("The Military Encyclopedia of Sytin ")
The fortress tower is a defensive structure , part of the fortress fences (walls) in ancient and Middle Ages [1] .
Fortress towers were built of brick , stone and wood in the corners of the walls and in long straight sections. Several protruding beyond the plane of the wall, had a round, semicircular, rectangular, polygonal and other shapes, with a diameter of up to 20 m, sometimes 1.5β2 times as high as the walls. The towers served as a shelter for the troops and a stronghold of defense, also for observation, providing longitudinal shelling of the fortress walls , approaches to them and protecting the passage to the fortress [2] . Accordingly, the towers are divided into deaf and traffic or travel (also called gate , gate or just gates ).
Content
History
The time of the appearance of the fortress towers dates back to the most ancient times; according to the surviving images of the tower, the ancient Egyptians , Assyro-Babylonians and Phoenicians built [2] .
In the written monuments of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, there is not only a mention, but a rather detailed description of such towers. The Romans began to place their towers not only on the fortress fence, but also outside the fortresses, in the form of advanced fortifications in mountain passages, at river crossings , as well as at the borders, like watch posts . They also introduced the field use of towers as strongholds of their camps and as observation towers on the battlefields [2] .
In the Middle Ages, defensive castle towers were greatly developed in Western Europe with the strengthening of castles . Drawbridges and drawbridges appeared, provided with special towers in the heads (prototype of the bridge bridge); sometimes such a head tower was adjoined to the main fence by a semicircular wall, forming a front courtyard and firing, at the same time, the bottom of the walls with longitudinally-inclined shots (prototype of the fossil shaver) [2] .
With the advent of firearms, the fortress towers began to be massive, armed with guns and adapted to gun defense. Developing little by little their internal space and the defense of the fortress in general, depending on the improvement of firearms and means of destruction, they began to give the towers a larger protrusion in the field (for flanking walls and a moat) and gradually (in the XVI - XVII centuries ) moved on to their architectural modifications, which are known in fortification as bastions (rondels) , bastions and turbo-bastions [1] [2] .
See also
- Fortress
- Fortress wall
- Castle
- Monastery
- Fort
- Kremlin
- Fortification
- Gun tower
Notes
- β 1 2 Military Encyclopedic Dictionary. - 2. - M .: Military Publishing House, 1986. - S. 70.
- β 1 2 3 4 5 Fortress Tower // Military Encyclopedia : [in 18 vol.] / Ed. V.F. Novitsky [et al.]. - SPb. ; [ M. ]: Type. t-va I. D. Sytin , 1911-1915.
Literature
- Zabel S.A. Fortification // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.