Thiers city fortifications

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City map from 1911 from the Encyclopaedia Britannica , which clearly shows the course of the main wall

The Thiers wall is the last and largest wall ring as fastening of the French capital Paris in the years around 1840-1844 at the instigation of the last King Louis Philippe was created. It owes its name to the politician Adolphe Thiers , who was Prime Minister at the start of construction.

construction

In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Paris had only sporadic fortifications, as the medieval walls were long out of date and a new fortification was probably also seen as unnecessary in view of France's military strength. This changed with the revolution and the defeat of Napoleon , when Paris saw the entry of foreign armies twice within a few months. The last Bourbon king, Louis-Philippe, had been pursuing the ambitious plan of a complete re-fortification of his capital since he took office in the wake of the revolution of 1830 , believing that the possession of Paris was the key to a successful defense of France. Marshal Soult submitted a first draft in early 1833. However, it was first necessary to overcome some resistance in parliament, since quite a few parliamentarians were convinced that the fortification was actually directed more against their own people than against external enemies. The project finally began in 1841 and was essentially completed just three years later, with loans totaling 140 million gold francs taken out for the construction .

It turned out to be problematic that in the years before (and especially after) the installation of the fortification system, weapon technology made great advances. This affected hand weapons and artillery to a particularly high degree, which in the middle of the 19th century caused a large fortress death, as older and smaller facilities were not able to cope with the improved attack methods and the modernization or new construction of contemporary fortresses required ever greater expenditures. Actually, the new city fortifications were no longer in keeping with the times when they were completed, and around 15 years later the massive emergence of powerful rear - loading guns made most of the fortifications in the bastionary system practically worthless.

Fortring

In the run-up to the city, a ring of 16 detached forts in the bastionary system was laid out as the first line of defense , which formed a ring about 53 km in length and could cover each other with artillery fire . There were gaps in the ring in some places, mainly in the west, where the Seine formed a natural line of defense. Most of the forts were rectangular or pentagonal, while Fort Double Couronne (translated 'double crown') was designed as a double crown work open to the rear just north of Saint-Denis .

The 16 forts

Main wall

The second line of defense was the actual 10 m high main wall (enceinte) with a 6 m wide parapet and a 3.5 m thick escarp wall as well as an upstream dry trench 10 to 40 m wide that enclosed Paris over a length of 34.5 km and 95 bastions , 17 gates, 23 smaller entrances ( barrières ), eight railway passages , eight postern and five passages for the Seine and canals. Behind the wall, a ring road and a circular railway ran along the defense line to improve communication. In front of the ditch was a 250 m wide glacis on which no buildings were allowed to stand or be erected ( zone non aedificandi ).

Children playing in the ditch in front of the main wall

The new wall ran a few kilometers from the then city limits, but as early as 1860 the country was incorporated into Paris, so that the city limits now corresponded to the course of the main wall, which is essentially still the case today. The main wall enclosed an area of ​​about 80 km², and at the time of construction there were still sparsely populated areas and fields between the city center and the wall. There were also a number of smaller complementary works such as batteries, lunettes , ravelins , redoubts , covered paths, etc.

View of the main wall at the Porte de Versailles around 1913

The Franco-German War

With the rapid defeat of the imperial armies in eastern France and the decision of the new republican government to continue the war, the area around Paris soon became a theater of war itself. Only about two and a half weeks after the lost battle of Sedan , the Germans had completed the encirclement of Paris and initially prepared for a blockade to prevent a union of new French army formations in the south-west with the Paris garrison. Thiers' city fortifications initially prevented a direct attack on Paris and provided the initially almost 350,000 defenders with a certain amount of support, as the Germans could not attack the city without heavy siege equipment. For the remainder of the war, a large part of the German forces was busy with the tiresome and protracted blockade and siege of the capital, and besides that, missions of the occupation who tried to weaken or blow up the siege ring had to be repulsed again and again.

