of soldiers flushed with rage and blood let loose upon an unarmed population: and either is likely to produce but a confused picture, made up chiefly by ringing the changes upon what the author of ‘Old Mortality’ calls “the four pleas of the crown.” Instead, therefore, of multiplying anecdotes of brutality and suffering, we shall only give the narratives of two eyewitnesses, the simplicity of which is a guarantee for their truth. The first is written by the minister of a church in Magdeburg. It is necessary to premise that the assault was made at daybreak, as the hour when the garrison were most likely to be off their guard, and at a time when a general belief was entertained that Tilly was about to break up the siege. It was therefore entirely unexpected.

“Going out of church immediately after sermon, some people of St. James’s parish passed by, and told me the enemy had entered the town. With difficulty could I persuade myself that this was anything more than a false alarm; but the news unfortunately proved too true. I then lost my presence of mind, and as my wife and maid–servant were with me, we ran directly to my colleague, M. Malsio’s house, and left our own house open. At M. Malsio’s we found many people, who had fled to him in great perplexity. We comforted and exhorted each other, as far as the terror of our minds would give us leave. I was summoned thence to discharge the last duties to a colonel, who lay dangerously wounded. I resolved to go, and sent my maid to fetch my gown: but before my departure from my wife and neighbours, I told them that the affair appeared to me to be concluded, and that we should meet no more in this world. My wife reproached me in a flood of tears, crying, ‘Can you prevail on yourself to leave me to perish all alone? You must answer for it before God!’ I represented to her the obligations of my function, and the importance of the moments I was called upon to give my assistance in.

“As I crossed the great street a multitude of matrons and young women flocked about me, and besought me, in all the agonies of distress, to advise them what to do. I told them, my best advice was to recommend themselves to God’s protecting grace, and prepare for death. At length I entered the colonel’s lodging, and found him stretched on the floor, and very weak. I gave him such consolation as the disorder of my mind would permit me: he heard me with great attention, and ordered a small present of gold to be given me, which I left on the table. In this interval, the enemy poured in by crowds at the Hamburg gate, and fired on the multitude as upon beasts of prey. Suddenly my wife and maid–servant entered the room, and persuaded me to remove immediately, alleging we should meet with no quarter, if the enemy found us in an apartment filled with arms. We ran down into the court–yard of the house, and placed ourselves in the gateway. Our enemies soon burst the gate open, with an eagerness that cannot be described. The first address they made to me was, ‘Priest, deliver thy money.’ I gave them about four and twenty shillings in a little box, which they accepted with good will: but when they opened the box, and found only silver, they raised their tone, and demanded gold. I represented to them that I was at some distance from my house, and could not at present possibly give them more. They were reasonable enough to be contented with my answer, and left us, after having plundered the house, without offering us any insult. There was a well–looking youth among the crowd, to whom my wife addressed herself, and besought him in God’s name to protect us: ‘My dear child,’ said he, ‘it is a thing impossible; we must pursue our enemies;’ and so they retired.

“In that moment another party of soldiers rushed in, who demanded also our money. We contented them with seven shillings and a couple of silver spoons, which the maid fortunately had concealed in her pocket. They were scarce gone before a soldier entered alone with the most furious countenance I ever saw; each cheek was puffed out with a musket–ball, and he carried two muskets on his shoulder. The moment he perceived me, he cried with a voice of thunder, ‘Priest, give me thy money, or thou art dead.’ As I had nothing to give him, I made my apology in the most affecting manner: he levelled a piece to shoot me, but my wife luckily turned it with her hand, and the ball passed over my head. At length, finding we had no money, he asked for plate: my wife gave him some silver trinkets, and he went his way.

“A little after came four or five soldiers, who only said, ‘Wicked priest, what doest thou here?’ Having said thus much, they departed.

“We were now inclined to shelter ourselves in the uppermost lodgings of the house, hoping there to be less exposed and better concealed. We entered a chamber that had several beds in it, and passed some time there in the most insupportable agonies. Nothing was heard in the streets but the cries of the expiring people; nor were the houses much more quiet; every thing was burst open or cut to pieces. We were soon discovered in our retirement: a number of soldiers poured in, and one who carried a hatchet made an attempt to cleave my skull, but a companion hindered him and said, ‘Comrade, what are you doing? Don’t you perceive that he is a clergyman?’

