FORTIFICATION, is the art of fortifying a town, or other place; or of putting it in such a posture of defence, that every one of its parts defends, and is defended by some other parts, by means of ramparts, parapets, ditches, and other outworks; to the end that a small number of men within may be able to defend themselves for a considerable time against the assaults of a numerous army without; so that the enemy, in attacking them, must of necessity suffer great loss.
Fortification may be divided into ancient and modern; offensive, and defensive; regular, and irregular; natural, and artificial, &c.
Ancient Fortification, at first, consisted of walls or defences made of trunks, and other branches of trees, mixed with earth, for security against the attacks of an enemy. Invention owes its origin to necessity; fortification seems to have had fear for its basis; for when man had no other enemy but the wild beasts, the walls of his cottage were his security; but when pride, ambition, and avarice, had possessed the minds of the strong and the daring to commit violences upon their weaker neighbors, either to subject them to new laws, or to plunder their little inheritance, it was natural for the latter to contrive how to defend themselves from such injuries.
Our Aborigines of North America, have left traces of fortification in its infancy, of which there are some curious and magnificent remains on the Miami river, in the state of Ohio.
There are abundance of Indian villages fenced round by long stakes driven into the ground, with moss or earth to fill the intervals; and this is their security (together with their own vigilance) against the cruelty of the savage neighboring nations.
Nor is fortification much less ancient than mankind; for Cain, the son of Adam, built a city with a wall round it upon mount Liban, and called it after the name of his son Enoch, the ruins of which, it is said, are to be seen to this day; and the Babylonians, soon after the deluge, built cities and encompassed them with strong walls.
At first people thought themselves safe enough with a single wall, behind which they made use of their darts and arrows with safety: but as other warlike instruments were continually invented to destroy these feeble structures, so on the other hand persons acting on the defensive were obliged to build stronger and stronger to resist the new contrived forces of the desperate assailants.
What improvements they made in strengthening their walls many ages ago, appear from history. The first walls we ever read of, and which were built by Cain, were of brick; and the ancient Grecians, long before Rome was ever thought of, used brick and rubble stone, with which they built a vast wall, joining mount Hymetus to the city of Athens. The Babylonian walls, built by Semiramis, or, as others will have it, by Belus, were 32 feet thick, and 100 feet high, with towers 10 feet higher, built upon them, cemented with bitumen or asphaltus. Those of Jerusalem seem to have come but little short of them, since, in the siege by Titus, all the Roman battering rams, joined with Roman art and courage, could remove but 4 stones out of the tower of Antonia in a whole night’s assault.
After fortification had arrived at this height it stopped for many ages, ’till the use of gunpowder and guns was found out; and then the round and square towers, which were very good flanks against bows and arrows, became but indifferent ones against the violence of cannon; nor did the battlements any longer offer a hiding place, when the force of one shot both overset the battlement, and destroyed those who sought security from it.
Modern Fortification, is the way of defence now used, turning the walls into ramparts, and square and round towers into bastions, defended by numerous outworks; all which are made so solid, that they cannot be beat down, but by the continual fire of several batteries of cannon. These bastions at first were but small, their gorges narrow, their flanks and faces short, and at a great distance from each other, as are those now to be seen in the city of Antwerp, built in 1540 by Charles V. emperor of Germany; since which time they have been greatly improved and enlarged, and are now arrived to that degree of strength, that it is almost a received opinion, that the art of fortification is at its height, and almost incapable of being carried to a much greater perfection.