Currently I’m reprising a Q&A series from 2019, which began on March 31  — and today’s refeatured question came from Lindsay. 😀

UK/AU/NZ

Lindsay: Which Battles Did You Research When You were Writing The Siege of the Camp? (Ed: In Daughter of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book 3.)

Helen: Well, I did a LOT of research, I can tell you that — most of which never made it into the book but was pretty fascinating stuff. Some of it was on pre-modern warfare generally, not just sieges, although I gradually honed in on those. In terms of specific sieges, I focused on those where the defenders were badly situated defensively, poorly supplied, and/or outnumbered:

• the siege of the Lucknow Residency during the Indian Mutiny (also considered the first war for Indian independence from British rule) of 1857;
• the siege of the Kabul Residency in 1879, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War;
• the defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War; and
• the siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking during 1900, and also the distinct but concurrent siege of the Beitang, the North Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Church.

I also looked at the siege of Metz (1552-3), and similar sieges of that era, particularly in terms of the effects of disease on siege warfare; the Roman approach to fortified camps; and several engagements of the American frontier in terms of assaults and sieges on scantily fortified positions and the tactics used by both the attacking and defending forces.

USA