“When these were gone a single soldier came in, to whom my wife gave a crape handkerchief off her neck; upon which he retired without offering us any injury. His successor was not so reasonable: for entering the chamber with his sword drawn, he immediately discharged a blow upon my head, saying, ‘Priest, give me thy money.’ The stroke stunned me; the blood gushed out in abundance, and frightened my wife and servant to that degree that they both continued motionless. The barbarian turned round to my wife, aimed a blow at her, but it glanced fortunately on her gown, which happened to be lined with furs, and wounded her not. Amazed to see us so submissive and patient, he looked at us fixedly for some moments. I laid hold of this interval to represent to him that I was not in my own house, being come to the place where I was to discharge my duty to a dying person, but if he would grant us quarter, and protect us to our home, I would then bestow upon him all I had. ‘Agreed, priest,’ said he, ‘give me thy wealth, and I will give thee the watchword: it is Jesu Maria; pronounce that, and no one will hurt thee.’ We went down stairs directly, highly contented to have found such a protector. The street was covered with the dead and dying; their cries were enough to have pierced the hearts of the greatest barbarians. We walked over the bodies, and when we arrived at the church of St. Catherine, met an officer of distinction on horseback. This generous person soon discovered us, and seeing me covered with blood, said to the person who conducted us, ‘Fellow–soldier, fellow–soldier, take care what you do to these persons.’ At the same time he said to my wife, ‘Madam, is yonder house yours?’ My wife having answered that it was, ‘Well,’ added he, ‘take hold of my stirrup, conduct me thither, and you shall have quarter.’ Then turning to me, and making a sign to the soldiers with his hand, he said to me, ‘Gentlemen of Magdeburg, you yourselves are the occasion of this destruction: you might have acted otherwise.’ The soldier who had used me ill, took this opportunity to steal away. Upon entering my house, we found it filled with a multitude of plunderers, whom the officer, who was a colonel, ordered away. He then said he would take up his lodging with us, and having posted two soldiers for a guard to us, left us with a promise to return forthwith. We gave, with great cheerfulness, a good breakfast to our sentinels, who complimented us on the lucky fortune of falling into their colonel’s hands; at the same time representing to us that their fellow–soldiers made a considerable booty while they continued inactive merely as a safe–guard to us, and, therefore beseeching us to render them an equivalent to a certain degree. Upon this I gave them four rose–nobles, with which they were well contented, and showed so much humanity as to make us an offer to go and search for any acquaintance whom we desired to place in safety with us. I told them I had one particular friend who had escaped to the cathedral, as I conjectured, and promised them a good gratuity on his part if they saved his life. One of them accompanied by my maid–servant went to the church, and called my friend often by name; but it was all in vain, no one answered, and we never heard mention of him from that period.

“Some moments after our colonel returned, and asked if any person had offered us the least incivility. After we had disculpated the soldiers in this respect, he hastened abroad to see if there was any possibility to extinguish the fire, which had already seized great part of the city: he had hardly got into the street, when he returned, with uncommon hastiness, and said, ‘Show me the way out of the town, for I see plainly we shall perish in the flames if we stay here a few minutes longer.’ Upon this we threw the best of our goods and moveables into a vaulted cellar, covered the trap–door with earth, and made our escape. My wife took nothing with her but my robe; my maid seized a neighbour’s infant child by the hand, whom we found crying at his father’s door, and led him away. We found it impossible to pass through the gates of the town, which were all in a flame, and the streets burnt with great fury on either side: in a word, the heat was so intense that it was with difficulty we were able to breathe. Having made several unsuccessful attempts, we determined at last to make our escape on the side of the town next the Elbe. The streets were clogged with dead bodies, and the groans of the dying were insupportable. The Walloons and Croatians attacked us every moment, but our generous colonel protected us from their fury. When we gained the bastion, which stands on the bank of the Elbe, we descended it by the scaling–ladders which the Imperialists had made use of in the assault, and arrived at length in the enemy’s camp near Rottensee, thoroughly fatigued and extremely alarmed.

“The colonel made us enter his tent, and presented us some refreshments. That ceremony being over, ‘Well,’ said he, ‘having saved your lives, what return do you make me?’ We told him that for the present we had nothing to bestow, but that we would transfer to him all the money and plate that we had buried in the cellar, which was the whole of our worldly possessions. At this instant many Imperial officers came in, and one chanced to say to me, ‘Ego tibi condoleo, ego sum addictus Fidei AugustanÆ.’ The distressed state I found myself in made me unable to give a proper reply to the condolences of a man who carried arms against those whose religion he professed, and whose hard fortune he pretended to deplore.

“Next day the colonel sent one of his domestics with my maid–servant to search for the treasure we had buried in the cellar, but they returned without success, because as the fire still continued they could not approach the trap–door. In the mean while the colonel made us his guests at his own table, and during our whole stay treated us not as prisoners, but as intimate friends.

“One day at dinner an officer of the company happened to say, that our sins were the cause of all the evil we suffered, and that God had made use of the Catholic army to chastise us; to whom my wife replied, that the observation perhaps was but too true; however, take care, continued she, lest God in the end should throw that very scourge into the flames. This sort of prophecy was fulfilled soon afterwards on the self–same Imperial army, which was almost totally destroyed at the battle of Leipzic.

