OF REGULAR FORTIFICATION.

my subject. This city, he says, which Nature has admirably fortified, is encircled In Curtius. on the East by a rapid river, the bank of which is so steep that there is no way to approach by there. To the West and South there are high rocks that Nature, it seems, has carved (a) expressly.

(b) Caesar provides us the other in his commentaries. It is Besançon, the Capital of the Franche-Comté, which the nature of the place rendered so strong that it gave a great occasion to prolong the war (these are the words of Caesar) Caesar because the Doubs surrounds almost all the city. What the river does not water, which is not more than six hundred feet in width, is occupied by a high mountain whose root touches the river on both sides. The third is in Polybius, who Polybius. speaks of it with his ordinary gravity; Phosis is a very ancient city of Arcadia in the middle of the Peloponnese, etc. A rapid torrent shaves the walls on the side of the West, which, not being able to be crossed for the greater part of the winter, renders this face inaccessible. To the East flows the Erymanthus with much slope and depth, about which poets and historians recount diverse things. The torrent that I have just mentioned, throwing itself into the Erymanthus, defends the South of the city, and to the North there is a craggy and difficult hillside which serves as its citadel. Thus, from three places the water defends the city, and from the other the mountain. Besides that, it is closed by good and strong walls, etc. To these three cities so well fortified, I will be permitted to add that of Uspes in Tacitus (c) by way of raillery. This city was in Uspes in Tacitus without fortification of nature. an elevated situation, garnished with walls and ditches; it is indeed true, he says, that the walls were not of stone, but of wicker (our usage will borrow hereafter from the Uspians these wicker walls to close the camp in a necessity, or on other occasions of fortifying an attack or a defense) stuck half into the ground and too weak to sustain an assault. That is why also it would have been taken the same day it was attacked, if the night had not stopped the combat. Uspes, therefore, was hardly defended by Nature, nor by art, nor by both.

(a) Q. Curtius book 8. (b) Book 1 of the Gallic War. (c) Annals book 12. We have heard just now what Vegetius says of Natural Architecture, let us join to him here for our pleasure Pliny the Younger, who was thinking of nothing less than our kind of Architecture. It is said that the Gauls, separated from us by the Alps, mountains almost insurmountable, spread into Italy on this occasion. A certain Swiss named Elico, having been a craftsman in Rome, brought raisins, and dried figs, with a little oil and wine to his country: We must certainly forgive them if they came to seek them at the point of the sword, since our limbs and our whole body find such good assistance in these two liquids. For my part, I do not prevent our debauched soldiery from fighting as well as they did formerly for oil and wine, but as an architect, I remark that Pliny, speaking of the Alps, says that they served as an insurmountable rampart between France and Italy, if this wretched desire to have the goods of others had not pierced and leveled them. But who will not be astonished (continues the same author) that to have the pleasure of shade, we went to look for trees in another world? It is the Plane tree, which was transported by the Ionian sea to the island of Diomedes to adorn his tomb, and from there passed into Sicily, and since then was among the first that are valued in Italy. There are some at the present hour even on the coasts of Flanders among the peoples who are tributary to us, who have no difficulty in buying shade from us. Pliny in book XII of his Natural History, chap. 1. But, I pray you, what great shade does this tree give? It can well sustain some light rain, but not big drops, nor a storm, and not at all the blows of hail: whereas the shade of a well-made wall preserves from the lightning of the enemy Cannon. It is not, therefore, a wonder if a people born to liberty refuses no overload of taxes to deliver itself from tyranny, and to preserve under the shade of its ramparts this precious and inestimable freedom. See also what is said remarkably touching these Alps in Titus Livy, book XXI. The Carthaginian army feared the enemies, remembering still the past war: but it feared more than that the length of the road and the difficulty of the Alps, which common rumor represented as horrible to those who did not know it, etc. Upon which Hannibal, encouraging his men, said that the sky did not cover any land inaccessible to valor, etc. That there was nothing impenetrable and insurmountable to a soldier who carries only his arms (I would willingly add, and who is transported by an insatiable desire to command, and to ravish the goods of others, which are the two most powerful machines for taking cities, and ruining States, etc. The soldiers, annoyed by so much fatigue, had a strange fear of the fall of avalanches, and among the snow, of the setting of the Pleiades. During this consternation, the army marching heavily from the break of day, and there being only the image of despair imprinted on the faces, Hannibal advances to the head, and from a point of rock from where the view extended very far, having had the troops stopped, he shows them from afar Italy, and the countryside that the Po waters below the Alps, telling them that the Alps they had crossed were the walls of Italy, and even of Rome. That they would have no more difficulties to surmount, that in one or two battles the affair would be done, that the Capital of Italy would be in their power, etc. And certainly that would have been so if Hannibal had survived as much as he had praised the advice of Maharbal. Thus, Titus Livy names the Alps the walls of Italy and of Rome. One can see in the same book of this author by what means Hannibal broke and pierced the Alps, this insurmountable wall.