but in all the other operations of war, the antients made the fame ufe of their 'machines as we do of our cannon. With them they formed batteries to impede and deftroy the enemy's works, and to defend their own; fo that they might be faid in a manner to cannonade one another. With them they battered their adverfaries at a distance, harraffed their watering and foraging parties, and reduced them to the greatest mifery and diftrefs. When they wanted to gain an eminence, or a bank occupied by the enemy, they first threw a flower of ftones from their flings and their machines; which, when well pointed, carried every thing before them. They battered likewife, on fome occafions, the enemy's camp with their machines, as we do with our cannon. This method of proceeding, Pompeius Sabinus adopt. ed against the Thracians: having furrounded themwith an entrench ment, he erected a redoubt, whence he poured upon them a continual discharge of ftones, darts, and fire. Nor were the machines unemployed in the paffing of rivers. On the bank of the river which was to be croffed, they raised batteries of catapulta and balifte, with which they kept the enemy at a diftance, while they were conftructing the bridge. It was in this manner that Germanicus croffed the Eder: and the fame method was practifed by Alex. ander in Thrace. When the river was large, they launched veffels, on which they built towers, and placed the machines in them, to diforder the enemy on the other fide, who was alfo provided with machines to prevent the paffage: or, having conftructed part of the bridge, they raised a tower on the moft advanced pier; and, under cover of the difcharge of stones and darts from it, they carried on the work to the oppofite bank. I fhall not enlarge on the methods they took of defending a pafs, or covering a retreat with their archers, or light artillery, by placing them in the most advantageous pofitions: fuch paffages are ob vious enough in the ancient au thors. I hope now that I have proved to your fatisfaction, that the antients made the very fame ufe of their machines of war as we do of our artillery. If we find them feldom taken notice of in the account of field-engagements, the reafon is, that it was the custom with them to draw their fwords, and come quickly to a clofe con flict: and if this was the practice in our armies, the artillery would not have fo confiderable a fhare, as it has at present, in the decifion of a battle." On the Sieges and Naval Armaments of the Antients, and their Refen. blance to thofe of the Moderns, From the fame. I NEVER could fubfcribe to the univerfal opinion, that the difcovery of gunpowder, the compafs, and the art of printing, have produced an entire change, and that for the better, in the fyf tem of affairs. The compafs in. deed was a noble invention. It cannot be denied, but fociety has derived wonderful benefits from the difcovery of an inftrument which in the darkest atmosphere points out to us the pole, guides us with fecurity,and makes us in fome measure mafters of the whole ex tent of the ocean. It may be called the very foul of navigation. The Cynofure alone would never have conducted us to the discovery of America; and we have caufe to boast, that a middling pilot in our age knows more than in the times of the antients did Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, or Hanno, the Columbus of the Carthaginians. The art of printing has alfo made a great alteration in the face of affairs, by rendering that common which formerly was a luxury that the great only could partake of. But are we to conclude, that letters have received any augmentation from an art that is fo productive of literary abortions, and by which are multiplied the means of propagating falfe fcience, which is far worfe than ignorance have no longer any doubts re maining. But you are not fo clear on what relates to naval ope rations and fieges,. on which you defire my opinion. I know not whether I fhall be able to find, among my little collection of notes, wherewithal to fatisfy you fully on this particular. To begin with fieges:-However univerfally it may be thought that the invention of artillery has entirely changed the nature of them, yet it will be found by thofe who confider the matter attentively, that the fundamental modes of the attack and defence of places are the very fame at this day as they were in the times of the antients. The towers, with which they flanked the curtain, jutted out just like our baftions, and, according to the doctrine of Vitruvius, fhould be at the diftance of a bowfhot from each other; this correfponds with our line of defence, which is to be equal to the range Again, Does it appear of a mufket-fhot. Perhaps we that the invention of gun-powder fhall not find any great difference has introduced any univerfal between thefe two distances; changes in the military fyftem? Our armies march at prefent in the fame manner, and with the fame precautions, as thofe of the antients: our orders of battle are the fame; we put in practice the fame ftratagems; and we