[The Pall Mall Gazette, No. 1744, September 15, 1870] 

There still appears to exist great misapprehension with regard 
to the siege operations now going on in France. Some of our 
contemporaries, The Times for instance, incline towards the 
opinion that the Germans, excellent though they be in the field, 
do not understand how to carry on a siege”; others suppose that 
the siege of Strasbourg is carried on for the purpose not so much 
of getting hold of the town as of making experiments and 
exercising the German engineers and artillerists. And all this 
because neither Strasbourg, nor Toul, nor Metz, nor Phalsbourg 
has as yet surrendered. It appears to be completely forgotten that 
the last siege carried on previous to this war, that of Sebastopol, 
required eleven months of open trenches before the place was 
reduced. 

To rectify such crude notions, which could not be put forth but 
by people unacquainted with military matters, it will be necessary 
to recall to them what sort of a proceeding a siege really is. The 
rampart of most fortresses is bastioned—that is to say, it has at its 
angles pentagonal projections called bastions, which protect by 
their fire both the space in front of the works and the ditch lying 
immediately at their foot. In this ditch, between every two 
bastions, there is a detached triangular work called the demi-lune, 
which covers part of the bastions, and the curtain—that is, the 
portion of rampart between them; the ditch extends round this 
demi-lune. Outside this main ditch there is the covered way, a 

broad road protected by the edge of the glacis, an elevation of 
ground about seven feet high, and gently sloping down externally. 
In many cases there are other works added to complicate the 
difficulties of the attack. The ramparts of all these works are lined 
at the bottom with masonry or protected by water in the ditches, 
so as to render an assault on the intact works impossible; and the 
works are so arranged that the outer ones are always com- 
manded—that is, looked down upon—by the inner ones, while 
they themselves command the field by the height of their 
ramparts. 

To attack such a fortress the method perfected by Vauban is still 
the one made use of, although the rifled artillery of the besieged 
may compel variations if the ground before the fortress be 
perfectly level to a great distance. But as almost all these fortresses 
were constructed under the reign of smooth-bore artillery, the 
ground beyond 800 yards from the works 1s generally left out of 
the calculation, and in almost every case will give the besiegers a 
sheltered approach up to that distance without regular trenches. 
The first thing, then, is to invest the place, drive in its outposts 
and other detachments, reconnoitre the works, get the siege guns, 
ammunition, and other stores to the front, and organize the 
depots. In the present war a first bombardment by field guns also 
belonged to this preliminary period, which may last a considerable 
time. Strasbourg was loosely invested on the 10th of August, 
closely about the 20th, bombarded from the 23rd to the 28th, and 
yet the regular siege began on the 29th only. This regular siege 
dates from the opening of the first parallel, a trench with the 
earth thrown up on the side towards the fortress, so as to hide and 
shelter the men passing through it. This first parallel generally 
encircles the works at a distance of from 600 to 700 yards. In it 
are established the enfilading batteries; they are placed in the 
prolongation of all the faces—that is, those lines of rampart whose 
fire commands the field; and this is done upon all that part of the 
fortress which is subjected to attack. Their object is to fire along 
these faces, and thus to destroy the guns and kill the gunners 
placed upon them. There must be at least twenty such batteries, 
with from two to three guns each; say fifty heavy guns in all. 
There were also usually placed in the first parallel a number of 
mortars to bombard the town or the bombproof magazines of the 
garrison; they will, with our present artillery, be required only for 
the latter purpose, rifled guns being now sufficient for the former. 

From the first parallel, trenches are pushed in advance in lines, 
the prolongation of which does not touch the works of the 

fortress, so that none of the works can enfilade them; they 
advance in zigzag until they arrive within about 350 yards from 
the works, where the second parallel is then traced—a trench 
similar to the first, but shorter in length. This is generally done 
the fourth or fifth night after the opening of the trenches. In the 
second parallel are established the counter-batteries, one against 
each of the attacked faces, and nearly parallel to them; they are to 
demolish the guns and ramparts face to face, and cross their fire 
with the enfilading batteries. They will contain in all about sixty 
guns of heavy calibre. Then, again, the besiegers advance by new 
zigzags, which become shorter and closer together the nearer they 
come to the fortress. At about 150 yards from the works the 
half-parallel is dug out for mortar batteries, and at the foot of the 
glacis, about sixty yards from the works, the third parallel is 
placed, which again contains mortar batteries. This may be 
completed on the ninth or tenth night of open trenches. 

