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 Civilians
Under Siege
from Sarajevo
to Troy

EDITED BY

Alex Dowdall
and John Horne
 Civilians Under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy

“From first-hand oral accounts of the sieges of Sarajevo and Leningrad, from
a great range of documentary evidence, and from literary works imagining the
sack of Troy, this volume studies warfare at its very darkest: the devastation of
cities and their civilian populations. The techniques of siege may have changed
beyond recognition over the millennia, but the objective of capturing or destroy-
ing entire communities or states has remained a constant feature of warfare, and
the human and material cost has always been extraordinarily high. The detailed
case studies assembled here offer fascinating and disturbing insights into the poli-
tics, economics, ethics and psychology of siege warfare, starting less than 30 and
ending more than 3000 years ago.”
—Hans van Wees, University College London, UK
 Alex Dowdall · John Horne
Editors

Civilians Under Siege

from Sarajevo to Troy
Editors
Alex Dowdall John Horne
University of Manchester Trinity College Dublin
Manchester, UK Dublin, Ireland

ISBN 978-1-137-58531-8 ISBN 978-1-137-58532-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58532-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947179

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Chapter 2 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details
see license information in the chapter.
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: The Grand Square in Lille During the Siege of 1792. © Heritage Image
Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
 Acknowledgements

This volume has arisen from an international workshop on the same

theme, organised by the Centre for War Studies, Trinity College
Dublin, and hosted by the Trinity College Long Room Hub Arts and
Humanities Research Institute. The editors would like to thank the
Centre for War Studies and the Long Room Hub Research Incentive
Scheme for their generous funding, which allowed this project to be fol-
lowed through to completion.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Alex Dowdall and John Horne

2 Transmission and Transformation: Memories of the Siege

of Sarajevo 15
Ivana Maček

3 ‘This Did not Happen’: Survivors of the Siege of

Leningrad (1941–1944) and the ‘Truth About the
Blockade’ 37
Alexandra Wachter

4 ‘Like Troy, Though About as Much Larger … as the

Encyclopaedia Britannica is Larger than the Iliad’:
Civilians and Siege Warfare During the First World War 61
Alex Dowdall

5 Siege Warfare in Comparative Early Modern Contexts:

Norms, Nuances, Myth and Massacre During the
Revolutionary Wars 83
Fergus Robson

vii
viii    Contents

6 Between Positional Warfare and Small War: Soldiers

and Civilians During the ‘Desolation of the Palatinate’
(1688–89) 107
Emilie Dosquet

7 Before the Storm: Civilians Under Siege During

the Thirty Years War (1618–1630) 137
Jane Finucane

8 A Race Against Time—A Fight to the Death:

Combatants and Civilians in the Siege and Capture
of Jerusalem, 1099 163
Alan V. Murray

9 As They Were Ripped from the Altars: Civilians,

Sacrilege and Classical Greek Siege Warfare 185
Joshua R. Hall

10 Civilians Under Siege in the Ancient Greek World 207

Philip de Souza

Index 233
 Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Alex Dowdall is Lecturer in the Cultural History of Modern War

and Simon Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. His
research is concerned with the impact of military violence on civilians in
modern Europe, with a special focus on France during the First World
War. He is currently preparing his first monograph, entitled Communities
under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918.
John Horne is Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where he
was Professor of Modern European History and a founder of the Centre
for War Studies. In 2016–2017 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor
of History at Oxford University, UK. A Member of the Royal Irish
Academy, he is also on the Executive Board of the Historial de la Grande
Guerre, Péronne. He has written extensively on modern France and the
transnational history of the Great War. Among his books are: (with Alan
Kramer), German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (2001), trans-
lated into German (2003) and French (2005); (ed.) A Companion to
World War One (2010); (ed. and with Robert Gerwarth), War in Peace:
Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (2012). He is cur-
rently working on a history of the French experiences of the Great War.

ix
x    Editors and Contributors

Contributors

Philip de Souza is Associate Professor of Classics at University College

Dublin, where he is a member of the Humanities Institute and the
Centre for War Studies. His books include: Piracy in the Graeco-Roman
World (1999); The Peloponnesian War (2002); The Ancient World at
War: A Global History (2008); War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval
History (co-edited with John France 2008); and The Sea in History: The
Ancient World (co-edited with Pascal Arnaud 2017).
Emilie Dosquet is a D.Phil. student in Early Modern History at the
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. She is currently finish-
ing her research on the ‘Desolation of the Palatinate (1688–1689)’ at
the Maison Française d’Oxford (where she won a research prize) and the
Faculty of History of the University of Oxford (where she is an academic
visitor).
Jane Finucane is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of
South Wales, UK. As a historian of the long seventeenth century, she has
a particular interest in the formation and impact of intellectual and infor-
mation networks across Britain and Europe in times of war and social
disruption.
Joshua R. Hall recently completed a Ph.D. in Ancient History
at Cardiff University, UK. His research focuses on warfare in the
Mediterranean world through the fourth century BCE.
Ivana Maček is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the
Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her
major publications are Sarajevo under Siege: Anthropology in Wartime
(2009) and an edited volume Engaging Violence: Trauma, Memory and
Representation (2014). Her writing also addresses Swedes’ engagements
in global war-zones, intergenerational transmission of experiences of war
among Bosnians in Sweden, and anthropological methods.
Alan V. Murray is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Studies at the University
of Leeds, UK. He has researched and published extensively on medieval
warfare, the crusades and the Latin East. His works include The Franks
in Outremer: Studies in the Latin Principalities of Syria and Palestine,
1099–1187 (2015) and the four-volume The Crusades: An Encyclopedia
 Editors and Contributors    xi

(2006). He is currently working on the history of tournaments, and on

the conversion and conquest of the medieval Baltic region.
Fergus Robson lectures on Napoleonic France and Europe, and nine-
teenth-century European history, at Trinity College Dublin and the
National University of Ireland Maynooth. He works on resistance to the
French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire in rural France, the emer-
gence of French identity and militarised cultural encounters during the
French Revolutionary Wars. He is Associate Director of the Centre for
War Studies at Trinity College Dublin.
Alexandra Wachter holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of
London, Queen Mary and is working as a researcher at Österreichische
Gesellschaft für Zeitgeschichte at the University of Vienna. Her inter-
ests include Soviet and post-Soviet history, with a particular focus on
memory cultures, as well as on space and architecture. Her Ph.D. thesis
explores coping strategies of survivors of the Siege of Leningrad in Soviet
and post-Soviet society. She was also co-curator of the exhibition ‘Soviet
Modernism 1955–1991. Unknown history’ (Vienna, 2012–13) and co-
editor of the book with the same title. She is currently working on the
interdisciplinary research project ‘L’viv. Museum of War’ where she is
researching memory cultures and museum exhibits related to the Second
World War in L’viv.
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Vosstaniia Square, St. Petersburg with obelisk (1985)

and the title GOROD-GEROI LENINGRAD
(Hero City Leningrad) on a roof-top, 2011 42
Fig. 3.2 Map of Vasil’evskii district with notes by Liudmila P 50
Fig. 4.1 Arras under siege in the seventeenth century 70
Fig. 6.1 Area of the French operations, 1688–89. The maps have
been created in collaboration with Teva Meyer, PhD
in Geography and Geopolotics (Université Paris 8
Vincennes-Saint-Denis) 110
Fig. 6.2 French Occupation of the Rhine Territories
at the end of 1688 Campaign 112
Fig. 6.3 The Capture of Philisbourg by the army of the King, commanded
by Monseigneur le Dauphin, the XXX October
M.DC.LXXXVIII. Paris: Jean Moncornet, 1689 114
Fig. 6.4 French appropriation and exploitation of the occupied
Rhine territories 118
Fig. 6.5 The newly awakened incendiary LaBroche (n.p., 1689) 119
Fig. 6.6 True account and brief presentation of the abominable
incendiaries of the French Brigadier Melac
(Nuremburg, c. 1689), German broadsheet with
wood engraving (detail). Alamy 125

xiii
xiv    List of Figures

Fig. 6.7 Two French generals, German press-clipping

(detail), 1919 126
Fig. 6.8 Speyer on fire, German etching published in a German
periodical entitled Europäischer Mercurius ([Nuremberg?],
May 1689) 129
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Alex Dowdall and John Horne

