CHAPTER I

CIRCUMVALLATION OF TOWNS

The distinctive character of military architecture in the Middle Ages must be sought in defensive fortification. In all other respects its constructive methods were identical with those employed in architectural works generally. The few ornamental features of military buildings, as, for instance, the interior vaults and the profiles of consoles and cornices, diverge but slightly from the accepted types of such features in the churches, monasteries, and domestic structures of the period.

The Latin, Roman, Gallo-Roman, Romanesque, and Gothic architects were versed in every department of the art they practised. The same architect was called upon to construct the church and the fortress, the abbey, and the ramparts which were often its necessary complement, the donjon, and castle, the town hall, the hospital, the rural barn, and the urban dwelling. He was responsible not only for the inception of every class and form of building, but for its successful elaboration; on him alone the responsibility of its execution rested; no scientific specialist checked his conclusions and verified his calculations as in our own time. The system by which the architect and the engineer have each their separate functions and responsibilities in the construction of the same building was unknown. The builder, or mason, as some would have him called, was an architect in the fullest sense; he himself traced the diagrams of his conceptions, and directed the execution of every detail, careful alike of stability and beauty.

It is a curious and disheartening phenomenon that such a direct contravention of the principles of mediæval art as the modern system of divided responsibility implies, should obtain only among the French, the very people to whom Western Europe owes its initiation into those principles. In England, in Belgium, in Holland, Switzerland, and Germany the architect is also the engineer; the science and the art of his craft are inseparable. "This intimate union of qualities gives an individuality to certain productions of these nations which we might well lay to heart and make the subject of serious comparative study. We must needs admit to begin with that we ourselves have become disciples rather than pioneers in a great movement."[57]

[57] "L'Art à l'Exposition," _L'Architecture_, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris. _L'Illustration_, for 25th May 1889.

The one preoccupation of the modern engineer seems to be the satisfaction of imperious necessity. He is inclined to neglect all that mathematics cannot give him. And yet he has brought about a very sensible progress by his mathematical application of modern science. He has unquestionably excelled in industrial masterpieces perfectly adapted to the needs of the moment, if wanting in the qualities that make for immortality. We accept with qualified admiration his marvellous bridges and kindred works in metal--marvellous yet ephemeral; but we accept them merely as a temporary substitute for the more solid if less showy stone bridges of our early architects.

We would not have the servant of yesterday the master of to-morrow. We protest against the degradation of the architect from his high and noble estate to the rank of a mere decorator, however skilful. We would not witness the extinction of the ancient French traditions which inspired so many masterpieces, and to which we look as the source of many yet to come.

It appears, moreover, that the general acceptation of the word _ingénieur_ (engineer) is a totally mistaken one. It is derived from the mediæval term _engigneur_, which was very differently applied.

The architect and the engineer of our own day are both _constructors_, but with a difference. The architect loves and cultivates his art; the engineer, with few exceptions, despises, or affects to despise, his.

In the Middle Ages their functions were perfectly distinct. The architect constructed what the _engigneur_ used his utmost cunning to destroy. The architect built ramparts and strengthened them with towers; the _engigneur_ undermined them if attacking, or countermined them if defending. It was his business to invent or direct the use of engines of war, such as rams, mangonels, arblasts, and machines for the slinging of enormous projectiles, or grenades. He constructed the portable wooden towers which the besieging party brought up against the walls for an escalade, directed the sappers who undermined them, and, in fact, superintended the manufacture of all such offensive engines as were necessary in the conduct of a siege, a process which, before the invention of firearms, necessitated preparations as prolonged and tedious as they were complicated and uncertain. In short, the architect was the constructor of fortifications, the _engigneur_ their assailant or defender. It was not until the time of Vauban that military engineers were called upon to exercise functions so much more extensive. At an earlier period there were, however, specialists in construction who undertook such works as the circumvallation of Aigues-Mortes, but their labours had little in common with those of modern engineers.

Before the feudal period the fortifications of camps consisted either of earthworks, of walls built of mud and logs, or of palisades surrounded by ditches, in imitation of the Roman methods of castrametation. The _enceintes_ of towns fortified by the Romans were walls defended by round or square towers. These walls were built double; a space of several yards intervened, which was filled up with the earth dug from the moat or ditch, mixed with rubble. The mass was levelled at the top and paved to form what is technically known as a covered way, or terrace protected by an embattled wall rising from the outer curtain.

