Outwork
An outwork is a minor defense, fortification, built or established outside the principal fortification limits, detached or semidetached. Outworks were developed in the 16th century, such as ravelins, lunettes (demilunes), caponiers to shield bastions and fortification curtains from direct battery. Later the increasing scale of warfare and the greater resources available to the besieger accelerated this development, and systems of outworks grew more and more elaborate and sprawling as a means of slowing the attacker's progress and making it more costly.
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Famous quotes containing the word outwork:
“A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion; it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)