In this proximity to the works the real difficulty begins. The 
artillery fire of the besieged, as far as it commands the open, will 
by this time have been pretty nearly silenced, but the musketry 
from the ramparts is now more effective than ever, and will retard 
the work in the trenches very much. The approaches now have to 
be made with much greater caution and upon a different plan, 
which we cannot explain here in detail. The eleventh night may 
bring the besieger to the salient angles of the covered way, in 
front of the salient points of the bastions and demi-lunes; and by 
the sixteenth night he may have completed the crowning of the 
glacis—that is to say, carried along his trenches behind the crest 
of the glacis parallel to the covered way. Then only will he be in a 
position to establish batteries in order to break the masonry of the 
ramparts so as to effect a passage across the ditch into the fortress, 
and to silence the guns on the bastion flanks, which fire along the 
ditch and forbid its passage. These flanks and their guns may be 
destroyed and the breach effected on the seventeenth day. On the 
following night the descent into the ditch and a covered way 
across it to protect the storming party against flanking fire may be 
completed and the assault given. 

We have in this sketch attempted to give an account of the 
course of siege operations against one of the weakest and simplest 
classes of fortress (a Vauban’s hexagon), and to fix the time 
necessary for the various stages of the siege—if undisturbed by 
successful sallies—on the supposition that the defence does not 
display extraordinary activity, courage, or resources. Yet, even 
under these favourable circumstances, we see it will take at least 

seventeen days before the main ramparts can be breached, and 
thereby the place opened to an assault. If the garrison be 
sufficient in number and well supplied, there is no military reason 
whatever why they should surrender before; from a merely 
military point of view it is nothing but their duty that they should 
hold out at least so long. And then people complain that 
Strasbourg, which has been subjected to but fourteen days of open 
trenches, and which possesses outworks on the front of attack, 
enabling it to hold out at least five days longer than the 
average—that Strasbourg has not yet been taken. They complain 
that Metz, Toul, Phalsbourg have not yet surrendered. But we do 
not yet know whether a single trench has been opened against 
Toul, and of the other fortresses we know that they are not yet 
regularly besieged at all. As to Metz, there seems at present no 
intention to besiege it regularly; the starving out of Bazaine’s army 
appears the most effective way of taking it. These impatient 
writers ought to know that there are but very few commanders of 
fortresses who will surrender to a patrol of four Lancers, or even 
to a bombardment, if they have anything like sufficient garrisons 
and stores at their command. If Stettin surrendered in 1807 to a 
regiment of cavalry, if the French border fortresses in 1815 
capitulated under the effect, or even the fear, of a short 
bombardment, we must not forget that Woerth*” and Spicheren ** 
together amounted neither to a Jena*’ nor to a Waterloo”; and, 
moreover, it would be preposterous to doubt that there are plenty 
of officers in the French army who can hold out a regular siege 
even with a garrison of Gardes Mobiles. 

HOW TO FIGHT THE PRUSSIANS? 

[The Pall Mall Gazette, No. 1746, September 17, 1870] 

After the Italian war of 1859, when the French military power 
was at its height, Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, the same 
who is now investing Bazaine’s army in Metz, wrote a pamphlet, 
“How to Fight the French.” At the present day, when the 
immense military strength of Germany, organized upon the 
Prussian system, is carrying everything before it, people begin to 
ask themselves who is in future, and how, to fight the Prussians. 
And when a war in which Germany, at the beginning, merely 
defended her own against French chauvinisme appears to be 
changing gradually, but surely, into a war in the interests of a new 
German chauvinisme, it is worth while to consider that question. 

“Providence always is on the side of the big battalions” was a 
favourite way of the Napoleon’s to explain how battles were won 
and lost. It is upon this principle that Prussia has acted. She took 
care to have the “big battalions.” When, in 1807, Napoleon 
forbade her to have an army of more than 40,000 men, she 
dismissed her recruits after six months’ drill, and put fresh men in 
their places; and in 1813 she was able to bring into the field 
250,000 soldiers out of a population of four-and-a-half millions. 
Afterwards, this same principle of short service with the regiment 
and long liability for service in the reserve was more fully 
developed, and, besides, brought into harmony with the necessities 
of an absolute monarchy. The men were kept from two to three 
years with the regiments, so as not only to drill them well, but also 
to break them in completely to habits of unconditional obedience. 

