ABSTRACT
When Sun Tzu first laid down the rules of warfare, it had, in China at least, become axiomatic that the least desirable form of offensive action was an attack on a city. Although the later campaigns of the Persian War were decided in open battles, often at sea, the Peloponnesian War, the Western world’s first great fratricidal conflict, could almost be considered a war of sieges. With the disintegration and fragmentation of the Greco-Roman world, warfare fell on evil days. The great battles of Europe were little more than ignorant tribes clashing with obsolete weapons. With the slow development of Western civilization came a limited improvement in the technology of warfare. The siege became so formal that battles developed as set pieces, more like chess than war. Cities fell on schedule as opposing generals reacted within the narrow, accepted canons of warfare.
