Citadelle Bayonne
Bayonne, France

Fortified to keep out unruly tribes of local hooligans, this region, named Novumpopulania by the Romans, was important because it permitted the monitoring of the main route one might take if interested in crossing the Pyrenees Mountains betwixt modern France and Spain. A Roman Castrum was in existence at Bayonne when the Romans left the region at the end of the 4th century AD. Some of those Roman walls are still part of Bayonne's defenses today, as it has remained a fortified city ever since!

For the next 150 years, a series of French king's engineers left their mark on Bayonne's fortifications. The result was a series of irregular, unmatching bastions sticking out in a semimenacing fashion from the town's walls: Grand Bayonne wound up with five bastions and two gates, while Petit Bayonne made do with four bastions and one gate.

Bayonne's 12th century castle, Floripes, was dismantled during this period. Vauban obviously had a healthy disdain for such edifices as castles in the modern age of the 1670's.

Lots of things also changed when Napoleon (1769-1821) became Emperor of France in 1804, though little in the way of starfort construction. In 1808 representatives of France and Spain met in Bayonne and hammered out the Bayonne Statute. This agreement was essentially Spain saying, "sure, we'd love to be ruled by Napoleon's older brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), and thanks for this constitution promising us sovereignty, which you will completely ignore when it suits you!" And so it was.

A mere five years later, an Anglo/Portuguese/Spanish army led by Sir Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), defeated Marshal Soult (1769-1851) at the Battle of the Nive (December 9-13, 1813). Foul weather prevented any active campaigning directly thereafter, but by the end of February, 1814 Wellington had crossed the Adour River, isolating Bayonne.

A brief aside about the sortie. Virtually all starforts were equipped with a sally port, which is a strategically-placed portal, separate from the main gate, through which a force might "sally forth" and attack its besiegers. The thought of a besieged fort's garrison bursting out of a sally port and successfully attacking those surrounding that fort has always seemed an extremely unlikely exploit to me. A fort has a known number of openings from whence a sortie might proceed, and if a body of soldiers is besieging a fort, one would think that they would be particularly attentive to those openings, thus precluding the possibility of being surprised by such an adventure. "They attacked us from one of the three portals through which they could have possibly attacked us! Who could've predicted that?!?"

However, there have absolutely been examples of this very thing occurring, including the sortie with which we are presently concerned. Historically, sieges could last for months, even years. A level of complacency on the part of those doing the besieging was inevitable, after long months of no activity other than lots of guys dying from the many diseases from which one could choose in such situations. If a fort's commander was clever enough to time a sortie correctly, perhaps with a distraction elsewhere, at the very least such an attack might lead to the sapping of both the besieger's men and will.

Work continued on Bayonne's defenses until 1846, when the Citadelle's northern ravelin was finally completed. All of Bayonne's defenses except the Citadelle were demilitarized in 1900. The Nazis occupied Bayonne from June of 1940 until August of 1944, randomly gunning down three people as they departed.

Much of Bayonne's city walls remain today, and are reportedly in good condition. The Citadelle is still occupied in some capacity by the French military, and is thus closed to visitors.

*Though unrelated to the sacred art of starfortery, the modern bayonet has its origin in Bayonne. Early muskets were inaccurate and reloaded in a cumbersome fashion, and it became common for a kind of spear to be dropped down a musket's barrel after firing a shot, so that one could defend oneself with something long and pointy. As the story goes, the musket-wielders of Bayonne at the end of the 16th century, notoriously short on powder and shot, found themselves more often than not holding their muskets with the spear sticking out. Determined to improve upon this clumsy contrivance, Bayonners devised a blade that was affixed alongside or beneath a musket's barrel, leaving it free to be reloaded if possible, or to be used as a stabbing device if not. The bayonet was commonly issued in all European armies by the 1660's. Thanks, Bayonne!