The first part of the title of this book comes from a section of the famous and rousing speech given by Winston Churchill on 4 June 1940. The second part of the title reflects the author’s study of the effects of the Second World War on the English agricultural landscape and for which work he was awarded an MPhil a number of years ago. In addition, the author is also uniquely qualified in that he directed the fieldwork of the Defence of Britain Project until its conclusion in 2002, and from then until 2004 was involved with the Defence Areas Project.

The word ‘landscape’ in the title is the key to the direction of the book. It is not a discussion about Operation Sealion, nor an analysis of the building of pillboxes and other defence structures. Instead, the book looks at, in detail, 67 selected English defence areas (in these approximately 1800 individual features are mentioned, about half of which survive) using a wealth of contemporary documentary sources in the National Archives, together with wartime, early post-war and modern aerial photographs. Remarkably there are also examples of 1940 Luftwaffe aerial photographs with pillboxes and other defences (even including the barbed wire!) carefully and accurately recorded (fig 1).

The German High Command, at least, it seems gave the possibility of invasion careful attention and one wonders to what extent the country’s detailed and extensive preparations, accurately identified, might have influenced the postponement of Sealion? On the other hand, it seems that no amount of camouflaging could prevent the potential invader from having an accurate picture of the defences beforehand and thus the ability to supply his troops with carefully annotated copies of British Ordnance Survey maps, and there are examples of these in the book. The information from all of these sources is marked on extracts of modern large-scale Ordnance Survey maps using a variety of symbols for the different components of the defended areas (fig 2): this work has been done by Clara Thomson who worked at Duxford with William Foot.

The author then examines the overall historical perspective of the 1940s defences and seeks to dispel certain myths and to point out that, despite initial shortages of building materials, defensive systems were put in place of a highly complex and well-planned nature, making maximum use of the landscape. By 1941 these defence works would have presented a considerable obstacle. They were most fully developed in the southeastern and eastern parts of the country – those facing the enemy. The survival rate for the structures has been found, naturally, to be better in rural rather than urban areas.

The first evidence of mobilisation for the citizens of the isles was probably the establishment of searchlights near their homes, by 1941 often provided with pillboxes to protect their generators and hutting. These temporary defence works (TDW) were not ‘owned’ by the War Office, and landowners were paid compensation for their presence. The pillbox, such an icon of 1940, owed its UK origins to the small concrete defence posts erected as antiinvasion defences in the First World War. One interesting point is that after the war the Ancient Monuments Branch of the Ministry of Works was considering certain First World War pillboxes for statutory protection, while a little later, in December 1939, the Army was considering their possible re-use as defence posts! With the end of the Second World War the question of what to do with the bulk of the defences had to be addressed (a beginning had been made in 1944 when defences that were seen to be inhibiting communications started to be dismantled). In March 1946 a TDW commission was set up and three categories of priority for removal were established. In the same year £100m in today’s money was spent on their removal. In the period immediately after the war little thought was given by heritage bodies to the preservation of the remaining examples of these defences: in fact the reverse was the case as most were considered ‘eyesores’. A possibly solitary exception was the preservation of the Second World War loopholes in the ruined Roman and Medieval walls of Pevensey Castle. The many components of the intricate, countrywide defence system began to disappear, and with their removal a mythology soon arose. It was rumoured that the works were built only as a morale-boosting exercise; or that they were quaint and feeble; and, in any event, that the pillboxes often faced the ‘wrong way’. It was only in the late 1970s, following the publication of Henry Wills’s book Pillbox, that interest slowly began to develop in the subject of Britain’s Second World War defences.

A positive step towards recording and preserving the defence works was taken by the 1992 FSG Holderness pilot project which sought to sample, categorise and record by fieldwork what might remain in a given defended area, the recording being sponsored by the Royal Commission for Historic Monuments (England). It became clear that there was a need for a national ‘Domesday’ survey and in 1995 the Defence of Britain Project was launched across the UK. Following the successful conclusion of the project in 2002 William Foot began the Defence Areas Project to study in detail, by reference to contemporary records and fieldwork, certain suitable defended localities as identified by the DoB project. The amount of information prepared by German intelligence on the defences and available and referred to by Foot comes as a revelation. In addition, the study would look at the defences in the context of their local landscapes, especially where these defences had used landscape features. This landscape of defence now lacks its earthworks, barbed wire, mines, troops etc and a considerable feat of imagination is required to summon up the appearance of the defended areas in 1940.

