Parapet

Medieval parapet with battlements

Parapet of a fortress wall (1870)

As parapet is in castles - and fortress , as well as in the field fixing each made of immediate protection of the underlying defense against enemy fire coverage referred. It is a major part of military fortifications . Behind the parapet, for example, there are banquets and gun benches for defense.

In a castle complex, the parapet is usually the height of a man, often protruding outwards, on a wall equipped with a battlement or on a weir platform . If it has battlements or loopholes , it is called a crenellated parapet, otherwise a closed parapet. Until the late Middle Ages, parapets were mostly made of stone, but after the introduction of powder weapons they were often replaced by wooden structures because it had been found that the fragments of stone flying around after hits often caused more damage to the defenders than the impacts themselves.

In fortifications , the parapet usually consists of earth fillings on the wall. As for the wall, the earth is removed from the ditch, a remainder must remain for the glacis .

The height of the parapet is either dimensioned so that the defender can shoot over it while lying, kneeling or standing, or so that an upright troop is covered at some distance from the parapet. Their thickness measures between one and ten meters and depends on the nature of the ground or the material, and on how long the parapet should withstand an attack fire.

The surface of the parapet, the so-called parapet crown, is slightly flattened on the outside so that it is easy to shoot over it and the attacker can still be seen close to the parapet. This flattening is known as the crown fall. The edges of this area are the inner and outer parapets, the former, on which the defenders stand, also called the fire line. The outer slope of the parapet, which suffers the most from fire, has one to one and a half times the system, the inner slope no more than ¼ system, so that the defender can come close to the fire line. They are clad with lawn, wickerwork, hurdles, fascines , bulwarks , boards and also with masonry.

See also: parapet

literature

• Reinhard Friedrich, Michael Losse : parapet. In: Horst Wolfgang Böhme , Reinhard Friedrich, Barbara Schock-Werner (Hrsg.): Dictionary of castles, palaces and fortresses . Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-010547-1 , p. 88, doi: 10.11588 / arthistoricum.535 .
• Otto Piper : Castle studies. Weltbild, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-554-7 , pp. 333-334, 667.

Web links

• Brief definition of parapet

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Small fortress ABC on festungpeitz.de , as of August 11, 2008.