A treatise containing the elementary part of fortification. [With] M. Belidor's new method of mining

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1756 Excerpt: ...wrote on fortification, that I have seen, are so deficient iri regard to this, that not the least knowledge can be gathered from their writings; they do not even mention any thing about it. From whence it seems to appear, that there can be given no general rule; whereby the strength or weakness cart be discovered; and if we consider the several attacks that were made in the late wars, one would be inclined to think, that the engineers were no ways acquainted with it. A late author has mutilated what is here said, and enlarged upori the subject very much; he had the assurance, Hot to say worse, to persuade the public, that all Was his own invention, as if this work had not been known before his; buC his whole performance consists in nothing else than a heap of ah/urdities. That Wl.Vaubat1 understood irregular fortification perfectly well, is plain from 'hose" places he has fortified of that kind and yet1 L hi« his commentators mention nothing of it; they very often lavishly bestow their praises on some of his works which do not deserve it, and are silent upon those which are very justly to be esteemed. When the situation of a place is such that it cannot be regularly fortified, it should be contrived to make it nearly so; that is, instead of inscribing it in a circle, it should be inscribed in an oval, so that one half may be like and equal to the other half; and when this cannot be done, it should be made as regular as it possibly can be, and as much as the nature of the ground will admit of. But to reduce irregular fortification into some form, that from thence their perfections and imperfections may be discovered; we shall suppose, in the first place, that one half of the place is equal and like the other half; and then shall shew.the applicatio...