Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/705

Rh were more useful for the defence than the attack. Later, larger pieces were made, which acted practically as mortars, throwing stone balls with high elevation, and barrels of burning composition. In the middle of the 15th century the art of cannon-founding was much developed by the brothers Bureau in France. They introduced iron cannon balls and greatly strengthened the guns. In 1428 the English besieging Orleans were entirely defeated by the superior artillery of the besieged. By 1450 Charles VII. was furnished with so powerful a siege train that he captured the whole of the castles in Normandy from the English in one year.

But the great change came after the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. with a greatly improved siege train in 1494. The astonishing rapidity with which castles and fortified towns fell before him proved the uselessness of the old defences. It became necessary to create a new system of defences, and, says Cosseron de Villenoisy, “thanks to the mental activity of the Renaissance and the warlike conditions prevailing everywhere, the time could not have been more favourable.” There is no doubt that the engineers of Italy as a body were responsible for the first advance in fortification. There, where vital and mental energy were at boiling-point, and where the first striking demonstration of the new force had been given, the greatest intellects, men such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Machiavelli, busied themselves over the problem of defence.

It has been claimed that Albert Dürer was the first writer on modern fortification. This was not so; Dürer’s work was published in 1527, and more than one Italian engineer, certainly Martini of Siena and San Gallo, had preceded him. Also Machiavelli, writing between 1512 and 1527, had offered some most valuable criticisms and general principles. Dürer, moreover, had little influence on the progress of fortification; though we may see in his ideas, if we choose, the germ of the “polygonal” system, developed long afterwards by Montalembert. Dürer’s work was to some extent a connecting link between the old fortification and the new. He proposed greatly to enlarge the old towers; and he provided both them and the curtains with vaulted chambers for guns (casemates) in several tiers, so as to command both the ditch and the ground beyond it. His projects were too massive and costly for execution, but his name is associated with the first practical gun casemates.

Before beginning to trace the effect of gunpowder on the design of fortification, it may be noted that two causes weakened the influence of the castles. First, their owners were slow to adopt the new ideas and abandon their high strong walls for low extended parapets, and, secondly, they had not the men necessary for long lines of defence. At the same time the corporations of the towns had learnt to take an active part in warfare, and provided trained and disciplined soldiers in large numbers.

When artillery became strong enough to destroy masonry from a distance two results followed: it was necessary to modify the masonry defences so as to make them less vulnerable, and to improve the means of employing the guns of the defence. For both these purposes the older castles with their restricted area were little suited, and we must now trace the development of the fortified towns.

Probably the first form of construction directly due to the appearance of the new weapons was the bulwark (boulevard, baluardo or bollwerk). This was an outwork usually semicircular in plan, built of earth consolidated with timber and revetted

with hurdles. Such works were placed as a shield in front of the gates, which could be destroyed even by the early light cannon-balls; and they offered at the same time advanced positions for the guns of the defence. They were found so useful for gun positions for flanking fire that later they were placed in front of towers or at intervals along the walls for that purpose.

This, however, was only a temporary expedient, and we have now to consider the radical modifications in designs. These affected both the construction and trace of the walls.

The first lesson taught by improved artillery was that the walls should not be set up on high as targets, but in some manner screened. One method of doing this in the case of old works was by placing bulwarks in front of them. In other cases the

lists or outer walls, being surrounded by moats, were already partially screened and suitable for conversion into the main defence; and as with improved flanking defence great height was no longer essential, the tops of the walls were in some cases cut down. In new works it was natural to sink the wall in a ditch, the earth from which was useful for making ramparts.

As regards resistance to the effect of shot, it was found that thin masonry walls with rubble filling behind them were very easily destroyed. A bank of earth behind the wall lessened the vibration of the shot, but once a breach was made the earth came down, making a slope easy of ascent. To obviate this, horizontal layers of brushwood, timber and sometimes masonry were built into the earth bank, and answered very well (fig. 7).

Another expedient of still greater value was the use of counterforts. The earliest counterforts were simply buttresses built inward from the wall into the rampart instead of outward (fig. 8). Their effect was to strengthen the wall and make the breaches more difficult of ascent. An alternative arrangement for strengthening the wall was an arched gallery built behind it under the rampart (fig. 9). This construction was in harmony with the idea, already familiar, of a passage in the wall from which countermines could be started; but it has the obvious weakness that the destruction of the face wall takes away one of the supports of the arch. The best arrangement, which is ascribed to Albert Dürer, was the “counter-arched revetment.” This consisted of a series of arches built between the counterforts, with their axes at right angles to the face of the wall. Their advantage was that, while supporting the wall and taking all the weight of the rampart, they formed an obstacle after the destruction of the wall more difficult to surmount than the wall itself and very hard to destroy. The counter-arches might be in one, two or three tiers, according to the height of the wall (figs. 10 and 11, the latter without the earth of the rampart and showing also a countermine gallery).

A more important question, however, than the improvement of the passive defence or obstacle was the development of the active