The besieged Gauls, facing starvation, eventually surrendered with their relief force standing by helpless. The Romans held the ground in between the two walls. The inner circumvallation, 10 miles, held in Vercingetorix's forces, while the contravallation kept relief from reaching them. Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars describes how at the Battle of Alesia the Roman legions created two huge fortified walls around the city. It was the implementation of these techniques between two armies in the field which was new. Most of the techniques used in trench warfare had existed for years in siege warfare. Small numbers of troops simply could not maintain a volume of fire sufficient to repel a determined attack. The very long fortifications of the ancient world, such as the Great Wall of China or Hadrian's Wall, were exceptions to the general rule and were in any case not designed to completely prevent enemy crossing the border, but to act as a deterrent to casual border infringement, as well as to act as a border control.Īlthough both the art of fortification and the art of weaponry advanced a great deal in the second half of the second millennium, the advent of the longbow, the muzzle-loading musket, and even of artillery did not substantially change the traditional rule that a fortification required a large body of troops to defend it. Periods of trench warfare occurred during the American Civil War (1861–65) and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and reached peak brutality and bloodshed on the Western Front in the First World War.įortification is nearly as old as warfare itself however, because of the relatively small size of the armies and the lack of range of the weapons, it was traditionally not possible to defend more than a short defensive line or an isolated strongpoint. Trench warfare arose when there was a revolution in firepower without similar advances in mobility and communications. Trench warfare is a form of war in which both opposing armies have static lines of defence. Related subjects: Military History and War
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