Sapping
Encyclopedia
Siege
A siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. The term derives from sedere, Latin for "to sit". Generally speaking, siege warfare is a form of constant, low intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static...
method which has been used since antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
against a walled city
Defensive wall
A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements...
, fortress
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
, castle
Castle
A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
or other strongly held and fortified military position
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
.
Antiquity
The Greek historian PolybiusPolybius
Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...
, in his Histories
The Histories (Polybius)
Polybius’ Histories were originally written in 40 volumes, only the first five of which are existent in their entirety. The bulk of the work is passed down to us through collections of excerpts kept in libraries in Byzantium, for the most part....
, gives a graphic account of mining and counter mining at the Roman siege of Ambracia
Ambracia
Ambracia, occasionally Ampracia , was an ancient Corinthian colony, situated about 7 miles from the Ambracian Gulf in Greece, on a bend of the navigable river Arachthos , in the midst of a fertile wooded plain.-History:...
:
According to Polybius, this was the first time poison gas was used.
Another extraordinary usage of siege-mining in the ancient Greece, where during Philip V of Macedon
Philip V of Macedon
Philip V was King of Macedon from 221 BC to 179 BC. Philip's reign was principally marked by an unsuccessful struggle with the emerging power of Rome. Philip was attractive and charismatic as a young man...
's siege of the little town of Prinassos, according to Polybius, "the ground around the town were extremely rocky and hard, making any siege-mining virtually impossible. However, Philip ordered his soldiers during the cover of night collect earth from elsewhere and throw it all down at the fake tunnel's entrance, making it look like the Macedonians were almost finished completing the tunnels. Eventually, when Philip V announced that large parts of the town-walls were undermined, the citizens surrendered without delay."
Mining was a siege method used in ancient China from at least the Warring States (481–221 BC) period forward. When enemies attempted to dig tunnels under walls for mining or entry into the city, the defenders used large bellows
Bellows
A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location.Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. When the volume of the bellows is decreased, the air escapes through the outlet...
(the type the Chinese commonly used in heating up the blast furnace
Blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...
for smelting cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
) to pump smoke into the tunnels in order to suffocate the intruders.
Middle Ages
In warfare during the Middle AgesMiddle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, a "mine" was a tunnel dug to bring down castles and other fortification
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
s. The technique was used when the fortification was not built on solid rock, and was developed as a response to stone
Rock (geology)
In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
built castles that could not be burned like earlier-style wooden forts. A tunnel
Tunnel
A tunnel is an underground passageway, completely enclosed except for openings for egress, commonly at each end.A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. Some tunnels are aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations or are sewers...
would be excavated under the outer defenses either to provide access into the fortification or to collapse the walls. These tunnels would normally be supported by temporary wooden props as the digging progressed. Once the excavation was complete, the wall or tower being undermined would be collapsed by filling the excavation with combustible material that, when lit, would burn away the props leaving the structure above unsupported and thus liable to collapse. Later, explosives were used for greater effect.
A tactic related to mining is sapping the wall, where engineers would dig at the base of a wall with crowbars and picks. Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay recounts how at the battle of Carcassonne
Carcassonne
Carcassonne is a fortified French town in the Aude department, of which it is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.It is divided into the fortified Cité de Carcassonne and the more expansive lower city, the ville basse. Carcassone was founded by the Visigoths in the fifth century,...
, during the Albigensian Crusade
Albigensian Crusade
The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc...
, "after the top of the wall had been somewhat weakened by bombardment from petraries
Siege engine
A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some have been operated close to the fortifications, while others have been used to attack from a distance. From antiquity, siege engines were constructed largely of wood and...
, our engineers succeeded with great difficulty in bringing a four-wheeled wagon, covered in oxhides, close to the wall, from which they set to work to sap the wall"
As in the siege of Carcassonne, defenders worked to prevent sapping by dumping anything they had down on attackers who tried to dig under the wall. Successful sapping usually ended the battle since either the defenders would no longer be able to defend and surrender, or the attackers would simply charge in and engage the defenders in close combat.
There were several methods to resist under mining. Often the siting of a castle could be such as to make mining difficult. The walls of a castle could be constructed either on solid rock or on sandy or water logged land, making it difficult to dig mines. A very deep ditch or moat could be constructed in front of the walls, as was done at Pembroke Castle
Pembroke Castle
Pembroke Castle is a medieval castle in Pembroke, West Wales. Standing beside the River Cleddau, it underwent major restoration work in the early 20th century. The castle was the original seat of the Earldom of Pembroke....
, or even artificial lakes, as was done at Kenilworth Castle
Kenilworth Castle
Kenilworth Castle is located in the town of the same name in Warwickshire, England. Constructed from Norman through to Tudor times, the castle has been described by architectural historian Anthony Emery as "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant...
. This makes it more difficult to dig a mine, and even if a breach is made the ditch or moat makes exploiting the breach difficult. The defenders could also dig counter mines. From these they could then either dig into the attackers' tunnels and sortie
Sortie
Sortie is a term for deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops from a strongpoint. The sortie, whether by one or more aircraft or vessels, usually has a specific mission....
into them to either kill the miners or to set fire to the pit-props to collapse the attackers' tunnel. Alternatively they could under mine the attackers' tunnels and create a camouflet
Camouflet
A camouflet, in military science, is an artificial cavern created by an explosion. If the explosion reaches the surface then it is called a crater....
to collapse the attackers' tunnels. Finally if the walls were breached they could either place obstacles in the breach, for example a chevaux de frise to hinder a forlorn hope
Forlorn hope
A forlorn hope is a band of soldiers or other combatants chosen to take the leading part in a military operation, such as an assault on a defended position, where the risk of casualties is high....