Siege is a form of war once more in the headlines with the conflict in
the Middle East. The Syrian city of Aleppo was split in two for four
years from 2012 to 2016, each half besieged by the forces of the other
side—the regime of Bashar al-Asaad (backed by Iran and Russia) and
the diverse coalition that emerged from the ‘Arab Spring’ and the rise of
Islamic fundamentalism. As this book goes to press that siege has ended
amid a welter of accusations by each party that the other targeted inno-
cent civilians. The world watched the harrowing spectacle of starving and
traumatised people trying to escape the ruins of eastern Aleppo into the
care of the United Nations without retribution (so far) against those who
had targeted them. The desolation they left behind was not just human
suffering, but also the destruction of one of the most important medi-
eval Arabic cities, its monuments, mosques and churches in ruins. Other
sieges have marred the war-torn landscape of Iraq as well as Syria (Homs,
Mosul)—a reminder that for all the destructiveness of modern firepower,

A. Dowdall (*)
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: alex.dowdall@manchester.ac.uk
J. Horne
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: jhorne@tcd.ie

© The Author(s) 2018 1

A. Dowdall and J. Horne (eds.), Civilians Under Siege from Sarajevo to
Troy, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58532-5_1
2 A. Dowdall and J. Horne

sieges (often of considerable duration) remain integral to warfare as they

have been throughout the ages.
Not only are sieges and the fate of civilians caught up in them imme-
morial, but they have shaped the imagination as well as the experience of
war. The founding epic of Western literature, Homer’s Iliad, recounts
several months near the end of a ten-year siege that concluded with the
sack of Troy as the inhabitants, with few exceptions, were enslaved or
put to the sword and the city pillaged and burned. Among those who
escaped was Aeneas, bearing his aged father Anchises, who according
to Virgil’s Aeneid (looking back at the fall of Troy from the first cen-
tury BCE) went on to found Rome, a city that also had its own litany of
sieges. Sieges, in short, and the fate of the inhabitants who are caught up
in them and suffer their consequences, have in the Western tradition at
least occupied a central place in the art and literature as well as the annals
of war.
The strictly military reasons for the perennity and importance of
sieges seem fairly clear. Ever since warriors fortified strongholds that
could threaten enemy forces in the field and ever since urban centres
developed as the locus of economic and political power, both became
logical targets of attack. Quite apart from the fact that taking major
centres was often the goal of a campaign, making their defence a pri-
ority, the use of strongholds to control extensive tracts of territory or
to provide refuge to forces under pressure gave sieges a broad strategic
importance.1 Because the defence of such strongholds was static, how-
ever, attacks on them produced a type of warfare that stood out, and
continues to stand out, from the manoeuvre of armies in the field or
from the harassment of guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency against
an extended population.2 Concentration in space and the polarisation of
attack and defence mark out the siege.
Further characteristics emerge under closer scrutiny. One is the dis-
tinction between direct and indirect attack on the part of those laying
the siege. Direct assault is the quickest means of reducing a stronghold.
But the strength of the latter’s defence and the quantity of its supplies
(or its capacity to be resupplied) help determine the balance of advan-
tage between the two parties. The indirect means of starving the enemy
out may prove a more effective form of attack in the longer term—or
at any rate the prerequisite for a successful assault. To these two means
of attack one should add the no less classic weapon of treachery and
trickery in order to weaken morale, provoke internal division or lead the
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

defenders into fatal missteps. A wooden horse, after all, was the undo-
ing of Troy. Yet, it is by no means certain that the ultimate advantage
lies with the besieger rather than the besieged. The former requires more
soldiers than the latter, since the point of defensive works is to econo-
mise manpower, and the larger forces deployed by the besieger cannot
then be used elsewhere. In the end, besieging forces may be seen off by
the strength of the defence or besieged in turn by relieving forces. As
in other forms of warfare, there lies a third option between victory and
defeat—negotiated surrender.
The special place of civilians in sieges compared to other kinds of
warfare is self-evident with towns and cities, which by definition con-
tain large non-military populations. But in the case of forts and castles,
inhabitants of surrounding areas may well seek protection and thus
become caught up in a siege. By its very nature, siege warfare exposes
civilians to the risk of particular forms of violence—such as bombard-
ment, hunger, disease, assault, rape, slavery, pillage, destruction of homes
and buildings and the desecration of cultural and religious sites. Other
types of combat may result in some or all of these. But sieges place civil-
ians at the heart of battle more consistently and in greater numbers than
other kinds of warfare—at least until the onset of bombing from the air
or the emergence of modern genocides.
It is this prominence of non-combatants in siege warfare (or at any
rate of those with no official status as warriors) that we propose to study
in this volume. Recently, historians of different eras have devoted a good
deal of attention to the effects of military violence on civilians, including
urban populations.3 Yet there has been little recognition of siege war-
fare as a discrete type of military engagement that makes civilians espe-
cially vulnerable, and therefore of the questions that stem from this.
Collectively, the authors of the chapters presented here contend that
the importance of sieges extends far beyond their tactical and strategic
value for armies in the field. Sieges have been the sites where the rela-
tionships between civilians and war have been defined to their fullest
extent. The book therefore raises questions about the roles of civilians
during sieges—as victims, particularly during the bloody massacres in
which sieges often end, and as active participants through their attempts
to support or undermine military forces. It also asks about the codifica-
tion of laws and customs of siege warfare; daily interactions between sol-
diers and civilians; the broader symbolic meanings of sieges for the wars
of which they form a part; their place in historical memory; and the ways
4 A. Dowdall and J. Horne

in which civilian survivors have dealt with siege trauma. In addressing

these issues, the book suggests that long before the ‘total wars’ of the
twentieth century, sieges eroded the distinctions between the civilian and
military worlds, and ensured that non-combatants were both victims and
participants of conflicts.
In order to pose these questions and to begin to address the gap in
our knowledge about civilians under siege, the book adopts a distinc-
tive, regressive method. As with any historical inquiry, there is a danger
in assuming evolutionary logic with the attendant risk of teleology (post
hoc ergo propter hoc—subsequent, therefore consequent). The dangers
are all the greater when the subject in question is one which, while pre-
cise (the fate of civilians), relates to a phenomenon that has occurred
with varying dimensions in different historical contexts and with such
fluctuating importance throughout history. By working in reverse order
from the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, for four years from
1992–1995, during which civilians with scant protection lived under
artillery fire from the Bosnian Serb forces in the surrounding moun-
tains, to the siege of Troy in the second millennium BCE, which was
rooted in historical reality but assumed mythological status in the lit-
erature of classical Greece, any idea of causal relationships is disrupted.
Instead, we gain a set of studies, each one of which poses fresh issues
precisely because its place in the sequence is not consequential and all of
which invite comparison with each other. The intention is to generate
questions and identify arguments about civilian experience that pay due
regard to the differences in form and importance taken by siege warfare
across history.
Those differences call for brief comment. If sieges figured in classical
Greece, they were the dominant form of warfare from the late Roman
to the high medieval periods and again in the early modern period, as
the offensive capacity of the gunpowder revolution met its answer in the
new ‘artillery fortresses’ pioneered in early sixteenth-century Italy. These
culminated in Vauban’s forts on the expanded eastern frontier of Louis
XIV’s France in the late seventeenth century.4 Larger field armies in the
eighteenth century and the anticipation of the ‘nation in arms’ during
the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars swung the pendulum
back to the war of movement. Yet the nineteenth century saw a contin-
ued duel between improved fortress design and more destructive fire-
power, giving rise to important sieges not only in Europe (Sebastopol
in the Crimean War in 1854–1855, Paris in the Franco-Prussian War
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