4 Written about September 16, 1870.— Ed. 

Now, here is the weak point in the Prussian system. It has to 
reconcile two different and finally incompatible objects. On the 
one hand, it pretends to make every able-bodied man a soldier; to 
have a standing army for no other object than to be a school in 
which the citizens learn the use of arms, and a nucleus round 
which they rally in time of attack from abroad. So far the system is 
purely defensive. But, on the other hand, this same army is to be 
the armed support, the mainstay, of a quasi-absolute Government; 
and for this purpose the school of arms for the citizens has to be 
changed into a school of absolute obedience to superiors, and of 
royalist sentiments. This can be done by length of service only. 
Here the incompatibility comes out. Foreign defensive policy 
requires the drilling of many men for a short period, so as to have 
in the reserve large numbers in case of foreign attack; and home 
policy requires the breaking in of a limited number of men for a 
Jonger period, so as to have a trustworthy army in case of internal 
revolt. The quasi-absolute monarchy chose an intermediate way. It 
kept the men full three years under arms, and limited the number 
of recruits according to its financial means. The boasted universal 
liability to military service does not in reality exist. It is changed 
into a conscription distinguished from that of other countries 
merely by being more oppressive. It costs more money, it takes 
more men, and it extends their lability to be called out to a far 
longer period than is the case anywhere else. And, at the same 
time, what originally was a people armed for their own defence 
now becomes changed into a ready and handy army of attack, into 
an instrument of Cabinet policy. 

In 1861 Prussia had a population of rather more than eighteen 
millions, and every year 227,000 young men became liable to 
military service by attaining the age of twenty.* Out of these, fully 
one-half were bodily fit for service—if not there and then, at least 
a couple of years afterwards. Well, instead of 114,000 recruits, not 
more than 63,000 were annually placed in the ranks; so that very 
near one-half of the able-bodied male population were excluded 
from instruction in the use of arms. Whoever has been in Prussia 
during a war must have been struck by the enormous number of 
strong hearty fellows between twenty and thirty-two who remained 
quietly at home. The state of “suspended animation” which special 

correspondents have noticed in Prussia during the war exists in 
their own imagination only.* 

Since 1866 the number of annual recruits in the North-German 
Confederation has not exceeded 93,000, on a population of 
30,000,000. If the full complement of able-bodied young men— 
even after the strictest medical scrutiny—were taken, it would 
amount to at least 170,000. Dynastic necessities on the one side, 
financial necessities on the other, determined this limitation of the 
number of recruits. The army remained a handy instrument for 
absolutist purposes at home, for Cabinet wars abroad; but as to 
the full strength of the nation for defence, that was not nearly 
made available. 

Still this system maintained an immense superiority over the 
old-fashioned cadre system of the other great continental armies. 
As compared to them, Prussia drew twice the number of soldiers 
from the same number of population. And she has managed to 
make them good soldiers too, thanks to a system which exhausted 
her resources, and which would never have been endured by the 
people had it not been for Louis Napoleon’s constant feelers for 
the Rhine frontier, and for the aspirations towards German unity 
of which this army was instinctively felt to be the necessary 
instrument. The Rhine and the unity of Germany once secure, 
that army system must become intolerable. 

Here we have the answer to the question, How to fight the 
Prussians. If a nation equally populous, equally intelligent, equally 
brave, equally civilized were to carry out in reality that which in 
Prussia is done on paper only, to make a soldier of every 
able-bodied citizen; if that nation limited the actual time of service 
in peace and for drill to what is really required for the purpose 
and no more; if it kept up the organization for the war 
establishment in the same effective way as Prussia has lately 
done—then, we say, that nation would possess the same immense 
advantage over Prussianized Germany that Prussianized Germany 
has proved herself to possess over France in this present war. 
According to first-rate Prussian authorities (including General von 
Roon, the Minister of War) two years’ service is quite sufficient to 
turn a lout into a good soldier. With the permission of her 
Majesty’s” martinets, we should even be inclined to say that for the 
mass of the recruits eighteen months—two summers and one 
winter—would suffice. But the exact length of service is a 

a “Berlin, July 17”, The Times, No. 26807, July 20, 1870.— Ed. 

secondary question. The Prussians, as we have seen, obtained 
excellent results after six months’ service, and with men who had 
but just ceased to be serfs. The main point is, that the principle of 
universal liability to service be really carried out. 

And if the war be continued to that bitter end for which the 
German Philistines are now shouting, the dismemberment of 
France, we may depend upon it that the French will adopt that 
principle. They have been so far a warlike but not a military 
nation. They have hated service in that army of theirs which was 
established on the cadre system, with long service and few drilled 
reserves. They will be quite willing to serve in an army with short 
service and long liability on the reserve, and they will do even 
more, if that will enable them to wipe out the insult and restore 
the integrity of France. And then, the “big battalions” will be on 
the side of France, and the effect they produce will be the same as 
in this war, unless Germany adopt the same system. But there will 
be this difference. As the Prussian landwehr system was progress 
compared with the French cadre system, because it reduced the 
time of service and increased the number of men capable to 
defend their country, so will this new system of really universal 
liability to serve be an advance upon the Prussian system. 
Armaments for war will become more colossal, but peace-armies 
will become smaller; the citizens of a country will, every one of 
them, have to fight out the quarrels of their rulers in person and 
no longer by substitute; defence will become stronger, and attack 
will become more difficult; and the very extension of armies will 
finally turn out to be a reduction of expense and a guarantee of 
peace.