What is "siege"

Siege \Siege\, v. t. To besiege; to beset. [R.]

Through all the dangers that can siege The life of man.
--Buron.

Siege \Siege\, n. [OE. sege, OF. siege, F. si[`e]ge a seat, a siege; cf. It. seggia, seggio, zedio, a seat, asseggio, assedio, a siege, F. assi['e]ger to besiege, It. & LL. assediare, L. obsidium a siege, besieging; all ultimately fr. L. sedere to sit. See Sit, and cf. See, n.]

1. A seat; especially, a royal seat; a throne. [Obs.] ``Upon the very siege of justice.''
   --Shak.

   A stately siege of sovereign majesty, And thereon sat a woman gorgeous gay.
   --Spenser.

   In our great hall there stood a vacant chair . . . And Merlin called it ``The siege perilous.''
   --Tennyson.

2. Hence, place or situation; seat. [Obs.]

   Ah! traitorous eyes, come out of your shameless siege forever.
   --Painter (Palace of Pleasure).

3. Rank; grade; station; estimation. [Obs.]

   I fetch my life and being From men of royal siege.
   --Shak.

4. Passage of excrements; stool; fecal matter. [Obs.]

   The siege of this mooncalf.
   --Shak.

5. The sitting of an army around or before a fortified place for the purpose of compelling the garrison to surrender; the surrounding or investing of a place by an army, and approaching it by passages and advanced works, which cover the besiegers from the enemy's fire. See the Note under Blockade.

6. Hence, a continued attempt to gain possession.

   Love stood the siege, and would not yield his breast.
   --Dryden.

7. The floor of a glass-furnace.

8. A workman's bench.
   --Knught.

   Siege gun, a heavy gun for siege operations.

   Siege train, artillery adapted for attacking fortified places.

early 13c., "a seat" (as in Siege Perilous, early 13c., the vacant seat at Arthur's Round Table, according to prophecy to be occupied safely only by the knight destined to find the Holy Grail), from Old French sege "seat, throne," from Vulgar Latin *sedicum "seat," from Latin sedere "sit" (see sedentary). The military sense is attested from c.1300; the notion is of an army "sitting down" before a fortress.

n. 1 (label en heading) ''A seat.'' 2 #(label en obsolete) A seat, especially as used by someone of importance or authority. vb. (context transitive English) To assault a blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by force or attrition; to besiege.

n. the action of an armed force that surrounds a fortified place and isolates it while continuing to attack [syn: besieging, beleaguering, military blockade]

A siege is a military blockade and assault of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering.

Siege or The Siege may also refer to:

Siege (John Kelly) is a fictional character, owned by Marvel Comics, who exists in the Marvel Universe.

Siege is a computer game developed by Mindcraft in 1992 for the PC DOS/MS-DOS.

Siege is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and HTTPS load testing and Web server benchmarking utility developed by Jeffrey Fulmer. It was designed to let web developers measure the performance of their code under stress, to see how it will stand up to load on the internet.

It is licensed as open-source software under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) open source license, which means it’s free to use, modify, and distribute.

Siege can stress a single URL or it can read many URLs into memory and stress them simultaneously. It supports basic authentication, cookies, HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols.

A siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. The term derives from sedere, Latin for "to sit". Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static defensive position. Consequently, an opportunity for negotiation between combatants is not uncommon, as proximity and fluctuating advantage can encourage diplomacy.

A siege occurs when an attacker encounters a city or fortress that cannot be easily taken by a coup de main and refuses to surrender. Sieges involve surrounding the target and blocking the reinforcement or escape of troops or provision of supplies (a tactic known as " investment"), typically coupled with attempts to reduce the fortifications by means of siege engines, artillery bombardment, mining (also known as sapping), or the use of deception or treachery to bypass defences. Failing a military outcome, sieges can often be decided by starvation, thirst, or disease, which can afflict either the attacker or defender. This form of siege, though, can take many months or even years, depending upon the size of the stores of food the fortified position holds. During the process of circumvallation, the attacking force can be set upon by another force of enemies due to the lengthy amount of time required to starve a position. A defensive ring of forts outside the ring of circumvallated forts, called contravallation, is also sometimes used to defend the attackers from outside

Ancient cities in the Middle East show archaeological evidence of having had fortified city walls. During the Warring States era of ancient China, there is both textual and archaeological evidence of prolonged sieges and siege machinery used against the defenders of city walls. Siege machinery was also a tradition of the ancient Greco-Roman world. During the Renaissance and the early modern period, siege warfare dominated the conduct of war in Europe. Leonardo da Vinci gained as much of his renown from the design of fortifications as from his artwork.

Medieval campaigns were generally designed around a succession of sieges. In the Napoleonic era, increasing use of ever more powerful cannon reduced the value of fortifications. In the 20th century, the significance of the classical siege declined. With the advent of mobile warfare, a single fortified stronghold is no longer as decisive as it once was. While traditional sieges do still occur, they are not as common as they once were due to changes in modes of battle, principally the ease by which huge volumes of destructive power can be directed onto a static target. Modern sieges are more commonly the result of smaller hostage, militant, or extreme resisting arrest situations.

Siege is an American hardcore punk band from Weymouth, Massachusetts. Formed in 1981, they were active in the Boston hardcore scene from 1984 to 1985, and reunited briefly in 1991. Guitarist Kurt Habelt and drummer Rob Williams reformed the band in 2016.

In its original incarnation, Siege paired extremely fast tempos with vocalist Kevin Mahoney's screeches and growls in their intense style of hardcore. Though little known at the time, the band has posthumously become revered by punk and heavy metal fans worldwide and is now regarded as one of the pioneers of the grindcore and powerviolence subgenres. Subsequent musicians have cited the group as a major influence, including the British grindcore band Napalm Death and the American thrashcore band Dropdead, whose band name was the title of Siege's six-song demo tape.

Siege is a book collecting the articles of American neo-Nazi James Mason, former leader of the National Socialist Liberation Front and Universal Order. It collects the text of Mason's SIEGE newsletter (1980–1986) and other propaganda, arranging it according to topic. It places an emphasis on gaining power through armed struggle rather than political means.

It was first published by Storm Books in 1992, edited and introduced by Michael Moynihan. It was republished, with a new preface by Mason and an introduction by Ryan Schuster, in 2003 ( Black Sun Publications, ISBN 0-9724408-0-1).

Siege is a 1940 documentary short about the Siege of Warsaw by the Wehrmacht at the start of World War II. It was shot by Julien Bryan, a Pennsylvanian photographer and cameraman who later established the International Film Foundation.

Siege was nominated for an Oscar for Best One-reel Short at the 13th Academy Awards in 1941, and in 2006 it was named to the National Film Registry by the Librarian of Congress as "a unique, horrifying record of the dreadful brutality of war".

"Siege" is an American comic book published by Marvel Comics from January 2010 to May 2010. It deals with the culmination of the Dark Reign story line, which saw Norman Osborn become the United States primary defense officer, leading H.A.M.M.E.R. as well as employing his own evil Avengers. The story depicts Loki manipulating Osborn into leading an all-out assault on Asgard, at the time located within the United States. Captain America and his own Avengers lead a rebellion against Osborn, which escalates into an all-out assault. The events in Siege led to Marvel Comics introducing the subsequent story-line Heroic Age.