Stone, brick, earth, wood

Almost two times larger range of fire of the new artillery made Zamość Fortress too small. A potential enemy could put up its artillery at the range inaccessible to fortress artillery and massacre the town. Renouncing the idea which appeared at the time of the Duchy of Warsaw of extending Zamość and improving its defence system backfired on Zamość Fortress. In the 1840s the fortress was “closed” in its historical layout. Its outside was improved but such external works as ravelins*/lunettes* and counterguards* did not stretch far enough into the foreground but “stuck” to the main perimeter of the fortifications. The most modern permanent works in the fortress included a tower battery protruding deep into Great Pond and perhaps a circular battery whose construction may have been started earlier, in front of the face of the ravelin-lunette before curtain wall* VI-VII. Unfortunately, they were not enough to adjust the fortress to new conditions. The most modern temporary work was the lunette between Bastions VI and VII, modernised in 1954-55. An earthen redoubt-fort* was built into the lunette but the solution was a makeshift one, caused by the Crimean War. All masonry walls had to be protected against the fire coming from the new artillery and only 12m thick embankments could face the enemy. Walls had to be shielded with moats narrow enough for a projectile falling at 1:4 angle not to reach them. Once again earth played the most important part in construction of fortifications. Meanwhile, all walls and bastions in Zamość Fortress were not only masonry and exposed but they were encircled with hundreds of embrasures placed quite high in relatively thin walls. Since there were artillery embankments beneath, several accurate hits with modern missiles could not only have destroyed the exterior wall of the embrasures but also caused a destruction of the embankment by falling fragments. In other words, in the 1860s Zamość was a perfectly designed fortress from the previous age. It was an “ideal or perfect town” but its perfection was that of a doll house. It was simply too small when compared to polygonal fortresses. Still well-prepared for short-range defence, it was completely useless for long-range combat. A potential enemy could have captured it easily and a recapture could have required an ocean of blood. Under the circumstances, the fortress had to be wither modernised or destroyed. Russians did the latter.

• 

  The plan was made because of possibility of a conflict with Austrian Empire in 1854 (the period of Crimean War). The darker tagged objects were modernized and built in that period

• 

• 

  Pay attention to the skyline of Zamość in the background with a characteristic for 19th century big number of the shooting range of infantry in the shooting gallery

• 

•