“At length I ventured one day to ask our colonel to give us leave to depart: he complied immediately, on condition that we paid our ransom. Next morning I sent my maid into the town to try if there was any possibility of penetrating into the cellar: she was more fortunate that day, and returned with all our wealth. Having returned our thanks to our deliverer, he immediately ordered a passport to be prepared for us, with permission to retire to whatever place we should think proper, and made us a present of a crown to defray the expense of our journey. This brave Spaniard was colonel of the regiment of Savelli, and named Don Joseph de Ainsa.”[28]

The sack of Magdeburg was an event of uncommon atrocity, and abhorred as such even in that age. But from the sort of clemency experienced by this clergyman, who was plundered of his goods after having nearly lost his life, and yet seems to feel much gratitude to his protector, we may imagine the treatment which the peasantry and citizens received from the rude soldiery of that time. These men, both officers and soldiers, were in a great degree mercenaries, who resorted to the wars expressly to mend their fortunes, and were not likely to exercise the presumed rights of the victor with much moderation. Few of their generals had much sympathy with the sufferings of non–combatants, of peaceable countrymen, and wealthy burghers; and those who might have been inclined to enforce discipline and soften the evils of war, were shackled by the deficiency of financial resources, and the consequent irregularity in issuing pay and other requisites to their armies. “There are things, my lord, in the service of that great prince (Gustavus Adolphus) that cannot but go against the stomach of any cavalier of honour. In especial, albeit the pay be none of the most superabundant, being only about sixty rix–dollars a month to a captain; yet the invincible Gustavus never paid above one–third of that sum, which was distributed monthly by way of loan, although when justly considered it was in fact a borrowing by that great monarch of the additional two–thirds, which were due to the soldier.”

“But were not these arrears,” said Lord Monteith, “paid to the soldiery at some stated period?” “My lord,” said Dalgetty, “I take it upon my conscience that at no period, and by no possible process, could one creutzer of them ever be recovered. I myself never saw twenty dollars of my own all the time I served the invincible Gustavus, unless it was from the chance of a storm or victory, or the fetching in of some town or doorp, when a cavalier of fortune who knows the usage of wars, seldom faileth to make some small profit.”

“I begin rather to wonder, sir,” said Lord Monteith, “that you should have continued so long in the Swedish service, than that you should have ultimately withdrawn from it.”

“Neither should I,” answered the captain, “but that great leader, captain and king, the Lion of the North, and bulwark of the Protestant faith, had a way of winning battles, taking towns, over–running countries, and levying contributions, whilk made his service irresistibly delectable to all true–bred cavaliers who follow the noble profession of arms. Simple as I ride here, my lord, I have myself commanded the whole stift of Dunklespiel on the Lower Rhine, occupying the Palsgrave’s palace, consuming his choice wines with my comrades, calling in contributions, requisitions, and caduacs, and failing not to lick my fingers as became a good cook. But truly all this glory hastened to decay after our great master had been shot with three bullets, upon the field of Lutzen; wherefore, finding that fortune had changed sides, that the borrowings and lendings went on as before out of our pay, while the caduacs and casualties were all cut off, I e’en gave up my commission, and took service with Wallenstein in Walter Butler’s Irish regiment.”

“And may I beg to know of you,” said Lord Monteith, “how you liked this change of masters?”

“Indifferent well,” said the captain, “very indifferent well. I cannot say that the Emperor paid much better than the great Gustavus. For hard knocks, we had plenty of them. * * * Howbeit, in despite of heavy blows and light pay, a cavalier of fortune may thrive indifferently well in the Imperial service, in respect his private casualties are nothing so closely looked to as by the Swede; and so that an officer did his duty on the field, neither Wallenstein nor Pappenheim, nor old Tilly before them, would likely listen to the objurgations of boors or burghers against any commander or soldado by whom they chanced to be somewhat closely shorn. So that an experienced cavalier, ‘knowing how to lay,’ as our Scottish phrase runs, ‘the head of the sow to the tail of the grice,’ might get out of the country the pay which he could not obtain from the Emperor.”

“With a full hand, sir, doubtless, and with interest,” said Lord Monteith.

“Indubitably, my lord,” answered Dalgetty, composedly; “for it would be doubly disgraceful for any soldado of rank to have his name called in question for any petty delinquency.”[29]

We do not quote the great romancer as historical authority; but there is no doubt but that Captain Dalgetty, though perhaps highly coloured, is no unfaithful likeness of those needy and profligate adventurers who bartered blood for gold, and formed a large portion of the armies of the age, indifferent on which side they fought, and constant only while pay, plunder, or promotion were at hand to reward their services.

The other narrative is that of a fisherman, a child at the time of this event, who is said to have survived it nearly ninety years.

