Fortification, Part IV: French Guns and Italian Lines | Hacker News Reader

Fortification, Part IV: French Guns and Italian Lines

acoup.blog

93 pointsTomte15 comments

To everyone who clicked here, I recommend his blog so much! It's great, I've even posted it before! :P

Okay, to be serious, it is really great.

Thank you for posting it to both you and OP. It is one of the true gems of the modern web

I've reread my comment and it was unnecessarily harsh - in hindsight, I apologise for that.

Okay, on a serious note again - I'm happy to see this blog being shared. I know how this sounds, but I really love it, both for dealing with pop-culture myths and both for the fact how it is written.

It’s brilliant. Probably my favourite corner of the internet. In many instances it has reshaped a lot of my thinking. Everything historical now looks different.

Some of my favourites:

- Practical Polytheism: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...

- No Man’s Land: https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-...

- Universal Warrior: https://acoup.blog/2021/01/29/collections-the-universal-warr...

The topic of star forts is very very interesting, though it raises more questions than satisfying answers.

For example, central Asia has many such forts in the middle of nowhere ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), some barely noticeable except from above, and even the surrounding landscape looks so scorched one wonders what really happened for the land to look like this and for these forts to be so erased. If you think natural erosion you imagine millennia, but focus on the forts and you imagine centuries, and it's hard to combine both scales.

Also you can find star forts all over the globe.The kmz file from this site [6] lists about a thousand locations across the globe, it's mind boggling to navigate around them. Who or what civilization managed to propagate this style so far beyond the reaches of what history taught us?

Finally the star forts are most often associated to the finest water canal in the world, and it's also mind boggling to imagine the amount of work involved in modelling the earth at such scale and precision without any engine.

Wild theories abound, I personally prefer focusing on the things one can see or visit and abstain from believing any (hi)story, but even then it's captivating.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/ZUsQsocutLTXiodm7 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/pkTMLFN7fxYofhkw8 [3] https://goo.gl/maps/SwogTFKo1uuidPNn9 [4] https://goo.gl/maps/1aFRdVHujvL8jLNTA [5] https://goo.gl/maps/gXTCPXjkSvbFnT2B9 [6] http://starforts.org/locations.html

> Who or what civilization managed to propagate this style so far beyond the reaches of what history taught us?

... European colonists, mostly. Star forts are what they built to protect themselves from the locals, who typically outnumbered them by some absurd margin. Because of this, you can find them wherever colonization was happening.

The Central Asian forts you linked are mostly part of the Siberian Line, a line of forts the Russians built where the northern forest turned to the southern steppe mostly in the early 18th century to protect their southern border from Kazakh raids, and to extend their influence eastwards. The land around them always looked like that as they were built on the periphery of the more fertile areas, to protect them. The forts themselves are so eroded mostly because they were not really built to last in the first place. As they were in the middle of nowhere, with no cheap transport available, they were built with what was locally available, which was often just packed earth with maybe a brick wall to keep the outer walls in shape.

The city of Lucca in Italy is a perfect example of walls evolution as there still are the roman, low medieval and renaissance walls.

Dutch engineers went to France to study the fortifications there. Then they came home and built copies of them just in time for a French invasion.

European history is truly mind-blowingly insane and violent, we are at a bit of a dull moment right now but things will heat up again. I remember a conversation with a Japanese guy: everyone thinks ninja and samurai but Japan had 300 years of peace before the Americans showed up.

> Japan had 300 years of peace before the Americans showed up.

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Japan, I don’t find a period of “300 years of peace”. Can you tell when “the Americans showed up”?

The Americans showing up probably refers to the 1854 Treaty of Kanagawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Kanagawa which forced the opening of Japanese ports to American ships.

The most recent battles in Japan prior to that that I'm aware of are the rebellions that broke out in 1837 due to famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenp%C5%8D#Rebellion

During the Edo period Japan was quite peaceful. The linked page shows nothing between 1638 and 1863. The Tokugawa shogunate started a little earlier (1600ish) and marked the start of a long period of internal peace. That's 200-250 (depending on how you count some of the events in 1600-1640 -- I think they had limited impact on the home islands?) which ended with the Meiji Restoration.

Excellent discussion. Thanks.

Fascinating to see the interaction military technology and political structure.

Good timing for Age of Empires IV!

I am expecting it will help me in Civ 6.

While it doesn't change anything about the actual power of French artillery (that was at the time incredible) the article makes it seem like it was the only reason that Charles VIII could make this incursion in Italy relatively easily.

As a matter of fact, besides and before the military successes, what allowed him to traverse Italy almost without fighting was the terror he managed to spread, from a modern viewpoint it is a perfect example of well designed "PSY-ops/public relations/propaganda".

In Emilia Romagna he first assaulted the (insignificant from a strategic/military viewpoint) Castle of Bubano (essentially to make pressure to Caterina Sforza) but, since it couldn't conquer it fast enough, it turned to the (possibly even less important) nearby Mordano which was easily taken (thanks to the powerful artillery), and then the French massacred everyone (men, women, children), literally everyone.

Next was (descending into Tuscany) Fivizzano (as well not-so-impenetrable as a fortification) and once again there was the killing of all the soldiers (that had surrendered) and of most of the inhabitants.

At this point the mere notice of Charles VIII intention to pass nearby made cities/castles/fortifications surrender in advance.

Florence was a little bit different as in the same days there was what essentially amounts to a revolution, the Medici were forced to flee and the Republic was instated, and when Charles VIII came near Florence (notwithstanding the stories of terror) found that the whole people were ready to take arms against his army (that would have been largely outnumbered) and through some diplomacy the "crisis" was solved without any fight.

The whole story (for those interested) is in two chapters of the Storia d'Italia by Francesco Guicciardini, which are (surprisingly) very readable via Google Translate (IMHO more readable than the 1763 English translation available on archive.org[0]):

https://it-wikisource-org.translate.goog/wiki/Storia_d%27Ita...

[0] https://archive.org/details/historyofitaly01guic/page/230/mo...

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