4

HISTORY OF ENGINEERING.

Bock I.

their battlements, which, turning constantly round, shivered all the darts that came in con-tact with them to atoms; and they checked the violence of the stones thrown by thebalist®, by woolpacks placed in proper situations to receive them.

Fig. 4.

TYKE.

The Tyrians did not relax in their exertions. They built within their outer wallanother, ten cubits broad, and five cubits distant from the former, and filled in the spacebetween with earth and stones. Alexander then constructed a battery, by joining many ofhis ships together, and then placing the rams against a portion of the wall, beat down 100feet of it, when he attempted to pass through the breach, but was repulsed by the Tyrians,who during the night again rebuilt the wall which had been battered down. The Mace-donians then approached with towers as high as the battlements of the Tyrian walls, and,casting out planks, formed a bridge. Here they were again repulsed by the Tyrians, whohad contrived long tridents, or three-forked hooks, to grapple and wound those placed onthe top of the towers; these grapples, attached to ropes, they flung over the shields of theassailants, and tore them out of their hands. Nets were thrown over those who attemptedto pass over the bridges formed of planks, and they became so entangled, that many ofthem tumbled headlong to the ground. They also filled their iron and brazen shields withsand, and after they had made it scorching hot by placing them over fires, it was by meansof a machine cast upon the besiegers, and getting between their breastplates and coats ofmail, burnt their flesh, and many died in consequence. The Tyrians sent off fire darts,heavy stones, and all kinds of missiles, and with long poles, armed with sharp knives andhooks, they cut the cords of the battering rams in pieces: they also discharged out of theirmachines masses of red-hot iron; they plucked men off the ramparts with iron instrumentsshaped at the end like a man’s hand.

Alexander was undismayed, and unwearied in his exertions: he continued to batter thewalls, and discharge ponderous stones out of his engines, and all sorts of missiles from hiswooden towers. Marble wheels placed upon the walls, and kept constantly turned, weremade to throw them off, and render them ineffectual: hides and skins were also sewntogether, which, being soft and pliant, were placed in other situations for the same purpose.

At last, Alexander perceiving that the wall next the arsenal was w r eaker than the rest, hebrought all his galleys which contained his best engines chained fast together to thatplace; here he cast a plank from a wooden tower with one end upon the battlements of thewalls, thus forming a bridge, and alone mounted the rampart, to the astonishment of all,neither regarding the danger nor the assaults of the Tyrians : his Macedonians quickly fol-lowed : he came first in contact with the enemy, and killing some with his spear, otherswith his sword, and tumbling others down with the boss of his shield, he overcame hisadversaries. During this time the battering rams had made another breach in the wall,and the Macedonians entering, joined the party fighting with Alexander, and by this meansat last was the city taken.

The Tyrians, throughout this siege, made a most valiant defence; but instead of theirbravery awakening in the breast of the conqueror an admiration for their courage, tohis lasting disgrace he ordered two thousand of the chief inhabitants to be crucified, andsold thirty thousand for slaves : eight thousand of its chief soldiers perished in the combat,and the city itself he burnt to the ground.

Nearly twenty years afterwards we again find Tyre able to resist an attack made uponit by the fleets and armies of Antigonus . who. after a fifteen months’ siege, captured it.