in 1870, Edirne/Adrianople in the First Balkan War in 1912–1913,

Przemyśl in Galicia in 1914–1915, at the start of the First World War)
but also in America (Richmond, Vicksburg and Atlanta in the American
Civil War).
The limits of space and our own knowledge have led us to focus on
the ‘Western way of war’, but we are acutely aware that sieges also played
a role in warfare outside Europe. Chap. 8 by Alan Murray on the siege
of Jerusalem in 1099 and Chap. 5 by Fergus Robson on the French and
British expeditions to Egypt and Palestine at the turn of the nineteenth
century allow us to look at how Westerners treated civilians in sieges in
two non-Western settings. But this theme becomes even more signifi-
cant during the zenith of Western colonialism. From Delhi and Lucknow
during the Indian ‘mutiny’ in 1857 to the siege of General Gordon in
Khartoum in 1881–1882 (and the subsequent reduction of the Sudan
by Kitchener) or Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, sieges
marked the irruption of European colonialism into Asia and Africa and
the violent reactions by indigenous peoples against it. In 1904–1905, the
Japanese dramatically stepped on stage as the first Asian power to mod-
ernise its military with a protracted siege of the Russians at Port Arthur.
How ‘indigenous’ and Western forces treated the civilians of the other
side in these colonial sieges is an important dimension of the subject that
others will hopefully take up.
The twentieth century complicates the picture for reasons of scale and
definition. Paris with two million inhabitants in 1870 anticipated the
potential size of civilian populations caught up by siege in an urbanising
world. There were three million in Leningrad in 1941–1944, including
some 300,000 refugees, and up to two million in Aleppo in 2012–2016.
Both these sieges still conformed to the classic definition of a strong
point or defended city surrounded and mostly cut off from resupply
(Leningrad famously could be supported in winter by ice roads over
Lake Ladoga and there was limited aid from the air in both cases). Both
were subject to starvation as well as direct assault. But air power reduced
the distinction between besieged cities under fire and the civilian popu-
lation of an entire region or country which could be targeted by mass
bombing, as happened widely in the Second World War and Vietnam.5
The same was true of naval blockade. This was an ancient compo-
nent of siege warfare: it contributed to the fall of Calais to the English in
1346–1347 and, when deployed on a novel scale during the Napoleonic
Wars, it helped isolate the continent from outside supply. Yet its
6 A. Dowdall and J. Horne

implications became altogether different when applied to industrial and

urban societies that relied on a global division of production and trade.
The indirect dimension of siege warfare—depriving the besieged of vital
supplies—could now be attempted for a country or even a continent, as
during the two world wars. Aerial bombardment (destroying cities from
above) and continental naval blockade (starving civilians out) thus trans-
lated key features of siege warfare to civilians not under close siege and
so to entire societies.
This was also the case with the siege as defensive combat.
Traditionally, the cost of fortifications limited strong-points to individual
fortresses or defended towns, although the accumulation of these, as in
the southern Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (a
highly urbanised area for the pre-industrial world), might well amount to
a defensive system. However, the kind of people’s war opened up by the
French Revolution meant that field works (an ancient form of defensive
warfare) could now be deployed thanks to mass armies and field artillery
as an extended defensive system, amounting to a kind of siege warfare
over substantial rural zones. These might even incorporate towns and
prior strong-points as subordinate elements. This was partly what hap-
pened between Washington DC and Richmond during the American
Civil War (the battle of Fredericksburg, the sieges of Petersburg and
Richmond) though the lesson went largely unlearned in Europe.6 It
is what occurred to general surprise in Europe in 1914–1915, not just
in the west, but also on the successive ‘fronts’ (the term in its current
sense dates from that moment) that locked Europe into a mutual siege
as each side sought both to defend itself and to attack the other and also
to deprive the latter of vital supplies by naval blockade and unrestricted
submarine warfare.7 In these ways, therefore, siege warfare and its effects
on the civilians caught up in it have influenced warfare more generally in
the contemporary age.
Overall, this book is structured around four main themes. The first
concerns the definitions and limits of sieges. Certain features are com-
mon to all sieges since the latter constitute a form of positional war rather
than warfare of movement and tend to focus on fixed sites of actual or
symbolic power. Yet as we have noted, there is always a relationship not
only to the wider campaign but also to the broader territory in which
they occur. Emilie Dosquet in Chap. 6, for instance, discusses how, dur-
ing Louis XIV’s wars in the late seventeenth century, sieges and posi-
tional warfare were elements of a wider strategy of ‘aggressive defence’.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

They were inextricably linked to partisan warfare, or ‘small war’. In

many cases, once besieged locations in the Palatinate had capitulated, the
siege was inverted and spilled out into the surrounding countryside as
towns became bases for French raiding parties—with devastating effects
on unprotected civilian communities. Fergus Robson analyses similar
developments in late-eighteenth-century Calabria and Puglia, where the
French Revolutionary armies witnessed, and participated in, the melding
of siege warfare and guerrilla warfare. Alex Dowdall in Chap. 4 shows
how, during the First World War, opposed lines of trenches spread across
vast tracts of Europe and, in the manner already indicated, combined
with aerial bombing, long-range artillery fire, economic blockade and
unrestricted submarine warfare to ensure that many Europeans expe-
rienced something of the conditions of siege warfare. Siege, in other
words, is a kind of combat that even in earlier periods, and certainly more
recently, extends more widely than at first might seem to be the case. We
must be aware that what happens outside the defences of a particular
stronghold may be as important as what happens inside.
The second theme consists of the distinctive types of violence that
siege warfare inflicts on civilians—ranging from indirect, economic vio-
lence, and in particular attempts to starve besieged locations into submis-
sion, to bombardment and outright massacre. Were certain conditions
more or less likely to result in violence? How sieges end is a vital fac-
tor, but also a variable, for the fate of civilians. Massacres of civilians
have always been common when strong-points fall. But what conditions
precipitate them? How important are factors such as race, religion and
cultural difference in determining the outcomes of sieges? The frenzied
onslaught that accompanied the fall of Jerusalem in 1099, discussed by
Alan Murray, or the sieges undertaken by Napoleon’s army in Egypt, a
force isolated in a strange and distant land, described by Fergus Robson,
suggest that inter-religious siege warfare outside Europe was particularly
brutal, especially if the successful besiegers felt themselves vulnerable
to the surrounding population. The ferocity with which British forces
destroyed Delhi after the siege of 1857, following the ‘mutiny’ of the
indigenous Sepoys and the complicity of the last Mughal emperor, bears
out the same point.8 Yet as Ivana Maček and Alexandra Wachter show in
their studies of Sarajevo (Chap. 2) and Leningrad (Chap. 3), the racially
motivated violence that has so often characterised twentieth-century war-
fare in Europe, in sieges as elsewhere, was no less brutal.
8 A. Dowdall and J. Horne

It is all the more striking, therefore, to find as Jane Finucane shows

in Chap. 7, that the conflict which stood for the following two centu-
ries as the mythic embodiment of brutality towards civilians in an era of
religious conflict, the Thirty Years War, was in reality a good deal more
nuanced regarding the treatment of civilians in sieges. This is not to deny
the slaughter when the Count of Tilly besieged and took Protestant
Magdeburg for the Catholic League in 1631. But as Finucane suggests,
this may have been untypical of what actually happened to civilians when
towns fell while thriving as the mythical embodiment of the worst that
could befall them. In reality, at least in the earlier phases of the Thirty
Years War, civilians seem often to have escaped such devastation or to
have experienced it only to a limited degree, especially when prolonged
resistance encouraged a negotiated outcome. Comparing these cases
thus enables us to consider whether extreme violence against civilians is
a characteristic feature of all or most sieges, or not, and if so, to what
extent siege warfare really affects non-combatants more than other types
of conflict.
The different cases under consideration also expose the array of moti-
vations underlying the use of violence against civilians and the reactions
of the latter. Sometimes, civilians were deliberately and consciously tar-
geted, as attacking forces sought to crush the morale and resistance of
the entire besieged population, combatant and non-combatant alike.
At other times, attacking armies considered civilian casualties merely as
collateral damage in their attempts to reduce defending garrisons. Yet
the violence that civilians experienced during sieges helped to eradi-
cate distinctions between combatant and non-combatant, and between
the civilian and the military worlds. Did civilians on some occasions
feel that siege conditions, and especially the threat of extreme violence,
transformed them into combatants, as seems to have been the case in
Jerusalem at the turn of the twelfth century or Leningrad in the twen-
tieth? This requires us to consider whether civilians were not merely the
victims but also the perpetrators of violence during sieges. Indeed, in cer-
tain scenarios civilians were to be found not only among the besieged
but also the attackers, as with the Crusaders who advanced on Jerusalem
in 1099. On that occasion, the nature of the expedition and the predic-
ament of the defenders meant that all involved on both sides, whether
warriors or not, were obliged to take part in the fighting. Moments such
as this reveal the difficulties involved in maintaining a stable definition
of the term ‘civilian’ in the context of siege warfare, the nature of which
sometimes dictates that all concerned take up arms or otherwise help out.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Yet despite the recurrence of this tendency across the ages, contem-
poraries continually tried to draw a distinction between combatant and
non-combatant, and to ensure that certain protections were granted to
civilians during sieges. This brings us to our third theme—how the cus-
toms, norms and laws of siege warfare have been produced, defined and
changed over time. Perceptions of acceptable and unacceptable behav-
iour are, and always have been, a central dynamic of siege warfare. In
ancient Greece, as described by Joshua Hall, religious notions of sacri-
lege regulated siege warfare and dictated that those seeking sanctuary in
temples and other religious buildings receive protection. And as Philip
de Souza argues, the extreme treatment that might be meted out to
the population of a besieged city that held out did not necessarily jus-
tify its application—as the Athenians who rowed back on the destruction
of Mytilene during the Peloponnesian War realised. In Europe during
the Middle Ages, religious conventions derived from the philosophy of
Augustine of Hippo focused on the concept of ‘just war’ and were con-
cerned with the circumstances that rendered war appropriate or oblig-
atory for Christians. The focus was on the moral justifications for war
rather than its appropriate conduct. Indeed, Augustine’s philosophy even
implied that in a war undertaken righteously, any type of violence was
acceptable. Nonetheless, the various ‘Truces of God’ promulgated in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, followed by the Innovamus set forth at
the Third Lateran Council of 1179, aimed to categorise those persons
immune from military assault—churchmen, merchants and peasants
involved in farming.9
From the early modern period, legal theorists including Alberico
Gentilli and Hugo Grotius were instrumental in further codifying the
laws of war, based on moral consensus and conceptions of natural law.
In his monumental De jure Belli ac Pacis (The Rights of War and Peace),
Grotius sought both to identify the legitimate causes of just war and to
regulate its conduct once begun in accordance with the laws of nature.
This included exempting women, children, farmers and merchants from
attack, as well as giving quarter, both during battles and sieges.10 Many
of the writings of the early modern period formed the basis of the mod-
ern laws of war, as laid down in the Hague Conventions of 1907, the
UN Conventions after the Second World War, and elsewhere.11 All of
these efforts to regulate warfare were deeply concerned with sieges,
given their large impact on civilian populations. This is not to say that
the evolving laws of war ever aspired to offer absolute protection to civil-
ians during sieges. On the contrary, during the Middle Ages and the
10 A. Dowdall and J. Horne

