s of artillery in modern times, the
whole interior of the town, as well as the walls, is usually battered
dreadfully by the shot and shells that are thrown over into it. A
shell, which is a hollow ball of iron sometimes more than a foot in
diameter, and with sides two or three inches thick, and filled within
with gunpowder, is thrown from a mortar, at a distance of some miles,
high into the air over the town, whence it descends into the streets
or among the houses. The engraving represents the form of the mortar,
and the manner in which the shell is thrown from it, though in this
case the shell represented is directed, not against the town, but is
thrown from a battery under the walls of the town against the camp or
the trenches of the besiegers.

[Illustration: THROWING SHELLS.]

These shells, of course, when they descend, come crashing through the
roofs of the buildings on which they strike, or bury themselves in the
ground if they fall in the street, and then burst with a terrific
explosion. A town that has been bombarded in a siege becomes sometimes
almost a mere mass of ruins. Often the bursting of a shell sets a
building on fire, and then the dreadful effects of a conflagration are
added to the horrors of the scene. In ancient sieges, on the other
hand, none of these terrible agencies could be employed. The
battering-rams could touch nothing but the walls and the outer towers,
and it was comparatively very little injury that they could do to
these. The javelins and arrows, and other light missiles--even those
that were thrown from the military engines, if by chance they passed
over the walls and entered the town, could do no serious mischief to
the buildings there. The worst that could happen from them was the
wounding or killing of some person in the streets who might, just at
that moment, be passing by.

In repairing Acre, therefore, and putting it again in a perfect
condition for defense, nothing but the outer walls required attention.
Richard set companies of workmen upon these, and before long every
thing was restored as it was before. There were then some ceremonies
to be performed within the town, to purify it from the pollution which
it had sustained by having been in the possession of the Saracens. All
the Christian churches particularly, and the monasteries and other
religious houses, were to be thus restored from the desecration which
they had undergone, and consecrated anew to the service of Christ.