“The 10th of May, early in the morning, at the time the master of our school was reading prayers, a report flew through the streets that the town was taken, which was confirmed by the ringing of the alarm bells. Our master dismissed us all in a moment, saying, ‘My dear children, hasten to your homes, and recommend yourselves to the protection of God; for it is highly probable we shall meet no more except in heaven.’ In an instant we all disappeared, some one way, and some another. For my own part, I took my course with speed along the high street; and found where the public steelyards are (and where the grand guard of the city was kept), a considerable body of troops with their swords drawn; and saw near them, and at a distance round them, a great number of soldiers stretched dead upon the pavement. Terrified with so melancholy a sight, I shaped my course down the street called Pelican, with a view to conceal myself in my father’s house; but had hardly advanced a few steps, before I fell in with a band of soldiers who had that moment murdered a man whom I saw weltering in his blood. This sight shocked me to such a degree, that I had not power to move forwards; but sheltering myself in a house opposite to the Pelican inn, found a kind–speaking middle–aged man, who said to me, ‘Child, why comest thou hither? save thyself before the soldiers seize thee.’ I was strongly tempted to put his advice in practice; but in that moment a party of Croatians rushed in, and holding a sabre to his throat, demanded his wealth. The old man immediately opened a coffer to them, full of gold and silver, and precious stones. They crammed their pockets with his riches; yet as the coffer was not emptied, they filled a small basket with the part that remained, and then shot the poor old man through the head. I stole away behind them, and found a place of safety among some empty casks, and there found a young lady, perfectly handsome, who conjured me to remove and make no mention of her. Anxiously reflecting where to dispose of myself, the same Croatians surprised me again, and one of them said, ‘Bastardly dog, carry this basket for us.’ I took it up immediately, and followed them wherever they went. They entered several cellars, and rifled women, maidens, and all persons that fell into their hands, without remorse. As we ascended from one of these cellars, we saw with astonishment that the flames had seized upon the whole fore part of the house. We rushed through the fire, and saved ourselves. In all probability, every soul was destroyed that remained within doors. As for my father, mother, and relations, I never heard a syllable concerning them from that time to the present.”[30]

This last sentence expresses briefly and emphatically the fate of the population. The whole town was burnt, except the cathedral, the convent of Notre Dame, with a few houses about it, and about a hundred and thirty fishermen’s cottages on the banks of the Elbe. The number of the slain cannot be distinctly ascertained, for we have no certain knowledge of the population of the city; but the slaughter seems to have been almost universal. It is said, however, that according to the computation of those who were appointed to clear the streets, 6440 bodies were thrown into the Elbe; and this does not include those, probably much the greater number, who were massacred in their houses, and buried under the ruins, or consumed in the general conflagration. One author says that 30,000 persons perished; Harte, that of 40,000 inhabitants, scarce 800 it was thought escaped: but contemporary authors vary in their numbers, which indeed in these cases can hardly ever be ascertained with certainty. The only lives expressly said to have been preserved, are those of 400 persons who took refuge in the cathedral; and in the Florus Germanicus, published only ten years later (a book written in the Imperial interest), it is asserted that none other were spared, and these only from respect to the sanctity of the place. The author, however, reduces their number to a hundred. Others must have been saved, like those whose narratives are given above, by chance, or individual compassion; but it is plain that indiscriminate destruction was the order of the day. This massacre will be an everlasting blot upon Tilly’s reputation. He remained without the town; and when solicited by those who had witnessed the horrors acted within, to stop the indiscriminate slaughter, he replied, “The town must bleed; it has not yet made sufficient expiation. Let the soldiers persist another hour, and then we will reconsider the matter.” According to another story, he said that the soldiers must have some recompense for so much time and trouble. Yet, say the historians of his own party, when on the third day he rode over the crackling ashes, and through piles of corpses, he wept as he quoted some lines of Virgil, relative to the destruction of Troy.[31]

There was no want of prodigies to foretell the fate of Magdeburg, by monstrous births, the fall of towers, and other circumstances of equal moment; several of which the curious reader will find mentioned by Harte, and many more minutely described by Lotichius, as above quoted. Such follies must have been deeply implanted in men’s minds when a Christian writer, in the seventeenth century, has thought it worthwhile to corroborate one of these omens by quoting a similar one from Valerius Maximus.

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Plan of Zaragoza.—(Copied by permission from Napier’s History of the Peninsular War.)

The engineer’s art has materially diminished the interest of modern sieges, by reducing them, independent of external relief, almost to certainty, and substituting the combinations of science for the personal exertions of the soldier. The warfare of trenches and batteries, by which outwork after outwork is rendered untenable, often without a bayonet being crossed in their defence, fails to rivet the attention, and indeed is scarce intelligible without some share of professional knowledge. It is not until the cannon have done their work, and opened a way to individual strength and courage, not until the assaulting columns are ready to ascend the breach, that the deep interest is roused which even against our better judgment attends on military daring. Still, after giving so many various specimens of this branch of warfare, it may naturally be supposed that we shall not pass in silence over all the brilliant actions of our own time: and the attention is at once directed to the Peninsular war, not only as the field in which the military energy of our empire was most successfully developed, but because it produced a great number of sieges of remarkable interest; while not one such occurs in the campaigns which Napoleon conducted in person. A volume of sieges might be compiled from this war, illustrative both of military resolution and of popular energy and desperation: no wonder then if we have hesitated between the contending claims of Zaragoza and Gerona. The latter city is the favourite of Colonel Napier, who cites its resistance to prove how far the regulated warfare of a disciplined force is superior to the enthusiasm of a population untrained to arms. The grounds of his preference are briefly these. Zaragoza was manned by above 30,000 soldiers and 25,000 armed citizens and peasants; but she wanted heavy artillery, regular fortifications, and a controlling spirit: for both the reputation and authority of Palafox appear to have been nominal, and it is to the influence of plebeian leaders that the ferocious energy of the defence is to be ascribed. Gerona contained about 3000 regular troops, and less than 6000 armed citizens; but she was well fortified, and commanded by an experienced and resolute officer. With this inferior force she held out twice as long as Zaragoza against a superior attacking army, conducted the defence in regular military order, and kept the enemy without her defences, instead of admitting him to wage a desperate struggle on her hearthstones and in her churches. On these grounds the defenders of Gerona may merit the preference assigned to them by Colonel Napier for having displayed equal bravery and devotion, with better fortune or greater skill. Still the irregular and desperate struggle in the streets of Zaragoza, where every house was a fortress, the end of every street a battery, where miner counterplotted miner, and every foot of ground was purchased by blood and ruin, will win the attention of more readers than would the systematic warfare carried on under the walls of Gerona.

