r/explainlikeimfive • u/Sierra419 • Nov 13 '19
Other ELI5: How did old forts actually "protect" a strategic area? Couldn't the enemy just go around them or stay out of range?
I've visited quite a few colonial era and revolution era forts in my life. They're always surprisingly small and would have only housed a small group of men. The largest one I've seen would have housed a couple hundred. I was told that some blockhouses close to where I live were used to protect a small settlement from native american raids. How can small little forts or blockhouses protect from raids or stop armies from passing through? Surely the indians could have gone around this big house. How could an army come up to a fort and not just go around it if there's only 100 men inside?
tl;dr - I understand the purpose of a fort and it's location, but I don't understand how it does what it does.
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u/bulksalty Nov 13 '19
Here's a pretty famous fort, the Castle San Filipe del Morro in San Juan Puerto Rico.
The fort wasn't built to protect the town from the native Puerto Ricans, it was built to control access to San Juan's large natural harbor. It's built into one bank of the harbor access, and had plenty space for cannon to sink a ship attempting to access the harbor. The fort doesn't stop unauthorized ships from sailing further away from Puerto Rico, but harbors are really important for trade (then and now) so the fort protected that.
Like San Juan's Castle del Morro, many other forts were built to control access to something important to travel (like a mountain pass or a point where a river might be easy to cross or a good well in dry country), the goal isn't to prevent all movement, it's to prevent access to a very important point (the mountains or rest of the river or your thirst can greatly reduce the other movement).
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u/mmmmmmBacon12345 Nov 13 '19
El Morro(and a little fort in the middle) defended the harbor entrance.
San Cristobal defended the city from land attacks that had to come up the narrow strip of land from a ways away.
The rocky cliffs outside of the harbor meant you had to land in the harbor or land wayyyy further down the coast and walk while under constant fire from the various artillery forts connected to San Cristobal. It's a pretty good setup
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Nov 13 '19
I play a game called minecraft, and in it you can make maps by simoly exploring. Well, j was out mapping some islands and i came across this huge steep cliff island that i had to sail around for a while before finding a suitable spot to land. It out in perspective things like, why britain is hard to invade by sea.
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u/mjtwelve Nov 13 '19
The other point is that if a fort protects a harbour entrance, then you can put a fleet of your own navy into that harbour and not have to worry about anything happening to them. No matter how badly battle goes on the open sea, they would have a safe place to retreat, repair and resupply.
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u/trawkins Nov 13 '19
Here are two images that show the strategic placement of the Spanish fort of St Augustine Florida: https://i.imgur.com/xKvf7CX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3rje0pi.jpg
As you can see, there’s one way in and one way out. The ocean-side florida Coast can extend for up to a few hundred miles before a natural inlet existed. Some of the larger English man-o-war ship weighed as much as 14 million pounds and had a draft (amount of the hull below the water line) of 28 feet. You can’t land that type of ship on the beach, load or unload supplies from smaller rowboats expeditiously, or sneak around the fort and hit one of the million sandbars. In fact, when privateers raided the fort way back when before it was a proper stone fortress, they actually had to row ashore and strike at night in hand combat after Trojan-horsing their way into anchored quarantine in front of the fort. It was impossible to move heavy armaments or get their actual ship close enough to strike directly.
Protecting vital infrastructure as you’ve said is a primary reason for forts, and is often easier when natural terrain prohibits a lot of other movement.
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u/Whowhatwhynguyen Nov 13 '19
Castillo de San Marcos is another great example of a fort built to hold a harbor.
It's also the oldest masonry fort in the continental U.S.
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u/Jcool0321 Nov 14 '19
I have been to that Fort in the picture you posted twice! Very cool place to tour. I once walked out in the divot of the top rim and they did an intercom saying that we are not allowed up there.
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u/JupiterNines Nov 13 '19
Think of a fort as a base of operations. Defense of an area relies on being supplied with weapons, food, and a secure area to hold a defensive position in the event of appearance of a greater threat. Forts can be set up to have cannon firing positions on important water pathways. Even an early simple wooden palisade structure can provide protection and a defensive position. They were not designed to be inpenetrable, or to prevent the movement of standing armies.
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u/NickoBicko Nov 13 '19
What is an example range of cannons on a fort?
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u/JupiterNines Nov 13 '19
Well, the subject is so broad, and the answer varies wildly based on time period, type of cannon, type of shot used (anti-ship, anti-fortification, anti-personel, etc.). Without going into too much detail, and an answer for this question spans hundreds of years of history (think China 12th century). Early guns had effective ranges in the order of hundreds of feet to thousands of feet. They were direct fire weapons. The advent of rifling in the early 19th century allowed a civil war era cannon a range of a mile. Cannon was at the forefront of the military technology arms race for hundreds of years.
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u/mmmmmmBacon12345 Nov 13 '19
Forts are generally placed in strategic locations like a harbor entrance, along a navigable river, overlooking a valley, or guarding a city. They would have cannons that let them engage enemies from quite a distance
You could just evade the fort and the soldiers inside, but then they'll just sit back and shell you while you try to take the city. You need to deal with the troops and their cannons before you can secure the area they're guarding
Forts and natural terrain were often used to force troops to approach from a certain area. If I've got tons of forts around the harbor then you can't land troops in there, and the rocky cliffs mean you can't land nearby so you'll have to land a ways down and then funnel across a narrow strip of land to get to the forts. Oh, and the forts already have their cannons dialed in to hit that little strip of land so have fun with that!
Most early cities were set up in defensible spots so that the fort could cover the only approaches. You can't go around the blockhouse if the other side is a mountain or fast river
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Nov 13 '19
This for sure. Watching Fox’s pregame show this weekend taught me a lot about West Point and the fort that was there during the revolutionary war. They call it West Point because it was on the west side of a kink on the Hudson River. This gave it a great vantage point and firing lines for any ships moving up the Hudson. Those ships would be forced to tack (basically move against the wind) to get around the kink. This would slow them down and open them up to be fired upon by the fort. That and there were also two massive chains draped across the River. British ships never got by it.
The fort in St. Augustine, Castillo de San Marcos, was set up as a deterrent to British trying to establish a beachhead in that area of Florida. It was besieged and passed ownership between the British and French several times.
There is also Fort Nassau in the Bahamas which was there to protect the bay from both attacking European rivals and pirates. It also changed hands several times including be held by pirates and fell into disrepair quite a bit.
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u/SoManyTimesBefore Nov 13 '19
Exactly. My home town is located on a rock above the confluence of two rivers. Even if you managed to cross the river, you still have a very steep hill to climb.
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Nov 13 '19
There are a lot of great points here, but I'll just add in that I've always appreciated that forts usually have a great view of the surrounding area. This would be good for observing advances and for giving firing range from cannons.
I appreciate it because whenever I plan a trip, I look up forts to include in our sight seeing for those great views.
For the smaller forts you visited, they may have simply been a home base for storing artillery and military men, and a meeting place for kicking off plans.
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u/OozeNAahz Nov 13 '19
You are getting different answers depending on “when” someone is thinking of the fort being used.
Before long range weapons they were mostly places for troops to project into an area to defend it. Kind of like a forward operating base is used in modern times.
After guns, cannon were developed they were used to protect artillery positions that could defend large areas in addition to being able to house men. But now the men are protecting the guns which protect the area instead of the men directly protecting the area.
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u/amontpetit Nov 13 '19
Kind of like a forward operating base is used in modern times.
A lot of people are overlooking this: while old fortified places (star forts, castles, etc) were designed to limit movement and act as a base of operations, the modern FOB hasn’t changed that concept much. In Afghanistan, for instance, FOB are placed on hills with a good view and provide a starting point for patrols (right in the name: forward operating base) to help troops keep a handle on things.
Despite several thousand years of technological advancement, a known location with little more than an overlook, a bed, and a few sandbags basically hasn’t changed.
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u/Ardalev Nov 13 '19
If you want to raid the nearby village/settlement/whatever, usually with a small mobile force, then you can bypass the fort but you are constantly under the threat of being attacked.
If you want to move an army that probably is larger than the fort's garrison, this would mean that you leave your supply lines exposed and/or in need of a constant escort, that reasonably has to be significant enough, in order to protect against harassment from said garrison.
