The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great 1660-1789 Routledge Library Editions: Military and Naval History Series

The later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been acclaimed as the classic period of artillery fortification. This was an era when fortresses and fortress systems shaped the calculations of strategists and statesmen, and often dictated the course of campaigns. The age was one of almost constant conflict and this book, originally published in 1985, explores the influence of the fortress in the dynastic wars of Bourbon, Habsburg and Hohenzollern, the contest for influence in the Baltic, the last crusades of the West against the Turks, and in the peculiar conditions of colonial campaigning and the War of the American Independence.

1. Louis XIV and the Apogee of the Old Fortress Warfare 1660-1715 2. The Masters: Coehoorn and Vauban 3. The Resolution of the Conflict: The Last Struggles of Habsburg and Bourbon 4. The Age of Frederick the Great 1740-86 5. A Time of Doubt: The Standing of Permanent Fortification in the Eighteenth Century 6. The Subjugation of Ireland and Scotland 7. The Battle for Sweden’s Trans-Baltic Bridgeheads 8. The Last Crusade – The Repulse of Ottoman Turkey 9. The Collision of the Colonial Empires 10. Conclusions. Glossary. Bibliography. Indices.