Knowra Ravelin Ravelin A detached fortification, usually triangular, built in front of a fortress’s main walls. It protects those walls and obstructs attackers approaching the fortress.
Bastion : A projecting part of a fortification, typically with two faces and two flanks, designed to provide defensive fire along adjacent walls. Ravelins worked with bastions, shielding their faces while leaving them able to cover nearby approaches.
Bastioned fort : A fortress whose projecting bastions provide overlapping fields of fire around its walls. Ravelins were designed as outworks of this system of defense.
Trace italienne : A style of early modern fortification using low, thick, angled walls and projecting bastions to resist artillery. Ravelins became standard outworks within this bastioned approach to artillery defense.
Fort George, Scotland : An eighteenth-century British military fortress near Inverness, built after the Jacobite rising of 1745. Its surviving defenses show ravelins integrated into a complete bastioned fortress.
Lunette (fortification) : A detached fieldwork with two faces forming a salient angle, sometimes open at the rear. A lunette can resemble a ravelin but differs in its usual layout and defensive role.
Glacis : A sloping bank of earth outside a fortress, designed to expose attackers to defensive fire and conceal the fortifications behind it. The glacis shaped the ground attackers crossed between a ravelin and the besieging army.
Curtain wall : The stretch of defensive wall connecting two towers or bastions in a fortified enclosure. A ravelin commonly stood before a curtain wall, protecting it from direct attack.
Italian Wars : A series of European conflicts fought from 1494 to 1559, marked by shifting alliances and increasingly powerful artillery. The wars accelerated the redesign of fortresses that made outworks such as ravelins valuable.
Citadel of Lille : A seventeenth-century French fortress in Lille, designed by Vauban and built after the city’s conquest by France. Its outworks demonstrate Vauban’s use of ravelins within a layered defensive plan.
Redoubt : A small enclosed fortification designed to defend a position, often as an isolated work. A redoubt is typically an enclosed strongpoint rather than a triangular outwork before a fortress.
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