, or construct a coupure
Coupure
A coupure is a means of closing an opening in a wall, floodwall or levee . The word comes from the french verb couper which means to cut....
. The great concentric ringed fortresses, like Beaumaris Castle
Beaumaris Castle
Beaumaris Castle, located in the town of the same name on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, was built as part of King Edward I's campaign to conquer the north of Wales. It was designed by James of St. George and was begun in 1295, but never completed...
on Anglesey
Anglesey
Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...
, were designed so that the inner walls were ready built coupures: if an attacker succeeded in breaching the outer walls, he would be in a killing field
Killing field
A killing field, in military science, is an area in front of a defensive position that the enemy must cross during an assault and is specifically intended to allow the defending troops to incapacitate a large number of the enemy. Defensive emplacements such as anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire and...
between the lower outer walls and the higher inner walls.
American Civil War
During the Siege of Vicksburg, in 1863, Union troops led by General Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
tunnelled under the Confederate trenches and detonated the mine beneath the 3rd Louisiana Redan on June 25, 1863. The following assault, led by General John A. Logan
John A. Logan
John Alexander Logan was an American soldier and political leader. He served in the Mexican-American War and was a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He served the state of Illinois as a state senator, congressman and senator and was an unsuccessful candidate for Vice President...
, gained a foothold in the Confederate trenches where the crater was formed, but the attackers were eventually forced to withdraw.
A more famous instance occurred during the Siege of Petersburg
Siege of Petersburg
The Richmond–Petersburg Campaign was a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia, fought from June 9, 1864, to March 25, 1865, during the American Civil War...
: Union troops dug a tunnel under the Confederate
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
lines at Elliott's Salient and packed its end with vast amounts of gunpowder. When set off, the resulting explosion killed about 300 soldiers. It might have been decisive if not for the faulty Union tactic of storming into, rather than around, the resulting crater, allowing the defenders to shoot down onto attackers unable to climb the steep crater sides. The combat was accordingly known as the Battle of the Crater
Battle of the Crater
The Battle of the Crater was a battle of the American Civil War, part of the Siege of Petersburg. It took place on July 30, 1864, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George G. Meade The...
. The horror of this engagement was portrayed in the Charles Frazier
Charles Frazier
Charles Frazier is an award-winning American historical novelist.Frazier was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1973. He earned an M.A. from Appalachian State University in the mid-1970s, and received his Ph.D. in English from the University...
novel, and subsequent Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007....
movie, Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain (film)
Cold Mountain is a 2003 war drama film written and directed by Anthony Minghella. The film is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Charles Frazier...
.
Modern warfare
Mining saw a brief resurgence as a military tactic during the First World WarWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, when army engineers attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare
Trench warfare
Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery...
by tunneling under no man's land
No man's land
No man's land is a term for land that is unoccupied or is under dispute between parties that leave it unoccupied due to fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dumping ground for refuse between fiefdoms...
and laying large quantities of explosives beneath the enemy's trench. As in siege warfare, mining was possible due to the static nature of the fighting.
A notable example was the Battle of Messines
Battle of Messines
The Battle of Messines was a battle of the Western front of the First World War. It began on 7 June 1917 when the British Second Army under the command of General Herbert Plumer launched an offensive near the village of Mesen in West Flanders, Belgium...
, when 450 tonnes of high explosive were placed in 21 mines after about two years of sapping. Approximately 10,000 German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
troops were killed when 19 of the mines were simultaneously detonated. The two remaining mines were not detonated as they were outside the battlefield. To the great discomfort of the townspeople, the British misplaced the documents containing the precise details and positions of the two remaining mines. One of the mines detonated on June 17, 1955 during a thunderstorm; the only casualty
Casualty
Casualty may refer to:*Casualty , a person who is killed or injured in a war or disaster*Disaster, an event resulting in death, injury, or destruction...
was a cow. The second mine remains undetected. Recently its location is believed to have been pinpointed, yet no one has attempted to recover it — thus, there are still several tonnes of high explosive buried somewhere in the Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
countryside.
Another example is recorded in Louis Trenker's Berge in Flammen. Whole mountain peaks in the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
, such as Col di Lana
Col di Lana
The Col di Lana is a mountain of the Fanes Group in the Italian Dolomites, situated in Livinallongo del Col di Lana , a municipality of the Province of Belluno, in the Italian region of Veneto....
, Lagazuoi and Marmolata, were detonated during the mountain war.
Because troop movements in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
were too fluid, and tunneling too slow, mining warfare was of little use during that conflict.
The Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
saw a resurgence of the use of tunneling by the Viet Cong forces, but these tunnels were more commonly operational bases and communication tunnels than mining tunnels.
See also
- Early thermal weapons
- Land mineLand mineA land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
- Tunnel warfareTunnel warfareTunnel warfare is a type of warfare that occurs in tunnels.It can be sometimes linked with urban warfare, as tunnels are often found in urban area and cities, although urban warfare as a whole usually dominates any tunnel considerations...
- SapperSapperA sapper, pioneer or combat engineer is a combatant soldier who performs a wide variety of combat engineering duties, typically including, but not limited to, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, demolitions, field defences, general construction and building, as well as road and airfield...
- SappingSappingMining, landmining or undermining is a siege method which has been used since antiquity against a walled city, fortress, castle or other strongly held and fortified military position.-Antiquity:...
External links
- Castles of Britain page about castle undermining