Zaragoza is situated on the right bank of the Ebro. Before its first siege, in 1808, it contained 50,000 inhabitants. It possessed no regular defences, and few guns fit for service, but was surrounded by a low brick wall. These deficiencies were in some degree remedied by the nature of its buildings, which were well calculated for the internal warfare subsequently carried on: the houses being mostly built of brick and stone, and vaulted, so as to be almost incombustible. The city was also full of churches and convents, strongly built, and surrounded by high thick walls. A broad street, called the Cosso, bent almost into a semicircle, concentric with the wall, and terminated at each end by the Ebro, divided the city into an outer and an inner part. It occupied the ground on which the Moorish walls had formerly stood, before the city attained its present size. This street was the scene of that heroic resistance in 1808, which kept the French at bay after the walls and one–half of the place had fallen into their hands. On the 3rd of August, rather more than a month after the commencement of the siege, the convent of St. Engracia, which formed part of the wall, was breached; and on the 4th it was stormed, and the victorious troops carried all before them as far as the Cosso, and before night were in possession of one–half of the city. The French general now considered the city as his own, and summoned it to surrender in a note containing only these words: “Head–quarters, St. Engracia: Capitulation.” The emphatic reply is well–known, and will become proverbial: “Head–quarters, Zaragoza: War to the knife.”

“The contest which was now carried on is unexampled in history. One side of the Cosso, a street about as wide as Pall–Mall, was possessed by the French, and in the centre of it their general, Verdier, gave his orders from the Franciscan convent. The opposite side was maintained by the Arragonese, who threw up batteries at the openings of the cross–streets, within a few paces of those which the French erected against them. The intervening space was presently heaped with dead, either slain upon the spot, or thrown out from the windows. Next day, the ammunition of the citizens began to fail: the French were expected every moment to renew their efforts for completing the conquest, and even this circumstance occasioned no dismay, nor did any one think of capitulation. One cry was heard from the people, whenever Palafox rode amongst them, that if powder failed, they were ready to attack the enemy with their knives—formidable weapons in the hands of desperate men. Just before the day closed, Don Francisco Palafox, the general’s brother, entered the city with a convoy of arms and ammunition, and a reinforcement of 3000 men, composed of Spanish guards, Swiss, and volunteers of Arragon: a succour as little expected by the Zaragozans, as it had been provided against by the enemy.

“The war was now continued from street to street, from house to house, and from room to room; pride and indignation having wrought up the French to a pitch of obstinate fury, little inferior to the devoted courage of the patriots. During the whole siege no man distinguished himself more remarkably than the curate of one of the parishes within the walls, by name P. Santiago Suss. He was always to be seen in the streets, sometimes fighting with the most determined bravery, at other times administering the sacrament to the dying, and confirming with the authority of faith that hope, which gives to death, under such circumstances, the joy, the exaltation, the triumph, and the spirit of martyrdom. Palafox reposed the utmost confidence in the brave priest, and selected him when anything peculiarly difficult or hazardous was to be done. At the head of forty chosen men he succeeded in introducing into the town a supply of powder so essentially necessary for its defence.

“This most obstinate and murderous conflict was continued for eleven successive days and nights, more indeed by night than by day; for it was almost certain death to appear by daylight within reach of those houses which were occupied by the other party. But under cover of the darkness, the combatants frequently dashed across the street to attack each other’s batteries; and the battles which began there were often carried on into the houses beyond, where they fought from room to room, and from floor to floor. The hostile batteries were so near each other, that a Spaniard in one place made way under cover of the dead bodies which completely filled the space between them, and fastened a rope to one of the French cannons; in the struggle which ensued the rope broke, and the Zaragozans lost their prize at the very moment when they thought themselves sure of it.

“A new horror was added to the dreadful circumstances of war in this ever memorable siege. In general engagements the dead are left upon the field of battle, and the survivors removed to clear ground and an untainted atmosphere; but here, in Spain, and in the month of August, there where the dead lay the struggle was still carried on, and pestilence was dreaded from the enormous accumulation of putrefying bodies. Nothing in the whole course of the siege so much embarrassed Palafox as this evil. The only remedy was to tie ropes to the French prisoners, and push them forward amid the dead and dying, to remove the bodies and bring them away for interment. Even for this necessary office there was no truce, and it would have been certain death to the Arragonese who should have attempted to perform it: but the prisoners were in general secured by the pity of their own soldiers, and in this manner the evil was in some degree diminished.

