Arte et Marte
or from fortress archives

For the first two months of the November Uprising construction of defensive works designed by General Jan Mallet-Malletski and started earlier was gradually completed under the supervision of an outstanding Polish military engineer Colonel Ignacy Prądzyńki. They included: a blockhouse* in front of the Szczebrzeska Gate, a vague sconce* on the side of Lublin road (probably the counterguard* in front of the ravelin * of the Old Lubelska Gate) and the Rotunda retrenchment* of Bastion IV with its casemates*. Only the last two facilities have been preserved. Prądzyński also deserves credit for setting up sortie units in the fortress consisting of infantry, cavalry and field artillery batteries. Thanks to them, Russian troops near Zamość were effectively drawn to the town, attacked there and could not be used elsewhere. Retrenchment was the only fragment of Bastion IV which has been preserved; the bastion’s faces and flanks with casemates were blown up in 1866. A repeated outline of the bastion with a lowered, earthen embankment overgrown with trees became an important element of the Town Park designed by Walerian Kronenberg.

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  On watercolor by Jan Paweł Lelewel. Bastion III, in the foreground, Szczebrzeska Gate, Bastion II and Bastion I - still before the conversion.

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  Picture by Jan Paweł Lelewel illustrating an ideal target state after the project of the fortifications by J. Mallet-Malletski of1825. The great caponier in front of Bastion III was never realized

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