Fort de Fouras

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Fort de Fouras

The Fort de Fouras or the Sémaphore de Fouras is the medieval castle of Fouras , a small French town in the Charente-Maritime department . It is often mistakenly called Fort Vauban , although for the most part it was built long before Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban's influence.

architecture

The fort is one of the best examples of stately coastal fortifications . Nothing has survived from the first medieval buildings. Today's castle stands on a crypt from the 15th century and the 30 meter high south wall of the first chamber. It is surrounded by fortifications from the 17th century.

history

The estuary of the Charente has long been of strategic importance, and the Romans built a castle there . The current fortification goes back to the Rochefort family in the 11th century, who levied tariffs on boats on the Charente. In 1305 Philip IV (1268-1314) bought Fouras, which was thus directly under the crown. Then he gave Fouras as a fief . The fiefdom changed hands several times until it fell to Jean II. De Brosse (around 1423 to 1483), who had the donjon built between 1480 and 1490.

Louis XIII (1601–1643) undertook a campaign against the Huguenots and had fortified cities inhabited by Huguenots destroyed after the siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628) . Fouras avoided destruction because its strategic position made it valuable to the king. He made it a royal fortress.

During the Dutch War (1672–1679), the fort's garrisons protected the mouth of the river, and construction work on the fortress continued until 1693.

When Rochefort Castle was converted into a naval arsenal , the Donjon of Fouras was used to observe ship movements and to send messages to the signal tower, which in the 18th century was not far from the residence of the Chef d'escadre (an ancien military title comparable to that of the Rear Admiral Régime ) was built in Rochefort.

In 1757, during the Seven Years' War , Henry Seymour Conway , the second-highest-ranking British officer in the attack on Rochefort , repeatedly called for the destruction of Fort de Fouras, but his fellow officers ultimately only agreed to a half-hearted night attack, which failed. Eventually the expedition returned to Portsmouth without having achieved anything. Although the responsible commander John Mordaunt was acquitted by the court martial, the affair damaged the reputation of both.

The fortress and citadel were classified as a Historic Monument on March 13, 1987.

  • Entrance of the fort

  • Tablet of the fort

  • Inner courtyard of the fort

  • Courtyard and bulwark of the fort

  • Fort dungeon

literature

  • Le Patrimoine des Communes de la Charente-Maritime. Flohic Editions, Volume 2, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-84234-129-5 , p. 620.

Web links

Commons : Fort de Fouras  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Clive Towse: Conway, Henry Seymour (1719-1795) . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  2. ^ A b Thomas A. Heathcote: The British Field Marshals, 1733-1997. A biographical dictionary. Leo Cooper, Barnsley 1999, ISBN 0-85052-696-5 .
  3. ^ Fort Vauban, Fouras in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)

Coordinates: 45 ° 59 ′ 9 ″  N , 1 ° 5 ′ 51 ″  W.