Star-Shaped Fort of Bourtange

1. Stane
   June 13th, 2009 at 2:22 am

   Oh, but there is plenty more or these star shaped forts all over Europe. The idea behind these crazy angles is to catch the enemy in crossfire where ever he is standing. Once the fortification engineers figured it out, it become fashionable so almost all forts and fortresses built in 17th and 18th centuries had this shape. Even older structures were retrofitted to resemble this plan.

2. jenni_purrr
   June 13th, 2009 at 7:01 am

   Here's one in the United States. Fort McHenry, in Baltimore Maryland. While not as pretty as the one you featured it has a storied past.
   http://scienceviews.com/photo/browse/SIA2057.jpg

3. Bernadette
   June 13th, 2009 at 7:10 am

   I've been there. It's quite nice.

4. Kev
   June 13th, 2009 at 11:01 am

   Here's a star shaped fort in the heart of Quebec City, Canada.
   La Citadelle http://lacitadelle.qc.ca/
   google map: http://tinyurl.com/nfwnrq

   Sometimes called "The Gibraltar of North America". Originally to defend against the English, then against the Americans, it is currently an active Canadian military garrison.

   This is the site of an important battle in North American history; in 1759, for better or for worse, British forces defeated French forces at the Plains of Abraham and decided the balance of French vs. English dominance in North America.
   Here's some light history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Quebec_(1759)

   Of course, the long term result was that removing the French threat removed the colonists' need to rely on the British military, one of the factors leading to the American revolutionary war.

5. Ladyfingers
   June 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am

   There's a star fort in Cape Town: The Cape Castle.

6. Kalel
   June 13th, 2009 at 1:08 pm

   I feel strangely sorry for the Saudis.

7. Mobyhead
   June 13th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

   James Burke provided an excellent analysis of how star fortresses worked in his television series Connections. The angular battlements "fill in" areas in which besiegers could shelter from defenders' fire, and the battlements could cover one another with withering cross-fire. Streets inside the fortress would be arranged to permit troops and guns to be transferred wherever they were needed as quickly as possible.

8. Seven Bates
   June 13th, 2009 at 2:38 pm

   "All the crazy angles and moats surrounding the star-shaped fort was were easier to defend."

   - I know. I hate grammar Nazi's too. Sorry.

9. Christophe
   June 13th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

   for more on the star forts :
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort

   and
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauban#Fortifications
   A French architect who specialized on star forts.

10. PK
    June 13th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    That makes sense. It's like the wiggly surface of our intestines: The more surface area with easy access from blood (inside the fort), the easier to digest the food (the enemies).

11. Foreigner1
    June 13th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Nederlandse_vestingsteden_en_ve rsterkte_steden is the Dutch Wikipedia-site. It sites about 166 cities in the Netherlands alone that are or were fortified cities like bourtange. http://www.vestingsteden.nl/citylist.html?lang=nl gives about 20 Dutch cities (not small villages like Bourtange of Veere or plain forts with similar shape like Rammekens, Sabina, De Schans near Goedereede or Fort Rijnouwen near Utrecht) that still have their walls and moats mostly intact. That list doesn't mention the Dutch cities that have -parts of- their mediaeval walls and/or moats still intact.

    Only in the Netherlands.
    And the most important reason all those walls and moats around cities still exist, is because at the critical time when the function of fortification was scrapped- they did't have money to demolish them.... And only several decades later, some folks started to see their touristic value and now all those cities that demolshed theirs scream with envie and some try to bring back some traces of those walls and moats...

12. Jerice Bergstrom
    June 13th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    Mobyhead is correct. Burke's analysis made teaching my kids history/science/everything SO much easier.
    btw - I believe that was Connections I. I don't know if the rest are available other than in PAL.

13. Miss Cellania
    June 13th, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/02/star-forts/

14. ted
    June 13th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

    Wow, a star-shaped fort. That's as unusual as a black squirrel.

    @Seven Bates. You hate "grammar Nazis", not "grammar Nazi's".

15. Mobyhead
    June 14th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    James Burke discusses star fortresses in episode 9, "Countdown," in the TV series Connections. He covers the subject between approximately 3 minutes into the episode to 9 minutes.

16. Church
    June 14th, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    @ted

    Considerably more common than black squirrels, if you go by range.

17. Steveningen
    June 15th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    I visited this village two years ago and enjoyed it very much. It's well worth a visit if you're ever in the northern part of The Netherlands.

18. Robert
    June 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Quebec is such a beautiful city!

19. John Winters
    August 19th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    The main explanation and all the comments so far seem to have missed one of the main points of the design. Yes - cross fire was important, but consider someone attacking one of these things without the benefit of aerial surveillance or a map. One of their main advantages is that, from the point of view of a stranger approaching on the ground, it's just plain difficult to work out how to get in. Often you would have to work your way up between two stellations, only to discover that you'd picked the wrong pair and there wasn't an entrance there at all.

    There's a really nice one in Lille, France - you have to pass through an outer ring of stellated defences (not knowing where you need to go, and probably with defenders dropping things on you from above) and then you're faced with another inner set of stellated defences.

    This is why spies drawing maps of defences were so important in those days.

20. Ukrainian
    September 29th, 2009 at 7:52 pm

    As history tells - if fortress was vulnerable it falls from long seige. Nevetheless the technology of this fortress impressive.

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