"A battle, for the most part, is a definite, clean-cut business between armies of equal, or varying, strength and technical skill; a matter of professionals diligently engaged in the exercise of their craft. A siege, frequently, witnesses the introduction of the entirely incalculable element of the civilian population - the element of the amateur-of-war, as it were - and in so doing engenders a whole clutch of highly variable considerations...Where siege operations are in question, it is necessary to bear in mind that, insomuch as a General in the field can only be a little cleverer than his soldiers will let him be, equally, the Commander of a beleaguered fortress can only be a little more resolute and resistant than the more invertebrate amongst his civil population - and eke his civil government will permit...To some extent, of course, a condition of siege is an admission of military failure. Those besieged have surrendered the priceless asset of mobility; the forces of investment, having failed to inflict defeat upon their opponents in the open field, have lost the invaluable power of maneuver...It is, indeed, almost a work of supererogation to emphasise the fact that masters of maneuver, such as Napoleon, Marlborough, and Wellington, not only strove their utmost to avoid that condition of military stagnation which a siege implies, but exhibited something less than their normal genius when, willy-nilly, they found themselves committed to a siege's tiresome prosecution." -- From the introduction.

Rome (A.D. 410) --Constantinople (A.D. 1453) -- Londonderry (A.D. 1689) -- Gibraltar (A.D. 1779-83) -- Acre (A.D. 1799) -- Sevastopol (A.D. 1854-6) -- Lucknow (A.D. 1857) -- Paris (A.D. 1780-1) -- Plevna (A.D. 1877) -- Mafeking (A.D. 1899-1900) -- Port Arthur (A.D. 1904-5) -- Stalingrad (A.D. 1942-3).