That portion of the _enceinte_ of Carcassonne which was built by the Visigoths in the sixth century is thus constructed on the Roman model. "The ground on which the town is built rises considerably above that beyond the walls, and is almost on a level with the rampart. The curtains[58] are of great thickness; they are composed of two facings of dressed stones cut into small cubes, which alternate with courses of bricks; the intervening space is filled not with earth, but with a concrete formed of rubble and lime."[59] The flanking towers which rise considerably above the curtains were so disposed that it was possible to isolate them from the walls by raising drawbridges. Thus each tower formed an independent stronghold against assailants.

[58] The wall space between the towers.

[59] Viollet-le-Duc, _La Cité de Carcassonne_.

Fig. 165 shows a portion of the north-west ramparts of the city of Carcassonne, with the first round tower; to the left of the drawing is the Romano-Visigothic tower, flanking right and left the curtains of the same period.

In accordance with the Roman tradition the _enceinte_ of a town, formed, as we have seen, of ramparts strengthened by towers, were further defended by a citadel or keep, of which we shall have more to say in the following chapter. This keep commanded the whole place, which was usually situated on the slope of a hill above the bank of a river. The bridge which communicated with the opposite bank was fortified by a gate-house or _tête de pont_, to guard the passage.

The circumvallation of towns often consisted of a double enclosure, divided by a moat. By the close of the twelfth century architects had caught the inspiration of the great military works of the Crusaders in the East, and military architecture had progressed on the same lines as religious and monastic architecture.

The territories, conquered by the Crusaders in the course of establishing the Christian supremacy in the East, had been divided into feofs as early as the twelfth century. These soon boasted castles, churches, and monastic foundations, of the Cistercian and Premonstrant orders among others.

According to G. Rey, the following abbeys and priories were built in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem at this period:--The monasteries of Mount Sion, Mount Olivet, Jehoshaphat, St. Habakkuk, and St. Samuel, etc., and in Galilee, those of Mount Tabor and Palmarée. The military organisation was regulated by the _Assises de la haute Cour_ (Assizes of the Supreme Court), which determined the number of knights to be furnished by each feof for the defence of the kingdom, and in like manner, the number of men-at-arms required from each church and each community of citizens.... The middle of the twelfth century was the period at which the Christian colonies of the Holy Land were most flourishing. Undeterred by the wars of which Syria was the theatre, the Franks had promptly assimilated the Greek and Roman tradition as manifested in Byzantine types of military architecture. The double enclosure flanked by towers, one of the main features of Syrian fortresses built by the Crusaders, was borrowed from the Greeks. Many of their strongholds, notably Morgat, the so-called _Krak_ of the knights, and Tortosa, were of colossal proportions. They may be divided into two classes. In the first, the buildings are of the Frankish type, and seem to be modelled on the French castles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The flanking towers are nearly always round; they contain a defensive story, while their summits and those of the intervening curtains are crowned with battlements in the French fashion. Other features subsequently introduced were: the double _enceinte_, borrowed from the Byzantines, the inner line of which commanded the outer, and was sufficiently near to allow its defenders to engage, should assailants have carried the first barrier; secondly, stone machicolations in place of the wooden _hourds_ or timber scaffoldings which were retained in France till the close of the thirteenth century; and finally, the talus, a device by which the thickness of the walls was tripled at the base, thus affording increased security against the arts of the sapper and the earthquake shocks so frequent in the East.

The buildings of the second class belong to the school of the Knights Templars. Their characteristic features are the towers, invariably square or oblong in shape, and projecting but slightly from the curtains. The fortress of Kalaat-el-Hosn,[60] or _Krak_ of the knights, commanded the pass through which ran the roads from Homs and Hamah to Tripoli and Tortosa, and was a military station of the first importance. Together with the castles of Akkar, Arcos, La Colée, Chastel-Blanc, Areynieh, Yammour, Tortosa, and Markab, and the various auxiliary towers and posts, it constituted a system of defence designed to protect Tripoli from the incursions of the Mahometans, who retained their hold on the greater part of Syria.... The _Krak_, which was built under the direction of the Knights Hospitallers, has a double _enceinte_, separated by a wide ditch partly filled with water. The inner wall forms a reduct, and rising above the outer enclosure commands its defences. It also encompasses the various dependencies of the castle, the great hall, chapel, domestic buildings, and magazines. A long vaulted passage, easy of defence, was the only entrance to the place. To the north and west the outer line consisted of a curtain flanked by rounded turrets, and crowned by machicolations, which formed a continuous scaffolding of stone along the greater part of the _enceinte_.

[60] _Étude sur les Monuments de l'Architecture Militaire des croisés en Syrie_, by G. Rey; Paris, 1871.

