Annals of a Fortress

by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Reims, Langres, and Autun had repaired their defences. Sens had walled itself round with the materials of its chief public buildings. The vale of Abonia, which at that time contained about twenty thousand inhabitants, followed their example; and pulling down their public edifices and the deserted temples of the city, the urban population formed ramparts around the plateau and a fence around the lower towns.

The works, however, undertaken in haste, were of no great account, and fortunately the Germans did not think of assailing them; but in the year 359, Julian, having assumed the purple, betook himself to Gaul to drive out the barbarians. The siege of Autun raised, he passed through Abonia, found its situation excellent, and arranged the plan of a fortress, which after the battle of Strasburg and the defeat of Chnodomar, was carried into execution. Abonia thus fortified formed part of the second line of strong places established by Julian between Reims and Lyons, in anticipation of fresh invasions by the Germans.

Gaul, although her sons had furnished the Roman army with its best soldiers for three centuries, had become unaccustomed to war at home. The Roman legions no longer consisted of troops such as those commanded by the Vespasians, the Tituses, and the Trajans. Composed principally of barbarians, they wanted cohesion, were not sustained by patriotism, and deposed their chiefs on the slightest pretext.

The latter, moreover, too often appointed by a court governed by intrigue, were for the most part incapable, or eager to enrich themselves rather than to conquer the enemy. For these troops, composed of heterogeneous elements, and having no faith in the valour of the chiefs placed over them—for these populations, accustomed to peace and the well-being it secures—ramparts were necessary, behind which the defence of the territory might be organized; for in the open field, such was the terror inspired by the Germans that a prolonged resistance could not be reckoned upon. Julian, however, had shown that the troops in the pay of the empire, if well commanded, were still in a condition to fight the barbarians; but Julian was a philosopher; he understood his times, and could not shut his eyes to the unsound state of the imperial government, or at least believed the evil to lie so deep that he attempted to stay its progress by a return to paganism, hoping perhaps in this way to restore youth to the worn-out body.

FIG. 16.
THE GALLO-ROMAN TOWN CITÉ JULIANA.

Julian had then about him Byzantine engineers who were very skilful in the art of fortifying places. This branch of knowledge is often developed among nations in proportion to the decay of military organization in the field. The conqueror of the Germans had caused the fortifications of Autun to be repaired and completed.

Those of Abonia, which were less extensive, were carried out with completeness according to an entirely new plan, since there existed no traces of the ancient fortifications: the engineer Philostratus sent by Julian was therefore left to his own discretion.

He began by clearing away the slopes of the ancient Oppidum along the verge of the plateau, thus removing some of the villæ that had not been destroyed at the time when the arrival of the Germans was expected (see [Fig. 16]). After having carefully studied the conformation of the ground, he perceived that the front of the city towards the north was weak, inasmuch as this front was most accessible to attack on account of the neighbouring plateau, whose level was but little below that of the site. He determined, therefore, to fall back, so as to get a more extended front. The front thus adopted was three hundred and fifty paces long.[4] Outside of this front he had a fosse sunk twenty feet wide in the bottom,[5] so as entirely to divide the tongue of land which connected the promontory with the northern plateau. This fosse terminated at the two declivities east and west. At each end the bottom of the fosse was furnished with palisades, and there was a descent into the fosse by means of a flight of steps contrived in one of the towers, as will presently be shown. Outside the fosse he formed a vallum about four hundred paces in length, with an outwork containing a guardhouse and a watch-tower. The Roman road to Langres came to this point. On the eastern side, the aqueduct which brought water to the city followed the vallum, and was crenelated (vide A). A gate was opened in the north front, flanked on the outside by two cylindrical towers. At the north-west angle arose a square tower high enough to afford a distant view of the valley at the bottom of which runs the river, and of the plateau; another square tower was built at the north-east angle, and between these two towers and the gate two other towers; so that between each tower there remained a space of about eighty feet.