by Antonio Carioti
In 1706, Turin was attacked for 117 days by the French troops of Louis XIV: the inhabitants had prepared by piling up food to ration
Sieges are dramatic moments par excellence, as they force the competitors to concentrate many forces in a small place and for a period that can be quite long. It is no coincidence that the poem that introduces Western literature, Homer’s Iliad, is about a siege of Troy that lasted a good ten years. Moreover, in history, sieges very often end in a tragic and bloody way, with the sacking of the conquered cities, the massacre and the enslavement of the inhabitants.
One of the most nagging problems for the besieged, as can still be seen today in the case of the Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv (read the news minute by minute here), is the shortage of food and water: lack of adequate supplies when none exist wells and wellfunctioning plumbing, when thirst cannot be quenched, life in a besieged fortress can quickly become untenable.
It is therefore imperative for the besiegers to stop supplies in order to starve the besieged. A terrible example concerns World War II, when Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was blockaded by the Germans for nine hundred days from 1941 to 1944. It is estimated that around 650,000 civilians died in this horrific ordeal, almost all of starvation, but the metropolitan Soviet Union held out and was eventually liberated by the Red Army’s counteroffensive.
Another city that resisted victoriously was Turin in 1706, besieged for 117 days by the French troops of Louis XIV and then liberated by the imperial army of Eugenio di Savoia: here the inhabitants had stocked up on large supplies, which were carefully rationed by the city authorities. . . The battle for supplies focuses on ports when coastal cities are under siege.
A case of the Carthage type, faced with Roman fury in the Third Punic War, decided to close accounts with its historical rival. Fueled by the power of desperation, the city endured for over two years. The siege ended only when the consul Scipione l’Emiliano managed to blockade the port and starve the defenders, and then in the spring of 146 BC. Chr. launched the decisive attack. Another very serious problem for the defenders are the sanitary conditions, also because in such cases the rural population tends to flock to the walls of the cities to escape from the enemy armies, causing overcrowding, the consequences of which can be fatal.
The bestknown case in antiquity was the plague of Athens in 430 BC. who killed an estimated one third of the population during the Peloponnesian War against Sparta, including the charismatic leader Pericles. Even the besiegers are often in critical states when the territory does not provide them with enough resources to sustain themselves, especially when the duration of a siege is excessively prolonged. For example, the later Roman Emperor Titus was a serious problem during the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, when there were several desertions among the legionaries before the city was conquered. Epidemics can also pose a threat to besiegers. Suffice it to recall the cholera that struck the Piedmontese troops during the siege of Sevastopol with the French and British during the Crimean War against the Russians between 1854 and 1855. Not far from where we fight today.
April 16, 2022 (Change April 16, 2022 | 16:42)
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