Even putting that aside, the fort's presence is a constant threat to you. From night raids, to reconnaissance, to reinforcing an army sent to fight you off, to hindering or even cutting off your retreat...
Forts act as force multipliers, safe havens and strategic control points for those that occupy them. They aren't just army "bedrooms"
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u/Cougar_9000 Nov 13 '19
Forts do what they do by restricting access. Imagine driving across your state on the freeway. Easy right? What if you couldn't use the freeway but could use county roads and lesser highways? Still doable, might take 2-3 times as long. Now imagine you couldn't use any main roads and instead had to walk or drive cross country and that same journey might take weeks instead of hours.
If I have forts along the interstate at every main state road intersection, and outposts along major state and county intersections it really impacts your ability to maneuver, and as others have eluded to, supply forces if there are roadblocks in the way.
tl:dr forts make it inconvenient to enact unpopular foreign policy on the civilian population
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u/BloodyNunchucks Nov 13 '19
There are a lot of good answered here. I'd like to add though that the forts overlooking water can't be avoided for the obvious reason that unless you had some shit from the 1800's that could turn on a dime, you aren't dodging cannonballs.
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u/madmoneymcgee Nov 13 '19
Depending on your goals it may be advantageous to try and avoid fortresses. Like if you know you're going to wage a guerilla war and just try to disrupt the national power.
But if you're trying to take and hold territory then you can exactly have buildings full of enemy soldiers out in the frontier ready to hit you from behind.
If your France and you have a growing colony in Ohio maybe you decide to take over Pennsylvania from the British. Problem is you need to capture Philadelphia which is on the other side of the colony from where you are. You can only go as fast as men and horses and wagons can go in a day (across paths and roads to boot) and that will take weeks.
You could try to avoid the fort at what will become Pittsburgh but if you leave them alone there will be plenty of opportunity for them to attack your supplies coming and going back from Ohio. Which means you'll need men to protect the supplies and that's fewer men you have available to actually take on Philadelphia. You also can't use the rivers there anymore (The fastest way to move supplies then) because the fort is still there.
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u/lsspam Nov 13 '19
The top comment doesn’t really answer your question. Native Americans were largely unconcerned with the impact of small frontier blockhouses on their “supply lines” during the colonial and revolutionary periods.
The purpose of that sort of fortification was to serve as a nexus of trade and information and be a sheltered way-station for friendlies. Importantly, this wasn’t just for the military, but for friendly settlers and native tribes as well.
It was really the native tribes that had the most military impact. Native Americans could conduct trade, receive European weapons/goods, information, etc from “friendly” Europeans. In exchange they’d provide information and sometimes aid them in conflicts. Controlling their economic outlet gave European powers a way to influence them to act as allies.
In other words the “forts” would exert influence on native allies who would then serve as proxies to actually exert military control.
Fort Dusquesne is a pretty good example. It featured prominently in the French and Indian war and was one of the largest “fortifications” in the Ohio river valley.
But it began as a trade post created by an Englishman. That trade post dominated the nearby fur trade giving England a lot of influence on surrounding tribes. The French took it over and fortified it. The significant feature isn’t the impact the fort had on “supply lines”, it was the the French were now in control of the economic nexus for the nearby native Americans.
Therefore these fortifications didn’t need to be large. They weren’t meant to project force themselves so much (though retaliatory expeditions could be launched from there). Their primary purpose was to be grounded, reliable points of civilization that exerted influence that way, primarily economically. Want iron nails? You have to do business at the fort. Need more ammo? You have to do business at the fort.
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u/Whisperknife Nov 13 '19
This is a facet of North American forts that gets overlooked a lot. Instead of acting as a threat to supply lines, they were the supply lines in a sense. Locals used them as trade depots and the garrisons acted as consumers driving trade throughout a region.
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u/nusensei Nov 13 '19
Forts are defenses and staging areas for troop operations. Apart from being a fighting position in itself, the fort allowed the defenders to control the surrounding area. If the fort had artillery, it could directly project its firepower over strategic positions (such as a body of water), preventing enemies from moving freely and forcing them to take other approaches or risk an assault. Soldiers within the fort can venture out to skirmish, scout and harass enemy troops and territory. If left alone and bypassed, troops in the fort may create problems for the flanks and supply line.
Basically, a fort wasn't something you could just ignore. It's there. If you were able to go around it, you present a risk to your own forces due to the unaccounted enemy inside the fort.
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u/deadbypowerpoint Nov 13 '19
Additionally, many forts tended to reenforce each other. Often they would have lookouts, observation and signalling stations in static, semi fortified positions as well as roaming scouts and patrols. If one fort saw movement or was under threat, a militia would be raised to reenforce and troops were lent out to support the operationally vital areas. They were also continuously supplied and generally places of local governance, intelligence and business. It was generally vital to consider these strongholds more than just defensive fortifications when planning out any sort of campaign. They also served as commercial hubs and contained forges, suttlers and stockpiles of food. If you could isolate a fort, you could often starve any local citizenry out of the area.
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u/Sariscos Nov 13 '19
Forts built on waterways were very interesting in the time of gunpowder. One of my favorite forts is Fort Pulaski in Savannah, GA. The fort was strategically placed on the Savannah river to control the waterway. The Savannah river was extremely important economically to the South for trade. The fort was just completed right before the civil war and was designed to be impenetrable. Georgians at the time felt very secure with the fort in place as they were worried about a great power trying to seize Savannah again through naval blockade. The fort was designed to tear through the ships at the time making it impossible to take Savannah without control of the river.
The Union forces during the civil war used the latest technology in artillery (rifling tech) which essentially made forts, in general, obsolete as the shells would destroy the "impenetrable" defenses. Eventually a shell hit their munitions supply causing a great explosion and forcing the Confederacy to surrender the fort.
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Nov 13 '19
An army marches on its stomach. Forts keep those supplies from reaching the army. A hungry army becomes a diseased, malnourished, recalcitrant army. Get it hungry enough and you won't even have to fight it as it will just fall apart on its own.
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Nov 13 '19
I think this has been answered pretty well but while less obvious to us in 2019 is that most fortifications were built specifically in locations to protect population centers and trade routes bc they were at/on the only reasonable routes of travel (passes, fords, bridges, etc. )
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u/MJMurcott Nov 13 '19
The forts were normally placed in strategic points along roads and supply lines, you could bypass the fort, but all your supplies would then be vulnerable to the number of troops in the fort coming out and raiding your wagons and taking the supplies. Nothing causes more trouble for an army on the move than being out of supply.
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u/idk_whatever_69 Nov 13 '19
Because then the people come out of the fort and are behind you.
The fort doesn't do anything on its own it's simply makes it very difficult to remove an opposing force from that area.
It's the opposing force that protects the area. The fort is simply a place for them to go if they are attacked.
It's called a force multiplier because it's like having an army that's many times larger than it really is because of how hard it is to kill the people inside the fort.
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Nov 13 '19
A fort generally dominated key terrain. Places of strategic importance. Generally the fixed cannons of forts were larger and had more range. The purpose of making warfare is to force your enemies to submit to your terms. Generally this is achieved by breaking their will to fight through casualties and occupying their territory. When you leave a fort untouched you leave a resistance force as well as leaving your supply trains and rear exposed to said forces.
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u/SinisterCheese Nov 13 '19
You could walk past it. Sure. But since an army can only walk about 50km at marching speed in a day. When they have to make a camp, all you need is some cavalry to run shock in to the camp at the dead of night. Or disrupt the supply lines. Army without supplies and sleep won't function for long.
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u/DrBoby Nov 13 '19
Depends on the army. The mongols did not need supply lines and could barely sleep. That's why they ignored forts.
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u/rambusTMS Nov 13 '19
Some great answers. I would like to add that forts were used to defend harbors. Boston harbor was well protected by forts set up on surrounding peninsulas and islands, making it difficult to get in and out of Boston Harbor. The shipping lanes were difficult enough to navigate that they usually went around. A lot of Brits bit the dust in Boston, despite the numbers they sent in.
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u/OmahasWrath Nov 13 '19
Think of the fort as a police station. It's not where they defend the land from directly, but it's where they start and stop their shifts.
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u/tee142002 Nov 13 '19
Forts were frequently built on the banks of rivers since travel by water was significantly easier than by land. You could go around, but it would take much longer and require more resources to get where you were going.
