ATTACK OF FORTIFIED PLACES.
CHAPTER I.
THE ATTACK WITHOUT THE USE OF REGULAR APPROACHES.
1. A fortified position may be taken by blockade, surprise, assault, bombardment, or siege.
A blockade consists in so surrounding a place and closing its communications as to keep the garrison from receiving reinforcements, provisions, and supplies sufficient to enable it to continue the defence and to avoid starvation.
The object of the attacking force is, in general, to completely close all communications between the garrison and the exterior; but this is not always possible, nor is it necessary in all cases, since such obstruction of communications as will reduce the incoming supplies below the necessary expenditures of the garrison will ultimately exhaust its stores.
An efficient blockade, continued long enough, will consequently reduce any place.
Whether it is advisable to attempt to reduce a place by blockade will depend upon the time which will probably be taken in its reduction, the force required for surrounding it, and repelling sorties from the interior or beating back a relieving army, and the expense in men and materials of taking the work by other methods. Blockades are more effective in reducing cities and towns than in taking places occupied only by a military garrison, since the presence of a large number of non-combatants in a place rapidly exhausts its store of provisions, renders epidemics more likely to break out, and by the suffering and misery resulting demoralizes the garrison, unnerves the commander, and eventually causes its fall. This justifies the apparent harshness of not allowing non-combatants to leave a beleaguered place.
The steps necessary for establishing the blockade are identical with those taken for the investment in a regular siege and will be described hereafter.
The capture of Paris in 1870-71 is one of the most recent and striking examples of a blockade on a large scale.