The study has demonstrated that the 1940 stop lines and their components were, in effect, a prepared battlefield (each stop line was divided into referenced sectors, each pillbox was numbered etc). General Ironside, C-in-C Home Forces, under whose direction the stop lines were planned, far from having a First World War mentality, had, with the French General Gamelin, accurately forecast the German blitz attack via the Ardennes in October 1939 (inexplicably Gamelin had overlooked his forecast during the conduct of the 1940 campaign). The concept of prepared battlefields can, perhaps, also be seen in the feste system and in the somewhat later French works developed around the city of Toul before the Great War^,small>1 The replacement of Ironside by General Alan Brooke in July 1940 led to the strengthening of the coastal defences, the building up of a strong mobile defence force, and the abandonment of much of the stop line construction, although these would, in places, remain where they contributed to the all round defence of a communications centre, for example in the retention of elements of the Taunton Stop Line. The Home Guard, once it was adequately trained and armed, would soon take over the responsibility for maintaining pillboxes (where these fitted into local defence schemes) and would also become a component of the developed divisional and brigade defence schemes. There was a growing fear amongst the military from 1940 onwards that fixed defences such as the pillbox might engender a ‘bunker mentality’ and so inhibit aggressive action, and consequently their importance and relevance began to diminish.

To gain equal balance the sites have been chosen carefully, not only in respect of the availability of documentary sources, but also to categorise them into three discrete areas: coastal defence, stop line defence and area defence. The maps and descriptions for each of the 67 areas illustrate the complex nature of the defended localities. For example, the anti-tank island at Ilton in Somerset, built during the winter of 1940–41 contained an FW3/28A anti-tank gun emplacement, pillboxes, an Auxiliary Units Operational Base, road and rail blocks, a minefield, and an anti-tank ditch. For each component the appropriate NGR is given. A detailed glossary of the many different anti-invasion defence types is also included: I liked the entry for ‘depth charge craters’ as in Eastern Command they were known as ‘Boche Bumps’! The book concludes with a lengthy list of other defended localities for which National Archive references have been found (these are given) as an aid for further research.

Let us look at one of the other locations chosen by William Foot: a section of the Royal Military Canal between Bilsington and Ruckinge in Kent. The canal was built during the Napoleonic Wars as an anti-invasion obstacle and in 1940 it was re-used for the same purpose: a graphic example of the re-use of fortifications. In 1940 vertical wooden poles obstructed fields adjacent to the canal against the risk of enemy aircraft landing and disgorging troops. In addition there were three immediate zones of defence along the canal. First, a number of the drainage ditches on the land in front of canal were widened and deepened to turn them into anti-tank. Second, the canal and its bridges were defended. On the salients of each section of the canal (which in the early 19th century were designed to be swept by cannon fire) pillboxes surrounded by barbed wire were positioned: the canal became an anti-tank ditch sealing off part of Romney Marsh. At bridge crossing points were situated minefields, roadblocks and weapons pits provided with all round defence: the bridges were either to be demolished or prepared for demolition on invasion. Third, the villages and main roads to the rear of the canal had defended roadblocks, fire positions and FW3/22 pillboxes, the rear zone extending up to the hills behind the Marsh where were situated gun batteries tasked to bring down fire on the canal and shoreline. Amongst the documents studied to establish the nature of the wartime defences are War Diaries, Operational Instructions, Defence Schemes and German intelligence maps. Amongst the defence components listed are: flame traps, battle headquarters, OPs, pillboxes, minefields, roadblocks, ‘Canadian Pipe Mines’, and a defended building (the latter referred to as a ‘pillbox’ on a 1940 defence map).

William Foot has carried out an impressive piece of work and one hopes that it will lead to the scheduling of each of the areas considered: the humble pillbox and its components do need all the help that they can get as they continue to disappear. The book, in addition to being superbly illustrated and vastly informative, also makes us look not just at the object but its place in the landscape of defence, and how in turn the physical landscape was a part of the defence planning of 1940.

Bernard Lowry

1. See Casemate 72 ‘ Report on the ‘Forum International de la Fortification’.

Born in 1633 Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban spent most of his life in the military service of Louis XIV, King of France, culminating in his promotion to Marshal of France in 1703, four years before his death.