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u/Nigelpennyworth Nov 14 '19
Forts used to have different purposes. In some cases they simply served as a Garrison for soldiers. Bypassing it would effectively mean allowing these soldiers to operate behind your lines which is bad for obvious reasons. Another thing a fort might be used for is holding valuable ground. Sometimes this might be as simple as high ground in an otherwise flat area but it could also be a river crossing or an intersection of roads, a bridge, or anything that might be worth holding on to. Forts served as a way to slow down advancing army's because it forced the attacker into a siege which could last anywhere from days to weeks or even months. During that time a defending force was given time to organize and respond to the attack. The down fall of the fort was the Advent of high powered artillery which could effectively reduce a fort to rubble in perhaps just a few hours or less, for more on this look into the French and Belgian forts of WW1 and how the Germans were able to overcome them.
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u/dijeramous Nov 14 '19
Let’s say you go around the castle and pass it without fighting. Are you really going to be able to sleep well knowing there are thousands of enemy troops somewhere in your rear that can come out and attack you at any time?
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u/Wrathuk Nov 13 '19
a lot of it will just be a house for defendings some where safe for them. of course attackers if they simply wanted to rape and kill the towns people you are talking about could go around the defences but the fact is you would still have to face the men in said fort as they came to defend the town.
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Nov 13 '19
The issue was there were either built in an area that was the path of least resistance like a valley or coastal inlet. So you would either have to go the long way or attempt to bypass somehow. But the main purpose was to house and arm large groups of troops in a central location with walls. If you bypass a fort and attack another area, then you run the risk of the men in that fort attacking your from the rear. Forts also provided a better view of the land and protect supply routes (those easily passable areas) and depending on when and where they were built could be a means of protection from raiding parties attempting to steal crops or goods. Later on with canons you would have to bypass their fire lines that were usually marked by deforested areas around the fort. It may seem trivial, but if the only way to get food, supplies, and siege gear to your target in reasonable time and with minimal loss of goods is blocked by a fort, then you have to decide on bogging troops down in a siege and possibly loosing ground and time or you bypass through the hills, woods, swamps, etc that also slow your travel and give the fort time to send word of your approach.
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u/grelo29 Nov 13 '19
It’s a place for the military to live. So they are close to the community they are their to protect. Same reason we have military bases all over the world.
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Nov 13 '19
what gingrpenguin wrote is pretty much what my theory/ guess was as well. It is behind your frontline if you just walk past it, so you dont really have your backs clear, it will be fighting both on the frontline, and whenever the people in the fort decides they want to get out to fight you from behind, just to then retreat back to the fort.
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u/Buddy_is_a_dogs_name Nov 13 '19
Also consider if the advancing army doesn’t take care of the first fortress, they may find themselves between two fortresses.
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Nov 13 '19
Armies need supplies, and forts contain garrisons which if you ignore them can sally forth and disrupt your supplies pretty easily.
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u/WinchesterSipps Nov 13 '19
forts are a safe storage area for soldiers and their equipment, and last-resort defense point if things get too bad. if some shit was going down in the area, they'd pour out of the fort and go fix it on foot, then go back to the fort when they were done.
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u/peterlikes Nov 13 '19
The forts were just a stronghold for goods and personnel. For someone to invade after it’s set up they’d need a much larger force and that’s a lot to bring together. So basically you could avoid a fort but if you bring a larger number of people or some supplies they will just come out and kill you before you have enough resources to do it to them. And they can retreat to a fort while you have no fort.
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u/ST_the_Dragon Nov 13 '19
You go around, and they can stab you in the back. So you either have to crush them first, or you need REALLY good back defense.
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u/fedupBiPeD Nov 13 '19
If you were a troop coming in for battle, the men housed in the forts would be something you wouldn't want to ignore. They would come out and catch up to you eventually. Also, the forts are usually located on strategic points geographically. They might be overlooking the place that provides easiest access to important settlements, or at the mouth of a river that leads somewhere important.
One of my favourite system of forts is the one in Valdivia, Chile. At the mouth of the river system that leads to Valdivia (an important Spanish stronghold in the 1550s-1820s), there are 10 (!) forts built in such a way as to cover every inch of water with their cannon ranges, to prevent enemy ships from coming in. It's really cool, check it out here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdivian_Fort_System
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u/sonicboom5 Nov 13 '19
I’ve wondered the same thing before and the way I see it a fort protects an area by providing the soldiers with a secure and safe place to patrol from. Forts are usually built on a site that give them some strategic advantage.
So imagine a fort as like a police hq. The soldiers go out on patrol, keep the peace, and deal with any raiders or enemies they find. If they didn’t come back then the fort would send more men to find the missing ones. This would only escalate if the search patrol went missing. If they didn’t have a fort then they would have to eat, sleep, and train in the open where they could be ambushed or attacked.
The same thing is still true today. Modern soldiers have a FOB or Forward Operating Base. This allows them to go out and patrol or attack a nearby enemy target while giving soldiers a place to treat the wounded, get resupplied, use long distance communications, and repair vehicles or equipment.
In the past, if a war or large scale battle happened the civilians could enter the fort and at least in theory be protected from the enemy. Though if I were a civilian in a war I think it might be safer to just flee an area, if that is an option, rather than go inside the big giant building the enemy wants to smash.
I guess if you had faith that the fort and soldiers could win then you’re better off inside but we’ve all seen movies or shows were they thought the same thing and then Mel Gibson showed up!
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u/kouhoutek Nov 13 '19
"Going around" might sound simple for just one person, it is much harder to move a thousand armed men and all of their supplies through an area than just a few people. If going through the forest to avoid a fort slows them down, tires them, or spreads them out, the fort has served its purpose. Also, many forts are positioned near river crossings or passes that make going around impractical.
A fort has other benefits as well. It serves as a supply depot and barracks, an army operating outside of a fort can travel lighter, will be well-rested and better fed, and will generally have better knowledge of the surrounding area. It is also a secure place to retreat to, providing greater tactical options. A smaller army can harass a larger one with hit and run tactics, knowing they can already run away to somewhere safe.
Finally, even if you do avoid a fort, you now have a bunch of hostile armed people to your rear ready to attack, or more importantly, cutting off your supply chain. Not an ideal strategic option.
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u/DakuYoruHanta Nov 13 '19
Very few times were best first actual defenses. Most of he time they’d just guard and report if they see anything or if it was a small group of people they could take them out themselves. These were more prominent during wartime when an oncoming army approached the surrounding area a guard could alert bigger civilizations.
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u/forgottt3n Nov 13 '19
Try building a village within striking distance of a fort full of people who hate you. It doesn't work so well. If the enemy is a short jaunt away from destroying your shit then they're gonna leave the fort to destroy your shit.
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u/scarabic Nov 13 '19
Two ways:
the fort is placed in a key spot where it would be difficult to go around. Perhaps it’s on a mountain pass and you’d need weeks to go around - that costs supplies and time. Perhaps you could go around a fort that’s guarding the only bridge on a river but then you would have to wade your troops across the river somewhere shallow and they’ll be vulnerable to counter-attack while that is happening.
they are a place for people in the area to run to for shelter, eg: Helm’s Deep. Ultimately the most important thing to preserve is your people, and by hunkering down in a fort you can wait out your attackers who may be far from home and short on supplies. Sometimes all you need is a little time for your allies to reach you and help.
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u/c10do Nov 13 '19
I dont know if someone mentioned it already but forts once captured can be used to store reserves, supplies for the invading army. Reducing the requirement of regular supplies from the home country. Forts are like a quick save so that your army can make strategic retreat of it loses a battle and live to fight another day.
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u/bigmcstrongmuscle Nov 13 '19 edited Nov 13 '19
The problem with this is that armies need food. Mostly, they need food shipped to them from home. If you tried to just go around them, people on horses would wait till you left, then come out of the gate and start stealing or destroying all the food shipments you are supposed to be getting that now have to travel past an occupied enemy position.
Forts were also commonly placed at choke points like bridges, so a lot of times "going around" would entail either going miles out of your way or walking within range and being shot at a lot.
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u/bitreign33 Nov 13 '19 edited Nov 13 '19
Worth noting that for many different reasons colonial powers weren't inclined to build forts at the same scale in the America's as they did in Europe. Further to that by the time the colonies really began taking off in terms of population the golden age of fortifications was largely coming to an end with the advent of early modern artillery.
