Mont Dauphin

Threat of invasion from Savoy prompted the French to further fortify the border. On the advice of Marshal Catinat, Vauban selected high ground near the confluence of the Durance and Guil Rivers and named it "Mont Dauphin" after the king's son. With steep slopes on three sides, it was ideal defensive terrain. Construction began in 1693, but when Vauban visited the site in 1700 as it neared completion he was unhappy with the construction, with famine being one of the problems hindering construction. The town designed to occupy the fortress was never appealing enough to attract a vibrant community, partly due to high winds, and the fortress is still largely empty. The fortress was modified through the Napoleonic period. In the 1790s, an innovative lunette was added.

An invader coming west from Italy had to first capture Chateau Queyras, then negotiate difficult mountainous terrain including gorges. An invader from the north had to first pacify Briancon, which by the mid 18th century boasted an array of forts. Perhaps because of this, and the waning threat from Savoy, Mont Dauphin never faced an attack, excepting an aerial one during the Second World War.

Southern Face

Terrain protects the southern, eastern, and western sides of Mont Dauphin. Although a road enters the southern side, a relatively simple defense was built on this approach. See below. The demi-lune in front of the southern Porte d'Embrun is unusually small.

Porte d'Embrun

Caserne Rochambeau

The panorama above is the view from just inside the southern gate, Porte d'Embrun. At right is the Caserne Rochambeau. Built from 1766 to 1783, the Caserne Rochambeau is a barracks built along the inside of the southern ramparts. It is a unique design inspired by a great architect of the 16th century Philibert Delorme who envisioned a system of smaller parts assembled. The building's wooden frame can be disassembled with a man able to handle each individual piece. Another great advantage was that long timber was scarce and expensive. The design allowed for a large space that could be used for storage of materials or the training of troops. Also note the staircase to an upper floor atop a flying buttress.

To the left of Caserne Rochambeau is Caserne Binot, a barracks perfectly adapted to the steep terrain on which it was built.

In front of Caserne Binot is a cistern that could hold 1,840 cubic meters of water. In peacetime, water was collected in the mountains and piped into the fort, but this supply of water would have been cut during a siege. As a result it was necessary to store water in cisterns. The oldest cistern is located near the powder magazine, presumably providing water to flood the magazine. The second, much larger cistern, the one here, was completed in 1730 and could hold two months worth of water.

At left is the "Plantation". It was created to provide shade and wood to the population and to the army. It included ash and lime trees, more resistant varieties.

Western Face

Little was needed to improve upon the natural defenses of this step slope. Only the fort's northern face required a strong, layered defense.

North Face

The north face featured three bastions, the eastern one with a counterguard to its front. Two demi-lunes were in front of the curtain wall between the bastions. To add greater depth, the eastern demi-lune was fronted by an advance bastion and the western demi-lune and bastion were fronted by a more complex advance work. With improvements in artillery, there was reason for even greater depth for the defense, so a lunette, named after its builder, d'Arcon, was constructed in front of the middle bastion. Plans for further lunettes were never carried out.

Now we will see the defenses from west to east.

Advance Work

The above panorama is of the front of the advance work, an unusually shaped fortification that defies easy categorization. Vauban was a believer that a geometrical 'cookie cutter' solution was wrong in many cases, that the designer must adapt his design to the terrain. The advance work is unusually shaped and includes terracing. It does not easily fit into a category. Sadly this portion of the fortress was closed off during my visit, preventing a more thorough investigation.

Note: The two panoramas of the western face were made from beneath the western edge of the advance work.

From Western Bastion

The fortresses bastions are shaped in the old style with recessed flanks. This may not be clear with the Bastion de Bourgogne but the distance to bastion Royal may make this more clear. The pas-de-souris, or mousetrap, leads into the complex advance work. This feature makes ladders are necessary to enter the advance work.

Porte de Briancon

At left is the view from atop the Briancon gate.

The left photo is from just inside the gate, which comes through the building at right, the Pavillon de L'Horloge. This building housed a clock and also includes the guard room and was where the fort commander lived. The building at left, the Pavillon des Officiers, completed in 1700, was home to unmarried lieutenants and captains.

Demi-lune d'Anjou

A guardhouse greets visitor entering town from the north. Atop the Demi-lune d'Anjou can be seen the advance work, but little sense can be made of it. Several hundred yards in advance is the Lunette d'Arcon.

