'New France' consisted of the area colonized and ruled by France in North America. This title takes a look at the lengthy chain of forts built by the French to guard the frontier in the American northeast, including Sorel, Chambly, St Jean, Carillon (Ticonderoga), Duquesne (Pittsburgh, PA), and Vincennes. These forts were of two types: the major stone forts, and other forts made of wood and earth, all of which varied widely in style from Vauban-type elements to cabins surrounded by a stockade. Some forts, such as Chambly, looked more like medieval castles in their earliest incarnations. René Chartrand examines the different types of forts built by the French, describing the strategic vision that led to their construction, their impact upon the British colonies and the Indian nations of the interior, and the French military technology that went into their construction.

"New France" consisted of the area colonized and ruled by France in North America from the 16th to the 18th centuries. This title, which follows on from Fortress 27: "French Fortresses in North America 1534-1763: QuAbec, MontrAal, Louisbourg and New Orleans" and Fortress 75: "The Forts of New France in Northeast America 1600-1763," takes a look at the forts guarding the frontier defenses of New France from the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Among the sites examined are forts CrAvecoeur (Illinois), Biloxi (on the Mississippi), St Jean-Baptiste (Louisiana), Natchitoches (Louisiana), de Chartres (on the Mississippi), CondA (Alabama), and Toulouse (Alabama).

"New France" consisted of the area colonized and ruled by France in North America from the 16th to the 18th centuries. This title, which follows on from Fortress 27: French Fortresses in North America 1534-1763: Qu_bec, Montr_al, Louisbourg and New Orleans and Fortress 75: The Forts of New France in Northeast America 1600-1763, takes a look at the forts guarding the frontier defenses of New France from the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Among the sites examined are forts Cr_vecoeur (Illinois), Biloxi (on the Mississippi), St Jean-Baptiste (Louisiana), Natchitoches (Louisiana), de Chartres (on the Mississippi), Cond_ (Alabama), and Toulouse (Alabama).

The 50 years before the American Civil War saw a boom in the construction of coastal forts in the United States of America. These stone and brick forts stretched from New England to the Florida Keys, and as far as the Mississippi River. At the start of the war some were located in the secessionist states, and many fell into Confederate hands. Although a handful of key sites stayed in Union hands throughout the war, the remainder had to be won back through bombardment or assault. This book examines the design, construction and operational history of those fortifications, such as Fort Sumter, Fort Morgan and Fort Pulaski, which played a crucial part in the course of the Civil War.

A year after John Bradstreet’s raid of 1758—the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)—Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great “American” victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians. In this first comprehensive analysis of Bradstreet’s raid, Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses never-before-seen materials and a new interpretive approach to dispel many of the myths that have grown up around the operation. The result is a closely observed, deeply researched revisionist microhistory—the first unvarnished, balanced account of a critical moment in early American military history. Examined within the context of campaign planning and the friction among commanders in the war’s first three years, the raid looks markedly different than Bradstreet’s heroic portrayal. The operation was carried out principally by American colonial soldiers, and McCulloch lets many of the provincial participants give voice to their own experiences. He consults little-known French documents that give Bradstreet’s opponents’ side of the story, as well as supporting material such as orders of battle, meteorological data, and overviews of captured ships. McCulloch also examines the riverine operational capability that Bradstreet put in place, a new water-borne style of combat that the British-American army would soon successfully deploy in the campaigns of Niagara (1759) and Montreal (1760). McCulloch’s history is the most detailed, thoroughgoing view of Bradstreet’s raid ever produced.

Christopher Duffy's brilliant history of fortifications and siegecraft is the best general work available on the subject. It covers the classic age of military engineering, which was heralded by the work of Vauban, chief engineer to the French King Louis XIV. There was astonishingly little change in the way fortresses were perceived and used for the next 200 years, until the advent of rifled artillery brought dramatic new ideas into play. Duffy examines the purpose of fortresses across Europe, and the debates of the time concerning their offensive and defensive uses. He analyses the strategic and structural considerations that dictated their locations, and describes how they were planned, designed and built, and by whom. He then explains how a siege progressed from start to finish: plans and preparations; the investment of the fortress; the ways in which a fortress could be reduced short of a formal siege; and the siege itself at every stage, from the choice of the frontal attack to the storm of the breaches and capitulation. The differences in siting, design and techniques of attack and defense for coastal fortifications are also covered. Using excerpts from the accounts of people who took part in actual sieges or were themselves besieged, Duffy brings out the human side of siege warfare as well as its purely technical aspects. In order to give the overall picture he traces four great sieges in their entirety: Namur in 1692 and again in 1695, with Vauban and his Dutch counterpart Coehoorn pitting their wits against one another; the French attack on Antwerp in 1832, which showed how little siegecraft had changed since Namur; and the Anglo-Dutch naval bombardment of Algiers in 1816. Duffy's clear perspective, and his skillful handling of details, make Fire and Stone and enthralling book to read as well as an invaluable source of information.

Encyclopedia entries cover early colonizing of what became the United States.