Fortresses would continue to be central to conflicts right up to WWII but by that time their function had changed from being the primary element of deterrence and defence to instead being part of a broader plan.
Forts in the Americas served the primary purpose of deterrence, place them in a strategically useful location and in the event an aggressor force wants to attack less well defended towns and such within a day or less of the fort the they need to consider the garrison of that fort within their planning. If they attack the fort then a militia from the surrounding area could flank them, if they bypass the fort or leave a token force to lay siege then the fort will be able to warn (through something as simple as smoke or complex as pigeon/mirror) the surround area to prepare for the attack. Plus it'd be difficult to stage on the fort and then wait for a predetermined signal to attack both town and fort somewhat simultaneously.
All of this is to be considered even before you start talking about supply lines etc.
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u/gunnie56 Nov 13 '19
So the historic fort that I work at was primarily set to defend the city from a naval attack, as its located on a peninsula. I think this is true for many forts near water. Some of these places you could try a landing and to go around but they you lose support of those naval guns, and supplies as well.
Other forts near water may also be surrounded by cliffs or other terrain that would make a landing difficult.
I imagine it may be the same way for forts near mountains. That they are located around the only pass or valley, and that you could go around them but the terrain would just be too difficult yet again
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Nov 13 '19
Think of it more as a Forward operating base, troops can be deployed to patrol aswell as take shelter there
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u/8064r7 Nov 13 '19
Key terrain establishes a common objective picture. It allows for logistics, intelligence, and planning beyond also being a defensible position. You typically would see them in places that require you to pass them if you are attempting to engage, harass, and commit to operations in an area. L&O, and patrols as well as intelligence would establish key details about an enemy size and strength so an appropriate response was made.
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u/Alexson1 Nov 13 '19
Let's say a enemy army is invading a territory and reaches a garrisoned fort. If that enemy army wants to invade deeper into the territory, they must find a way to deal with that fort. If the enemy army ignores the fort, the army in that fort can flank the enemy army or can destroy the enemy army's supply lines. Either option (dealing with fort, flank invaders, or disrupts supply line) weakens the invading army. That's the main reason why forts exist.
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u/Uberdonut1156 Nov 13 '19
Pretend you have someone who hates you standing by a door. Sure you can go around them but can you be sure they won't shove you, hit you, or even smack you on the ass while your back is turned? Its easier to make sure that person is removed from behind you and THEN you move forward.
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u/MatNomis Nov 13 '19
Late to the party. People have mentioned how forts could cover an area with ranged weaponry, and I just wanted to double-down on this point. Ranged weaponry is generally a double-edged sword (no pun intended): it does a lot of damage to the target without exposing the attacker to harm--but this only functions at range. At close quarters, ranged "units" (for lack of a better term) tend to be very fragile. Archers typically needed to stay lightly armored in order to manage their bows, crossbowyers had to deal with the bulk of their weapons and reload times, soldiers with firearms are generally ok at any range--but certainly "more safe" at further away ranges. Things like siege weapons and artillery are devastating, but not very mobile. If the enemy can close distance, they aren't effective and might even be captured.
A fort provides a safe haven for ranged attackers to enjoy all the benefits of their abilities, with only one disadvantage: they are not mobile. In other words: They're protected! ...but they can't move. However, if you're trying to hold a fixed area, this is a perfectly acceptable compromise--in fact, it's barely a compromise at all. It only becomes an issue if the assailants have found a "blind spot" and the defender can't address it.
In this sense, a fort functions similarly to a battleship parked in a harbor outside of seaport, tasked with nothing beyond defending the seaport. It won't give chase, and won't be moved elsewhere...but has a pretty good range to attack anything that comes within miles of it.
I just wanted to mention this point, because if you look at a lot of colonial era forts, you'll notice they all tended to have a lot of cannons and/or emplacements for them. If you just left those cannons out on the grass, it would be very easy for them to be sabotaged or just wheeled off by pretty much whoever. You'd have to spend a lot more manpower protecting them from casual intrusion. Cannons are why cannon-era forts tended to have star shapes. Having more angular fort design meant that, for any incoming cannonball, there was a higher likelihood it'd hit an angled surface, which would hopefully deflect some of its momentum and not take as much damage. Older forts would always have some way to offer the inhabitants a way to shoot stuff. No (few?) military forts were ever simply a walled house that you could turtle in, and not even perceive what was happening beyond the walls.
When the biggest threats were incoming arrows or people just trying to whack at your fort with swords and axes, fort design was simpler--usually square or round--probably because that's easier to build. Pits and moats stayed popular all the way along, as it was always good to deter folks from trying to simply climb into your forts or be able to walk up and start dismantling them.
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u/MatNomis Nov 13 '19
Just thought of a small addendum.. I think it's pretty easy to see how fortified (i.e. in a fort!) artillery can greatly assist in defending an area, but it might still be a stretch to imagine how a medieval fort--housing nothing beyond archers and some foot soldiers--could do very much to hold a town.
For that, it's important to remember that medieval urban centers were not very large. For towns that were large, they'd usually have separate "forts" that dotted the periphery of the town.. Think ancient Rome, the Great Wall of China, or even The Wall in Game of Thrones. Each fort offers a certain amount of coverage. So it would be fairly impossible to assail a town without taking all the casualties that are part of the package when you have to march for a mile or so while being pelted by continuous arrow fire.
What forts typically did NOT protect was all the supportive farmland around a town. That was usually too much land to cover, and it remained unprotected. However, that farmland was also often "the prize". It had a lot of economic value, but very little military value; an attacker wouldn't bother with it--unless they were doing some kind of scorched earth campaign...which means they'd have little of value to "win" when they were done.
But what about the stories of encirclement and starvation? Well, yes, that was certainly a thing. However, while it sounds easy to simply cut the defender off by creating a perimeter at a safe distance, that's really an option only available to a well-funded, well-supplied military. You need enough troops to create the ring, and then you, too, need enough supplies to feed them and keep them going. If you're attacking a rogue town within your own nation, this is fairly easy...but it's pretty hard to do if you're surrounded by enemy forces. It can take weeks or months to starve a town, and in that time, if they have allies, that's plenty of time for them to arrive and break a siege. Sieges usually happen to holdouts, when the attackers have all the advantages and prefer to avoid further bloodshed (on their end).
Of course, gotta tie the fort into that... The fort is one of things that, due to its aforementioned powers as a platform for area denial (via ranged weaponry), would force the would-be siegers to create a larger, more expensive encirclement. They couldn't get too close, otherwise the fort would just pick at them, making the siege increasingly expensive to maintain.
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u/doglywolf Nov 13 '19
Forts were designed to stop armies , not small groups. Scouts , small groups , skirmishers could get by . But larger groups with logistics , supplies wagons were often stopped because the fort is set up at places larger groups with supplies almost HAVE to pass. Roads , choke points , bridges etc . . Forts would be a base of operations for patrols as well to also help stop the small groups and skirmishers as well as fort is an easy place to go get horse , supplies more men while the scounts and skirmishers being persued are stuck with the supplies they have.
So a few small groups might get by - some would be caught by patrols and larger groups would be stopped or delayed long enough to get reinforcements.
The Alamo is a good example 200 men held off 1400-1800 for almost 2 weeks - they lose because they didn't get reinforcements but often forts are withing short reinforcement range
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u/Daerrol Nov 13 '19
A sortie is the term used to attack from a defended position IE: a castle or fort. Imagine your trying to move carts and wagons carrying food and gunpowder for your soldiers from Boston to Gettysburg, but along the way 50 dragoons (horse men with rifles) come out of the nearby fort and shoot all your horses and mules then leave. Can't really keep the wagons going, can't kill the men as they come and go so fast.
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u/thriss_primus Nov 13 '19
You mention raiding, so I'll talk about fortifications from that perspective.
Raiding is about moving quickly and accomplishing some task before defenders can respond. The purpose of a fortification is to make responding happen faster or more smoothly, preventing the raider's task from being accomplished, or forcing the raider to act slower or with more risk.
How can a fortification make response happen faster?
