im curious about the ways in which towns and cities were fortified over the ages, but im not sure where to begin to get a good understanding of what was done, when it was done, and why it was done, /his/.
the current extent of my knowledge is that we began fortifying towns and cities on naturally hard to challenge ground with the motte and bailey approach, and irregular city planning made it difficult for an army to reach the inner rings of the city, protecting the various different classes of society.
Fortifications are much, much older than that. They predate history. The oldest settlements we even know about (Jericho, etc) were surrounded by walls.
>>1416194
true, but walls are one thing, im more interested in the developments in fortifications, such as the changing to rounded stone fortifications to defeat siege tactics, and the gradual decline of them as cannons rose in popularity.
We've used walls since civilisation began
>>1416180
City walls are a meme. People didn't live inside walls like in your Japanese anime.
>>1416205
On the contrary every minor and major settlement would of originally had walls in antiquity. Read Caesars accounts, every city he finds has walls to be sieged. Walls aren't that difficult to build if the populace come together and care about their safety. In fact its probably an important step in becoming civilised, just like how Mesopotamians became more civilised from uniting to drain the swamplands or how the ancient Chinese blocked off the rivers to stop the endless floods.
>>1416212
>On the contrary every minor and major settlement would of originally had walls in antiquity.
Except Sparta... then again they had oliganthropy so we shouldn't have them as basis for smart ideas.
>>1416272
Perhaps if Sparta had walls it wouldn't have fallen into obscurity by 200BC
>>1416205
Even in cities that did not have extensive walling, there was usually a point in the city that was fortified and was used as a hardpoint when the city was besieged.
See: the Acropolis, Chinese "arrow towers," and Urban castles.
>>1416197
>but walls are one thing, im more interested in the developments in fortifications,
Not seeing what distinction you're making. Siege warfare is as old as civilization.
>and the gradual decline of them as cannons rose in popularity.
Cannons radically changed the designs of fortifications, but did not cause their decline. Look up star forts.
>>1416279
But Nabis did began the building of walls on that date...
>>1416297
Too late
>>1416180
Fortified settlements have pretty much always worked the same way:
A settlement becomes rich through advantageous position for trade, exponential development (larger agriculture means more people means more people means more farmers means larger agriculture...) combined with competent administration, a powerful figure deciding he likes it, or any other reason.
This wealth attracts raids and wars from bandits or hostile nations or cities (which all essentially amount to the same thing; hostile people seeking to loot).
The city fights off a number of raids (or doesn't and is reduced to obscurity again or destroyed. Switching hands isn't really a setback when the new owner is equally competent and doesn't let their soldiers go apeshit on the populace). Seeing the need, the city or the entity that controls the city spends a few decades' worth of income on fortifications. With proper fortifications in place, any enemy that wants to take the city requires (in addition to a fighting force of greater strength than the city's garrison) the supplies and supply lines needed to wait around long enough to starve out the city (There's a great example in the Iran-Iraq war where superior Iranian air power resulted in the Iraqi forces besieging some or other port starving while the defenders were perfectly provisioned). They also need to be able to fight off attacks from the city's controller or the city's allies or both. Either that or they need siege equipment capable of breaching the walls of the city's citadel (because a single hard point can prevent control of a city, and this is how fortifications have remained relevant in the age of cannon and the modern era); as well as a vastly disproportionate amount of manpower. Even the most poorly conceived defenses, if manned by a motivated force with comparable technology to the attackers, provide an extreme force multiplier to the defenders.
>>1416355
Basically, it just makes the city a pain in the ass to capture, and allows time for reinforcements to arrive. It requires extreme incompetence on the attacker's part to lose a siege to the garrison alone, rather than being forced to give up the siege by defending forces outside the city.
I should mention that a single major fortification can have a ludicrous zone of control. a few hundred square meters of fortified ground in a major city prevents that entire multiple square kilometer city from being occupied properly.
Since the city will no doubt be the administrative hub and refuge of all nearby villages, this prevents the full benefit of controlling the surrounding countryside.
While a major investment, fortifications in a city greatly multiply the military relevance and time to capture of an area.