encamp, or at least we fhould encamp, as they did. Nothing is changed in the fundamental principles of war. Put in the place of the catapulte and the balife our cannon and our mortars, and all is parallel. It gives me pleasure to find that your idea for nearly coincides with mine. With regard to the field operations, which form the most confiderable branch of war, you for we are informed, by a paffage in Vegetius, that the arrows car ried to the diftance of fix hundred feet, which is about the range of a point blank fhot from a firelock. They alfo made projectures in their walls to flank the affailants; and the streets leading to the gates were not in a direct line, but crooked. They were not without ditches to keep the enemy at a diftance; nor terreplains, nor efplanades, in the defences, to ftop the enemy, in cafe he had got poffeffion of any part of the rampart: and they directed, agreeable to the precepts of the beft modern engineers, that that the works, and the places of arms, fhould be made large and fpacious, that there might be room for whole cohorts to draw up in them. Such was in fubftance their fyftem of defence. Their mode of attack was alfo extremely fimilar to ours. When they pitched their camp before a town, they took care to fortify it as well from thofe within as from thofe who might come from without, to fuccour the befieged; in which they fhowed wonderful ingenuity. The wells, which were used at the fiege of Philipfburg to protect the lines, and the wolf-traps that were made at the blockade of Prague, for the fame purpose, were but flight imitations of what was contrived in the like circumstances by the antients. They carried on their approaches as much as poffible under cover. Some will have it, that they were carried on by trenches, juft as they are at prefent; others deny it: but they certainly fecured the communication between the camp and the front of the attack with a fpecies of trench. The befiegers undermined the walls of the fortreffes, and the befieged likewife dug mines under the works of the befiegers; in which fharp conflicts often took place between the miners, who did all they could, with fumigations and fires, to deftroy one another. The affault was ufually carried on under cover of a heavy difcharge from the machines, and from the velites, who fwept off with their stones and arrows all who ventured to fhew themfelves upon the walls; and fallies were likewife made in the fame manner by the befieged, to drive the enemy from the ap. proaches. Batteries of Salife were conftructed, with which they difmounted the machines of the enemy, and made breaches in the walls, when at a distance: as they did, when clofe, with batteringrams: and I mentioned in my laft, that these machines had force enough to dismantle the walls, and even to level the tow. ers, in which the principal strength of the fortreffes confifted. Regulus had balifte in his army, even fo far back as the first Punic war. Vefpafian had a prodigious number at the fiege of Jotapata; and it was with these machines that Pompey battered the Temple of Jerufalem, which for folidity was not inferior to the strongest citadel. No wonder then that the learned, after confidering the mode of attacking and defending places in paft ages, fhould not fuffer themfelves to be hurried away with the current, and fhould judge, that in this branch of the art of war, there is little difference between the ancient and the modern practice. Count Leonardi, a man eminent for his know. ledge of military architecture, af ferted, that the whole of a fortifi cation, confifting in the curtain, the flank, the ditch, the covert way, the places of arms, and the batteries, no one that understood any thing of modern fortification, would hold cheap the maxims of Vitruvius. And the famous Duke of Rohan affirms, that, though the invention of artillery may have produced a few changes in military architecture, yet the principles of attack and defence are at this day the fame with those of ancient times; and that the fiege of Alexia is the exact counterpart of the cele celebrated fieges of the Prince of the machines mounted in these Orange, the Marquis of Spinola, and the Duke of Parma. Now, if we pass from a review of the military to that of the naval, armaments of the antients, we shall find them more conformable than is commonly imagined to thofe of the prefent age. Their fhips of war had the appearance of fortreffes as well as ours; and that not from their immenfe bulk alone, but from the nature of the arms with which they were furnished, which might be called great and fmall artillery. We read in Diodorus Siculus, that Demetrius Poliorcetes had on the prows of his veffels catapulte that carried to a prodigious diftance, which correfpond with our bowchaces. On the first-rate fhips the antients erected towers and caftles: as proof of which we have the Ibis Liburnis inter alta navium of Horace; and the Tanta mole viri turritis puppibus inftant of Virgil; and Florus tells us, fpeaking of thofe very fhips of Mark Anthony, that they refembled fo