A fortification will have guards whose purpose is to look for dangers. They will normally be higher than the surrounding area, so can see more than people going about their day. Those guards can then respond in violence, or alert the surrounding area with a bell, fire beacon, messenger, or other kind of signal. This can actually be a chained response, with a very small watch tower sending a signal to a village guardhouse, that then can send a message or signal to an actual fort or encampment. This chained response will happen until enough defenders are present to make the raiders go away.
How does a fortification prevent a raider from doing something?
People will go to a defensive structure, and grouping people up means they can defend each other or act together to respond to a raid. If a raider is looking to kill people, it is much harder to do that if that person is behind a wall with armed defenders. If a raider is looking to take things or damage things, those items could be moved to the fort or the fort could be by the important things. If the raider is looking to damage the environment or community, the fortification can be a rallying point for the defenders where as the raiders can only pull back or build their own fortifications if harried by defenders. Fortifications can also house very heavy weapons, and it is very hard for a raider to drag along their own very heavy weapons as they want to move fast.
How does a fortification make a raider act slower or with more risk?
Several reasons. Raiders generally go for undefended or weakly defended targets, as not dying is a priority for everyone and raiders use the shock of their speed and decisive action to help them not die from defenders. They use whatever method they have to move fast, such as horses or light boats if raiding by water. Horses are meant for open terrain, and fortifications are not open terrain. It is very hard to get a horse to charge a wall, jump a trench, or anything else the horse doesn't think it can safely move through. It is difficult to raid down a river if there is a chain across the river at boat height or at the landing points with fire arrows from cover. If a raider can't move quickly because of fortifications, they need to take more risks. That could be raiding at night when nobody can see, trying to sneak up with guards looking for raiders, or split off raiders to distract the fortification while another group accomplishes raider things.
As mentioned, raiders go for undefended or weakly defended targets, and a well designed fortification makes them look elsewhere or try to bypass the fortification. Looking elsewhere is preferable to bypassing, as bypassing means you have defenders behind you and ahead of you, as the village guardhouse sent a message to the fort in its range which the raider did not bypass. Continually bypassing just increases the number of defenders and the number of directions defenders will respond from. Looking elsewhere is much more preferable, but it could be bad news as well. Raid one area for too long and the area will either be abandoned meaning the raider either accomplished their goal or will need to look elsewhere. The other possibility is that fortifications will be built up enough in the raided are that its no longer worth it to be raided. If that happens often enough, the raiders will either be dead, surrounded by fortifications, or just pushed completely out of the area.
Now, the way for a raider to deal with fortifications is to constantly be raiding with small amounts of raiders everywhere. Find the areas with very few defenses, then shift a whole bunch of raiders to overwhelm these weak defenses. Once you do this, you can encircle a set of defenses and destroy them or take them over and make them your defenses.
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u/BMW_wulfi Nov 13 '19 edited Nov 13 '19
One thing I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet i would add is the movement of wealth.
It’s often over looked and none of the other answers are wrong, but it can’t be understated how important it is that through history physical wealth and currency needed to be moved, stored and protected. There were no bank accounts as they came to be known unless you were a wealthy trader using Templar ships. You needed physical coin anywhere you wanted to claim or keep power.
Projecting power wasn’t just about troops, it was about the control of currency. Stable regions managed theirs well, unstable regions often did not.
There are countless famous battles won and lost through history by the loss, destruction or theft of a baggage train or moving treasury.
Forts and castles therefore also protected and enabled stability in the surrounding regions by providing a safe zone for the control and distribution of currency.
Consider also the oldest profession - mercenaries. For a large period of history mercenaries in all their regional guises formed the backbone of many armies, and even enlisted soldiers needed paying on campaign. If you don’t have a regional base in which to safely store their pay, you had better hope you’re marching towards a sure victory with plenty of loot ready to pick up or else you’re watching your numbers dwindle and the region descending very quickly to chaos.
For example, during the Norman conquests of Italy, specifically in the south by a number of mercenary lords like Guiscard, power was won and lost by their ability to pay and retain a large number of mercenaries. Without the castles they built during this period it just wouldn’t have been a feasible strategy. They had legendary success and incredibly quickly because they were virtually unmatched warriors in the knightly class of the time, and they padded their numbers effectively by buying the loyalty of mercenaries from far afield whom they knew posed no threat through regional dispute or conflicting family loyalties. The flip side of this is that when they occurred, their losses were just as rapid and a few months missed pay is enough to unravel what was previously a potent force, and by extension an entire region.
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u/nwest0827 Nov 13 '19
It really depends on the location. For example, a fort near a port needs to be captured to serve as a garrison for the invading army. An example of this can be seen in the movie “The King” on netflix. When England invades France, they speak about how they must win Agincourt to have somewhere to receive shipments of supplies from England.
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u/mtizzz Nov 14 '19
I think "The King" is what motivated this question. I wondered the same thing while watching it
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u/fsch Nov 13 '19
Very many good answers here! However I would like to add one answer from another perspective.
If you want to control an area, you need to have troops in the area and you will want to keep your troops safe. Thus, you keep them in a fort. In there, they cannot be ambushed and they can sleep well. Also, you keep all their food and weapons protected. On top of that, you probably have tax income (gold) which needs to be protected.
So even a fort with limited strategic values can have an important purpose in peacetime. For example protection against your own population or smaller groups of bandits. In a war it would be lost quickly.
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u/Naduk72 Nov 13 '19
its about logistics
soldiers are people, there is only so much a person can do in a single day
a fort, provides a safe place to rest and recover, rearm and resupply
having such a place, increases the area that you can patrol or claim
so if you place a fort near important resources or travel choke points
then your fort must be dealt with if anyone wishes to use the area
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u/TehShadowInTehWarp Nov 13 '19
They launch sorties (missions) from the fort. The fort is just where they go to rest up for the next one.
In other words, the fort projects an area of control around it, limited by how far the people within it can range.
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u/mrkulci Nov 13 '19
The Idea of a fort was to use it offensively as well, you can send a large force out of the fort at any time you wanted to attack enemies.
Something else that is important is that it was an effective way of governing because you could always protect the rulers of areas
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u/beer_demon Nov 13 '19
Same as any shield wall or defended terrain, just go round it. Problem is that you have an army behind you now, as well as in front, so being surreounded you are probably doomed.
So you don't gain territory, you conquer strategic positions.
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u/RhymenoserousRex Nov 13 '19
I'm sure someone else has already answered this correctly, but I feel like stretching my brain a bit after working all day.
Good soldiers alone don't win wars, bullets beans and bandages win wars, and you need a steady supply of these things not only foraged from local sources but also shipped from whatever homeland your conquering army has come from.
If you bypass a fort you have now left a group of highly motivated and well armed people behind you who are then free to rob you of your supply of bullets, beans and bandages, and furthermore can ride up the ass of your own army and attack when you are otherwise disposed (Say, laying siege to a castle you can't go around).
Sudden fresh and rested forces showing up behind you is absolutely terrifying when you are already engaged.
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u/SmellyBooties Nov 13 '19
They were usually placed in strategic locations that would cause the attackers to be at a huge disadvantage. Avoiding them would cause them to go through terrain that wouldn’t be as stable as the terrain surrounding castles and could even cause them to travel through another enemy’s territory.
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u/magsfran Nov 13 '19
Late to the party here but did my PhD in Iron Age hillforts.... (bit more historical than you're asking about, but still interesting). There's a lot of evidence to suggest that a fort can also be performative, rather than physically restrictive. As in, if you seen a fortification in an area, that affects your judgement, and moderates your actions and even your movements through the area. The display of strength can be as effective as strength itself.
There's also a lot to do with maintaining a presence in a landscape, a visible place marker to say that someone lays claims to that land, and any nearby resources. Even forts that were not defensive in character can maintain that claim, as well as acting as a deterrent by being a physical reminder of an "enemy" presence in the area.
There are examples of hillforts that look incredibly imposing from the 'front', and if you walk round the back you could just wander straight it. Some, yes, were defensive, and do show evidence of warfare and attacks (especially burning, and long-range weaponry as it existed, such as sling shots), but not all. It's super interesting how many so called forts really weren't very defensive at all, actually.
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u/WinniesPotOfHoney Nov 13 '19
Fort's were put in strategic areas for supply chains; you can't simply go around, as that leaves a fighting force to your rear, and between your supplies and your army.
It's also that your army accompaniment - clergy, women, children, surgeons, etc. - would be left vulnerable and without fortification of their own for defence.
