Military Architecture Being Now out of Print, It Has Been Thought Well to Issue a Third Edition

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF E. VIOLLET-LEDUC, BY M. MACDERMOTT, ESQ., ARCHITECT. WLith the original ftmch (Kngrabhtgs. THIRD EDITION. ©ifuro ana lonoott: JAMES PARKER AND CO. 1907. PRINTED BY JAMES PARKER AND CO., CROWN YARD, OXFORD. PREFATORY NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE Second Edition of the English Translation of Viollet-le-Duc's Military Architecture being now out of print, it has been thought well to issue a third edition. The work seems not to have been superseded by any other as regards the general treatment of the principles adopted in mediaeval times for the fortification of Castles and Towns. The examples, it is true, are drawn from existing remains in France, but the same principles apply to English fortifications whether of Castles or Towns, and the admirable illustrations of M. Viollet-le-Duc speak not only in all languages, but elucidate the mode of structure adopted in all countries. It has therefore not been considered necessary to make any addition to what M. Viollet-le-Duc wrote, but it has been thought well to reprint the Preface by Mr. John Henry Parker, which he appended in 1879 to the Second Edition. Oxford, Sept., 1907. a 2 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE first edition of the English translation of this work was published in 1860, under my direction, with the full consent of the Author, and with the original engravings from his own excellent drawings. My reason for re-publishing it at the present time is because I cannot help seeing how useful it would be for the officers of the English army in Zulu-land and other parts of South Africa, and in the savage parts of India, wherever the well-disciplined troops of civilized nations come in contact with savages. It explains all the modes of attacking and defending a camp or a city that have been used from the time of the Romans, by means of these admirable drawings of M. Viollet-le-Duc, which make them far more easy to understand than any words alone could do. It is much to be regretted that more attention has not been paid to this subject in military schools. The first twenty pages of this work, describing the Roman fortifications, would alone be of immense service in fighting with barbarians, as they had to do. The Roman remains in many parts of England would be easily accessible, and much might be learned from them. Unfortunately the fortifications of the ancient Britons on the hills are continually called by ignorant people " Caesar's Camps ; " and the earthworks of the real Roman camps, which may generally be found within half-a-mile of the British city, are entirely overlooked, and allowed to be ploughed-up by the farmers. In some parts of England the entrenchments of many cities VI PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. and camps remain, and they are part of the history of the country and of the people. When the Romans first attempted the conquest of Britain under Julius Caesar, they attacked these fortified cities by assault, but although their superior arms and discipline generally enabled them to take them, their commanders soon saw that this cost too many lives ; half the Roman army was lost in a single campaign, and they were obliged to retire and abandon the attack for a time, but never lost sight of their object ; and when they resumed the attack in the time of Claudius and Nero, under the great general Aulus Plautius Lateranus, they had learned caution, and they no longer attacked by direct assault, but starved out the Britons by blockade, especially by cutting off their supply of water. The cities were almost always on the tops of lofty hills, and strongly defended by entrenchments, following the out line of the cliffs of the hill ; but at that height there was no water, and that necessity of life had to be fetched from some neighbouring stream or spring on the level ground below. The Romans, therefore, made a camp at a short distance ; their entrenchments were always on the oblong plan, and on level ground ; a Roman legion could entrench their camp in a single night sufficiently to be secure against the attack of savages ; then they followed their usual practice, one-third of their army slept in turn, another third was ready to defend the camp, and the remaining third to attack or to watch the enemy. The first object was to watch where the water was fetched from, and then place a guard upon that day and night, relieved in turn, so that each had to watch for eight hours only, by that means they could entirely prevent the Britons from getting any water. In their camps, their superior arms and discipline could not be PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Vll overcome by their half-armed and half-naked assailants in whatever numbers they might surround them ; and the Romans always made a well in each camp, unless it was by the side of a running stream, as at Dorchester, in Oxfordshire. It appears that even before their time the Etruscan soldiers understood equally well the importance of the spade in war ; there is in the Kircherian Museum in Rome a figure of an Etruscan soldier, in bronze, with a wheel-barrow fastened to his back instead of the knap sack of an English soldier, and apparently not much more difficult to carry. Etruscan Soldier with Wheelbarrow, from the Kircherian Museum, Rome. Vlll PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. This is a very curious illustration of the defensive arms (if they may be so called) of that early period. This man probably belonged to the corps of engineers ; we see that he has the shield and his wheelbarrow, but neither sword nor spear. It seems evident that a cer tain number of these trained and skilled workmen, thus equipped, accompanied the army, and that their duty was to dig and form an entrenchment at once, and defend themselves in case of need while doing so, not to fight. In such a country as South Africa might not the same plan be followed with advantage ? Probably the natives would be more ready to dig than to fight for the stranger, and might safely be trusted to do the digging part, which would set at liberty to fight so many more of the English soldiers, and relieve them from some of the hardest work in that hot climate. All accounts agree that the cities of the Zulus are placed in the same manner, on the tops of inaccessible mountains, and there could very rarely be any water in that situation ; could they not be watched in the same manner as the Britons were ? It has long been known that the Roman soldiers conquered more by the spade than by the sword from the earliest period of their history. The original fortifications of Rome itself were entirely earthworks, aggeres, or great banks of earth, with enormous fosses, or trenches ; the lesson they had learned at home they carried with them everywhere. It may seem strange, at first sight, for an army in the nineteenth century to take a lesson from the tactics of warriors of a thousand years before the Christian era ; but it must be remembered that the people we have to fight with are in much the same state of civilization as the natives of Italy were when they were conquered by the Etruscans, and that EARTHWORKS are found by PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. IX experience to be the best defence against modern artillery, as they were at an earlier period against the artillery of those days. At a later period the Norman Barons, to whom large grants of land in all parts of England were made by William the Conqueror, had to defend themselves against a hostile population, and each built himself a castle; at first these were earthworks only, but "ne cessity, the mother of invention," taught Gundulph to erect a keep of stone on his estate at Mailing, in Kent. This keep is in existence, and is of the rudest con struction ; M. Arcisse de Caumont and the best Norman antiquaries acknowledged that it is of earlier character than any keep in Normandy, when I shewed them a drawing of it, and the French call the style of archi tecture which we call THE NORMAN STYLE, the ANGLO- NORMAN STYLE. There is no doubt that it was developed in England under the Norman kings quite as much as in Normandy. About the year 1840 M. Arcisse de Caumont, the leader of the Norman Archaeological Society, with a party of the best-informed members of it, made an excursion to the sites of all the castles of the Norman Barons who had gone over to England with William the Conqueror, with the intention of ascertaining the distinction between the construction of walls in the first half of the eleventh century and those of a later period. To their astonishment they could find no trace of masonry of that period in any one of them. There were magnificent EARTHWORKS in all of them, but no stone walls. An account of this excursion is given in the Bulletin Monumental, of which M. de Caumont was the editor. There is good reason to believe that Gundulph was the inventor of the Norman keep ; it was so exactly a 3 X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. what was wanted, that it was rapidly followed all over England, and gradually spread over the whole of Europe, especially wherever the Normans went.

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