Talk:Defensive wall

message: How is this for an edition to walls?  Its a wall whose stated purpose is defense...? gren グレン 09:57, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: They're not really walls, they're fences. Small portions of the barriers consist of walls, although you'll find more pictures of those portions since they sell more newspapers than a boring fence. I added them anyhow. --Joffeloff 21:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Israeli West Bank barrier]] [[Israeli Gaza Strip barrier]] 

message: I am going start translating the German article Stadtmauer to add to this one. Any help / feedback welcome. 
ACH 20:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation from German to English 

message: First point, the title is misleading. The article is mostly about city walls, and that term redirects here, but is not mentioned in the introduction, and possibly not in the text at all.
Second I agree strongly with ACH that the huge list of fortified cities overwhelms the article.
Certainly in english usage, city walls is the more familier term for the secondary defences that protected the citizenry of fortified towns. I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but many British fortified towns consist of a citadel or castle - a military structure, and  a walled town, usually attached to the castle, or more rarely surrounding the castle. The function of the walled town is subtly different from the castle. The castle both defends and controls the town. The city walls add to the defensive strength of the castle, protect the inhabitents from external threat but also provide a measure of control over the inhabitents. The wall keeps in, as well as out.
Carnarvon, Beaumaris, Berwick-on-Tweed all follow this pattern.
Further point, plain wall, usually called curtain wall, is relativly a very weak defensive structure.
An attacker can concentrate large amounts of force against a small section of the wall, and only a relativly few defenders can challange them. If the wall is scaled, the the attackers and defenders are very quickly fighting on even terms, not a desirable position from the defenders viewpoint.  From the days of the Romans and before, defensive lines were composed of towers linked by short sections of wall, arranged so that a) the towers can enfilade attackers approaching the wall, and b) so that even if the wall is scaled the attackers have the benifit of the shelter of the towers to mount counter attacks against the invaders.
City walls that are only man high, and plain wall without reinforcing towers are not serious defensive features. Any  reasonably large attacking force would have control of the wall in minutes.
Lastly cannon came to dominate both attack and defence from the 14th centuary on. From the end of the Roman era, where siege warefare was well developed, to the arrival of cannon, the strength of a wall was synonymous with its hight, and ditches were a secondary means of gaining a few feet of hight. From the arrival of cannon, a higher wall was simply a bigger target. Anything that a cannon could fire at it could destroy. Thus walls were no higher than could be protected by the ditch in front of them, and "walls" became huge banks of earth, "revetted" (faced) in stone and strongly equipped with defensive cannon. See the photograph of the walls of Berwick in the article Berwick-on-Tweed for a view of city walls of this era.
Well, you are more than welcome to add to the article in that respect -  I do not have much knowledge of the topic (I am mainly translating the German article as stated above) so any expertise / experience is welcome. 
I did, at one point, wonder how to best describe the city defense with one term that I could then keep consistently througout the article - and of course the title seems to be misleading, too. Moreover, it is linked with the German article for city walls not some generic "defensive walls".
I am not sure how to move the list of fortified cities to a separate page or whether I even can (I registered only a few days ago) so any help is appreciated. Thanks ACH 15:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say that the consensus is to keep them separate - I'll remove the tag if no-one else has anything to say soon. ACH 13:33, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Work in progress

message: ===>Largely identical articles The scope and content of both largely overlap. I don't know which should redirect to the other, though. I'm inclined to say "separation barrier" should be the main article, as not all of these are strictly built for defense, but all walls, by definition, separate. Thoughts? Justin (koavf) 01:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the current defensive Wall article contains more information, mostly about medieval walls, their history, and structure. I suppose one way of going about it would be to merge the articles, but put the aforementioned information in a separate article, say "city walls", as it does not fit under such a generic header in my opinion. ACH 11:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: It looks to me like Defensive walls is more about fortified cities of an earlier era, whereas Separation barrier deals with much longer walls that separate territories and zones. No? //Big Adamsky 07:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with [[Separation barrier]] 

message: I came to Defensive wall from "Walled City" - can the redirect be made clear please - with a link to the former place in Hong Kong which I was looking for?Jackiespeel 17:26, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Walled City

message: I object to a merge, as that article is already extensive, and because it specifically supports the medieval subject.    The Transhumanist   11:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who put the merge tag on Medieval fortification?

message: I was looking for the terms Rampart and Bulwark, both re-direct to Defensive wall,
but neither seems to contain any iformation about these terms, or their modern semantics in relation to the Defensive walls. Because the "Defensive wall" is a catch-all article, a little Defensive wall-related glossary seems to be missing. Any opinions? Barefact (talk) 20:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I just came across this page looking for Rampart and I was going to make the same comment. I'll leave a note on the appropriate wikiprojects, hopefully someone knowledgeable will either include information on them in this article or create new articles.--Profitoftruth85 (talk) 22:19, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ditto. DAVilla (talk) 05:42, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rampart, Bulwark terms 

message: The Berlin Wall was a defensive wall? In the 20th century? In the age of strategic bombers and ICBMs? See that ploughed strip? Its purpose is to help the patrol guards see if any of the prisoner slaves escaped the "worker's paradise!" 67.206.161.143 (talk) 21:07, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Berlin Wall Picture 

message: Hi, this needs to be linked to :de:Stadtmauer and its likes, but there obviously is a problem. It's somewhere in here I think, but I can't quite resolve it. Any help appreciated. Cheers, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 10:13, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interwiki Link problems 

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