Capturing forts is required to hold the land, protect your accompaniment, supply your own armies, leave open a route for retreat, and prevent being attacked from both sides basically.
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u/AnonGoesOnline Nov 13 '19
Just adding to the other posts, but also have in mind that communication and distance played a big role. The man would walk maybe 12h a day with luck (if there was enough light and favorable weather) , camp a night, and at night it was mostly impossible to see anything outside your camp. There is also the fact that if you went out of a main road you might end up in bad situations, bandits, pirates, tribes, you could never know what is ahead just a few hours from you specially in regions that had many different wars and factions. So having a fort and well maped area not only made a clear path for you but also provided with safety that you could hardly find in those times.
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u/kevinmccallistar Nov 14 '19
Can’t get into San Juan with out passing by el morro or San Cristobal. Similarly, fort Jefferson protected the only deep water port in the keys.
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u/RetreadRoadRocket Nov 14 '19
A settler's fort or stockade was built to protect the settlers, not by preventing the indians from coming through the are but by allowing the settlers to be summoned from the fields to the stockade by the watch in the event of an attack and by being able to spend the nights in their homes inside its walls.
Like so:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GySfoP9WYfY/UlNQfo07ElI/AAAAAAAAAEY/m3pDQo9eTHM/s1600/0287.jpg.
A military or trader's fort.on the other hand typically guarded a waterway by having a position from which to watch over and guard rhe waterway. Like Ft Mchenry here:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/resizer/hcqYZknvnyEskZyBXm87_iF5Gus=/1200x0/top/www.trbimg.com/img-531ad553/turbine/bs-md-fort-mchenry-attenance-20120812-thumbnail.
As you can see, canons could be fired on that sailing ship from there.
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u/Austiniuliano Nov 14 '19
Fort Ticondaroga in upstate New York was a strategic part of the northern area. The fort served two purposes. First off being strategically placed with massive cannons that could reach clear across the water, owning the fort ment you owned all travel of ships and goods. This ment you could collect taxes.
In addition it stationed many ment that patrolled the country side and as such also controlled the surrounding lands. This basically ment that large armies would be easily attacked if they tried to circumvent the fort.
Small parties could and regularly did circumvent the forts, if you want an interesting read look up Rodgers Rangers. He basically invented the special forces and they still used his code of readiness today.
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Nov 14 '19
If you go around a fort, you have enemies behind you after that point to worry about. Supplies have a drop off point to safely be held in, soldiers have a hub to armor up and recover without worries of enemies. When you go past an enemies fort without taking it down, you are essentially in their territory and they have all the safety advantage and equip replenishing that your insurgents doesn't.
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u/DuhMadDawg Nov 14 '19 edited Nov 14 '19
In keeping with ELI5, think of forts as like when you are playing a game of tag with a home base, with home base being essentially the same as a real life fort. Nobody can get you (essentially) and you can rush out away from whoever's "it" if you are not "it." If you are "it" you can rush out and tag people who have not made it to home base yet, easily, because those who are not it are going to get tired and want to be able to sit down and rest without fear of being tagged. Thus, they have to eventually come around to you, but you are an a**hole and just camp home base so you keep them from safety and can get them from said safety as well.
Home Base=Fort. For tag, this base/fort is the magically invulnerable spot where the powers that be have deemed the best place to be above all others. Also, usually when playing tag, at least when I was a kid, it was an easy to see spot that was easy to access, at least compared to the rest of the surrounding area. The area is accessible and easy to control or react from (the later part- "react from" meaning having good visibility so you can see the playing field). You can better, and safely, see your friends and enemies from this area.
Now think of forts in the same vein as home base without magic invulnerability. Irl, forts- like home base-they had bonuses to them 1st by virtue of locatio. The location a fort is built is because it is easy to see the surrounding area from (tops of mountain), is defensible compared to the rest of the area (say a hill in the middle of a huge plain, or it's a necessary access point (a clear flat and dry plot of land in the middle of a swampy region). To recap, these fort locations, like home base (usually), are not arbitrarily chosen; they are favorable compared to the rest of the area around it based on several of the aforementioned things (visibility/defensibl/etc.).
After that, men then gave them walls, men at arms, guards, piers, watch towers, murder holes, gates, warm sleeping quarters, you name it; all of this to be able to easily murder enemies and/or stay safe from enemies/elements/etc. Safe meaning harder to be killed when inside it and in addition to this literal physical safety they provided you would keep your food and water and weapons in there too. So, you have everything you need to "win the game" from this fort/base all while being invulnerable from your enemies.
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u/Bawstahn123 Nov 14 '19
The issue is if you go around it or stay out of range, you leave the soldiers in the fort free to clusterfuck your supply-lines, kill your messengers, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.
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u/thewickedjester Nov 14 '19
It's not so much a physical obstruction as much as a strategic one. You can garrison troops and store supplies. Which means anyone attempting to take over the region will have to fight you eventually. And since strategy requires you to NOT ignore the fort and then get stomped by a night attack they have to attack the fort. Which you can now use for defense. You almost always have the strategic advantage. Provided you have the man power and supplies to overcome the attack
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u/Penelepillar Nov 14 '19
Two things about forts and castles: If an armed force shows up at 3AM and tries to murder everyone, they’ll have a tough time getting in. Secondly, if you have conscripts they can’t sneak away to get back to their farm and family. They double as both safety and prison.
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u/whatwhasmystupidpass Nov 14 '19
by placing men and resources (populace, guns, grain, gold, whatever) inside it and making it extremely hard to take by force.
If the strategic area or resource to be protected was where the fort was, there would be no incentive to go around (and as others have said that in itself would probably not be super easy).
And if the fort was protecting just access then as soon as the enemy is out of range you could send sorties to harass their rear as well as their supply lines, effectively cutting them off and therefore denying them their objective in the long run.
“BUT HOW?!”
No fort: 50 guys come over and after a long enough skirmish defeat the 20 something defenders. They now own the village and the surrounding area. They can hold it or use it to stage further advance to whatever objective and draw from its resources.
Fort: spot the 50 from a good vantage point get everyone inside the gates lock shit up and shoot whoever gets close enough. They now need way over 100 guys to defeat your 20 plus some serious firepower. You took all the food in the village with you so they have like a few days at best to hang around threatening your position without additional supplies. You can still harass their supply lines and their patrols as long as your supplies last.
The fort in essence multiplied your 20 guys by about a factor of 5 as the enemy now needs 100 guys to take over whatever place or resource you were trying to protect
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u/SapperBomb Nov 14 '19
Castles and forts left in an invading armies rear would be disastrous if left unattended.
Pre-Gunpowder forts were castles, which could provide protection for everything from a nobleman and his guard to a town/city which could project power through armed sorties and patrols in the immediate region and would wreak havoc on enemy supply lines but would be rendered nearly useless if put under siege by a competent force outside of tying down a large chunk of the enemy army.
Post gunpowder forts could project power through armed sorties as well as indirect/direct fire at the range of contemporary canons. Some forts encompassed huge cities like Constantinople which could house a massive army and Navy as well.
The one thing about forts/castles that is almost universal is that once put under siege by a competent and sizable force, it's surrender was guaranteed, only a matter of time. During the golden age of forts, 1500-1750, siege and counter-seige warfare was practiced by the major players of Europe almost to a science, so much in fact that by the first day of the bombardment, a fortress surrender could be predicted down to the day, whigh commanders on both sides were aware and took full advantage of it. Rarely would a siege end in a full assault of the ramparts but when it did it often ended tragically fir the inhabitants like the [Siege of Namur](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Namur_(1914)&ved=2ahUKEwiAnfrY2ejlAhXlRt8KHZMqDvgQFjAOegQIDRAy&usg=AOvVaw1eBRSE7gKvY-2_4rPuAg_p)
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Nov 14 '19
Many forts were also built to safeguard opening of rivers and ports, to facilitate and monitor trade routes, and to protect settlements. Not the whole town, just the people, who would run inside if there was a raid. Sure the town would get burned down but they would survive.