The most obvious physical legacy of his work is the wide range of most impressive fortifications surrounding the kingdom of France – his pré carré – from mountain fortress to coastal tower and fortified towns. This heritage is reflected in the submission in 2007 of no fewer than 14 of his works for UNESCO World Heritage Listing, supported by the French government.

Jamel Ostwald is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University; his published articles have focused on the operational context of battles and siege tactics in the age of Louis XIV and in 2007, the 300th anniversary of Vauban’s death, it is appropriate for a book to appear containing a reassessment of his less permanent and glamorous achievements: the development, application and legacy of his skill at sieges.

Vauban is largely seen as the dominant figure of his day in the fields of designing and constructing fortifications, for which he is rightly renowned, and in the besieging and taking of defended places, which many consider his more notable achievement. On the construction side, his legacy lasted well over a century after his death, with his established precepts being quoted and applied unquestioningly for many years, to the detriment of innovation. In siegecraft however, things were different. When both he and the king were young men and the king expressed his enthusiasm for martial activity by his presence at battles and sieges, supporting his protégé directly, things went well for Vauban, but as both grew older and had less presence in the field, Vauban found his influence waning, his maxims questioned, his siege conduct criticised and his advice ignored. To counter this effect Vauban wrote in 1672 his Mémoir pour servir d’instruction dans la conduite des sièges et dans la défense des places. Towards the end of his life, in 1704, as he saw his advocacy of the efficient siege further undermined and ignored he wrote his much deeper, wideranging and conservative Traité de l’attaque et de la défense des places.

The first treatise is a very different animal from the second, which allows much less latitude to the siegemaster and strongly recommends sticking to the rules or maxims as closely as possible. Several of his last sieges had been criticised: efficiency was not the credo of the generals as it was for the engineers. Generals and princes wanted things to happen more quickly than the methodical approach allowed.

Between the two treatises came the 1697 ‘Perfect Siege of Ath’ regarded by Vauban, his contemporaries and numerous commentators long after the event as his exemplar siege, carried forward with the greatest possible efficiency, with the lowest possible cost in lives, time, expense and material.

In Vauban Under Siege Ostwald uses these three events to assess Vauban’s influence and legacy. He introduces his theme by explaining the significance of the siege in Vauban’s day, and for a century or two before, as defence got the better of attack. Short campaigning seasons meant a prolonged siege could delay an attacking army long enough to negate any value in an ultimately successful siege.

Fortress defence was a serious matter, and so was the taking of them, to which Vauban devoted much time and intellect. He was not particularly an innovator in siege techniques, but was particularly well able to distil from early methods their essence; formal parallels, first used successfully by him at the 1673 siege of Maastricht, made the approach much safer, made the engineers and sappers much more secure during siege works and especially against sorties by the garrison, and regularised and simplified the system so all could understand it. His 1672 treatise shows a ‘wide variety of transitional styles’ of parallel. Trench cavaliers as a means of overtopping the covered way were not new either, nor was ricochet fire, but Vauban’s genius lay in identifying the essence of a technique, regularising and, most of all, systematising it.

The second half of the book focuses on how others followed, or did not follow, Vauban’s example, using the context of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–12), which allows an evaluation of ‘Vauban’s impact on positional warfare by gauging what he passed on to others and how well his call for efficiency was received’. Analysis is primarily of the Low Countries sieges, the key area for the French, British and Dutch, where there were 11 full years of campaigning, armies reaching 100,000, and Vauban’s pré carré was most severely tested. Thirty-eight sieges took place, many times the number seen in Louis’ previous Flanders campaigns and in a mere 11 years approaching the total number of Vauban’s sieges – between 40 and 50 – achieved in his lifetime.

The prestige and standing of engineers, never great, fell further. All Vauban’s attempts to convince the king of the need for a corps of trained sappers and miners, to give them authority, good pay and career prospects, failed. Throughout the War, complaints were loud and frequent from generals on both sides on the extreme shortages of skilled and experienced engineers. Their continual presence at the front ensured high attrition rates, much greater than line soldiers. Poor pay and career prospects militated against a strong corps; always in the field, engineers could only advise and were never in control of material supplies, troops or progress; at the same time many generals had an inflated and mistaken notion of their own abilities in siege warfare and cheerfully overrode their engineers’ advice.

The engineers had the same difficult relationship with the artillery; every branch of the army was jealous of its own position and power and the exercise of that power was its main objective, in competition rather than co-operation with other arms. Vauban is particularly scathing about the performance of the artillery, which remained essentially unchanged throughout his career. Under these conditions, the task of the chief engineer was indeed most challenging.

