Approaches

All the works are generally so called that are carried on towards a place which is besieged; such as the first, second, and third parallels, the trenches, epaulements with and without trenches, redoubts, places of arms, saps, galleries, and lodgments. See these words more particularly under the head Fortification. This is the most difficult part of a siege, and where most lives are lost. The ground is disputed inch by inch, and neither gained nor maintained without the lo of men. It is of the utmost importance to make your approaches with great caution, and to secure them as much as po ible, that you may not throw away the lives of your soldiers. The besieged neglect nothing to hinder the approaches; the besiegers do every thing to carry them on; and on this depends the taking or defending of the place. The trenches being carried to their glacis, you attack and make yourself master of their covered-way, establish a lodgment on the counterscarp, and effect a breach by the sap, or by mines with several chambers, which blow up their intrenchments and fougades, or small mines, if they have any. You cover yourselves with gabions, fascines, barrels, or sacks; and if these are wanting, you sink a trench. You open the counterscarp by saps to make yourself master of it; but, before you open it, you must mine the flanks that defend it. The best attack of the place is the face of the bastion, when by its regularity it permits regular approaches and attacks according to art. If the place be irregular, you must not observe regular approaches, but proceed according to the irregularity of it; observing to humor the ground, which permits you to attack it in such a manner at one place, as would be usele or dangerous at another; so that the engineer who directs the attack ought exactly to know the part he would attack, its proportions, its force and solidity, in the most geometrical manner.