Star fort - Wikipedia. A star fort, bastion fort or trace italienne, is a fortification in a style that evolved during the age of gunpowder when the cannon came to dominate the battlefield. It was first seen in the mid- 1. Italy. Origins. From there, arrows were shot at the enemies, and the higher the fortress was, the further the arrows flew. The enemies' hope was to either ram the gate or climb over the wall with ladders and overcome the defenders. For the invading force, these fortifications proved quite difficult to overcome, and accordingly, fortresses occupied a key position in warfare. Passive ring- shaped (enceinte) fortifications of the Medieval era proved vulnerable to damage or destruction by cannon fire, when it could be directed from outside against a perpendicular masonry wall. In addition, an attacking force that could get close to the wall was able to conduct undermining operations in relative safety, as the defenders could not shoot at them from nearby walls. In contrast, the star fortress was a very flat structure composed of many triangular bastions, specifically designed to cover each other, and a ditch. In order to counteract the cannonballs, defensive walls were made lower and thicker. To counteract the fact that lower walls were easier to climb, the ditch was widened so that attacking infantry were still exposed to fire from a higher elevation, including enfilading fire from the bastions. Microsoft Office 2016 Pro Plus Beta ISO 32bit & 64bit Free Download It’s a well-known fact to all of us that Microsoft is working on a new version of Office and Windows (like windows 10). Now they are working on Microsoft Office 2016. It may be arrive in the second. The predecessors of star fortifications were medieval fortresses, usually placed on high hills. From there, arrows were shot at the enemies, and the higher the fortress was, the further the arrows flew. The enemies' hope was to either ram the gate or climb over the. A small Dutch fort in 1647 On its return journey in March 1647 the Dutch ship Haerlem ran ashore in Table Bay. Although the ship could not be salvaged the captain and his crew managed to reach land safely. The captain left for the Netherlands on a ship that was. Find the latest news on men's and women's health, diet, exercise, fitness, medical treatments and conditions on NBC5 DFW's health news page. They were the lucky ones who managed to make it home from Vietnam. Now, a half-century later, some veterans. Jersey Hotels accommodation service for hotels in Jersey, offering on line bookings with instant booking Confirmation of hotels in jersey UK, channel islands, search by price, By. House of Hope In 1633, Wouter Van Twiller, director-general of New Netherland, sent Jacob van Curler on a mission to a spot on the Fresh River where it met its tributary, called Little River. The Dutch had long traded with the Indians hereabouts, but recently the. The Fayetteville Observer: Breaking news and in-depth coverage of Fayetteville, N.C., Fort Bragg, crime, ACC and high school sports, politics and Cape Fear region counties of. The annual International Games Day, supported by the American Library Association's Games and Gaming Round Table, is intended to reconnect communities through their libraries around the educational, recreational and social value of all types of games. The outer side of the ditch was usually provided with a glacis to deflect cannonballs aimed at the lower part of the main wall. Further structures, such as ravelins, tenailles, hornworks or crownworks, and even detached forts could be added to create complex outer works to further protect the main wall from artillery, and sometimes provide additional defensive positions. They were built of many materials, usually earth and brick, as brick does not shatter on impact from a cannonball as stone does. The French army was equipped with new cannon and bombards that were easily able to destroy traditional fortifications built in the Middle Ages. Star forts were employed by Michelangelo in the defensive earthworks of Florence, and refined in the sixteenth century by Baldassare Peruzzi and Vincenzo Scamozzi. The design spread out of Italy in the 1. It was employed heavily throughout Europe for the following three centuries. Italian engineers were heavily in demand throughout Europe to help build the new fortifications. The late- seventeenth- century architects Menno van Coehoorn and especially Vauban, Louis XIV's military engineer, are considered to have taken the form to its logical extreme. Elvas, in Portugal is considered by some to be the best surviving example of the Dutch school of fortifications. When the newly effective maneuverable siege cannon came into military strategy in the fifteenth century, the response from military engineers was to arrange for the walls to be embedded into ditches fronted by earthen slopes so that they could not be attacked by destructive direct fire and to have the walls topped by earthen banks that absorbed and largely dissipated the energy of plunging fire. Where conditions allowed, as in Fort Manoel in Malta, the ditches were cut into the native rock, and the wall at the inside of the ditch was simply unquarried native rock. As the walls became lower, they also became more vulnerable to assault. Dead zone. To prevent this, what had previously been round or square turrets were extended into diamond- shaped points to give storming infantry no shelter. The ditches and walls channeled attacking troops into carefully constructed killing grounds where defensive cannon could wreak havoc on troops attempting to storm the walls, with emplacements set so that the attacking troops had no place to shelter from the defensive fire. Enfilade. The lower walls were more vulnerable to being stormed, and the protection that the earthen banking provided against direct fire failed if the attackers could occupy the slope on the outside of the ditch and mount an attacking cannon there. The Castle of Good Hope is the oldest building in South Africa. Built between 16 by the Dutch East India Company, better