early modern period massacre and pillage were deemed perfectly accept-
able, even expected, when garrisons rejected negotiated conclusions
and forced attackers to take a town by storm, or when non-combatants
participated in the town’s defence (though as Jane Finucane shows, this
does not necessarily mean that such devastation took place). The 1907
Hague Conventions outlawed such practices, but not the attacker’s right
to bombard defended towns. During the First World War, many cited
the legality of bombing defended locations when attempting to justify
aerial bombing raids far from the lines given the fact that in this ‘con-
tinental siege’ all towns were theoretically defended. Siege warfare was
thus a highly regulated, even ritualised form of combat, yet also one in
which civilian casualties were sometimes deemed acceptable.
Yet, as the chapters in this volume demonstrate, these rules, regula-
tions and rituals were frequently broken, and civilians often suffered
far more than even the laws and customs of war envisaged. In ancient
Greece, sanctuary was not always respected, especially following con-
tentious sieges when civilians participated in the defence of their town.
As Alan Murray points out, the crusader massacre of the population of
Jerusalem in 1099 may have been acceptable under the conventions of
war at the time, given that the city did not surrender and was taken by
storm. Yet there is no evidence that the crusaders ever offered surrender
terms to the city. During French operations in the late-seventeenth-cen-
tury Palatinate, as Emilie Dosquet shows, laws and customs of siege war-
fare were sometimes respected, with garrisons and besiegers negotiating
mutually acceptable surrender terms. But during ‘after-siege’ operations,
such rules more often broke down. Raiding parties seeking to exact con-
tributions theoretically required official orders to carry out their activi-
ties; in practice they did not always receive such orders, and from the
perspective of the civilian populations concerned, there was little differ-
ence anyway between officially sanctioned and unofficial violence. The
rules of siege warfare were therefore often at the forefront of the minds
of participants, although the content of these rules varied greatly over
time, as did the extent to which they protected civilians and the rigour
with which they were applied.
Finally, this book explores the memories and cultural representa-
tions of civilians under siege. The cases of Sarajevo and Leningrad reveal
the traumatic memories which sieges have inflicted on civilian popula-
tions. In the former, as Ivana Maček argues in relation to the children
of Sarajevan refugees growing up in contemporary Sweden, memories
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

of the siege have been passed down and, in the process, transformed
from one generation to the next. In the case of one family, the parents
did not hide their experiences of the siege from their daughters, but at
least sought to shield them from the worst of their traumatic memories.
This, combined with their daughters’ responses to attitudes towards the
Bosnian war and siege of Sarajevo prevalent in Swedish society, helped
create ‘family memories’, wherein emotionally charged experiences dur-
ing the siege are turned into moral lessons and the parents’ nostalgia
mixes with the children’s fantasies. What is notable in Maček’s case is
that the children she has studied display few signs of ‘secondary trauma-
tisation’, in contrast to the children of siege survivors in Sarajevo itself,
where the phenomenon is common. This, perhaps, is due to the fact that
the memories of the siege of Sarajevo which she studies were formed in
the context of Sweden’s open and pluralist democratic culture, rather
than the politically tense climate of contemporary Bosnia.
In this respect, the remembering studied by Maček also stands in con-
trast to that of the siege of Leningrad. As Alexandra Wachter shows, sur-
vivors of this siege struggled to form their memories in the contentious
political atmosphere of the Soviet Union after the Second World War and
then of Russia after the fall of Communism. In the immediate aftermath
of the siege, a heroic narrative of resistance and victory was propagated
before the Soviet leadership in Moscow, wary of the popularity of local
party leaders in Leningrad, actively repressed commemoration. Official
commemoration, and the narrative of heroism, started up again during
Khruschev’s thaw, when youth organisations, in particular, were tasked
with presenting the siege as an ideal topic for patriotic education. It
was presented as a difficult time which Leningraders nevertheless mas-
tered. Although there were some attempts to analyse the siege in a more
objective light in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the
patriotic narrative of resistance and heroism continues to this day and,
as Wachter shows, actively shapes the memories of survivors. Those who
experienced the siege feel compelled to take their recollections from an
official canon of sorts and repress more troubling and traumatic memo-
ries which, nonetheless, emerge at unexpected moments.
Although the categories of trauma and memory are applied with more
difficulty to the early modern, medieval and classical periods, we can still
identify the central role that older sieges have played in the ‘self-memo-
ries’ of towns. Successful resistance or, conversely, destruction and mas-
sacre are lasting images and, in certain cases, the treatment of civilians
12 A. Dowdall and J. Horne

under historic sieges has generated mythic meanings for subsequent gen-
erations, as in the case of the Thirty Years War for nineteenth-century
Germany. The effects of siege warfare on civilians have thus produced
important cultural legacies, as illustrated by the bombarded towns of
northern France during the First World War. Here, civilians looked to
the histories of their own towns during early modern and medieval sieges
for moral lessons—to seek reassurance and models of action. The sieges
of classical antiquity with which this collection ends, and especially the
siege of Troy, have also assumed mythic dimensions and provided poster-
ity with vast, and potent, cultural repertoires. Indeed, it may be, as Philip
de Souza suggests in the final chapter, that the extraordinary literary
focus given by classical authors, and especially Euripides in his tragedies,
to the fate of non-combatants, and especially to women and children, in
the cataclysm that engulfed the Trojans, helped turn innocent besieged
civilians into the quintessential victims of war for subsequent millennia—
until they were replaced in the twentieth century by those of the even
greater cataclysm of genocide.
Yet as we started out by observing, sieges have nonetheless remained
a key feature of war in the contemporary period, and the civilians caught
up in them (whether active participants or not) still embody the collat-
eral suffering visited by war on those not centrally engaged in combat.
In early 2016, the UN estimated that 400,000 people were living in 15
besieged locations during the Syrian Civil War without proper access to
food or medical aid. Other estimates put the figure as high as 600,000.
Abdullah al-Khatib survived one such siege in the Yarmouk refugee
camp, which was surrounded by pro-Assad forces for three years. He
summarised the brutal logic underlying these military tactics and the par-
ticularly acute effects they have on civilians: ‘Through the sieges, they
[the pro-government forces] are pressuring the civilians so they in turn
pressure the rebels and blame them for the siege. This is despite the fact
that the ratio of armed rebels to civilians in these areas is usually one to
ten, so the primary victims are the civilians.’ In January 2016, reports
emerged of the particularly horrific conditions prevailing in the town of
Madaya, several dozen miles outside Damascus in southern Syria. This
town of 30,000 people had been blockaded since July 2015 by pro-gov-
ernment forces, in retaliation for similar blockades carried out by rebel
troops on the towns of Fua and Kefraya, further north. Images of ema-
ciated children caused international outcry and prompted the leader
of the British Liberal Democratic Party, Tim Farron, to condemn ‘this
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

medieval-style siege of thousands of people’ being undertaken by the

Assad regime.12 The history of siege warfare from Sarajevo to Troy, or
indeed from Aleppo to Troy, indicates, however, that there is nothing
‘medieval’ at all about such brutal tactics.

