Fortified location

“ The territory of each of these fortified places is to extend as far as 2,000 toises from its fortifications; they shall provision themselves every ten days, and, as far as relates to this fixed provisioning, they shall not be considered as included in the countries occupied by the French army, which, on its part, is not to impede the carriage of stores into the said fortresses. ”

“ Many of those bluff headlands, peninsulas, and isolated hills presented all the requisite adaptations for native strongholds. They have, accordingly, been fortified with great labour and skill. Embankments and ditches enclose the whole space, varying in strength according to the natural resources of the ground. The approaches are guarded by trenches and overlapping walls, more or less numerous in different forts; and have occasionally a mound alongside of the other defences of the approach, but rising above the rest of the works, as if designed both for out-look and additional defence. ”

“ As a preliminary to the siege of any fortified place, all possible information is obtained as to the strength and character of its fortifications, the garrison, armament, stores of provisions and ammunitions, water supply, water routes, telegraph and railroad lines, manufactures, especially those which may be converted into factories of arms and munitions, the character of the population of the place, their probable food supply and their loyalty to their state ”

“ They are of every shape and size, from stately piles like Wigmore and Goodrich, to the smallest fortified farm, like Urishay Castle, a house half mansion, half fortress. Even the church towers of Herefordshire, with their walls seven or eight feet thick, such as that at Ewias Harold, look as if they were designed as strongholds in case of need. On the western and northern borders of England we find the largest number of fortresses, erected to restrain and keep back troublesome neighbours. ”

“ The beleaguered army may still be in condition to recapture the forts by vigorous assaults; and in almost every case, before the fall of the works of the outer line, a line of provisional fortifications of high resisting power, connected by trenches, will have been constructed by the defence in rear of the captured works, with its flanks secured by the collateral works of the outer line. ”

“ Those forts or fronts resting upon precipices, bordering deep marshes or deep and rapid streams, or which are so placed that approaches upon them will be swept in flank and rear by the fire of the works, which cannot be silenced, are considered impregnable by the ordinary operations of the siege. Most serious difficulties are presented by those in which the adjacent works are so disposed and of such strength that they can be carried only in succession and by regular approaches ”

“ In fact, the redundancy of fortification all over this mountain, the useless repetition of walls over a precipice itself inaccessible, the care with which every hole in the boulders through which an arrow could pass is closed, prove that the occupants were in constant dread of attack, and lived like a garrison in the heart of an enemy’s country. ”

“ Lower Town huddles in artistic chaos at the foot of the sheltering cliff, and, as aforetime, the overhanging fort protrudes its protecting muzzles. Spires and antique minarets which looked down upon a French settlement struggling with foes in feathers and war-paint, still gleam from the towering rock on which their stable foundations are laid; and after five sieges and the passing of two and a half centuries the mother city of the continent remains a faithful survivor of an heroic age, on historic ground sacred to the valour of two great races. ”

“ Now the whole history of the art of war is a history of the alternate strength and weaknesses of these permanent fortifications; the word permanent means fortifications not of a temporary character, hurriedly set up in the field, but solidly constructed over a long space of time, and destined to permit a prolonged resistance. ”

“ In practice there will always be occasion for some use of fortification. A mountain range may lend itself to an economical defence by a few men and some inexpensive barrier forts. A nation may have close to its frontier an important strategic centre, such as a railway junction, or a town of the first manufacturing importance, which must be protected. ”

“ The remains of some strongly-built forts, of quadrangular forms, occupying the heights which command the road, sufficiently point out Sidy Abdellàti as an ancient military station; and indeed, had we found there no vestiges of antiquity, we should have been induced from the nature of the ground to look for some indications of fortification; since the advantages of position, of soil, and of water, [47] which it possesses, are too great to have been overlooked by the ancients. ”

“ In the present day isolated forts are seldom used, and only for such purposes as to block passes in mountainous districts. Fortresses are used either to protect points of vital importance, such as capital cities, military depots and dockyards, or at strategic points such as railway junctions. ”

“ Subject to the question of time, a very high degree of strength can be given to them, if the military situation makes it worth while to expend sufficient labour. A century or more ago, the dividing line between permanent and field fortification was very rigidly drawn, since in those days a high masonry escarp surmounted by a rampart was essential to a permanent fortress, and these could naturally not be extemporized. ”

“ Permanent fortification is intended for the defense of towns, frontiers, and seaports, and is constructed of durable materials in time of peace; while field fortification being raised only for the temporary purpose of protecting troops in the field, its materials are those afforded by local circumstances and a limited time. ”

“ Natural fortification consists of obstacles, such as marshes, mountain passes, &c., which are found in some countries, and should be taken advantage of to impede the approaches of an enemy.
Artificial fortification comprises those works which are constructed to defend a place. ”

“ The wonderful trenches, too numerous to mention in detail, show a very high order of military skill in fortification, and this is the more remarkable when we discover that Neolithic man was probably answerable for their construction, although the fort has been subsequently occupied by men of the Bronze Age, and also by the Romans. ”

