1. Construction of a bastioned front in a plain, with ravelin, tenaille, and covered way, in plan and profile, after the first system of Vauban, with the improvements of Cormontaigne; name and destination of every single part, angle, and line.
2. Brief description of a regular attack upon a bastioned fortress; sketch of the preparations for attack; lines of circumvallation and contravallation.
Description of parallels, approaches, demi-parallels, and the duties of the infantry in them; saps, trench cavaliers; carrying the covered way, crowning the glacis, passage of the ditch, escalade of the rampart. These operations to be detailed according to their object, position, and arrangement, but without special reference to their technical execution.
General notions relative to the batteries of a besieging army, their position, object, calibre of guns, and practice.
3. Outlines of the system of defense of a fortress relative to the employment of infantry and cavalry in garrison, and of the standing artillery in arming the fortress and placing it in a state of defense against a regular attack or an attack by open force in all its stages.
Especial knowledge of the duties of infantry and cavalry in garrison, in guarding, occupying, and defending the works, and in sallies, required.
4. Historical sketch of an actual siege (on which the examinee has attended a lecture,) and the principles of the attack and defense of fortresses in general.
5. Account of the situation, form, arrangement, and object of some of the means employed for increasing the permanent strength of fortresses, exclusive of the more technical points.
a. The rampart of the body of the place. Angle of the bastions and its effect; length of flanks and faces; auxiliary flanks; empty and solid bastions attached and detached fausse-brayes.
The escarp, earthen wall, revetment, demi-revetment, simple crenneled wall, arched crenneled wall, revetment en décharge; perpendicular and parallel casemates.