Notes
1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret
(1832; repr. Princeton, 1976), book 6, Chaps. 10–13, 393–414.
2. Brian Hughes and Fergus Robson (eds), Unconventional Warfare from
Antiquity to the Present Day (Basingstoke, 2017) looks at this parallel
theme in a companion volume.
3. Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and Hannah Smith (eds), Civilians and
War in Europe, 1618–1815 (Liverpool, 2012); Alan Forrest, Karen
Hagemann and Jane Rendall (eds), Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians:
Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,
1790–1820 (Basingstoke, 2009); Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering
(eds), Endangered Cities: Military Power and Urban Societies in the
Era of the World Wars (Leiden, 2004); Stefan Goebel and Derek Keene
(eds), Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and
Commemorations of Total War (Farnham, 2011); Mark Grimsley and
Clifford J. Rogers (eds), Civilians in the Path of War (Lincoln, 2002).
4. Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare
(Cambridge, 1995), 106–117.
5. Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young (eds), Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth
Century History (New York and London, 2009).
6. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York,
1988), 571–574, 756–757, 844–847.
7. John Horne, ‘Le Front’, in Vu du Front. Représenter la Grande Guerre,
ed. Sarah Houssin-Dreyfuss (Paris, 2014), 17–28.
8. William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857 (London,
2006), 346–392.
9. Michael Bryant, A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the
Present (London, 2016), 53–58.
10. Ibid., 99–104.
11. Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare: The Modern History of the
International Law of Armed Conflicts (London, 1983).
12. ‘Syrian Regime to Allow Aid into Besieged, Starving Town’, Guardian
Online, 7 January 2016, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/07/
syria-to-allow-aid-into-besieged-town-where-thousands-face-starvation
(accessed 20 March 2017).
 CHAPTER 2

Transmission and Transformation:

Memories of the Siege of Sarajevo

Ivana Maček

More than 20 years have passed since the Dayton Peace Agreement of
1995 for Bosnia and Hercegovina, which began the end of the four-
year-long Siege of Sarajevo. Three-quarters of the pre-war population
of Bosnia and Hercegovina, around three million, fled or were driven
from their homes, and of these around one million left for ‘third coun-
tries’ outside the former Yugoslavia.1 This brought a complicated and
fragile peace for both citizens who stayed in the country and those who
found refuge abroad. ‘By 1994, half of Sarajevo’s 600,000 pre-war resi-
dents had left the city. Another 150,000 “displaced persons” had arrived,
mostly Muslims from villages and small towns in eastern Bosnia’.2 While
some refugees in third countries were obliged to return to Bosnia and
Hercegovina after the war (Germany, for instance, had a policy of com-
pulsory return), others, including refugees in Sweden, were left with a
choice. Some people returned to their homes; others resettled in ter-
ritories that were now under the military and administrative control of
‘their’ ethnonational group.3 The vast majority of refugees in Sweden,

This project was financed by the Swedish Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens

jubileumsfond).

I. Maček (*)
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
e-mail: ivana.macek@socant.su.se

© The Author(s) 2018 15

A. Dowdall and J. Horne (eds.), Civilians Under Siege from Sarajevo to
Troy, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58532-5_2
16 I. Maček

however, chose to remain, as they felt that they had better opportunities
there than if they were to return to Bosnia and Hercegovina.4
In 2013–2015, I followed the families of more than 20 people who left
Sarajevo for Sweden because of the siege. I was interested to see what signifi-
cance experiences of the siege now have in the lives of the parents who were
there, as well as for their children, most of whom were born in Sweden.
In this chapter, I have chosen to focus on one family in order to examine
important phenomena connected with the intergenerational transmission
and transformation of the parents’ experiences to the next generation.5
Comparison with the results of a similar study done a few years ago
in Sarajevo suggests that living in Sweden shapes the ways the siege is
remembered and understood today.6 Another important factor is how the
siege is narrated.7 As I myself did anthropological fieldwork in besieged
Sarajevo, my interlocutors knew that I had experienced the siege, albeit
from a different position than themselves. For the grown-ups, this fact
connected us through common experience. For the children, I occupied
a position similar to their parents. The fact that I come from the for-
mer Yugoslavia, have lived in Sweden since 1990 and have a son born in
Sweden after the war also made our life experiences similar. I believe that
these commonalities opened doors that would otherwise have remained
closed and enabled me to offer an account of the transmission and trans-
formation of parents’ experiences of the siege of Sarajevo in Sweden.

The Porous Siege

The siege of Sarajevo lasted from spring 1992 to spring 1996. During
the ensuing 20 years, the majority of pre-war residents who fled have
not returned permanently. When I talked to Sarajevans in Croatia in the
1990s, as well as during the past few years in Sweden, many said that
they left ‘on the last airplane’ or ‘with the last bus convoy’. The flight of
Sarajevans from the town in early April 1992 was substantial, helped by
what was left of the former Yugoslav army, but people also left later, when
the front lines surrounding the town had been established and the siege
was tighter.8 As one young woman I befriended during the siege told me
in 1994, ‘anyone who wanted to could leave’. In other words, the siege
was porous: people could move in and out, albeit with difficulty. If you
wanted to leave, you needed good contacts with all three armed groups
involved: the HVO (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane, Croat Defence Council,
Bosnian Croats’ Army), the ARS (Armija Republike Srpske, Bosnian Serbs’
 2 TRANSMISSION AND TRANSFORMATION … 17

Army) and the ARBiH (Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine, Army

of the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the army of the Bosniak-
dominated government).9 Paying bribes to all three was often necessary.
The porousness of the siege also meant that goods could pass into the
town, creating a flourishing black market.10 Especially after the opening of
the tunnel under the airport runway, which was under the control of the
Muslim-dominated government of Sarajevo, opportunities for relatively
safe government-sponsored departures and returns were considerably
increased.11 Finally, one of the harshest aspects of siege life was the rup-
ture of communications with the outer world. The telephone lines were
cut, and there were few expensive satellite phones and fax machines; ama-
teur radio broadcasters had only a few crackling connections; some mes-
sages passed through the Red Cross on their standard-form letters; some
private parcels came through humanitarian organizations.12
In many families, the women left first, taking the children with them,
while the men stayed. Men had a military obligation and needed extra
papers to leave. Moreover, people reasoned that hostilities would not
last longer than the summer, so someone should remain to protect the
apartment from being occupied by refugees and to hold onto the fam-
ily’s position in local society. When it became clear that the hostilities
were prolonged and unpredictable, and that participation in armed units
meant not only defending the hometown but also being sent to front-
lines elsewhere in Bosnia and Hercegovina, fighting a war that most saw
as senseless and not in their own interests, the men also began to leave.13
Most of the families that I have met in Sweden today left the besieged
town in this way and settled in Stockholm, the Swedish capital.
In order to understand the ways in which the siege has been transmit-
ted and transformed in the Swedish context 20 years after it ended, I take a
close look at a middle-class urban family. Vesna and Nenad were both born
in Sarajevo; they were already a couple before the war; when the war started,
they had just begun their first jobs after completing their studies and were
still living with their respective parents.14 After leaving the town separately,
they settled in Sweden where they married and had two daughters.

