Stardate 20020425.2057

(On Screen): Siege warfare goes back as far as we have records. Traditionally there were only two ways to finish a siege: you either prepare an assault, or you surround and wait until the besieged decide to come out (or they all die). In the 16th century a third answer appeared: you destroy them by cannon fire. That wasn't really efficient, however, until the 19th century and it depended enormously on the size of the siege.

Sieges come in all sizes, from individual buildings up to complete cities. It's even possible to lay siege to an entire nation, though at that level it changes somewhat. The larger the area being besieged, the more porous it will be. The largest siege which I can think of right off the top of my head was Napoleon's attempt to besiege the UK through his "continental system" which amounted to closing all the ports and harbors on continental Europe to the use of British shipping. In this case the goal wasn't so much to starve out the British as it was to ruin their economy by depriving them of markets for their goods. The problem with that for Napoleon was that Europe is a really big place, and inevitably there were those who cheated. The worst of the cheaters was Russia, and in 1812 Napoleon decided to invade Russia in order to force it to close its ports to the UK. (And we all know how that turned out.)

But the majority of sieges are much smaller than that. The Germans besieged Leningrad in WWII, and the Soviets were able to get supplies in during the winter months by driving over the ice. Leningrad didn't fall, but conditions in the city were miserable and tens of thousands of people there died of cold or starvation. Being subjected to siege is nearly always a horrible experience, even if you don't lose.

Like all aspects of warfare, siege was the subject of a great deal of innovation over the centuries. Initially you had villages being sacked by raiders, and it didn't take too long for someone to realize that the raiders would have a much more difficult time if you surrounded the village with a palisade. But that was probably going to be made of logs, and wood burns; the raiders soon figured out what to do about that.

So you started to make your city walls out of compacted earth. Of course, if it's not very tall then ladders will get the raiders over, so you make your walls taller, but at that point compacted earth just isn't strong enough (and it probably has sloped walls anyway), and you find yourself building in stone because nothing else will do. There have been some quite impressively long stone walls to defend entire areas, and of course the most amazing of these was the Great Wall. But it was more common for them to encircle a relatively small area, such as Athens. Athens stood up to years of siege during the Peloponnesian war, because it had access to its harbor and Sparta couldn't defeat the Athenian fleet. So Sparta controlled all land access to the walls of Athens and ravaged the countryside, but Athens could move men and supplies in and out by sea. Sparta never breached the walls, and the war didn't end until Sparta was able to create a fleet which defeated the Athenian fleet.

There are three critical supplies which must be stockpiled in a fortress if you wish to stand up to siege: water, food and arrows (or other ammunition), and of these water is usually the most critical. Through the middle ages, the primary form of defense against siege was known as a curtain wall because it was vertical in order to make it difficult to climb, and sometimes more than fifty feet tall. Often there was an overhang on top and defenders would drop things on those attempting to attack the walls.

You need water and food because when they run out you have to leave or die. You need arrows (ammunition) in order to defend the wall. If your enemy can move close to the walls, there are a number of things they can do to bring them down and breach your defenses. And what you hope is that eventually they'll give up and go away.

Of course, the other possibility is that you hold out until you are relieved by friendly forces. If there's an army which can move in and attack the besiegers, they can lift the siege. So you don't necessarily need infinite amounts of supplies; just enough to last until your friends can show up. (One of the better examples of that was when the siege of Bastogne was lifted in 1944 by US Third Army.)

But if you don't have any friends, then you better be ready to sit out a very long wait. There was one castle built by the Crusaders in modern Lebanon which withstood years of siege before it finally fell to the Muslims through a trick.

The stupidest thing you can do is to get yourself isolated in an unprepared position without supplies. In that case a siege can bring you out in fairly short order through hunger or thirst. And if you don't have a lot of ammunition, the besiegers may be able to force you to exhaust what you have through various feints, leaving you vulnerable to assault. Of course, sometimes it happens that way in the heat of the moment, because you get yourself surrounded. Your only hope in that case is to be relieved. Otherwise you better write your will.

That's what happened to the Palestinians who are holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem; they moved into the church and got themselves surrounded there, and since then the Israelis have laid siege to the building. Israel could have destroyed the place and killed everyone in it a long t