BOMBARDMENT, the act of throwing bombs or shells into a town or fortress for incendiary purposes. A bombardment is either desultory, when ships, field batteries or a proportionately small number of siege bat teries throw shells into a place in order to intimidate the inhabitants and garrison into a hasty surrender, or for some other purpose; or it is regular, and then forms one of the methods of conducting the attack of a forti fied place. The attack by regular bombard ment was first introduced by the Prussians in their sieges in 1815, after Waterloo, of the fortresses in the north of France. The army and the Bonapartist party being then much dispirited, and the remainder of the inhabit ants anxiously wishing for peace, it was thought that the formalities of the old me thodical attack in this case might be dispensed with, and a short and heavy bombardment sub stituted, which would create fires and ex plosions of magazines, prevent every soul in the place from getting a night's rest and thus in a short time compel a surrender, either by the moral pressure of the inhabitants on the commander, or by the actual amount of dev astation caused, and by outfatiguing the gar rison. The regular attack by direct fire against the defenses, though proceeded with, became secondary to vertical fire and shelling from heavy howitzers. In some cases a desultory bombardment was sufficient, in others a regular bombardment had to be resorted to; but in every instance the plan was successful; and it is now a maxim in the theory of sieges, that to destroy the resources, and to render unsafe the interior of a fortress by vertical fire, is as important (if not more so) as the destruction of its outer defenses by direct and ricochet firing, A'bombardment will be more effective against a fortress of middling size with nu merous non-military inhabitants, the moral ef fect upon them being one of the means applied to force the commander to surrender. Before
bombarding a town, it is customary to give 24 hours' notice thereof, to allow women, children and non-combatants to leave it. Modern bom bardments have not usually been _pacticularly destructive. During the siege of Paris, 1870 71, some 500 shells were thrown into the city daily by the Germans, but relatively little mis chief was accomplished by them. A similar result was shown at the bombardment of San tiago de Cuba by the American forces in 1898, and also in the long sieges of Ladysmith and Kimberley in 1899-1900. , The recent bombard ments of the European War have taught vari ous lessons. The German forces reduced the fortresses of Liege, Namur, Maubeuge and Antwerp by furious and sustained bombard ments in which fortifications of the most modern kind were rendered'untenable and use less; the damage to civilians and the moral effects playing no inconsiderable part in hasten ing surrender. On the other hand the British and French fleets bombarded the forts of the Dardanelles in an effort to reach Constanti nople. While the bombardment was incessant, the deadliest of modern ordnance and ex plosives being brought into but little damage was inflicted and little gained from a military viewpoint, compared to the expendi ture of ammunition and the losses inflicted by the fire of the heavy land batteries, five capital ships and many lesser craft being destroyed, and other fleet units seriously damaged.