Of course Jamestown does have triangular bastions as evidenced by Bill 
Kelso's excavations and they occur on other sites like Martin's Hundred 
albeit adapted to the circumstsnces and threats of the new World. 
England was backward in this period re fortifications but economics 
played an important part - the English were only too familiar familiar 
with Dutch and Spanish fortifications of the late 16th century from 
fighting in the Low Countries but lacking money or the ability of the 
hapsburgs to make subject towns pay for their own defences - they used 
the Dutch model of low cost earth and timber fortifications in Virginia 
and in English Civil War.

paul courtney
leicester



Henry Cary wrote:
> I would like to add that Vauban's legacy is significantly more complex 
> than typically described. There is a large historiography on the man 
> and his accomplishments, but I would venture that currently he is seen 
> more as an innovator in the development of military science, rather 
> than the creator of the bastion.
> The bastion and the bastioned trace, like that seen on hundreds of 
> Spanish, British, French and Dutch, and early American fortifications 
> in North America, was also commonly known as the trace italienne, in 
> reference to its origins in Italy during the late 15th to 16th 
> Centuries. This eventually spread to the rest of Europe (some have 
> said it came late to Britain as evidenced by Henry VIII's medieval 
> style round-tower coastal defences, and could explain the lack of 
> bastions in early 17th C colonial sites like Jamestown, but I think 
> this could use more research).
> Thus, by the time Vauban came along there was a long tradition of 
> applying the trace italienne to the defence of towns and military 
> camps. However, it is what Vauban did with that heritage that made him 
> famous. At the site level, he was considerably skilled at transforming 
> a medieval fortress into a trace italienne, and also defeating a trace 
> italienne with siegeworks. But on a broader level, his major 
> contribution was creating a strategic network of fortifications for 
> the defence of France, as well as developing France's military 
> engineers into a professional, scientific corps.
> It was this corps, the Corps Royal du Genie, that during the late 18th 
> Century came to see Vauban as their founding father and vigorously 
> codified his engineering ideas into 'systems' of bastions and 
> outworks, something Vauban never did in his lifetime. This school also 
> formed the 'paradigm army' for other military engineering 
> establishments in Britain and the newly minted United States into the 
> early 19th Century.
> By the second decade of the 19th Century, however, the ideas of 
> Marc-Rene, Marquis de Montalembert were being taken up by the Germans, 
> British, and Americans, resulting in masonry casemate works like Fort 
> Sumpter (and Fort Henry here in Kingston) that abandoned the long, 
> trace italienne for a polygonal traced redoubt.
> There are many good sources on the topic but three great ones are:
> Janis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military 
> Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution, MIT Press, 2004
> Henry Guerlac, Vauban: The Impact of Science on War, In Makers of 
> Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Peter Paret 
> (ed.) Princeton University Press, 1986
> Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern 
> World, 1494-1660, Routledge Press, 1997.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Henry Cary
>
> Royal Military College of Canada and Parks Canada Archaeological 
> Services,
> Cavalry House,
> RMC, Kingston, Ontario
> Canada
> [log in to unmask]
>
>> From: Iain Stuart <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Vauban
>> Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:56:04 +1100
>>
>> Vauban is well known (I would have thought) as the foremost military
>> engineer of Louis XIV. He is notable for geometric type forts which were
>> copied by later military engineers but perhaps with more emphasis on the
>> geometry rather than the subtlety of the terrain analysis that 
>> accompanied
>> Vauban’s work.
>>
>>
>>
>> A good introduction that puts Vauban’s work into context is Annals of a
>> Fortress by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (which I have a copy of somewhere, 
>> le Duc
>> was and architectural historian and the inventor of gothic).
>>
>>
>>
>> The interesting question is that of Vauban’s influence in North 
>> America –
>> isn’t the fortress at Louisbourg supposedly one of his designs?
>>
>>
>>
>> Ours in Australia were less geometric being built much later.
>>
>>
>>
>> yours
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr Iain Stuart
>>
>> JCIS Consultants
>>
>>
>>
>> P.O. Box 2397
>>
>> Burwood North
>>
>>
>>
>> ph/fx (02) 97010191
>>
>>
>>
>> HYPERLINK "mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]
>>
>> HYPERLINK 
>> "mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>> Check out the website at HYPERLINK 
>> "http://www.jcis.net.au"www.jcis.net.au
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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