“A council of war was held by the Spaniards on the 8th, not for the purpose which is too usual in such councils, but that their heroic resolution might be communicated to the people. It was, that in those quarters of the city where the Arragonese still maintained their ground, they should continue to defend themselves with the same firmness: should the enemy at last prevail, they were then to retire over the Ebro into the suburbs, break down the bridge, and defend the suburbs till they perished. When this resolution was made public, it was received with the loudest acclamations. But in every conflict the citizens now gained ground upon the soldiers, winning it inch by inch, till the space occupied by the enemy, which on the day of their entrance was nearly half the city, was reduced gradually to about an eighth part. Meantime intelligence of the events in other parts of Spain was received by the French, all tending to dishearten them. During the night of the 13th, their fire was particularly fierce and destructive: in the morning, the French columns, to the great surprise of the Spaniards, were seen at a distance retreating over the plain, on the road to Pampeluna.”[32]

Zaragoza, however, was a place of too much importance long to enjoy in quiet her hard–earned laurels. In the course of the autumn, the French recovered their superiority in Arragon, and had no sooner done so, than they bent their strength to repair the disgrace which their arms had sustained, and overthrow the firmest bulwark of independence in the western provinces of Spain. The inhabitants, aware that their heroic resistance had purchased only a temporary deliverance, employed the intervening time in repairing and improving their external defences, and still more so in preparing to renew to greater advantage that internal conflict, in which experience had shown their real strength to exist.

“It has already been observed, that the houses of Zaragoza were fire–proof, and generally of only two stories, and that in all the quarters of the city the numerous and massive convents and churches rose like castles above the low buildings, and that the greater streets running into the broadway, called the Cosso, divided the town into a variety of districts, unequal in size, but each containing one or more large structures. Now the citizens, sacrificing all personal convenience, and resigning all idea of private property, gave up their goods, their bodies, and their houses to the war; and being promiscuously mingled with the peasantry and the regular soldiers, the whole formed one mighty garrison, well suited to the vast fortress into which Zaragoza was transformed: for the doors and windows of the houses were built up, and their fronts loop–holed; internal communications were broken through the party–walls, and the streets were trenched and crossed by earthen ramparts mounted with cannon, and every strong building was turned into a separate fortification. There was no weak point, because there could be none in a town which was all fortress, and where the space covered by the city was the measurement for the thickness of the ramparts; nor in this emergency were the leaders unmindful of moral force.

“The people were cheered by a constant reference to their former successful resistance; their confidence was raised by the contemplation of the vast works that had been executed; and it was recalled to their recollection that the wet, usual at that season of the year, would spread disease among the enemy’s ranks, and impair, if not entirely frustrate, his efforts. Neither was the aid of superstition neglected: processions imposed upon the sight, false miracles bewildered the imagination, and terrible denunciations of divine wrath shook the minds of men whose former habits and present situation rendered them peculiarly susceptible of such impressions. Finally, the leaders were themselves so prompt and terrible in their punishments, that the greatest cowards were likely to show the boldest bearing, in their wish to escape suspicion.

“To avoid the danger of any great explosion, the powder was made as occasion required; and this was the more easily effected, because Zaragoza contained a royal depÔt and refinery for saltpetre, and there were powder–mills in the neighbourhood, which furnished workmen familiar with the process of manufacturing that article. The houses and trees beyond the walls were all demolished and cut down, and the materials carried into the town. The public magazines contained six months’ provisions; the convents were well stocked; and the inhabitants had likewise laid up their own stores for several months. General Doyle had also sent a convoy into the town from the side of Catalonia, and there was abundance of money, because, in addition to the resources of the town, the military chest of CastaÑos’s army, which had been supplied only the night before the battle of Tudela, had been in the flight carried into the town.

“Companies of women, enrolled to attend the hospitals, and to carry provisions and ammunition to the combatants, were commanded by the Countess Burita, a lady of an heroic disposition, who is said to have displayed the greatest intelligence and the noblest character during both sieges. There were thirteen engineer officers, and 800 sappers and miners, composed of excavators, formerly employed on the canal, and there were from 1500 to 2000 cannoneers.

“The regular troops that fled from Tudela being joined by two small divisions which retreated at the same time from Sanguessa and Caparosa, formed a garrison of 30,000 men, and together with the inhabitants and peasantry presented a mass of 50,000 combatants, who with passions excited almost to frenzy awaited an assault amidst those mighty entrenchments, where each man’s home was a fortress and his family a garrison. To besiege with only 35,000 men a city so prepared was truly a gigantic undertaking.”[33]

It was on December 20, 1808, that Marshals Moncey and Mortier appeared in front of the town. We pass over the early part of the siege, which contains nothing to distinguish it from a multitude of others. The French, supported by a powerful battering and mortar train, advanced their trenches slowly towards the town until January 22, when Marshal Lasnes arrived to assume the command. On the 29th four breaches were declared practicable. That night four columns rushed to the assault; one was repulsed, the other three established themselves, and the ramparts of the city became the front line of the French trenches.

