Archimedes and Todleben were, no doubt, clever men in their way and good citizens, yet one characteristic of delicate men's minds they lacked--veneration; they showed a sad disrespect for the wisdom of the ancients, deranged the calculations which so much learning and patient thought had hallowed, disturbed the minds of white-haired veterans, took sieges out of the grasp of science, and plunged them back into the field of wild conjecture.
Our generals then sat down at fourteen hundred yards' distance, and planned the trenches artistically, and directed them to be cut at artful angles, and so creep nearer and nearer the devoted town.

Then the Prussians, whose hearts had been in their shoes at first sight of the French shakos, plucked up, and turned not the garrison only but the population of the town into engineers and masons.

Their fortifications grew almost as fast as the French trenches.
The first day of the siege, a young but distinguished brigadier in the French army rode to the quarters of General Raimbaut, who commanded his division, and was his personal friend, and respectfully but firmly entreated the general to represent to the commander-in-chief the propriety of assaulting that new bastion before it should become dangerous.

"My brigade shall carry it in fifteen minutes, general," said he.
"What! cross all that open under fire?
One-half your brigade would never reach the bastion." "But the other half would take it." "That is not so certain." General Raimbaut refused to forward the young colonel's proposal to headquarters.

"I will not subject you to TWO refusals in one matter," said he, kindly.
The young colonel lingered.