Bastion

see also: Etymology of Bastion

The bastion is one of the elements of the traditional Fortification S, it replaces in those, the turn to provide fires of flanking on the Courtine and to defend the angles of the body of place. It is consisted a ground slope pressed on the interior wall of the ditch, the Escarpe. The slope constitutes a platform, the bench, where is laid out largest of the Artillerie of the fortified town.

Its form is pentagonal, with two faces towards the enemy, two sides providing fires of flanking on the curtain and the throat towards the body of place. The sides were of two types, rights or curves with handles. The bastion could be full and capped with a rider, raised platform, it such a pentagonal, where the artillery with long range was postionnait. They alternated with advanced works, the Demi-lune S and Tenailles which crossed their fires with those of the bastions, drawing a general plan out of star. The angles of the bastion was often equipped with a watch tower for the sentinels of the fort.

At its origin, it was related to the body of the principal fortification and the fall of the one of them generally meant the fall of the fort. Vauban innovated by transforming it into detached work, which it named counterguard . The bastionnée tower which replaced it on the body of place, then made it possible to draw with artillery, on the back of the bastion, after its capture, which made the task of the attacker even more complicated.

See too

Forteresse#L' appearance of artillery and the beginning of the bastion
Rampart
Face bastionné

Sources

bastion

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