page_title: Bastion
section_title: Evolution
hierarchical_section_title: Bastion / Evolution
caption_attribution_description: English: Deal Castle Deal Castle was built during the reign of King Henry VIII, part of a series of castle which included Pendennis in Cornwall, and nearby Walmer. These castle were hastily built between 1539 - 1542 at a time when England under threat of a Catholic invasion. The invasion never took place, however, the castle did see action in 1648 during the English Civil War.
context_page_description: A bastion or bulwark is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fire from the flanks being able to protect the curtain wall and the adjacent bastions. Compared with the medieval fortifications they replaced, bastion fortifications offered a greater degree of passive resistance and more scope for ranged defense in the age of gunpowder artillery. As military architecture, the bastion is one element in the style of fortification dominant from the mid 16th to mid 19th centuries.
context_section_description: By the middle of the 15th century, artillery pieces had become powerful enough to make the traditional medieval round tower and curtain wall obsolete. This was exemplified by the campaigns of Charles VII of France who reduced the towns and castles held by the English during the latter stages of the Hundred Years War, and by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the large cannon of the Turkish army.
  During the Eighty Years War (1568–1648) Dutch military engineers developed the concepts further by lengthening the faces and shortening the curtain walls of the bastions. The resulting construction was called a bolwerk. To augment this change they placed v-shaped outworks known as ravelins in front of the bastions and curtain walls to protect them from direct artillery fire.
  These ideas were further developed and incorporated into the trace italienne forts by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, that remained in use during the Napoleonic Wars.
caption: One of the semi-circular bastions at Deal Castle, a Device Fort on the south coast of England.
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