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BEGINNING OF THE SIEGE 255 battle array, ten being at tbe boom and seventeen in reserve further within the harbour. The Turkish army on the 11th placed its guns in position before the walls. On the 12th the batteries began playing against the Caimon- walls and, with ceaseless monotony, day and night the menfes° ] discharge of these new machines was heard throughout the Apnl 12 - city during the next six days. Their immediate effect soon showed that the walls, solid as they had proved themselves in a score of former sieges, were not sufficiently strong to resist the new invention. The huge balls, fired from a short distance amid a cloud of the blackest smoke, making a terrible roar and breaking into a thousand pieces as they struck the walls, so damaged them that they required daily and constant repair. The narratives of those present agree in representing the defenders from the very commencement of the bombardment as being constantly engaged in repair- ing the injury done by these ' takers of cities.' Large and unwieldy as they were, unmounted and half buried amid the stones and beams by which they were kept in position, they were yet engines of destruction such as the world had never seen. Planted on the very edge of the foss and requiring such management and care that the largest could only be fired seven times a day, they gave proof within a week of their employment that they could destroy slowly but surely the walls which had stood since the reign of the younger Theodosius. The defenders in vain suspended bales of wool and tried other means of lessening the damage. All they could accomplish was to repair and strengthen the damaged portions as rapidly as possible. Already by April 18 a part of the Outer Wall and even Dcamage two great towers of the Inner had been broken down in the ca?non 7 b Lycus valley. 1 Justiniani had been compelled to take in A P ri118 - hand the construction of a stockade for their defence 4 where the attack was the fiercest and the damage to the walls the greatest.' The walls of the foss, including the breast- work, had been broken down, the foss itself in this place 1 Crit. xxxiv.