The Perilous Siege

The younger daughter, Daniela, aged 15, knew very little about the war
because, as she told me, her parents did not talk much about it when she
was a child and had only just started talking more now that she was older.
18 I. Maček

When she was younger she imagined the war as constant shooting,
but now that she thought about it, she realized that there could not have
been shooting all the time, and she could not really understand how life
functioned in wartime. Regarding the siege of Sarajevo, she knew from
her grandmother that they had neither food nor electricity and that her
grandfather worked as a doctor in the hospital. About her parents’ life in
wartime she knew nothing, except that ‘it was not good’ and that ‘it was
not easy’. She was slightly embarrassed about not knowing more. When
I asked her to try to imagine how it was for them, she said that they
must have felt a lot of fear and discomfort. Her mother left, she thought,
because she could live a better life in Sweden. When I asked why her
father stayed longer, she said that he probably thought that he could live
there but after some time he realised it was impossible.
Although Daniela’s knowledge of the siege was very limited and
mostly generic, it included both transmissions and transformations of
some key themes in this family’s experiences: the danger and low stand-
ard of living, and the sense that the situation was surreal and incompre-
hensible. She was not aware of the particulars of her parents’ experiences
during the siege, or of why and how they decided, attempted and finally
managed to leave.
Her older sister, Ida, aged 18, knew more about these themes. She
said she knew some ‘details’ about the siege, but what she actually knew
was mostly what had happened to her parents, not how it happened
and how they felt about it. By referring to her parents’ experiences as
‘details’, she meant that she did not have a broader picture of the siege.
When the parents, sometimes both and sometimes individually, told me
about the events that Ida knew about, their stories were richer and often
had a different focus. I call these narrated memories ‘family stories’ and
analyse whether and how they have been transmitted and transformed.15
While Daniela struggled to understand what it meant to live with
intermittent, but lethal, shooting, Ida must have heard a story about a
neighbour who was killed during a heavy bombardment in front of the
apartment block where her mother lived. ‘Mum and Dad did tell me …
How their neighbours were shot in front of them and how the grenades
were falling constantly. I mean, in Sarajevo you can still see. All that is
not yet repaired, there is still a lot of [damage] there, the holes.’
In the parents’ version of this family story, it was a rather more absurd
occasion. The young couple was in town and came back to where Vesna
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
lain for years within the thick volume. They might have
been there when Professor Lavers bought the encyclopædia.
Michael knew that he bought many of his books second-
hand. Besides, if he had left the notes there, they would
have been missed, and questions asked and search made.
Evidently no one had missed the money.

Why, then, Michael asked himself, need he proclaim what he

had found? If a man found a sum of money, he had a right
to keep it till some one claimed it, and could prove that it
was his. If Mrs. Lavers came and told him that she had lost
this money, he would restore it to her at once. But till then
he had a perfect right to retain it. At any rate, he would do
nothing hastily. He would wait and see what happened. So
Michael locked the notes within his desk and tried to go on
with his work as usual. But this was not easy. He could not
forget that the notes were there, though he tried hard to do
so. Nor, in spite of the many excellent arguments by which
he strove to persuade himself that he was acting rightly,
could he get the better of an uneasy sense that he was
swerving from the path of rectitude.

A week passed by, and the roll of notes remained within

Michael's desk. He was still trying to persuade himself that
he was justified in retaining them, and he still found that
the voice of conscience would not endorse his arguments.
There were moments when that voice would say to him that
his action in keeping money that was not his was little
better than stealing.

One evening Michael Betts, goaded by these irritating

suggestions, started to walk up Gower Street, with the half-
formed intention of calling at Mrs. Lavers' house and asking
to see her, that he might tell her what he had found in the
old encyclopædia. The struggle within him was still so
strong, the love of gain contending so fiercely with the love
of integrity, that it is probable he would in any case have
turned back when he reached Mrs. Lavers' house. But when
he came to the door he found the steps littered with straw
and paper; there was no light in the windows, and when he
lifted the knocker, its fall resounded hollowly through the
now empty house. Mrs. Lavers and her children had gone
away, and the house was no longer a home.

Michael's feeling was one of relief.

"Now there's an end to the matter," he said to himself.

"She's gone away, I don't know where, and it's not in my
power to tell her. It's clear she knows nothing about the
money, and she does not want it. I have therefore a perfect
right to keep it."

And hugging this thought to his heart, and congratulating

himself on the lucky thing he had done when he purchased
the professor's library, Michael turned homewards.

As he approached his shop, he saw a girl standing beneath

the lamp-post at the corner. She was a girl about fifteen
years of age, with bright eyes showing beneath the thick
black fringe which covered her forehead. Her cheeks were
flushed by the cold wind, which, however, she did not seem
to mind as she stood there. A large white apron covered her
dark gown; she wore a violet woollen shawl crossed over
her chest, and a hat with many feathers was on her head.
She turned and looked curiously at Michael as he passed
her, eyeing him so intently that he was conscious of her
scrutiny, and resented it. As he was opening the door of his
shop, she came to the head of the steps and called out in
loud, clear tones:

"I say, are you Michael Betts?"

"That is my name, certainly," replied Michael, with dignity,
"but I cannot see what business that is of yours."

"Maybe not. And yet, p'raps it is my business. Maybe I know

more of you than you think for, Michael Betts."

"Then you know I'm a respectable man, and have nothing

to say to a girl like you," returned Michael angrily.

"Respectable, indeed!" cried the girl hotly. "I don't know

about your being so mighty respectable, but I'd have you
know, other folks can be respectable besides yourself. You
might practise a little civility along with your respectability."

Michael closed his door sharply, cutting short this tirade.

The girl made an angry, defiant gesture in his direction, and
then ran off.

"The hussy!" said Michael to himself. "How did she get my

name so pat, I wonder? I hope none of the neighbours
heard her calling it out. Anyhow, they all know me for a
respectable man."

Suddenly with the thought his face flushed, and a pang of

shame smote him. Was he indeed a respectable man?
Would they respect him if they knew how he had kept the
notes? Could he say that in that instance he had acted
perfectly on the square? Alas! His conscience convicted him.
He was no longer satisfied of his own probity. He had given
his self-respect in exchange for those fifty pounds.

CHAPTER VI
 AN UNWELCOME ENCOUNTER

MICHAEL paid the fifty pounds into his bank, and had the
satisfaction of seeing them entered in his pass-book. He
was so much richer than he had expected to be, yet
somehow he did not feel richer, but poorer. He had rather
the feeling of one who had suffered loss. There was a stain
upon his conscience, and a weight upon his mind; yet, with
the strange perversity of human nature, he would not own
this to himself. He still professed to believe himself justified
in keeping the money he had found. He clung to it, and
liked to think how it had swelled his balance at the bank,
even whilst he knew that he should be filled with shame, if
any one should ever learn how he had come by that money.

In Michael's lonely life there was no one save Mrs. Wiggins,

the charwoman, to observe how he lived, and mark the
variations in his moods. She began at this time to observe a
change in the bookseller. He had never been what she
would call a "pleasant-speaking" gentleman. She had
always found him short of speech, irritable, and disposed to
snub her whenever she attempted to inform him as to the
gossip of the neighbourhood; but now he was positively
surly in his manner towards her, and so quick of temper
that it was almost more than she could "put up" with.

One morning, she thought she was giving him intelligence

in which he could not fail to be interested, when she said:

"I've 'eard where that lady, the professor's widow, as you

bought so many books of, 'as gone to live."

Her words startled Michael, and he turned his eyes on her

without speaking. She took his silence as an encouragement
to proceed.
"She's gone to live in Clarendon Gardens. That's not a very
nice place, is it? And even there, she 'as only part of a
'ouse. It seems she's quite poor now she's lost 'er 'usband.
She's sent away 'er servants, and keeps only a bit of a girl
now. She washes and dresses the children 'erself, and does
most of the cooking—and she such a lady, too! It's 'ard,
ain't it? I 'eard it all from my cousin, who works for 'er
landlady."

"I wish to goodness your cousin would mind her own

business, or that you would keep her gossip to yourself!"
exclaimed Michael angrily. "How can I help it, if Mrs. Lavers
is poor and has to do without servants? I've done what I
can for her in buying her books. What more can I do?"

"Oh, lor me! Nobody would expect you to do anything for

her," exclaimed Mrs. Wiggins, with unconscious satire. "I
just thought you might like to know about the poor lady.
You need not turn so fiercely on me, Mr. Betts, for giving
you a piece of news."

"Keep your news till it's wanted, and mind your own
business," responded Michael crossly.

Mrs. Wiggins took up her dust-pan and brush, and retreated

with much clatter into the back premises, muttering words
which were not complimentary to her employer.

"Do, indeed! I'd like to see 'im ever do anything for anybody
besides 'isself, the close-fisted old curmudgeon. I'd be sorry
for a mouse that had to live on 'is leavings. The idea of 'is
turning on me like that, as if a body couldn't speak about
nothin'."

It was impossible for Mrs. Wiggins to understand how her

words had for Michael the force of an accusation. She did
not know of the secret consciousness which they awakened.
"So, then, it was a poor woman whom he had defrauded,"
said the voice of Michael's conscience.

"Defrauded! What an absurd idea!" the voice of his other

self responded. "There was no fraud in the matter; the
money had never been Mrs. Lavers'. A man had a right to
keep what he found, unless he knew it to belong to some
one else."

But reason as he might with himself, the information

imparted by Mrs. Wiggins had disturbed Michael's mind.
An incident which occurred a few days later further
destroyed its peace.

