Date: 1854
His soldiers, protected from missiles by moveable penthouses (called Tortoises), gradually filled up the wide and deep ditch round the town, so as to open a level road for his engines (rolling towers of wood) to come up close to the walls.  The engines being brought up close, the work of demo lition was successfully prosecuted ; notwithstand ing vigorous sallies from the garrison, repulsed, though not without loss and difficulty, by the Mace donians.  Presently the shock of the battering engines had overthrown two towers of the city- wall, together with two intermediate breadths of wall ; and a third tower was beginning to totter.