Essays in the History of Fixed Defenses

George Patton once famously observed that “Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man.” But we keep on building and rebuilding them. To cite just one example, Jerusalem is known to have been besieged in 1010, 701, 597, 587, 168, 162, 63, and 37 BCE, and in 70, 614, 637, 1099, 1187, 1834, 1917, and 1947-48 CE.

Founded in 1984 by Raimondo Luraghi, the Italian Society of Military History promotes critical study of the history of conflict, with particular attention to the interaction of military factors with philosophical, legal, political, economic, social, geographical, cognitive, visual, and literary sciences. The Society publishes a series, Fucina di Marte (“Forge of Mars.”) This massive and comprehensive collection of essays is the 25th volume in that series. In a world where academic publications have become prohibitively expensive, it is delightful to see such a scholarly and well-produced volume as Fortification and Siegecraft avilable as a free 33.3 Mb pdf file that can be downloaded at , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/405344626_2026_25_BLACK_ed_Fortification_and_Siegecraft_Fvcina_di_Marte_series_No_25.

The book contains 22 chapters, extending in time from ancient Greece through World War II. Each chapter has its own notes and bibliography. There are many full-color illustrations of excellent quality. I was surprised by the absence of any information on the contributors, who are apparently mostly European and North American scholars. There is no volume index, but the “Find” feature of Adobe Acrobat provides quick direct access to the occurrences of any desired search term in the text:

1. Blood, Battering Rams, and the Occasional Traitor. A reappraisal of Greek siege warfare, by Alessandro Carli
2. Quartered Safe Out There. The Roman Army on the Frontiers, by Jorit Wintjes
3. Byzantine-Sasanian Struggle for Petra and the Siege Warfare in the Lazic War (541-562 AD), by Nika Khoperia
4. Siege and Fortification in Medieval Europe, by John France
5. The Maritime Dimension in the 16th Century Mediterranean Sieges, by Mark Stevens
6. “Downstream Operations”: Fortresses and the Strategy of the Habsburg Emperors in the mid-17th century, by Lothar Höbelt
7. Fortress Siting. An Aspect of Fortress Warfare, by Ulf Sundberg
8. Siege Warfare in East-Central Europe: Conquering and Defending Fortifications in Early Modern Transylvania (1551-1660), by Florin Nicolae Ardelean
9. Fortifications Variables in Western Eurasia and the Americas: Intersection of Resources, Topography, Policy, and Results, by Peter B. Brown
10. “Mutua se spectant brachia”: The Fossa Eugeniana, Siege and Economic Warfare in the 17th-Century Low Countries, by T.G. Otte
11. “We make war more like foxes than lions”. Fortress Warfare in Civil War, David Flintham
12. Two Sieges of Portuguese Melaka: 1629 and 1640-1641, by André Murteira
13. Key to Success: Ottoman Siege Warfare in the Second Half of the 17th Century, by Kahraman Sakul
14. A history of Native fortifications In North-Eastern America, by Jason Warren
15. Fortresses for Defending Río de la Plata in the Eighteenth Century by Alejandro Amendolara
16. Warfare with Spade and Pickaxe. The neglected Role of Fortified camps in the 18th century, by Alexander Querengasser
17. Fortification in British Imperial History, by Jeremy Black
18. Fortresses during the Napoleonic Wars, by Alexander Mikaberidze
19. “By Regular Approaches”? Petersburg 1864, by Ethan S. Rafuse
20. The Siege of Port Arthur (1904–5) and Its Lessons for Strategy and Fortifications, by Rotem Kowner
21. The Maginot Line. Architecture, engineering and urban planning, by Kevin Passmore
22. The role of air power in siegecraft: The experience on the German Soviet Front in World War Two, by Giorgio Scotoni

The editor, Jeremy Black, MBE is an English historian. An emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, he is the author of over 180 books, including A Short History of War (2021) and How the Army Made Britain a Global Power: 1688–1815 (2021). In 2008, he received the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History.

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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews in modern history include To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940, From Ironclads to Dreadnoughts: The Development of the German Battleship, 1864-1918, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City, The Demon of Unrest, Next War: Reimagining How We Fight, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Hitler's Atomic Bomb, The Dark Path: The Structure of War and the Rise of the West, The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War, Operation Title: Sink the Tirpitz, A Light in the Northern Sea, A Street in Arnhem, British Naval Gun Mountings, The Indian Rebellion, 1857-1859, Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War, From Ironclads to Admiral, The Battleship New Jersey, and Guibert.

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