“The walls of Zaragoza thus went to the ground, but Zaragoza herself remained erect; and as the broken girdle fell from the heroic city, the besiegers started at the view of her naked strength. The regular defences had indeed crumbled before the skill of the assailants, but the popular resistance was immediately called with its terrors into action. * * * The war being now carried into the streets of Zaragoza, the sound of the alarm–bell was heard over all the quarters of the city, and the people assembling in crowds, filled the houses nearest to the lodgments made by the French. Additional traverses and barricadoes were constructed across the principal streets; mines were prepared in the more open spaces; and the communications from house to house were multiplied, until they formed a vast labyrinth of which the intricate windings were only to be traced by the weapons and the dead bodies of the defenders. The members of the junta, become more powerful from the cessation of regular warfare, with redoubled activity and energy urged the defence, but increased the horrors of the siege by a ferocity pushed to the very verge of frenzy. Every person, without regard to rank or age, who excited the suspicion of these furious men, or those immediately about them, was instantly put to death; and amid the noble bulwarks of war a horrid array of gibbets was to be seen, on which crowds of wretches were suspended each night, because their courage had sunk beneath the accumulating dangers of their situation, or because some doubtful expression or gesture of distress had been misconstrued by their barbarous chiefs.

“From the heights of the walls which he had conquered, Marshal Lasnes contemplated this terrific scene; and judging that men so passionate and so prepared could not be prudently encountered in open battle, he resolved to proceed by the slow but certain progress of the mattock and the mine; and this was also in unison with the Emperor’s instructions. Hence from the 29th of January to the 2d February, the efforts of the French were directed to the enlargement of their lodgment on the walls; and they succeeded after much severe fighting and several explosions in working forward through the nearest houses, but at the same time they had to sustain many counter–assaults from the Spaniards.

“It has been already observed that the crossing of the large streets divided the town into certain small districts or islands of houses. To gain possession of these, it was necessary not only to mine but to fight for each house. To cross the large intersecting streets it was indispensable to construct traverses above or to work by underground galleries, because a battery raked each street, and each house was defended by a garrison that, generally speaking, had only the option of repelling the enemy in front, or dying on the gibbet erected behind. But as long as the convents and churches remained in possession of the Spaniards, the progress of the French among the islands of small houses was of little advantage to them, because the large garrisons in the greater buildings enabled the defenders not only to make continual and successful sallies, but also to countermine their enemies, whose superior skill in that kind of warfare was often frustrated by the numbers and persevering energy of the besieged. * * *

“The experience of these attacks[34] induced a change in the mode of fighting on both sides. Hitherto the play of the French mines had reduced the houses to ruins, and thus the soldiers were exposed completely to the fire from the next Spanish posts. The engineers therefore diminished the quantity of powder, that the interior only might fall, and the outward walls stand, and this method was found successful. Hereupon the Spaniards, with ready ingenuity, saturated the timbers and planks of the houses with rosin and pitch, and setting fire to those which could no longer be maintained, interposed a burning barrier which often delayed the assailants for two days, and always prevented them from pushing their successes during the confusion that necessarily followed the bursting of the mines. The fighting was however incessant, a constant bombardment, the explosion of mines, the crash of falling buildings, clamorous shouts, and the continued echo of musketry deafened the ear, while volumes of smoke and dust clouded the atmosphere, and lowered continually over the heads of the combatants, as hour by hour the French with a terrible perseverance pushed forwards their approaches to the heart of the miserable but glorious city.

“Their efforts were chiefly directed against two points, namely, that of San Engracia, which may be denominated the left attack, and that of St. Augustin and St. Monica, which constituted the right attack. At San Engracia they laboured on a line perpendicular to the Cosso, from which they were separated only by the large convent of the daughters of Jerusalem, and by the hospital for madmen, which was entrenched, although in ruins since the first siege. The line of this attack was protected on the left by the convent of the Capuchins, which General Lacoste had fortified to repel the counter–assaults of the Spaniards. The right attack was more diffused, because the localities presented less prominent features to determine the direction of the approaches: and the French, having mounted a number of light six–inch mortars on peculiar carriages, drew them from street to street, and from house to house, as occasion offered. On the other hand, the Spaniards continually plied their enemies with hand–grenades, which seem to have produced a surprising effect, and in this manner the never–ceasing combat was prolonged until the 7th of February, when the besiegers, by dint of alternate mines and assaults, had worked their perilous way at either attack to the Cosso, but not without several changes of fortune and considerable loss. They were, however, unable to obtain a footing on that public walk, for the Spaniards still disputed every house with undiminished resolution.

“The 8th, 9th, and 10th were wasted by the besiegers in vain attempts to pass the Cosso; they then extended their flanks. * * * The 11th and 12th, mines were worked under the University, a large building on the Spanish side of the Cosso, in the line of the right attack; but their play was insufficient to open the walls, and the storming party was beaten with the loss of fifty men. Nevertheless, the besiegers continuing their labours during the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th, passed the Cosso by means of traverses, and prepared fresh mines under the University, but deferred their explosion until a simultaneous effort could be combined on the side of the suburb.

