Fortification
The Confederate Defenses at Mobile Bay
A Union attack on Mobile Bay and its defenses was a huge undertaking. Triangular in shape, the bay was about thirty miles long—about eight miles wide at the upper end and just over twenty near the mouth. The entrance to the bay, however, was only three miles wide and most of this length toward the western side was extremely shallow.…
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CRUSADER CASTLES
Chastel Blanc: The fortified church and town of Safita (Castel Blanc) in the mid 13th century The great tower or keep (1) of Castel Blanc in the Syrian coastal mountains was a massively fortified church rather than simply a castle. The lower chamber (2) formed the church with a semi-domed…
THE PENINSULAR WAR: THE LINES OF TORRESÂ VEDRAS
The Lines of Torres Vedras were lines of forts and other military defences built in secrecy to defend Lisbon during the Peninsular War. Named after the nearby town of Torres Vedras, they were ordered by Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, constructed by Sir Richard Fletcher, 1st Baronet, and his Portuguese workers…
The Great Inca Rebellion – The Siege of Cuzco I
As always, the Spaniards’ first reaction to a disturbance with the Indians was to try to seize the initiative. Hernando sent his brother Juan with seventy cavalrymen – virtually every horse then in Cuzco – to disperse the Indians in the Yucay valley. While riding across the plateau of rolling…
The Great Inca Rebellion – The Siege of Cuzco II
Manco Inca and other 3 soldiers with Spanish weapons during the rebellion. The beleaguered Spaniards now decided that their immediate survival depended on the recapture of the fortress on the cliff above them. According to Murua, Manco’s relative and rival Pascac, who had sided with the Spaniards, gave advice about…
The Mareth Line
Infantry bunker of the Mareth Line A line from the Book of Job was among Bernard Law Montgomery favorites: “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” He was a master of organization and training, of the set battle, of the theatrics of command. “Kill Germans, even…
The War of the Engineers I
The French engineers who designed the forts were well aware that the rifled, breech-loading guns that were increasingly coming into use in the 1870s were far superior to the cannon that Vauban and his followers had in mind when they designed and built their forts. The difficulty men like SĂ©rĂ©…