Stand up and fight!

One of the most effective and dangerous methods of capturing a fortress was a mine war. A mine, an ominous word, associated with explosives hidden somewhere and waiting for the pressure of man or a vehicle, originally meant a drift or a tunnel. Tunnels under fortifications were known from the beginning or fortress war, from antiquity. They gained an entirely new meaning when powder was invented. Till the 1860s (i.e. when Zamość aged in the blink of an eye), walls and fortification embankments constituted a technological advantage over artillery. To damage a bastion to such an extent that it was possible to risk capturing it, one had to shoot accurately, from a close distance and for a long time. Making a tunnel ending with a mining chamber, placing explosives there and detonating them was a much more effective method of causing damage to the bastion of a besieged fortress. However, making a tunnel was difficult and dangerous. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of a stifling drift, miners had to face a danger of being buried alive. To make matters worse, defenders, knowing what was going on, started to dig a counter tunnel beneath the one dug by the enemy to blow it up with the miners trapped inside. A terrible race underground would go on and if the two tunnels met, a fierce fight ensued in the darkness of falling dust. In the 18th century often a whole system of masonry tunnels and counter tunnels were built beforehand; the system often stretched out under the foreground of bastions* and tenaille*. The best preserved accessible system of this type is located in Kłodzko Fortress. By means of a system of tunnels made in advance, it was possible not only to get rid of enemy mines but also to blow up troops and gun batteries preparing for a siege on the ground. To do such “mole work” soldiers needed to have nerves of steel, be very fit, be familiar with mining techniques and have a sense of direction underground. Miners were often people who came from areas where coal or ores had been mined for a long time. The largest explosive charges in history were detonated during WW I on the western front in Flanders and in the Alps, on Austrian-Italian front line.