Planning and throwing up the batteries. Preparation and use of the different kinds of materials of construction. Different sorts of batteries. Methods of construction. Repairing of damaged batteries, and the calculation generally of all the materials necessary for constructing them.
Purpose and equipment of besieging batteries, with the preparations, special and general, for a regular attack.
Proceedings in the regular attack, and their modifications in irregular sorts of attack, occasioned by the situation of the fortress with reference to the surrounding ground, or by the special nature of the defenses.
Proceedings after capture, and when the siege is raised.
b. For Defense.
The equipment of the fortress. Determination of its artillery. Preparations in the fortress when it is declared in a state of siege. Conduct of the artillery in the regular attack, and against irregular modes of attack, as well as in particular cases, such as when in detached isolated works, when the place is relieved, or when the garrison fight its way out.
In the artillery course of the first and second cœtus, the students have gained a general knowledge of the materials of artillery, as well as its organization and use as an Arm; but the lectures were for the most part limited to what was of the greatest immediate consequence, viz., the description of the actual condition and relations of the Prussian artillery.
The object of the instruction given in the third cœtus is, on the one hand, to expose the scientific laws of artillery and its various parts, and, on the other, to track the historical development of the Arm, so as by this means, and by consideration of the constitution of foreign artilleries, to extend the views of the students beyond our own practice, thus, to form their judgment, and induce them to think and contrive for themselves.
In the comparison of our own and foreign existing systems with the results of scientific considerations, the teacher should proceed with caution, and not raise in the young men the inclination to or the habit of crude and officious criticism. Investigation of things as they exist must, therefore, not confine itself to the mere search after defects; it can be only profitable when employed to test our own powers at improvements, and to discern thereby the difficulties and impediments that accompany them. The value which speculative reasoning has for the purposes of the artillery ought to be properly esteemed by the students, but, in face of the results of experience, not be estimated too highly; and in the comparison of different artilleries one with another, the influence must not be overlooked which the peculiarities and the history of a country ever exert on its institutions.