The action of the East upon the West was manifested in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the application to the fortification of Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes of methods in use among the Crusaders in Syria.

This oriental influence is apparent at Carcassonne in the double _enceinte_ borrowed from Syrian fortresses.

The city of Carcassonne stands upon a plateau commanding the valley of the Aude, the site of an ancient Roman _castellum_. In the sixth century it fell into the hands of the Visigoths, who fortified it. It increased considerably in extent during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, but in the time of Simon de Montfort (1209) and of Raymon de Trancavel (1240) the _enceinte_ was not nearly so important as it became under St. Louis. By the middle of the thirteenth century the king had begun the construction of defensive works on a vast scale, and built the outer _enceinte_, which still exists, as may be seen on the plan (Fig. 167) taken from Viollet-le-Duc's _Cité de Carcassonne_.

The primary object of the _enceinte_ was to secure the place against a sudden attack during the completion or enlargement of its interior defences. The additions of St. Louis, which were carried on by Philip the Bold, rendered Carcassonne impregnable in the general estimation. "As a fact, it was never invested, and did not open its gates to Edward the Black Prince till 1355, when all Languedoc had submitted to him."[61]

[61] Viollet-le-Duc, _La Cité de Carcassonne_.

Oriental influences are equally evident at Aigues-Mortes. The Genoese Guglielmo Boccanera, who constructed the _enceinte_, was apparently familiar with the system of fortification adopted by the Crusaders in Syria. The machicolations which here make their first appearance in Languedoc (in the reign of Philip the Bold), proclaim the filiation of Aigues-Mortes to the Syrian fortresses. Italian influences are also perceptible in the square plan of the flanking towers. French architects had always preferred the round tower, as more solid in itself, and less open to attack from sappers, who, in advancing against a building of this form, were fully exposed to the missiles of the defenders from the curtains adjoining; while, on the other hand, the angles of the square tower gave a certain protection to assailants advancing against its front.

The ramparts of Avignon, which date from the fourteenth century, seem to have been constructed on Italian methods. The curtains are flanked by square towers, open towards the town, and surmounted by embattled parapets corbelled out from the walls, and machicolated so as to command their bases.

In the thirteenth century walls and towers were provided with movable wooden scaffoldings, as shown at A in the figure. Spaces were left in the masonry of the walls for the insertion of wooden beams, which, projecting from the curtain, supported an overhanging gallery. This, being pierced with traps or apertures in the flooring, commanded the base of the wall, and was an important element in defensive operations. But as it was found that these timber galleries were easily set on fire by assailants, they were replaced in the fourteenth century by stone machicolations, as shown at B, consisting of corbels, supporting an embattled parapet. Between the inner face of the parapet and the outer face of the curtain the supporting corbels alternated with openings for the defence of the base, as already described. This arrangement, among the earliest examples of which are the square towers of Avignon, was soon generally adopted by architects in the construction of city ramparts.

"The art of fortification, which had made great advances at the beginning of the thirteenth century, remained almost stationary to the end of it. During the Hundred Years' War, however, it received a fresh impetus. When order had been restored in the kingdom, Charles VII. set about the restoration or reconstruction of many fortresses recaptured from the English. In the defensive works of such towns and castles, and in various new undertakings of a like nature, we recognise the method and regularity proper to an art based on well-defined principles, and far advanced towards mastery."[62]

[62] Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire_, vol. i.

In the Abbey of Mont St. Michel the successive modifications applied to military _enceintes_ from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, are illustrated in the fullest and most interesting manner.

Of the fourteenth century fortifications, which surrounded the original town at the summit of the rock, connecting the ramparts with the _Merveille_ on the north, and the abbey buildings on the south, some fragments still remain. The tower on the north is intact. The walls are crowned with machicolations, in accordance with the then novel system of massing the defences at the top of the ramparts. The gate of the _enceinte_ was to the south-east, judging from the miniatures in the _livre d'heures_ of Pierre II., Duke of Brittany, which show the arrangement of the original _enceinte_ at the close of the fourteenth century.

The abbey was at this time governed by Pierre Le Roy, one of its ablest abbots and most famous constructors. He rebuilt the summit of the _Tour des Corbins_ (_merveille_), restored, and re-roofed the abbey buildings to the south of the church, which, begun by Richard Justin in 1260, were carried on at intervals by his successors till they were partially destroyed by the fire of 1374. He completed the eastern defences by the addition of the square tower at O on the plan (Fig. 151), in which he built several rooms for the accommodation of his soldiers. The tower is known as the _Tour Perrine_, in memory of its author. We have seen that the abbots gradually became great feudal chieftains; the Abbot of Mont St. Michel was further commandant of the place for the king; and he was empowered to bestow feofs on the nobles of the province, who bound themselves in return to keep guard over the mount in certain contingencies, enumerated in the following rendering of a Latin text:--[63]

[63] Ed. Corroyer, _Description de l'Abbaye du Mont St. Michel et de ses Abords_.

