Present arms!

You are standing at the site of a bastion whose remains had been covered with a layer of earth until recently, whose casemates had been neglected and there had been nothing to show that the building used to be the second largest bastion in Zamość Fortress. As a matter of fact, it was artillery that wiped out Zamość Fortress. Not literally, but by its fortress-destroying potential. Before it was liquidated, the fortress had been thoroughly modernized and almost immediately became a dangerous and troublesome old wreck, which had to be done away with quickly. This is how Russian empire perceived Zamość Fortress in the 1860s. For Russians the main potential enemy was Austrian empire at that time. Austria could have sided with Russia’s opponents - Turkey, France and England in 1854 during the Crimean War and started to introduce a revolutionary gun of Wahrendorff’s design. Loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun, it fired an elongated projectile filled with shattering material. When fired, thanks to the rifling of the barrel, this projectile would spin without going off course. M.61 – an Austrian gun of this type would fire at the range of about 5.7 km and the projectile, after hitting the target, would not only destroy it with its kinetic energy like the former cannonballs but would also wreak havoc by exploding. Similar and very good though smoothbore Russian guns fired at the range of 3.7 km but their rate of fire was twice as small as that of the Austrian guns. The age of brick fortifications and the bastion system had come to an end.

• 

• 

  The development of this type of the guns, in just a couple of years made the Fortress of Zamość outdated