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]