many floating caftles; that the wind could not move them without labour; and that they made the fea groan under their weight. Thefe expreffions might be applied with great propriety to that famous fhip of two hundred guns, called the Charante, which was built by Louis the Twelfth, or the Anna, of one hundred and fourteen large pieces of cannon, which I have myfelf feen in the port of Cronstadt, at the mouth of the Neva, in the Baltic fea. From towers and caftles they difcharged ftones, darts, and other mifile weapons, as we are informed by Vegetius; and likewife red-hot arrows, prepared with oil, fulphur, and other combuftible materials, to fire the enemy's fhips, in the fame manner as at fieges. Their machines were of great fervice in the difembarking of troops; which was effected under cover of their discharge, like that of fo many batteries of cannon. It was thus that Cæfar landed on the British fhore. Bringing his fhips of war clofe to the land, he kept fo continual and heavy a discharge upon the Britons, as to diflodge them, while the troops landed from the tranfports: by which means, the Romans made good their defcent on that iffand, which coft them afterwards so much la. bour to fubdue. Diodorus Siculus fpeaks of veffels armed, as one might call it, with artillery at the fiege of Tyre, and at that of Rhodes, which was conducted by Demetrius Poliorcetes: the most memorable fiege perhaps of all antiquity, on account of the various contrivances in engineering put in practice by that ingenious prince. I fhall fay nothing of the wildfires of the Greeks, which were thrown by means of pipes or pots upon the fhips of the enemy; an invention of the lower empire: but the fire-fhips we fhall find to have been a very early invention. Their hold was filled with tow, pitch, and rofin; and being set fire to, they were carried by the wind into the midft of the enemy's fleet. It is fuppofed they were originally made ufe of at Tyre, to deftroy the the immenfe dyke which Alexander threw across the harbour, in order to cut off that city from all communication with the fea: but I find Thucydides takes notice of thefe fire-flips in his hiftory of the Peloponnefian war, which happened long before the fiege of Tyre. And you may find a remarkable inftance of their effects in the Commentaries of Julius Cæfar, where he relates, that a great part of his fleet was deftroyed by them in the Sicilian feas. But, notwithstanding all these fires and these machines, the antients did not stand to engage, and, as it were, to cannonade one another at a diftance. As in their battles on fhore, after the first difcharge of their machines, and that iron fhower of darts which darkened the air, as Virgil expreffes it, they came to clofe action, hand in hand; to did they likewife act in their naval engagements. Plutarch relates, that in the battle of Actium, the large fhips of Mark Anthony being furrounded by the fmaller and lighter Liburnian veffels of Auguftus, the combat had the appearance of an affault upon fo many caftles. They ufually endeavoured to fink one another; the Greeks in particular, by boarding with the roftrum, or beak, with which the fhips prows were fortified. You remember that Duillius, the first naval commander of the Romans, who obtained the reftral crown by his victory at Mylum, first thought of erecting of his fhips the prow crow,, or drawbridge: of which Polybius has given a minute defcription. As foon as they had approached near enough, they let fall the draw-bridge on the on the 2 bow or fide of the enemy's fhip, which it grappled with a kind of iron claw that was fixed to the extremity of it. Thus they boarded the enemy; and the foldiers hav. ing filed over the draw-bridge, the fea-fight became the fame with an engagement on fhore. Without this contrivance the Romans would never have fucceeded in their first battle at fea with the Carthaginians, a people fo expert in maritime affairs; and this method of fighting they ftill retained, after they had acquired fome knowledge of naval operations. Their hiftorians often speak of their marine legions. Befides, Vegetius exprefsly informs us, that the common practice was to let down the draw-bridges, board the enemy, and engage hand to hand. This was indeed, on all occafions, the favourite method of the antients, as that by which every blow has its effect, and which gives the fulleft fcope to perfonal valour. Thus, even at fieges, the intention of all the works carried on by the affailants, was to bring them clofer to the befieged. And the Spartans, who placed their whole ftudy in war, in which they went beyond all the other ftates of Greece, thought their own arms the fureft defence, their own breafts the strongest ramparts of their city. But, to conclude at once this long harangue, might we not venture to wager, that if thofe brave Greeks and Romans were to return into the world, they would not make any alteration, in fpite of the cannon, in their manner of fighting? Confidering the fyftem of war as a machine, we may affert, that the moderns have not added |