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H
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ESOURCE
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TUDY
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MILITARY FORTRESSES
Seventeenth century military engineering conventions dictated the design of Castillo de San
the castle useless as a form of defense and forced military engineers to develop a new type of
fortress able to withstand the force of cannon bombardment on its walls. The Italians first
developed the bastion system, which quickly spread across Europe and, by the seventeenth
century, dominated fortress design. European nations not only utilized bastioned fortresses at
home but also built fortifications in their colonial outposts in the same manner, altering designs
to suit local conditions and materials. Thus the Spanish officials in St. Augustine adopted the
bastion system for the early wood forts and, later, for the stone fortress, Castillo de San
Marcos.
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The bastion system evolved out of the medieval castle form. Engineers lowered castle walls
and placed mounds of earth in front of them, creating ramparts able to withstand cannon
bombardment. Moats remained an integral part of the defenses to prevent enemy forces from
scaling the sloped embankments and entering the fort. The circular castle tower evolved into the
angular bastion, which afforded protection to adjacent walls. Beyond the fortress walls engineers
placed a variety of masonry and earthen outer works that strengthened the fort’s defenses.
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Bastioned forts centered on a plaza, around which the massive ramparts stood. The interior
of the ramparts sloped upward toward the fighting platform, called the terreplein. The
banquette, or firing step, rose above the terreplein and was protected by the parapet. Soldiers
fired on the enemy through embrasures (openings) in the parapet. On the exterior of the
rampart, facing the moat, a masonry scarp retained the earthen wall of the rampart. The opposite
side of the moat also had a masonry retaining wall, the counterscarp, above which stood the
covered way. A palisade protected the banquette for the covered way. The glacis, an earthen
bank kept clear of vegetation, sloped downward from the covered way into open country.
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Seventeenth century forts were most often square in shape; the linear curtain walls projected
outward at the corners into diamond-shaped bastions, from which soldiers could view the
surrounding area in all directions. Ravelins were similarly shaped defensive structures, often built
in front of curtain walls to provide additional support to the points of the bastions, which were
most vulnerable to attack. Finally, outer defense works like counterguards and hornworks, built
of earth and wood and placed in front of the fort’s main body, provided additional strength to the
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Luis Arana, “The First Spanish Period, 1668-1763: The Endurance of Castillo de San Marcos,” in Historic
Arana (National Park Service, 1986), 9-10; Chatelain, 39-40.
reprint, Ottawa: Museum Restoration Service, 1968), 2l-22.
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Warfare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 2.
C
ASTILLO DE
Marcos. The introduction of cannon as an implement of war late in the Middle Ages rendered
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John Muller, A Treatise Containing the Elementary, Part
of
Fortification, Regular and Irregular (1746:
Structure Report: Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, C. Craig Frazier, Randall Copeland, and Luis
Christopher Duffy, The Fortress in the Age
of Vauban
and Frederick the Great, 1660-1789, vol. 2 of Siege