“ The fort stands a hundred feet over our heads on a bold promontory, and the rocky Palamidi soars a hundred feet still higher, on a crag that thrusts its head sharply into the clouds, as if it would lift the little fortress out of eyesight. ”

“ For defensive purposes nature and art have combined to render the place exceedingly strong. Ranges of hills, varying from 300 feet to 1500 feet, surround the port and town almost completely, offering scope for fortification of the most formidable character, advantages which, as far as construction goes, have been well utilized, massive and lofty stone forts occupying every point of advantage. ”

“ On one side there is a plain, always accounted by engineers the most convenient for the construction of fortifications; on the other an eminence, lofty enough to command the surrounding country, and at the same time sufficiently level at the summit to receive the walls of a fortress, powerful at once from its position and regularity. ”

“ The situation of these fortifications, which are uniformly in the most fertile land of the country, indicates that those who made them were an agricultural people; and the remarkable care and skill with which they were executed afford traits of the genius of a people who relied more on their military skill than on their numbers. ”

“ To see a fort is naturally supposed to be not the most formidable of undertakings; but to see Fort Fisher means a ride of miles over the bleakest of sand bars; means the climbing of great heaps of sand, under the hottest of suns; means a scrambling over irregular chasms and precipices of sand, where the explosions have destroyed at once every semblance of fortification and every foot of solid earth—means all this, prolonged for hours, under the penalty of the consciousness that otherwise you would be pretending to see Fort Fisher, when you were doing nothing of the sort. ”

“ They are nearly all, if not quite all, situated on land rather elevated above that which is immediately contiguous, and surrounded, or partly so, by deep ravines, so that these form a part of the fortification themselves. ”

“ The fort is roomy; two or three hundred men could find quarters there; and although it is, under modern conditions, of little use against an enemy from without, it occupies a position of considerable strength with regard to the city itself. ”

“ The massive towers are connected by solid walls, constructed upon the system of fortification, which generally prevailed in the middle ages. Those walls and towers follow all the turnings and windings of the mountain; and previously to the invention of gunpowder and artillery, this fortress must have been almost impregnable. The situation of this edifice is the most delightful and commanding that can be conceived. Wherever the spectator may turn his eyes, it is impossible for him not to be struck with admiration at the picturesque beauty and fertility of the surrounding country. ”

“ The forts are large buildings of a dazzling white colour, perforated with port-holes, similar to those belonging to a ship of war, and mounted with old guns, the greater portion of which are without carriages, and served, ordinarily, by a single artillery-man, assisted in time of war by three or four peasants. ”

“ Walls and windows, massive, lofty, and nearly touching each other from above afforded a perpetual fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world. ”

“ There thus was built the great English fortress of Crown Point, covering the highest parts of the peninsular promontory southwestward from the old French fort. The limestone 298 rocks were cut into deeply, and ramparts raised twenty-five feet thick and high, the citadel being a half-mile around. The ruins of these heavy walls, the ditches, spacious parade and demolished barracks, give an idea of the costly but obsolete military construction of that time. ”

“ One thing to be remembered with all our fortifications is that it is almost useless to make them impregnable from the sea if they are left open to land attack. This is true even of our own coast, but it is doubly true of our insular possessions. ”

“ The great strength of modern fortification consists certainly in the glacis, or in that smoothly sloping mound which conceals and covers the rampart to87 the very chin, yet is severed from it by a deep and impassable ditch, screening it from every injury, even by the heaviest and most numerous ordnance, whilst its own gradual slope is swept by a rain and hail of cannon-balls, grape shot, and musketry, both from its own parapet and that of the superior rampart. ”

“ In the old days forts were strong castles, usually built on a high rock or hill; but when guns of great range and force came into use, engineers sank their forts into the earth as much as possible. To outward appearance a Liége fort seemed to be nothing but a low, grassy mound rising from a deep ditch. ”

“ Now even though you may not be versed in warfare, you must realize that for a thousand men to throw up such a fortification as I have described, between midnight and daybreak, which came about four of the clock, was a wonderful piece of work, and in addition to all this two strong fences made of stones and rails had been built either side of the entire works, thus forming a fairly good obstacle in case an enemy attempted to make an attack elsewhere than directly in front. In the rear was the sharp slope of the hill up which soldiers could not well make their way. ”

“ The fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with their bare, precipitous sides, will remain as historic monuments, grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt long ago, and grows in abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat around Fort Ellsworth will be a century hence. ”

“ The inhabitants and the government are gradually waking up to a sense of this truth; for I heard something said about their abandoning the wall around the Upper Town, and confining the fortifications to the citadel of forty acres. Of course they will finally reduce their intrenchments to the circumference of their own brave hearts.
The most modern fortifications have an air of antiquity about them; they have the aspect of ruins in better or worse repair from the day they are built, because they are not really the work of this age. ”

“ Whilst the remainder of the army spent their time here, the 4th, 21st, and 44th, being landed above the fort, were busied in the siege. This small work stands, as I have stated, at the extremity of a promontory. Towards the sea its fortifications are respectable enough, but on the land side it is little better than a blockhouse. ”