"The tenure of these vavassories was by faith and fealty, and their holders were bound to furnish relief and thirteen knights, each of whom was to come in person to guard the gate of the abbey when necessary--that is to say, in time of war; each to keep guard for the space of the ebb and flow of the sea--that is to say, during the rising and falling of the tide; and each to be provided with gambeson, casque, gauntlets, shield, lance, and all requisite arms; and further to present themselves thus armed yearly at the feast of St. Michael in September."

In the early years of the fifteenth century he built the gate-house and crenellated curtain which connects it with the _Merveille_, to the north of the guard-room, _Bellechaise_ (see Fig. 163, beginning of this chapter). The gate-house was placed in front of the northern façade of _Bellechaise_ (D, Fig. 150); an open space between this and the south wall of the new structure formed a wide _machicoulis_ for the protection of the north gate (that of _Bellechaise_), which, by the erection of the new building, had been transformed into a second interior entrance. The gate-house or _châtelet_ is a square structure, flanked at the angles of the north front by two turrets, corbelled out upon buttresses. In general appearance they resemble a pair of huge mortars standing on their breeches. Between the pedestals of these turrets was the doorway and the inclined vault over the staircase leading to the guard-room. This entrance was defended by a portcullis worked from within on the first story, and by three _machicoulis_ at the top of the curtain, between the battlements of the turrets. For the further protection of the gate-house Pierre Le Roy built the barbican which covers it to the east and north, and also commands the great staircase (_Grand Degré_) on the north. He modified the ramparts by the addition of the tower known as the _Tour Claudine_ at the north-east angle of the _Merveille_. In the lower story of this tower he constructed a guard-room, the postern of which communicated with the _Grand Degré_, and by a series of ingenious and unique combinations was so contrived as to command all the approaches.[64]

[64] Ed. Corroyer, _Description de l'Abbaye du Mont St. Michel_, etc.; Paris, 1877.

In 1411 the Abbot Robert Jolivet was nominated lord of the abbey by Pope John XXIII. After his election by the monks he was made captain of the garrison by the king, but continued to live in Paris. In 1416, however, he hastened to his abbey, which was threatened by the English, who had possessed themselves of Lower Normandy after the battle of Agincourt in 1415. Whilst the English were busy fortifying Tombelaine, Robert Jolivet completed his walls and certain towers round about the town, which still exist. To meet the expenses of his undertaking the abbot obtained a grant from the king of fifteen hundred _livres_ from the revenues of the Viscounty of Avranches, besides a subsidy from the Master of the Mint at St. Lô.

At the time when Robert Jolivet was building the new ramparts, from about 1415 to 1420, the town had greatly increased towards the south, and even setting aside the dangerous proximity of the English at Tombelaine, some more extensive system of defence than that afforded by the fortifications of the fourteenth century was imperatively needed to secure the place against attack. Robert Jolivet incorporated his new walls on the east with those of the preceding century, which, following the escarpments of the cliff, descend to the beach, and are protected by the northern tower. These walls he flanked with an additional tower projecting considerably from the surface, which was destined to command the adjoining curtains and protect the main line of his defences. He then carried his walls round to the south of the rock and strengthened them by five other towers. The last of these, known as the _Tour du Roi_, forms the south-eastern projection of the place, and commands the western gate of the town.

The walls and their sloping bases are defended by stone machicolations above, the consoles of which support open crenellated parapets. Several of the towers were roofed, and afforded shelter for the defenders of the ramparts. After leaving the _Tour du Roi_ the walls turn off at a right angle and unite themselves to the abrupt declivities of the rock by means of a series of steps and covered ways, commanded by a fortified guard-room. Even the inaccessible peaks of the rock itself are fortified and connected with the defences of the abbey on the south.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, and still more notably towards its close, firearms had been successfully used in various sieges, and had made such rapid progress that the whole system of attack and defence was transformed. Towers gave way to bastions, the terraces of which became batteries, while the battlements of the earlier mode were replaced by epaulments. Machicolations which were now merely a traditional decoration at last disappeared altogether, and military science gradually took the place of architecture, for which there was henceforth little scope in this particular field.