T. Orillon, to protect the flank V.
X. A double bastion or cavalier.
Y. A retrenchment with a ditch, of the breach Z.
&. Traverses to protect the terreplein of the ramparts from enfilade.
Turning back now to the middle of the 16th century we find in the early examples of the use of the bastion that there is no attempt made to defend its faces by flanking fire, the curtains being considered the only weak points of the enceinte. Accordingly, the flanks are arranged at right angles to the curtain, and the prolongation of the faces sometimes falls near the middle of it. When it was found that the faces needed protection, the first attempts to give it were made by erecting cavaliers, or raised parapets, behind the parapet of the curtain or in the bastions.
| Fig. 21. |
The first example of the complete bastioned system is found in Paciotto’s citadel of Antwerp, built in 1568 (fig. 21). Here we have faces, flanks and curtain in due proportion; the faces long enough to contain a powerful battery, and the flanks able to defend both curtain and faces. The weak points of this trace, due to its being arranged on a small pentagon, are that the terreplein or interior space of the bastions is rather cramped, and the salient angles too acute.
In the systems published by Speckle of Strassburg in 1589 we find a distinct advance. Speckle’s actual constructions in fortification are of no great importance; but he was a The 16th century. great traveller and observer, and in his work, published just before his death, he has evidently assimilated, and to some extent improved, the best ideas that had been put forward up to that time.
Two specimens from Speckle’s work are well worth studying as connecting links between the 16th and 17th centuries.
Fig. 22 is early 16th-century work much improved. There are no outworks, except the covered way, now fully developed, with a battery in the re-entering place of arms. The bastions are large, but the faces directed on the curtain get little protection from the flanks. To make up for this they are flanked by the large cavaliers in the middle of the curtain. The careful arrangement of the flank should be noted; part of it is retired, with two tiers of fire, some of which is arranged to bear on the face of the bastion. The great saliency of the bastion is a weak point, but the whole arrangement is simple and strong.