known as the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), this. Therefore, the shape was designed to make maximum use of enfilade (or . The indentations in the base of each point on the star sheltered cannons. Those cannons would have a clear line of fire directly down the edge of the neighboring points, while their point of the star was protected by fire from the base of those points. The evolution of these ideas can be seen in transitional fortifications such as Sarzana in northwest Italy. Forward batteries commanded the slopes which defended walls deeper in the complex from direct fire. The defending cannon were not simply intended to deal with attempts to storm the walls, but to actively challenge attacking cannon and deny them approach close enough to the fort to engage in direct fire against the vulnerable walls. The key to the fort's defence moved to the outer edge of the ditch surrounding the fort, known as the covered way, or covert way. Defenders could move relatively safely in the cover of the ditch and could engage in active countermeasures to keep control of the glacis, the open slope that lay outside the ditch, by creating defensive earthworks to deny the enemy access to the glacis and thus to firing points that could bear directly onto the walls and by digging counter mines to intercept and disrupt attempts to mine the fort walls. Compared to medieval fortifications, forts became both lower and larger in area, providing defence in depth, with tiers of defences that an attacker needed to overcome in order to bring cannon to bear on the inner layers of defences. Firing emplacements for defending cannon were heavily defended from bombardment by external fire, but open towards the inside of the fort, not only to diminish their usefulness to the attacker should they be overcome, but also to allow the large volumes of smoke that the defending cannon would generate to dissipate. Fortifications of this type continued to be effective while the attackers were armed only with cannon, where the majority of the damage inflicted was caused by momentum from the impact of solid shot. While only low explosives such as black powder were available, explosive shells were largely ineffective against such fortifications. The development of mortars, high explosives, and the consequent large increase in the destructive power of explosive shells and thus plunging fire rendered the intricate geometry of such fortifications irrelevant. Warfare was to become more mobile. It took, however, many years to abandon the old fortress thinking. Construction. As such, they were often improvised from earlier defences. Medieval curtain walls were torn down, and a ditch was dug in front of them. The earth used from the excavation was piled behind the walls to create a solid structure. While purpose- built fortifications would often have a brick fascia because of the material's ability to absorb the shock of artillery fire, many improvised defences cut costs by leaving this stage out and instead opting for more earth. Improvisation could also consist of lowering medieval round towers and infilling them with earth to strengthen the structures. It was also often necessary to widen and deepen the ditch outside the walls to create a more effective barrier to frontal assault and mining. Engineers from the 1. The main benefit of the glaces was to deny enemy artillery the ability to fire point blank. The higher the angle of elevation, the lower the stopping power. The colossal fortifications, among the most important in Europe, were demolished ten years later. The first key instance of trace Italianate was at the Papal port of Civitavecchia, where the original walls were lowered and thickened because the stone tended to shatter under bombardment. Effectiveness. With the original medieval fortifications beginning to crumble to French cannon fire, the Pisans constructed an earthen rampart behind the threatened sector. It was discovered that the sloping earthen rampart could be defended against escalade and was also much more resistant to cannon fire than the curtain wall it had replaced. The second siege was that of Padua in 1. A monk engineer named Fra Giocondo, trusted with the defence of the Venetian city, cut down the city's medieval wall and surrounded the city with a broad ditch that could be swept by flanking fire from gun ports set low in projections extending into the ditch. Finding that their cannon fire made little impression on these low ramparts, the French and allied besiegers made several bloody and fruitless assaults and then withdrew. The new type of fortification also played a role in the numerous Mediterranean wars, slowing down the Ottoman expansion. Although Rhodes had been partially upgraded to the new type of fortifications after the 1. Ottoman power base and far from any allies. On the other hand, the Ottomans failed to take Corfu in 1. Fort Saint Elmo played a critical role in the Ottoman siege of 1. Eventually it fell, but the Ottoman casualties were very high, and it bought time for the relief force which arrived from Sicily to relieve the rest of the besieged island. The star fort therefore played a crucial and decisive role in the siege. The now ancient fortifications were still of some value at this point. A Russian- Ottoman- English alliance led at sea by Admiral Ushakov and with troops sent by Ali Pasha retook Corfu in 1. Louis Fran. Ultimately, Parker argues, . This is a profound alteration of the Military Revolution thesis originally proposed by Michael Roberts in 1. Parker's emphasis on the fortification as the key element has attracted substantial criticism from some academics, such as John A. Kingra, particularly with respect to the claimed causal link between the new fortress design and increases in army sizes during this period. In the 2. 0th century, with the development of maneuverable tanks and aerial warfare during and after the First World War, fixed fortifications became and have remained less important than in previous centuries.
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