This is the view from just in front of the Demi-lune d'Anjou. Wickerwork gabions are visible here. These were used like sandbags by a besieger as they advanced their trenches toward a fortress. In this case they and nearby trenches were dug in 2007 to try to study siege techniques.

View from Bastion Royal

From the tip of Bastion Royal, the center of the three bastions, you can see most of the northern defenses.from the other two bastions at either flank, both demi-lunes, the advance work in front of the western bastion, and the bastion du front which is forward of the eastern demi-lune. The earthwork inside the Bastion Royal has to be a cavalier, designed so that the bastion can be defensible even if the wall is breached.

In later times a caponier became a covered passage through the ditch - or a covered fighting position in the ditch - both with overhead protection. Mont Dauphin has an earlier version of the concept - in this case earthworks providing protection from flanking fire for men moving to and from the Demi-lune de Berry.

Now we have gone back outside the fortress and looked in. The traverse is designed to protect infantry on the covered way from enfilade fire. It is also designed to be used as a fighting platform, and men can move around it with ease through a chicane. Next we will walk to the left, around the Bastion du Front Avance.

The Bastion du Front comes to the edge of the bluff overlooking the Guil. Next, we will walk along the path to the left of the bastion to the Demi-lune de Berry behind it.

Vauban's outworks in this area include not only the Demi-lune de Berry between the Bastion Royal and the Bastion Dauphin but also a counterguard in front of the Bastion Dauphin.

Bastion Dauphin

Much of the fortress is visible from the eastern bastion, which is protected by a counterguard. A sentry post, or echauguette, overlooks it and across the Guil gorge to the Guillestre Plateau. Improvements in artillery technology made enemy occupation of this plateau a danger to the fort. Vauban designed defenses for this plateau, but they were never built. (See map at right.) Not clearly distinguishable here, the Bastion du Front Avance is forward of the Demi-lune de Berry. Inside the fortress several barracks can be seen, with the Caserne de Rochambeau along the fortress's southern rampart. The Caserne Campana was built in 1695 to partially house some of the troops building the fort.

Eastern Face

Not entirely obvious from the top, the fortress's eastern face is a cliff.

Lunette d'Arcon

Originally built between 1728 and 1731, it was a demi-lune designed to eliminate dead ground not visible from the main fort. In 1791 it was transformed and improved by General d'Arcon, becoming the Lunette d'Arcon. Two other planned lunettes were not built. Named after its inventor, a veteran of the Seven Years War, the lunette was innovative in its time and influenced fort design elsewhere. Linked to the fortress by an underground passage, the lunette has firing ports to its rear in a multi-story circular structure designed as living quarters. A traverse running down the center of the lunette served as a magazine, separating parapet into two sides. The underground passage from the main fortress continues forward to a casemate inside the lunette's counterscarp - allowing defenders to fire along both sides the ditch. Additional tunnels - countermines - extended in three directions from the lunette to protect against enemy tunneling.

The fort included a church, visible in the center of the panorama, but it was never completed. Begun in 1697, there was a lack of money and never a large enough population. Incomplete, it is oddly shaped as a result - too high for its length, too short for its height.

The powder magazine is nearly obscured behind the arsenal. Built between 1693 and 1695, the Poudriere was designed by Vauban, and is one of the oldest buildings in the fort. It could store more than one hundred tons of powder on two levels. The magazine wass designed so it could be instantaneously flooded in case the fortress was captured, rendering the powder unusable, at least until it was re-ground. Thick masonry walls with buttresses were designed so that any explosion would be up and not out. Because of advances in artillery, the pwder magazine was buried under a hill of earth in 1881.

The arsenal served as both a warehouse and as a maintenance and repair facility for armaments. The arsenal of Mont-Dauphin was built here because it was the most difficult place for enemy fire to reach. The first wing, parallel to the Durance, was finished soon after 1700. In the mid 1700s a second perpendicular wing was built. Only the second building remains as the oldest building was bombed by the Italian air force in 1940. Fusils, muskets, swords and ammunition were kept on the upper floor. On the ground floor were gun carriages, wheels, chassis, and replacement artillery platforms for the ramparts.

From atop a rock pile you can see the buildings that we just talked about. To the right the mounds of earth are firing positions for guns, built beginning in 1873. Bunkers inside sheltered the gunners and ammunition.

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