During the defense, the architecture of the fortress played a decisive role. The location, walls, equipment - all this determined how successful the assault would be, and whether it was worth undertaking at all.
Athenian long walls
After the victory in the Greco-Persian wars, Athens began to flourish. For protection from an external enemy, the huge city was covered with a fortress wall, not only surrounding the city, but also protecting the path to the main sea gate of Athens - the port of Piraeus. The long walls, built in a short time, stretched for six kilometers. Since in the 5th century BC, the supply of Athens with bread was carried out from the colonies of the Northern Black Sea region, it was strategically important to preserve the possibility of supplying the huge city by sea. There was no external threat to Greece at that time, most of the Greek city-states possessed much smaller armies than Athens, and the main probable enemy of the Athenians - the Spartans - were invincible in a field battle, but they did not know how to take fortresses. Therefore, Athens theoretically turned into an impregnable fortress capable of withstanding a long-term siege,without prospects for the enemy to take possession of the city. In fact, it turned out to be so - in order to defeat Athens, Sparta had to build a fleet, and only after the sea routes were blocked, Athens was forced to surrender. Under the terms of the civilian, the inhabitants of the city were forced to destroy the walls, which were later restored and finally destroyed only in the Roman era.
Castle Krak des Chevaliers
In the Middle Ages, when small armies of several tens, hundreds and extremely rarely thousands of people fought against each other, powerful stone walls surrounded by a moat were practically inaccessible. Long sieges, requiring colossal efforts, were also rarely practiced. Only in cinema and a number of works of fiction can one find a dashing description of the storming of a medieval castle. In reality, this task is difficult and extremely difficult. One of the most powerful fortresses of the Crusaders in the territory of modern Syria was the castle of Krak de Chevalier. Through the efforts of the Hospitaller Order, a wall was erected with a thickness of 3 to 30 meters, reinforced with seven towers. In the XIII century, the castle had a garrison of up to 2,000 people and a huge amount of reserves that made it possible to withstand a long siege. Krak de Chevalier was virtually impregnable, repeatedly repelling the onslaught of the enemy … He was besieged more than once, but always unsuccessfully. Only in 1271 the fortress was taken, however, not by storm, but only with the help of military cunning.
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San Elmo. Malta
By the middle of the 16th century, the stronghold of the Knights of Malta was an imposing fortress. It was surrounded by a system of fortress walls with bastions, and the batteries had the ability to crossfire, causing significant damage to the attackers. To destroy the fortress, it was necessary to systematically bombard it with artillery fire. The Maltese fleet was safely sheltered in the inner harbor behind the line of the Borgo city defenses. The narrow entrance to the bay was blocked by a massive chain. In 1565, when the Turks attempted to seize the fortress, the garrison consisted of 540 knights, 1,300 mercenaries, 4,000 sailors and several hundred inhabitants of Malta. The siege army of the Turks numbered up to 40 thousand people. During the fighting, the Turks, at the cost of colossal losses, managed to take Fort San Elmo,but later it was necessary to abandon attempts to storm other fortifications of the fortress and lift the siege.
Shusha
The security of a fortress does not always depend on the massiveness of its walls and defensive structures. An advantageous location can negate any numerical superiority of the siege army. For example, as in the case of the Shusha fortress in Karabakh, which was defended by Russian troops in 1826. The citadel, erected practically on sheer cliffs, was virtually impregnable. The only way to the fortress was a winding path, which was perfectly shot from the fortress, and two guns installed along it could repel any attempt to approach the gate with buckshot. In 1826, Shusha withstood a 48-day siege by a 35,000-strong Persian army. Two assault attempts were repulsed with huge losses for the besiegers. The peculiarities of the position of the fortress did not allow the enemy to completely block the tiny fortress, which received food from outside. It is noteworthy that during the siege, the garrison of the fortress lost only 12 people killed and 16 missing.
Bobruisk fortress
By the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812, the Bobruisk fortress was considered new and one of the strongest on the western borders of the Russian Empire. The main defensive line of the fortress included 8 bastions. The four-thousandth garrison was armed with 337 guns, huge reserves of gunpowder and food. The enemy could never be sure of the success of the frontal assault, and the long siege meant that the fortress was fulfilling its main role - to delay the enemy and gain time. In the Patriotic War of 1812, the Bobruisk fortress withstood a months-long blockade, being in the deep rear of the Napoleonic army throughout the war. The 16-thousandth Polish detachment that carried out the siege, after several unsuccessful clashes, limited itself only to the blockade of the Bobruisk fortress, abandoning the assault attempts.