Business had taken Michael to the south side of the river,

and he was returning late in the evening across one of the
bridges on his way back to Bloomsbury, when his attention
was arrested by the appearance of a man who stood leaning
against one of the parapets and coughing violently. Michael
started, and a thrill ran through him. He had so long
thought of his brother as dead, that the sight of this man,
who bore so striking a resemblance to him, affected him
almost with terror, as though he conceived him to be a
ghost.

To be sure, he had grey hair, and Frank's had been brown

when Michael last saw him, and his form was pitifully bent
and wasted; but still the resemblance was there, and so
strong that Michael involuntarily stood still as he saw him,
whilst his heart began to beat more painfully than was
pleasant. The same instant the man ceased coughing; he
lifted his head and saw by the light of the gas-lamp on the
parapet above him the man who stood at his side. A low cry
of wonder—and was it of pleasure?—escaped him. He
moved a step nearer, exclaiming eagerly:

"Michael! Michael!"

"You don't mean to say it is you?" exclaimed the other, in

tones which expressed no pleasure at the meeting. "You,
Frank, after all these years! I thought you were dead."

"And perhaps hoped that I were," returned the other,

retreating a step or two, whilst an air of hopelessness came
over him again. "Well, it's no wonder. I'm not a brother you
can be proud of."

Michael looked at him for a moment ere he made reply. The

man appeared thin, and cold, and ill; but his was not one of
the most abject-looking of the forms to be seen abroad in
London. His clothes, though worn and threadbare, were
decently tidy.

"You've only yourself to thank for being what you are,"

Michael said. "Drink and gambling and bad company bring a
man to this."

"I've given up the drink, and gambling too, thank God!" said
his brother. "I've been a teetotaler for more than a year,
Michael."

"I'm glad to hear it," replied Michael, his tone implying that
he doubted the statement. "But if that is so, how do you
come to be in such low water? How do you live?"

"I can scarcely tell you how I live," returned the other. "I
shouldn't live at all, if it were not for my little girl."

"Your little girl!" exclaimed Michael. "You don't mean to say

that you've been so foolish as to marry?"

"I married many years ago, and I had one of the best of
wives, though, God forgive me! I was often a brute to her.
It was foolish of her to take me, no doubt, but I could never
regret it. Whilst she lived, things were better with me; but
when she died I went all wrong again. And now, when I fain
would live a different life, I can't find any one willing to give
me a chance."

"You could surely get work, if you exerted yourself."

"Could I? You don't know how hard it is to get work in

London. And who would employ a man like me, when there
are plenty of big, strong fellows to be hired? I haven't the
strength to lift or carry. I'm good for very little now. I was in
the Infirmary for three months. They patched me up a bit
there, but I'm not much the better. If it were not for my
little girl, I shouldn't be living now. She works at the match-
making, and she keeps me more often than I keep her,
bless her!"
A feeling of cold disgust was creeping over Michael Betts.
There was no room for pity in his heart. He was conscious
only of intense annoyance that such a being as this should
be his brother.

"I'm sorry for you," he said loftily, "but it's your own fault.
You made your bed, and you must lie upon it. I did what I
could for you years ago, and ill you repaid me for what I
did. Now I must wipe my hands of you. But here is a shilling
for you."

He held out the coin as he spoke, but the chilled fingers of

the other made no attempt to take it. The shilling fell from
them to the pavement, and the ill-clad man did not pick it
up.

"I don't want your money, Michael," he said hoarsely. "I

could not help speaking to you when I saw you by my side;
but don't think that I should ever have sought you out or
asked you to do anything for me again. I know too well that
I deserve nothing from you."

"That is well," said Michael coldly. "I must confess that had
you come, you would not have found a welcome from me,
since the last time you were at my place, you left me with
good cause to regret your visit."

He turned on his heel without giving another glance at his

unhappy brother.

"Michael, Michael," the weak voice called after him.

But Michael strode on and paid no heed. He did not slacken

speed till he was the length of several streets from the river.
Then he paused and drew a deep breath as he wiped the
heat from his forehead.
"To think that he should turn up again!" he said to himself.
"And I thought he was dead! But no, here he is again, and
in the same deplorable plight. A pretty sort of a brother!"

And Michael knew that in his heart, he wished that his

brother were dead.

"Of course, it's the same old story," he continued. "He's a

sorry scamp, and always will be. It's all gammon about his
becoming a teetotaler and trying to lead a better life. I don't
believe a word of it. No, that won't go down with me. I only
hope he'll keep away from me, as he says!"

Thinking thus, Michael arrived at his shop. It could hardly

be called his home. He drew out his key, unlocked the door,
and went in. He struck a match and kindled a lamp which
he had placed just inside the door. Seen by its dim light the
shop looked gloomy indeed. He passed through to the little
room at the back. This, too, was littered with books. The
fire had fallen out, and the place looked unhomelike and
cheerless. Michael shivered. He became conscious of
weariness and depression. He placed the lamp on the table
and looked about for some means of rekindling the fire. The
flame flickered feebly. Mrs. Wiggins had forgotten to
replenish the oil.

As he looked about him in the dim light, Michael's eyes fell

on the old leathern armchair which stood beside the
fireplace. He had known that ancient piece of furniture as
long as he had known anything. His mother, as her health
grew feeble, had sat in it constantly, and now, as Michael
glanced at it in the uncertain light, it suddenly appeared to
him that he saw her form seated again in the old armchair.
Most vividly, he seemed to see her sitting there with her
white muslin cap resting on the dark hair which had been
untouched by silver when she died, her little grey shawl
upon her shoulders, and her hands busied with the socks
she was perpetually knitting for her sons. Only an instant, it
was ere the lamp flame leaped up, and he knew that he had
been deceived by his fancy, but that instant left its
impression. He sank on to a chair, shaken in body and mind.

How his mother would have grieved if she could have

foreseen what Frank's future would be! Her darling son, a
poverty-stricken tramp wandering about in search of a job!
And he, Michael, had promised her that he would always be
good to Frank. Had he kept that promise? Was he keeping it
when he turned away from his brother on the bridge, telling
him that he had made his bed and he must lie on it?

Michael sat for some minutes absorbed in painful thought.

Then, resolutely turning his back on the old armchair which
had awakened such unwelcome reflections, he began to
pace to and fro the floor, for his limbs had grown benumbed
by the chill of that fireless room.

"No," he said, half aloud, "I have not failed in my duty

towards my brother. I have done all that could be expected
of me. No one would do more. I've helped him again and
again, only to be repaid by the basest ingratitude. Now, I
will do no more."

CHAPTER VII
IN THE GRIP OF PAIN
MICHAEL went to bed that night feeling thoroughly chilled in
body and miserable in mind. Sleep would not come to him,
nor could he get warm, though he put all the wraps he
could find upon his bed. As he turned and tossed upon the
mattress throughout the night, unable to find ease, the
form of his brother as he had seen him on the bridge was
ever before his eyes. What a wretched thing Frank had
made of his life! It was all his own fault, for he had had a
good chance when he was young. And then to think of his
marrying, when he had not enough to keep himself! What
improvidence!

Michael wondered what the little girl was like of whom his
brother had spoken. With the thought, the image of the
professor's sunny-faced, winsome little daughter rose
before his mind. But it was not likely that his niece was at
all like her. A girl who worked at match-making! Well, it was
hard on a respectable, hard-working man to have relatives
of such a description. Michael wished that he had taken
another way home than the way that had led him across
that bridge. He had been so much more comfortable under
the persuasion that his brother was dead.

When Michael woke from the brief sleep that visited him
towards dawn, it was past the hour at which he usually
rose. But when he would fain have bestirred himself in
haste, he found it impossible to do so. His back and limbs
seemed to have grown strangely stiff, and when he tried to
move, an agonising pain shot through them. He struggled
against the unwelcome sensations, and did his best to
persuade himself that he was suffering only from a passing
cramp. But the pain was terrible. He felt as if he were held
in a vice. How to get up he did not know; but he must
manage to do so somehow. It was necessary that he should
get downstairs to open the door for Mrs. Wiggins. Setting
his teeth together and often groaning aloud with the pain,
he managed at last to drag himself out of bed and to get on
his clothes. It was hard work getting downstairs. He felt
faint and sick with pain, when at length he reached the
lower regions. It was impossible to stoop to kindle a fire. He
sank into the old armchair and sat there bolt upright, afraid
to move an inch, for fear of exciting fresh pain, till he heard
Mrs. Wiggins' knock. Then he compelled himself to rise, and
painfully dragged himself forth to the shop door, where he
presented to the eyes of the charwoman such a spectacle of
pain and helplessness as moved her to the utmost
compassion of which she was capable.

