Talk:Coupure

Military history: Fortifications / British / European

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Counterscarp or Coupure[edit]

http://www.angelfire.com/wy/svenskildbiter/madict.html has counterscarp defined as:

Counterscarp: The outer side of a ditch of a fortification, in some permanent fortifications it was faced with stone to make entering and retreating from the ditch more hazardous.

This is my understanding of the term. Is there more than one meaning, or is the present entry wrong? --Shoka 22:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Read the article on the siege of Limerick.

Coupure: (1) An entrenchment made by the besieged behind a breach in the defences. (2) A passage through the glacis to allow the defenders to sally forth to attack an approaching enemy force. (Fr. couper, to cut).

would seem to describe the situation more accurately. Where did the description of the works as a counterscarp come from?--Shoka 23:19, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote this article after comming across the term for the palasade built at the siege of Limerick. I can not find the web page where I saw it, but here is another reference which uses the term for the siege of Clonmel

Cromwell ordered up the battering guns, breached the wall, and made it assaultable for horse and foot. O'Neill, however, lost no time in causing a counterscarp and a ditch to he made right opposite the breach, and he also threw a strong body of musketeers into the houses lying near the wall, who opened a galling fire on the enemy as they advanced. The assault now began in right earnest, the Cromwellians never thinking of the ditch and counterscarp which barred their progress, and so valiantly did the Irish behave on that awful night that they three several times beat back their assailants with terrible carnage. Resolved, however, to win or lose all, Cromwell poured his masses pell-mell into the breach, the hind ranks pushing those that went before them into the ditch, where they were slaughtered without mercy for fully four hours.[1]

If one uses the term "scarp" (as in "scarp slope", the leading edge of escarpment) to mean the wall of a fortress then I suppose one can have a counterscarp either side of the wall. I would agree with you that usually they are placed on the outside for obvious reasons. I think we should move this article to Coupure, although it is not very often used as an expression on the net for such a defensive construction. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that makes a concensus of two... Thanks --Shoka 21:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]