Conversely, the fortifications were only partially up to the task, as both the works themselves and their equipment were meanwhile out of date and had little to oppose the superior German siege artillery. At the beginning of the siege, this was not so serious, as the Germans initially avoided direct attacks on the plants - they wanted to protect the Parisian civilian population and the city so as not to turn neutral third countries against them. Later, however, the forts in the south-west of the city (Vanves, Montrouge, Issy) could be fought down with heavy artillery without great difficulty, without being able to prevent the besiegers from bombing the city itself, which resulted in numerous casualties and serious damage. This bombardment then helped to speed up the surrender on January 28, 1871.

Expansion 1874–1885

Due to the obvious deficiencies in the existing fortification systems, the French government decided from 1874 onwards, as part of the strong fortification building activity that was being carried out all over France at that time, to once again expand the fortification belt and lay a second, outer ring of seven first-order forts, 16 second-order forts Over 50 batteries and redoubts around the existing fortifications, which were again connected by a circumferential ring road and circular railway. These new structures expanded the perimeter of the fortification to over 124 km and corresponded to the current standard of the fortress rings built or expanded many times in the second half of the 19th century, such as Cologne , Bucharest , Liège , Verdun or Przemyśl .

The newly built forts

  • North camp (around Saint-Denis)
    • Fort de Cormeilles
    • Fort de Domont
    • Fort de Montlignon
    • Fort de Montmorency
    • Fort de Ecouen
    • Fort de Stains
  • East camp (Ourcq Canal to the right bank of the Seine)
    • Fort de Vaujours
    • Fort de Villeneuve-St.-Georges
    • Fort de Chelles
    • Fort de Villiers
    • Fort de Champigny
    • Fort de Sucy

The existing facilities remained, even if at least the main wall was hardly seen as an obstacle, so that non-permanent buildings could be erected on the glacis, which led to the emergence of a chain of slums. The military value of the second Fortring was soon also called into question with the explosive grenade crisis around 1890, since with the advent of improved HE shells, older works made of bricks or earth could no longer withstand bombardment for a long time. Some of the outer forts were subsequently upgraded.

Discontinued after 1919

After the end of the First World War , the main wall, which was now worthless from a military point of view, was dismantled with the exception of small remains. An initiative to create a green belt was only partially successful; instead, social housing was initially built in the area of ​​the glacis. The boulevard périphérique, which surrounds all of Paris, now runs in place of the main wall . The completely outdated forts of the inner fort ring were almost all preserved, some remained in military possession and were used as depots, barracks or school buildings. Some forts in the outer ring were used for defensive purposes even after the First World War. During the Second World War, some of the forts were used again for military purposes, and after the defeat of France in 1940, they were also used by German occupation forces.

Todays situation

With the exception of the Fort de la Double Couronne in Saint Denis, which was demolished in 1919, all the forts of the inner belt are still preserved today. Many are still used by the military, others serve as police barracks or government offices. The fort on Mont Valérien became a central memorial for the French resistance against the German occupation in World War II, as the fort was used by the occupiers as a place of execution.

Only small remains of the main wall are preserved:

  • Bastion n ° 1 on the north bank of the Seine on Rue Robert-Etlin
  • Flank of the bastion n ° 28 at the Porte de la Villette
  • Bastion n ° 44 behind the Berthier Ateliers, Rue André-Suares
  • Bastion n ° 45 in the Jardin Claire-Motte
  • Bastion stone N °. 82 in the garden of the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe
  • Part of the Porte d'Arcueil
  • Poterne de Peuplers on Boulevard Kellermann
Posterne des peupliers, preserved remnants of the city fortifications

Web links

Commons : Thierssche Stadtbefestigung  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paris. Zeno.org: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, p. 147665 (cf. Meyer Vol. 15, p. 437)
  2. ^ Paris. Zeno.org: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, p. 147665 (cf. Meyer Vol. 15, p. 439)