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Updated: May 25, 2025
It has been proved days ago that what I said was correct, for slowly but surely the fire of two Chinese guns has demolished successively the outer wall, the enclosed courtyards behind it, and then a line of houses linked together by field-works hastily constructed from the rubble lying around.
Amongst the dunes not a vestige remains of the field-works for which they fought. Bones, broken weapons and shattered breastplates, and all the débris of the fight, were long ago buried fathoms deep beneath mounds of drifting sand.
I have too good an opinion, founded both upon observation and experience, of the skill of your artillerists, to credit the insinuation that they for several weeks unintentionally fired too high for my modest field-works, and slaughtered women and children by accident and want of skill. The residue of your letter is rather discussion.
There seemed therefore to be but one practicable mode of assault; which was, to treat these field-works as one would treat a regular fortification; by erecting breaching batteries against them, and silencing, if it were possible, at least some of their guns.
Levelling their own field-works, repairing the defences of the town, storing provisions sent ashore from the fleet, making fascines, and cutting firewood, busied them through the autumn days bright with sunshine, or dark and chill with premonition of the bitter months to come.
It proposes no longer to defend upon expensive permanent works precisely located upon the map, but upon a number of improvised batteries in which heavy guns can move somewhat behind field-works concealed as much as possible, numerous and constructed rapidly under the conditions of the campaign.
Sieges; such as characterized the wars of the last century, are too slow for this period of the world, and the Prussians recently almost ignored them altogether, penetrated France between the forts, and left a superior force "in observation," to watch the garrison and accept its surrender when the greater events of the war ahead made further resistance useless; but earth-forts, and especially field-works, will hereafter play an important part in war, because they enable a minor force to hold a superior one in check for a time, and time is a most valuable element in all wars.
If the city were upon the right bank of the Rhine, and there were only an intrenched camp of field-works on the left bank, there would be no certainty of security either for the depots or the army.
Those who wish a description of the lines of Torres Vedras, must read Napier, or some one else who knows all about them; for my part, I know nothing, excepting that I was told that one end of them rested on the Tagus, and the other somewhere on the sea; and I saw, with my own eyes, a variety of redoubts and field-works on the various hills which stand between.
The throwing up of field-works and barricades went on with such speed that the blockading forces were able in a few days to detach a strong column towards Châlons-sur-Marne in order to help the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia. That army in the meantime was in pursuit of MacMahon by way of Nancy, and strained every nerve so as to be able to strike at the southern railway lines out of Paris.
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