“At the left attack also a number of houses bordering on the Cosso being gained, a battery was established that raked that great thoroughfare above ground; while under it, six galleries were carried, and six mines loaded to explode at the same moment; but the spirit of the French army was now exhausted; they had laboured and fought without intermission for fifty days; they had crumbled the walls with their bullets, burst the convents with their mines, and carried the walls with their bayonets. Fighting above and beneath the surface of the earth, they had spared neither fire nor the sword; their bravest men were falling in the obscurity of a subterranean warfare; famine pinched them, and Zaragoza was still unconquered!

“‘Before this siege,’ they exclaimed, ‘was it ever heard that 20,000 men should besiege 50,000?’ Scarcely a fourth of the town was won, and they themselves were already exhausted. ‘We must wait,’ they said, ‘for reinforcements, or we shall all perish among these cursed ruins, which will become our own tombs before we can force the last of these fanatics from the last of their dens.’

“Marshal Lasnes, unshaken by these murmurs and obstinate to conquer, endeavoured to raise the soldiers’ hopes. He pointed out to them that the losses of the besieged so far exceeded their own, that the Spaniards’ strength must soon be wasted, and their courage must sink, and that the fierceness of their defence was already abated; but if, contrary to expectation, they should renew the example of Numantia, their utter destruction must quickly ensue from the combined effects of battle, misery, and pestilence.

“These exhortations succeeded, and on the 18th, all the combinations being complete, a general assault took place. The French at the right attack having opened a party wall by the explosion of a petard, made a sudden rush through some burning ruins, and carried without a check the island of houses leading down to the quay, with the exception of two buildings. The Spaniards were thus forced to abandon all the external fortifications between St. Augustin and the Ebro, which they had preserved until that day. And while this assault was in progress, the mines under the university, containing 3000 pounds of powder, were sprung; and the walls tumbling with a terrific crash, a column of the besiegers entered the place, and after one repulse secured a lodgment. During this time fifty pieces of artillery thundered upon the suburb, and ploughed up the bridge over the Ebro, and by mid–day opened a practicable breach in the great convent of St. Lazar, which was the principal defence on that side. Lasnes, observing that the Spaniards seemed to be shaken by this overwhelming fire, immediately ordered an assault, and St. Lazar being carried forthwith, all retreat to the bridge was thus intercepted, and the besieged falling into confusion, and their commander, Baron Versage, being killed, were all destroyed or taken, with the exception of two or three hundred men, who, braving the terrible fire to which they were exposed, got back into the town. General Gazan immediately occupied the abandoned works, and having thus cut off above 2000 men that were stationed on the Ebro, above the suburb, forced them also to surrender.

“This important success being followed on the 19th by another fortunate attack on the right bank of the Ebro, and by the devastating explosion of 1600 pounds of powder, the constancy of the besieged was at last shaken. An aide–de–camp of Palafox came forth to demand certain terms, before offered by the Marshal, adding thereto that the garrison should be allowed to join the Spanish armies, and that a certain number of covered carriages should follow them. Lasnes rejected these proposals, and the fire continued; but the hour of surrender was come. Fifty pieces of artillery, on the left bank of the Ebro, laid the houses on the quay in ruins. The church of Our Lady of the Pillar, under whose especial protection the city was supposed to exist, was nearly effaced by the bombardment; and the six mines under the Cosso, loaded with many thousand pounds of powder, were ready for a simultaneous explosion, which would have laid a quarter of the remaining houses in the dust. In fine, war had done its work, and the misery of Zaragoza could no longer be endured.

“The bombardment, which had never ceased from the 10th of January, had forced the women and children to take refuge in the vaults, with which the city abounded. There the constant combustion of oil, the closeness of the atmosphere, unusual diet, and fear and restlessness of mind, had combined to produce a pestilence, which soon spread to the garrison. The strong and weak, the daring soldier and the timid child, fell before it alike; and such was the state of the atmosphere, and the disposition to disease, that the slightest wound gangrened and became incurable. In the beginning of February the deaths were from four to five hundred daily; the living were unable to bury the dead, and thousands of carcases scattered about the streets and court–yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of the churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption, or to be licked up by the flames of the burning houses as the defence became contracted.

“The suburb, the greatest part of the walls, and one–fourth of the houses were in the hands of the French; 16,000 shells thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of 45,000 pounds of powder in the mines, had shaken the city to its foundations, and the bones of more than 40,000 persons of every age and sex bore dreadful testimony to the constancy of the besieged.

“Palafox was sick; and of the plebeian chiefs, the most distinguished having been slain in battle, or swept away by the pestilence, the obdurate violence of the remaining leaders was so abated that a fresh junta was formed; and, after a stormy consultation, the majority being for a surrender, a deputation waited on Marshal Lasnes on the 20th of February to negotiate a capitulation.”[35]

Some doubt exists as to the terms obtained; the French writers assert that the place surrendered at discretion; the Spaniards say the following conditions were obtained: that the garrison should march out with the honours of war, to be constituted prisoners and marched to France; the peasants to be sent home, and property and religion to be guaranteed. On the 21st, from 12,000 to 15,000 sickly men laid down the arms which they could scarcely support, and this memorable siege was terminated.