From bastion to perpendicular fortification

Abstract

Throughout the eighteenth century, the construction of fortifications was mainly carried out according to the French school of military engineers who were held in great repute in Europe. These were employed in numerous commissions beyond the French frontier including Malta. The French engineering corps defended the design principles of their founder Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban. This famous corps successfully fought off a late 18th-century challenge mounted by a creative engineer, Marc-Rene, marquis de Montalembert. The French engineers were prepared to stick with meaningless determination to the traditions of fortifications by Vauban. In 1776 Montalembert set a new process of military engineering normally referred to as the 'perpendicular style' of fortification. At that time, French military engineers used Vauban's 70-year old architectural ideas to highlight the way in which military architect-engineers embodied technological inertia, a philosophical conservatism reinforced by their administrative functions that rejected radical change and refused to consider fortifications in isolation from their strategic context. Montalambert introduced the replacement of the bastion by the tennaile trace, which contained immensely strong caponiers, powerful artillery defence from casemates and a copious amount of infantry loopholes. Montalembert's idea of fortification was further supported by increased modem artillery attacking fire power as opposed to Vauban's defensive architectural strategy. Technological and new design ideas commanded the new philosophy of military engineering. Eventually these ideas became the traditional method of fortress-building throughout the rest of Europe in the course of the following century. As a military order which was constantly facing dangers, living in an isolated island without any means of production, the Order of St. John was constantly preoccupied with matters concerning defence strategy and the best possible military fortifications. The large numbers of the most excellent military engineers and armaments available during that period in Catholic Europe brought over the by the Order to Malta between 1530 and 1780, explained this traditional preoccupation. Therefore, it is by no chance that the order brought to Malta the best available French engineers of the 18th cent. The last important fort built by the Order was Fort Tigne. Begun in 1792, this coastal defence fort was designed by the resident engineer Etienne de Tousard who followed the latest development in Europe. Fort Tigne shows a distinctive change in defence strategy than the earlier forts of Manoel and Chambrai. With its circular tower-keep, diamond-shaped plan and counterscarp musketry galleries, it was to prove a definite and clear split from the traditional bastioned style of fortification found around Valletta and its harbours.