"Dear me! Mr. Betts, you do look bad. It's the rheumatics,
that's what it is. I've 'ad 'em myself. Is it your back that's
so very bad? Then it's lumbago, and you'd better let me
iron it."

"I'll let you do nothing of the kind!" cried the old man
angrily. "Do for pity's sake keep away from me; I can't bear
a touch or a jar. Make haste and light me a fire, and get me
a cup of tea. That's all I want."

"You ought to be in bed, that's where you ought to be," said

Mrs. Wiggins. "Just let me help you upstairs, now do, and
then I'll bring you a cup of tea, all hot and nice."

"How can I go to bed?" he asked impatiently. "Who is to

look after the shop if I go to bed?"

"Oh dear! That's a bad look out. Have you no one to whom
you could send to come and take your place? Have you no
brother now who would come to you?"

"Of course I have not!" he cried, annoyance betraying him

into a quick movement, which was followed by a groan of
pain. "I do wish you would attend to your business, and not
ask me stupid questions."
"Stupid or not, you're not fit to stand in that shop to-day.
Why, you couldn't lift a book without wincing. Ah me! It's
bad enough to be lonesome when you're well, but it's sad
indeed when you're ill to have no one to do a thing for you."

"Do be quiet," he cried; but Mrs. Wiggins, excited by the

sight of his suffering, was not disposed to hold her tongue
till she had fully relieved her mind. She began to suggest
one patent remedy after another, and showed a remarkable
acquaintance with all the quack medicines of the day. But
Michael refused to try any of them. He had hardly ever been
ill in his life, and he did not in the least know what to do
with himself, or how to bear his pain.

It grew worse as the day wore on, and though Mrs. Wiggins
made him a good fire, and he sat over it, he could not get
warm. It was hopeless to think of attending to business. He
was obliged to give in at last, and allow the shop door to be
closed, whilst he was ignominiously helped up to bed by
Mrs. Wiggins.

"Now you'd better let me send for a doctor," she said.

"No, indeed," he replied with energy. "I want no doctor yet.

You don't suppose I can afford to send for a doctor every
time I have an ache or pain?"

"Maybe not," she said, "but it seems to me you're pretty

bad now."

"Folks don't die of rheumatics," he said.

"Oh, don't they?" she returned. "I've known a many cases

in which they 'ave. Rheumatics is no joke. They're apt to
seize on the 'eart, don't you know?"

And with this comforting reflection she left him.

As Michael lay there in pain and misery, he was reminded of
a childish voice, which had said:

"I should think you would cross soon, Mr. Betts, for you are
so very old."

Could it be that he was drawing near to the hour when he

would have to cross that river of death?

The pain grew worse. From shivering, he passed into

burning fever. Mrs. Wiggins felt very uneasy when the time
came for her to go home.

"I don't like to leave you, Mr. Betts, I don't indeed," she
said. "I can't think it's right for you to be all alone in this
house. If you was to be took worse—"

"I shall not be worse," he said hoarsely; "the pain can't be

worse than it is now, and it would not make it any better to
have some one else in the house."

"But I wish you'd let me stay with you," she suggested.

"Just let me go and tell my 'usband, and come back
directly."

"No, no, no," he said, for he was weary of her attentions.

"Take the house key with you, and lock the door on the
outside, and come as early as you can in the morning. But
first bring a big jug of cold water, and set it here beside the
bed. I'm so thirsty, I could drink the sea dry, I believe."

"Ah, you've got fever, that's what you've got," replied Mrs.
Wiggins. "Well, I suppose you must have your way."

So she did what he told her, and then went home.

But she was so impressed with the fact of his being very ill
that she bestirred herself unusually early the next morning,
and was at Mr. Betts' shop quite an hour before the time at
which she generally appeared. She unlocked the door and
let herself into the shop. Already the place seemed to have
a deserted look. The dust lay thick on the books. Mrs.
Wiggins went quickly up the steep staircase and knocked at
the door of the attic, which was Michael's bedroom. She
knocked, but there was no response to her knock. She
knocked again more loudly, but Mr. Betts did not bid her
enter, only she could hear his voice talking in strange, far-
off tones. After a little hesitation she turned the handle and
entered the room. Michael Betts lay on the bed, his face
flushed with fever, his brows contracted with pain, his eyes
wild and dilated. He was talking rapidly and incoherently.

"Well, Mr. Betts," she said, as she approached the bed, "and
'ow do you find yourself this mornin'?"

But he paid no heed to her words. They fell on unconscious

cars. He went on talking rapidly; but she could not
understand what he was saying. As she bent nearer, she
could catch a few words now and then; but there seemed
no connection in them.

"The river—it's cold and deep—there's a little girl on the

other side—Oh, the pain—the awful, burning pain!—Oh,
water—give me water—there's water in the river—I don't
care if he is my brother. Give me water—water, I say. What
are you telling me about the money?—It's mine—I have a
perfect right to it. Oh, this pain! The water—the river."

"Lor' bless me! He's right off 'is 'ead," said Mrs. Wiggins;
"'e's in a raging fever. It's no good speakin' to 'im. I must
just fetch a doctor, whether 'e likes it or not."
A little later, a doctor stood beside Michael's bed. He
pronounced it a severe case of rheumatic fever, made some
inquiries respecting the circumstances of his patient,
prescribed for him and departed, saying that he would send
a nurse to look after him, since he needed good nursing
more than medicine. The doctor showed his wisdom in so
acting, for had Michael been left to the tender mercies of
Mrs. Wiggins, well-meaning though they were, he would
probably never have risen from his bed. As it was, he had a
hard struggle ere the force of life within him overcame the
power of disease. He was very ill, and at one time, the
medical man had but faint hope of his recovery.

He was confined to his bed for weeks, and the little book-
shop remained closed the while, for Michael was far too ill
to give any directions as to what should be done about the
business. After the fever left him, he was as weak as a
baby: too weak to care about anything, so weak that every
effort was painful, and he felt as if he had not the heart to
struggle back to life again. Yet he shrank from the thought
of death, and one of the first questions he asked his nurse,
when he was able to think and speak connectedly, was if
she thought he would recover.

"Yes," she said cheerfully, "you've turned the corner now.

All you need is feeding up. Every day will see a change for
the better now, if you're good and do as I tell you."

"I'll try," said Michael, quite meekly. "You've been very good
to me, nurse."

"I should be a poor kind of nurse, if I hadn't been good to

you," she replied. "It's my business to look after people
when they're ill, and I have to take the greatest possible
care of them, or things would go seriously wrong."
"I never had any one do as much for me as you've done,"
said Betts; "not since I lost my mother, I mean."

"Then you never had a wife?"

"No. I've never had time to think about getting one."

The nurse laughed.

"You're a strange man," she said; "but now eat some of this
jelly."

"It is good," said Michael; "really I don't know as I ever

tasted anything better."

"It's real, strong calf's-foot jelly, and it was made by a lady

on purpose for you."

"That can't be," said Michael, looking at her in surprise;

"there's no lady would make jelly for me. You must be
making a mistake."

"Indeed I am not. You have more friends than you think.

She came here and gave it into my very hands, so I must
know. She said she'd heard from the doctor that you were
ill, and she felt sorry for your being all alone. She said she'd
done business with you, and when she saw the shop shut
up, she asked about you."

"Well, I never!" said Michael. "I can't imagine who it could

be."

"She said her name was Lavers."

"What?" exclaimed Michael in amazement. "What name did

you say?"

"Lavers—Mrs. Lavers."
Michael gave a groan.

"What is the matter?" asked the nurse, turning to look at

him; "have you the pain again?"

"No," he muttered, "not that sort of pain; but I wish she

had not done it."

"Why, you ungrateful man!" exclaimed the nurse.

Michael made no reply. A hot flush of shame was dyeing his

cheeks, and mounting to his forehead. The nurse observed
it with some anxiety. She took his hand to feel his pulse.
Was the fever about to return?

CHAPTER VIII
THE BURDEN MAKES ITSELF FELT

"MR. BETTS," said the nurse, three days later, as she came
into the room, "that lady is downstairs, and she wants to
know if you would like to see her."

"What lady?" asked Michael, though he thought he knew.

"The lady who made you the jelly—Mrs. Lavers, of course."

"Oh no," said Michael, shrinking down and drawing the

bedclothes closer about him, as if he would fain hide
himself; "I don't want to see her. I can't have her coming
here. Tell her so, please."