Sieges were the exception, rather than the norm, of the Napoleonic Wars. This simple truth may seem unremarkable to the modern reader, yet it represented a significant shift from the norms of eighteenth-century warfare. The more agile style of campaigning made possible by the invention of the corps system by Guibert, and perfected by Napoleon, inevitably led to strategy shifting towards a focus on climactic, decisive battles. As a result, hundreds of books have been written on the decisive engagements of the era, from Austerlitz to Salamanca and particularly Waterloo. In the process, however, the sieges that were conducted during the period, and their strategic and wider significance, have generally been overlooked in the historiography. It is now more than a decade since Frederick Myatt wrote a narrative study of the sieges of the Peninsular War, and over three decades since Christopher Duffy's book on the military experience in the period. Yet scholarly interest is increasingly