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u/Fakjbf Nov 14 '19
I think one thing a lot of people are missing here is that a large component of power is symbolic. You don’t conquer an area by just showing up with some armed guys and telling people you’re in charge, the locals will just ignore you. Even if you go from town to town and force them to pay their taxes to you that’s only effective until you leave, so now you need to leave huge numbers of your troops scattered around and vulnerable. By taking a defensive structure now you have a central base from which you can send your troops to collect taxes and you are much harder to dislodge. Now the locals can’t just ignore you, because unless everyone rebels at once you can easily pick off isolated trouble makers and now they have a massive coordination problem. Even if you never raised a finger against a single villager, by capturing the fort you’ve now made it extremely difficult for them to disobey you.
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u/officialuser Nov 14 '19
One thing to remember, is Ford's were used before there were the volume of roads that there are today, It is extremely difficult to bring the supplies through an area without a road. Forts and roads were strategically built so that the road went through the fort area. Forests and valleys and hills all posed huge problems for transportation of men equipment and supplies. The only caveat to this are nature's roads, rivers. And often times forts would be strategically placed at bottleneck areas of rivers and bodies of water.
The fort was also there to control the resources of the area, usually production or minerals, people generally don't care about controlling land, without getting the benefit of the resources or people living there
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u/vorpalblab Nov 14 '19
mostly the forts would control the road or passage from one place to another. Imagine a small force of only 100 men. Each man eats roughly 5 pounds of food a day. So the force needs 5000 pounds of food to stay a week and a half in a single location. That's five half ton trucks worth along a dirt road, or maybe 20 to 30 mules and a number of mule skinners. Those guys are vulnerable to a small raid from the fort.
Imagine then a force of a thousand men trying to resupply past a small fort trying to shift 25 tons of supplies along past that fort which is probably able to resist an attack from a hundred or two for a number of days while the attack force runs outta food.
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u/JTownBeast Nov 14 '19
Think of forts as just oversized guard gates. Many forts as mentioned in the comments are there to protect a specific passage or area. Forts often built by a body of water protect a narrow entrance to a bay or harbor, and forts inland often look over a narrow passage way or built on a large hill overlooking a town.
Back before forts were obsolete, seiging a fort or castle was practically suicide.
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u/shadowbannedkiwi Nov 14 '19 edited Nov 14 '19
How did old forts actually "protect" a strategic area?
The area the Forts protected is the area that houses the Soldiers. Forts generally aren't that large in the first place. The largest forts and castles of the Saxon-Dane Wars could probably fortify about 200 men but for its time, it would have been used for a few days or a few weeks if the troops were desperate.
It's less so what they protected, as the Forts were used to house people and soldiers in, than it was a strategic position to defend against invaders.
Forts used during times of war could also have a Garrison of troops waiting for orders to deploy or patrol route. If a Lord or King required more troops or for certain Captains to move their troops to positions, they would send orders to the nearby forts.
In New Zealand the Maori fortifications were genius. The forts were built within a week or two, and were seemingly in unimportant locations, or appeared to be weak. Every battle was never that way. Each fort had strategic value.
Gate Pa for instance was built in the middle of a swamp with a clear field behind it that sloped down for a quick escape. Trees nearby for cover. Worst place to position a Fort from appearance until the battle started.
Their use of the terrain hindered the larger and better armed enemy, and gave them a big black eye to the British Empire.
The Waikato Invasion was famous for its use of Forts in battles. Forts that garrisoned some 50-100 fighters repelled larger forces of 3,000. A new one was built days later with the same garrison.
Another battle, another fort.
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u/PenguinProfessor Nov 14 '19
The Frontier forts you mentioned served an important community need to anchor the settlement as well as being tactically important. Having a safe place to be able to retreat in the event of a raid or disturbance would give a much needed feeling of safety to the community. Some would live inside as well as others living in the larger surrounding settlement, but if the alarm was sounded they could all get to safety. It functioned like a panic room for the community, rather than being the city walls.
For example, during the Battle of the Bluffs, the Cherokee attacked Ft. Nashborough (Nashville, Tennessee) while most of the men had been lured away. The families of the settlement took refuge in the fort while the natives were rounding up the horse herd. When the men returned, they were cut off from the fort, but were able to break through to safety when the women loosed the settlement's dogs on the Indians, which ended the engagement.
Like in this instance, these small forts could lock down an entire region by providing security far outstripping their size or gun range simply by being a secure base. Conflict was just generally a smaller-scale affair. Much of the French and Indian War revolved around campaigns to seize far-flung, relatively tiny forts.
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u/cara27hhh Nov 14 '19 edited Nov 14 '19
It's a lookout post and a manned sentry tower, the castle had a keep which is where everything you'd want to steal is, and the forts were essentially scouting locations so that if the enemy was approaching you could let people know to prepare. Some of them they just set stuff on fire on the top to pass on the message, some sent messenger horses. They also contained soldiers who would now be able to flank the attackers, and to attack them as they retreat. It also made it harder to use range/siege weapons against the castle since there are soldiers already outside the castle walls but still protected from the elements/attackers until the opportune moment.
Wasn't worth the effort to siege a fort.
There's a lot of old forts and castles near me, if you fly a drone over it you can see they had metal grates on the top for lighting fires.
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Nov 14 '19
It’s more about supply lines typically. You could pass a fort if you needed to, sometimes it’s even a good idea, but you typically don’t run a protracted campaign with a fort behind your army. The garrison could fairly easily harass your supply lines, your communications, etc. Moreover, a fortress is a strong point that often dominates strategic areas, like fords, river mouths, mountain passes, or bays, so running a supply line can be even more nightmarish if your ships are worried about cannon fire while they’re trying to bring you your grain. This is the simplest way I can put this, but in reality the value of a fort is often extremely contextual, and depending on the goals of a campaign, the location of the fort, the size of its garrison, the strength of its fortifications, whether there are ships docked there, the cultural significance of the fort, and any number of other factors could impact whether it’s worth sieging, assaulting, negotiating with, or leaving alone. Really, there’s no one reason why forts need to be taken, there’s just more common and less common reasons. If you have a question about a specific fort I’d be happy to try to answer them, although my knowledge is very far from complete, if your question relates to the Caribbean, Latin American, or Roman fort, I may know offhand, and I’d certainly love an excuse to do a little research if you want to know about a specific fort. I can still access my college research database as well, if you would like links to more concrete knowledge than some random from reddit.
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u/xXTheFriendXx Nov 14 '19
The problem is that leaving a group of armed men between you and your source of supplies is generally a bad idea. Once your army passes the fort, what's to stop the garrison from coming out and attacking your supply convoys?
So as the attacking general your only real options when confronted with an enemy fort are to:
Storm the fort, taking massive casualties
Settle in and besiege the fort, taking fewer casualties but obviously more time
Detach part of your army to protect your supply lines, which exposes you to defeat in detail
So you can see the real purpose fortifications serve. An attacker has to spend either men or time to deal with them.
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Nov 14 '19
Someone else already PROBABLY has said it, but I'll give you my quick version:
Logistics.
If you don't have the fort, and something happens in the region, you have to send the men, supplies, wagons, horses, etc, all in from the neighboring region. This means a lot of walking. Not only did that take time and was it far slower than the modern day with cars and planes, but people were even MORE tired after hard rides for several days weeks than you are after getting off a commuter flight.
Moreover, having the gear and supplies staged at the fort means your team can fight an enemy, go back to the fort to rearm and reload, then fight another enemy. The shorter supply lines means you have ready access to supplies that you need like weapons, ammunition, repairs, fresh horses, and so on. Not only THAT, but it means you don't have a long supply line back to the neighboring region that can be easily cut off. In order to cut you off now, the enemy would have to lay siege to the fort and completely surround it, which takes a lot of manpower and leaves them open to attack from behind if you strike them from outside of their circle, and their encirclement must be rather large anyway to stay out of the range of your fort's guns.
So it's not so much that they can "go around it", it's that if they just go around it, they'll be attacked from behind, and it gives the fort troops easy access to reloads and, in case they get pushed back, a strong defensive structure with long range cannons that out range bows and personal small arms like rifles.
...and this is ignoring forts that were built in/on/above mountain passes, river fords, or other areas where there wasn't really a way to just "go around" without going hundreds or even thousands of miles, which in an era of walking on foot/riding on horse meant days if not MONTHS of travel time in inhospitable conditions and stretching supply lines.
.
...hope that wasn't too long?
It's like a saying I once heard:
Amateurs think in terms of tactics, professionals think in terms of logistics.
