page_title: Wagon fort
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Wagon fort / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Circled wagons outside National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center
context_page_description: A wagon fort, wagon fortress, or corral, often referred to as circling the wagons, is a temporary fortification made of wagons arranged into a rectangle, circle, or other shape and possibly joined with each other to produce an improvised military camp. It is also known as a laager, especially in historical African contexts.
context_section_description: Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman army officer and historian of the 4th century, describes a Roman army approaching "ad carraginem" as they approach a Gothic camp. Historians interpret this as a wagon-fort.
  Notable historical examples include the Hussites, who called it vozová hradba ("wagon wall"), known under the German translation Wagenburg ("wagon fort/fortress"), tabors in the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Cossacks, and the laager of settlers in South Africa.
  Similar, ad hoc, defensive formations used in the United States were called corrals.
  These were traditionally used by 19th century American settlers travelling to the West in convoys of Conestoga wagons. When faced with attack, such as by hostile Native American tribes, the travellers would rapidly form a circle out of their wagons, bringing the draft animals (sometimes horses, but more commonly oxen) and women and children to the center of the circle. The armed men would then man the perimeter, the circled wagons serving to break up the enemy charge, to create a certain amount of concealment from observation and shelter from enemy firearms fire. The wagons would also slow down and separate any warrior who attempted to get into the circle, although they never formed a perfect barricade as a true wall would. This tactic was popularly known as "circling the wagons", and this is still an idiomatic expression for a person or group preparing to defend themselves against attack or criticism.
caption: Circled wagons
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