(5) SIEGE & URBAN WARFARE

 

With fortifications – a historical development significant enough for its own interlude in John Keegan’s A History of Warfare – came siege warfare.

Or perhaps more precisely, prehistorical development, given that both cities or at least human settlements of sufficient size and fortifications emerged in the Neolithic and Bronze Age – indeed, one of the key features for archaeology. There may have been prototypes of fortifications or fortified positions using natural features or chokepoints in the Paleolithic, but not the resources for standing or field armies to hold or take them on the same scale.

“Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict focused on capturing a fortified position (castle, city, or fort) by surrounding it to block supplies (investment) and using active assaults to breach defenses. Common methods include starving defenders, utilizing artillery, tunnelling under walls, or scaling them.”

Sun Tzu in The Art of War admonished besieging cities as the “worst policy”, given the cost in time, resources and forces exceeds even that of the usual costly attrition to be avoided for war in general.

However, siege warfare is surprisingly prolific in history, notably in later medieval history where “sieges were more common than pitched battles”. It’s also surprisingly prolific in fictional depictions of war, in part due to the dramatic nature of last stands.

The rosy-fingered dawn of Western literature, Homer’s Iliad, is ultimately about the siege of Troy – which may or may not have some Bronze Age historicity. Similarly, both the literary and cinematic versions of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings feature key battles, such as those for Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith, that are sieges.

Without winning a siege by assault or attrition, that left options of negotiating surrender by diplomacy, “the use of deception or treachery to bypass defenses” or the blunter options that could affect either the besieged or besiegers – “starvation, thirst or disease”.

Siege warfare is usually seen as ending with gunpowder but that’s not strictly or initially the case, as something of an arms race developed between fortifications and artillery in early modern history. It was with the advent of greater firepower from the nineteenth century and particularly of mobile warfare from the twentieth century, that “the significance of classical siege declined” and “a single fortified stronghold is no longer as decisive as it once was”.

Ironically however, while the “classical siege” may have declined from modern firepower and mobile warfare, the same force of industrialization that underlay both led to battles or wars of attrition that resembled sieges. States had the means to maintain and supply forces in the field that could then effectively besiege each other or their defensive positions on an unprecedented scale and span.

The trench warfare on the Western Front of the First World War resembled a form of siege warfare. The Second World War might seem to have displaced that through combined arms and maneuver, but it is striking how many battles of that war were or resembled sieges – Stalingrad and Monte Cassino to name just two of them, apart from the famous siege of Leningrad.

The battles or sieges of the Second World War also demonstrate that while city walls may have stopped being a feature in siege warfare, cities themselves did not – with urban warfare resembling a form of siege warfare, only now of attrition of defensive positions within the city itself. Since the Second World War, urban warfare has also often combined elements of guerilla warfare with siege warfare.

The attritional nature of modern industrial warfare has extended beyond individual battles or even any direct combat to resemble sieges on a grand scale – such as the submarine warfare of the Second World War, with the Germans effectively besieging Britain and the Americans besieging Japan, or for that matter the Cold War in Europe, resembling two armies besieging each other.