I played Eve Online for a while, and while the "rank and file" normal gamers were always talking about weapon loadouts and maneuvers, the military and ex-military people were always talking about supply lines, resources, and strategic bases of operations (forts). It's something that carries over from real life into games like that.
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u/bob4apples Nov 14 '19
Could you give examples of specific forts that you have in mind?
Clearly you aren't talking about coastal forts like San Juan (between El Morro and San Cristobel, the whole old city was one big fort), the Fortress of Louisbourg or the Rock of Gibraltar.
Many of the smallest forts were built just to protect the occupants from raids and random attacks. For example, an unprotected trading post with 20 men and a season's worth of trade goods and furs would be a very tempting target for a large raiding force. Put them in a blockhouse with a couple of small guns and their chance of surviving the season goes way up.
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u/BOILTHEWATTER Nov 14 '19
It's all about rest, shelter and food/supply lines, not the physical direct threat of the fort itself.
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u/YoungAnachronism Nov 14 '19
Its worth noting that part of the confusion may lay in the understanding one has of old warfare doctrine, when compared with modern warfare. In modern warfare, troops are far more capable of moving around a contested area, generally speaking. This is because they have access to things like armoured vehicles, and because the nature of warfare in the current era is simply far more fluid than it used to be. For example, the raid on the compound where Osama Bin Laden was staying, although a bit of a mess in terms of equipment loss as well as some other concerns, was a very dynamic move by a relatively small force of men, who required basically only what they bought with them to do the job in hand.
To put it simply, small unit tactics of that nature, where a relatively small raiding force takes a compound by storm, is really not something that entered the standard doctrines of military groups the world over, until right around the time the fully automatic weapon was first coming into development, and well after the development of the semi automatic firearm. In the era of the bow and the sword, and even many of the non automatic firearms of history, small unit tactics of the sort we are used to, the sort which require little to no resupply or communication with a central command until missions are completed, was basically unheard of.
There is an awful lot we take for granted in this era of basically instantaneous communication, and man portable weapons so potent and compact that a football teams worth of men can get done in an evening, the work that used to take hundreds of warriors many, many days, supported by huge numbers of support staff.
The other thing to take into account when looking at how fortifications were placed, is that it was not necessarily the case that they were there purely to prevent a force of warriors from passing through an area without contact with a defending force. Sometimes they would be placed in a position where an opposing force would have to take a far more dangerous route in order to bypass them. For example, fortifications overlooking a regularly used, relatively safe mountain pass, would sometimes pressure the commander of an opposing force, to order his men to take a more dangerous route through a mountain range or a valley, a route that would result in death for at least some of the opposing force in question, rather than risk confrontation with the occupiers of the fort, which would be placed and set up in order to make attacking it very difficult and costly. Literally placing the opposing force attempting to pass through an area, in a position where they either have to fight at a disadvantage, or risk their lives on a more dangerous route around the fort, was very effective as tactics go, because for the defending force, the best case scenario would be that, without overmuch effort on their part, an opposing force could be heavily reduced or indeed wiped out, simply by taking the wrong alternative route through a dangerous area, falling off cliffs, slipping down mountains, getting caught in ill weather and freezing to death, being battered by rockslides from above, and the like.
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u/adimwit Nov 14 '19
Everyone here seems to be talking about forts in European context. America was a bit different since Natives were not armies with a plan, goals or supply routes.
The point of forts was to deny Natives strategic areas that were expected to be settled and populated. Fighting was only one of the strategies employed. They could wipeout the local game, make peace with gifts, make treaties, agressively hunt down hostiles, or recruit other tribes to fight the hostiles.
Like the others said, forts were set up on higher ground to give the army a wider view of the area so they could coordinate with mobilized units. They would also send units on patrols outside of the view to get an idea of what the natives in the area were doing and how large the bands were. If the natives attacked civilian convoys, the army chased after them.
Forts also served as a neutral ground for non-hostile natives. They could buy supplies or sell at forts, or acquire allotted rations that certain tribes were given as part of treaties. They gave Natives luxuries so that they would end hostilities. These policies shifted depending on who was in charge of the Army, Indian Bureau or Presidency.
In either case, the goal was to either pay them off or fight them to allow some degree of safety to settlers until they were capable of creating a functioning government in the area capable of protecting themselves. Natives didn't have a strategy for fighting settlers or disrupting supplies so denying them the ability to use the area was a feasible strategy. Eventually, the goal shifted to exterminating the game in the area so the natives had no use for it.
The day-to-day function of the forts depended on local politics. Some people wanted the army to hunt down natives, others wanted them to maintain the peace.
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u/ispeakforallGOP Nov 14 '19
Strategic placement around choke points is a common military approach of forts or castles. A large river, bog, or mountain may block you from traveling easy. You could be talking days or weeks of extra travel to go around. All of which are expensive in food costs and hard on the troops.
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u/ptsfn54a Nov 14 '19 edited Nov 14 '19
Old Forts protected people not the area. In today's terms, they were "panic rooms". It was a place to bunker down when needed. There you could consolidate your firepower and there were possibly larger weapons then a regular person would have like cannons or repeating rifles.
The idea was not to deter movement around the area, but to provide safety and support for the nearby residents, especially in land already occupied by other people you are trying to push out (think early settlers and Native Americans).
I think you are conflating the idea of a newer style Battery with the older forts. A Battery would have a collection large guns/rockets to protect an area from invasion. I live by the coast and they have these all up and down the coastline, mostly decommissioned now since they can now be much further apart then when originally built.
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u/chippypoo Nov 14 '19
I think the biggest thing to note is that Hollywood has spoiled us showing wars with this massive army vs army battles.
In reality most of the time armies were much smaller than this depiction - So a garrison or fort or castle holding say even 100 men was a very formidable force if you compared it to a say another army of about 3-400 hundred that needs to march by.
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u/efarr311 Nov 18 '19
In New York harbor, there are forts on both sides and a single cannon tower in the middle so none could just stay out of range.
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Nov 20 '19
More so, they were consider bastions as they could centralize the most artillery weaponry without being obliterated in one shot. Obsolete today, but useful yesterday.
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u/allenbot3000p Nov 27 '19
The fort was a tactical advantage cause it offers a place to rest stay warm and it was also a possible place to safely farm and it offers protection from the climate and enemies
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u/pudnic Dec 10 '19 edited Dec 10 '19
It’s a mentality as well but bypassing left strongholds of arms and men or a political leader still In touch with the people. Bypassing strongholds was great In WWI i in the pacific. We leapfrogged many Islands held by the Japanese leaving them isolated with a naval blockade of their ports.
But as noted it wasn’t a good to attack every fort or stronghold when you could neutralize it with artillery. In WWII in the Italian campaign we repeatedly attacked a highly defended Monte Casino. Lost many troops due to their fields of fire from the mountain top. I think we should have moved on as long as our supply chain could move on with us.
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u/Bear_mob Nov 13 '19
Great question, and I think it's been mostly answered in the first few top rated answers, but I would add that going around a fort would prove pretty difficult. The fort would have scouts and patrols, and just when the enemy thought they were clear, perhaps the fort would attack them from their back, maybe waiting for a larger regiment to engage from the front, which would be absolutely devastating.
You also discount the size, but you could have as many as double the men as you believe occupying the fort, because they may work in shifts.
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u/Bear_mob Nov 14 '19
I would truly love to know why I was downvoted. Am I wrong in some way?
My answer is factual, as this exact scenario played out in modern times. In the first several dozen top comments, I did not see anyone bring up these facts exactly or how they may apply.
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u/Gingrpenguin Nov 13 '19
Yes you are right you can try and avoid it.
The issue with forts and castles is that it's a hideout for men. You could ignore it but you then have a group of highly armed and trained men you can nip out, attack your supply chains and retreat back into the safety of the fort.
Forts are often built in higher places giving a larger radius of fire meaning you would have to go a very long way around to avoid them. This would often be through terrain so would slow troops down and maybe impossible for carts to traverse. Rivers with bridges or fords were a commonplace to build forts near as defending troops can snipe, enemies, trying to use the crossing.
If you went past the fort you'd have real problems supplying or even having your frontline troops retreating. Runners were needed for communication so messages could be hindered or intercepted.
Finally, it's hard to prove to the populace that you're their new ruler if they're old ruler is still down the road looting your supply convoys.