Vauban’s reputation may well be greater now than in his own day – many generals were not overawed and general officers savagely criticized their engineers for incompetence. Early in this War, failings amongst the Allied engineers were largely hidden by the parlous condition of the old Spanish fortifications they were called upon to overcome, but when they collided with Vauban’s pré carré fortresses things were very different and losses in the engineer corps, always short of complement, soared. While records show the numerous and virulent reports by general officers of the perceived failings of engineers, these are very difficult to evaluate as there are virtually no detailed engineer records to access; only the prosecution’s case can be heard. The author concludes from a detailed study of what evidence there is that ‘most of the complaints either had little foundation or were based on unreasonable expectations’. Three specific charges can be and are tested; that engineers were out of practice (refuted); that they attacked the strongest part of a fortress (unclear – not even Vauban actually defined how to identify the strongest/weakest part of a fortification, and on occasion attacked the stronger part where conditions dictated it.); and that they were unable to estimate accurately the difficulty of a siege (true; too many unknowns, Vauban was very clear on this). An analysis of siege predictions finds strongly in favour of the engineers, concluding that they underestimated the length of their sieges by an average of only three days.

All the generals’ complaints boil down to delays; time is of the essence, vigour and dash are the buzzwords. Allied generals even complained about Coehoorn, noted for his great bombardments and even more for his frequently costly storming of the covered way, the key to a fortress. Surprise, storm/bombardment and blockade were the three key aspects for the rapid taking of a fortress. When sieges were necessary, trenches were opened earlier and closer to the ramparts than recommended, and yet, in the War of the Spanish Succession, in spite of an apparent failure to follow Vauban’s maxims 88% of sieges in Flanders succeeded, and all major sieges.

The key to this conundrum lay in artillery and the application of overwhelming firepower by the Allies; in this war individual batteries might contain the cannon of an earlier complete siege train, and when mounted to overlook the defences could quickly destroy covered ways and bastions, sometimes with trenches barely opened. The Allies also relied far more than the French on indirect fire weapons, howitzers and particularly mortars, while making little use of ricochet fire. By 1704, when Vauban wrote his second treatise on defence, even he, scornful of these Allied weapons, was forced to concede their effectiveness. Similarly, he did not favour bombarding towns, considering it expensive, destructive of a future asset and a waste of ammunition, but generals with their imperative to save time, had no such qualms, happily destroying towns in the hope of inducing a quick surrender, a wish rarely realised. And so with the Allied attack on the main curtain they ignored Vauban’s maxim to take all the outworks first, and made such a storm of fire against ravelin and bastion that they swept away all before them. A crude and very expensive method, in terms of resources and lives compared to Vauban, but equally effective and generally substantially faster, although not without serious side-effects from loss of troops and morale. The Allied army had pretty well run out of steam by the time Britain withdrew from the War in 1712, with the major pré carré fortresses of Lille, Tournai, Mons, Douai, Béthune and Aire all taken, albeit at great cost.

This culture of martial vigour continued throughout the 18th century and is still with us today.

Copious and wide-ranging footnotes complement the text and a series of valuable appendices, graphs and tables illuminate the narrative and reveal the methodology of the research; there are some revealing statistics. Some more siege plans would have been helpful, especially those of the Allies in the War of the Spanish Succession.

This very well-researched book tells a fascinating and revealing story. While Vauban was much lauded in his day, and possibly even more so later, even then he had a torrid time of it. His was a voice crying in the wilderness, attempting to promote a culture of efficiency in terms of lives, money and resources, in a culture of vigour and audacity where human lives and matériel had little value, a culture still prevalent in the West today. While his treatises and personal authority had their effects in his day, in the war immediately after his retirement, his maxims were largely ignored yet sieges were still successful albeit by expensive brute force methods much decried by Vauban himself.

Charles Blackwood

The illustrations below are from Le Triomphe de la Méthode: Le Traiteé de l'Attaque des Places de Monsieur de Vauban, Ingénieur du Roi. (written 1704, published 1737).

The original prints are held by the Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre at the Direction Centrale du Génie in Paris. Photographed by Jean Vigne, published by Gallimard Albums, 1992. Illustrations reproduced by kind permission of Professor Nicolas Faucherre (Professor at University of Nantes, Vauban expert and FSG member), Philippe Prost and Editions Gallimard.