Outer Walls
The Walls of Florence
“If the walls are made too high, they are excessively exposed to the blows of the artillery; if they are made too low, they are very easily scaled. If you dig ditches (moats) in front of them to make it difficult (to employ) ladders, if it should happen that the enemy fills them the wall becomes prey to the enemy. I believe, therefore, that if you want to make provision against both evils the wall ought to be made high, with the ditches inside and not outside. This is the strongest way to build that is possible, for it protects you from artillery and ladders, and does not give the enemy the faculty of filling the ditches. he wall, therefore, ought to be as high as occurs to you, and not less than three arms lengths [two meters] wide, to make it more difficult to be ruined. It ought to have towers placed at intervals of two hundred arm lengths [one hundred and thirty meters].”
Source for text: Niccolò Machiavelli (Henry Neville, translator) The Seven Books on the Art of War (London: 1675) Book Seven.
Source for illustration: Eugène Emmanuel Violet le Duc Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIème au XVIème siècle (Paris: B. Bance, 1858) Volume I, Page 424
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