Ditches
The Walls of Florence
“Opinions are different; for ditches full of water protect you from (subterranean) tunnels, the ditches without water make it more difficult for you to fill them in again. But, considering everything, I would have them without water; for they are more secure, and, as it has been observed that in winter time the ditches ice over, the capture of a city is made easy, as happened at Mirandola when Pope Julius besieged it.* And to protect your self from tunnels, I would dig them so deep, that whoever should want to go (tunnel) deeper, should find water.”
*On 20 January 1510, during the coldest winter experienced by northern Italy in a hundred years, the forces of Pope Julius II captured the fortress of Mirandola after advancing across the frozen moat.
Source for Text: Niccolò Machiavelli (Henry Neville, translator) The Seven Books on the Art of War (London: 1675), Book Seven
Source for illustration: Eugène Emmanuel Violet le Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIème au XVIème siècle, (Paris: B. Bance, 1858) Volume I page 441
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