Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

362 FUIOCHKL CASTLi:.
omission is the more remarkable, because tbe principle
was familiar at that age, and duly valued as it was well
understood. It would seem as if the Highland Chiefs
had never thought or heard of extending the principle
of fortification beyond that of their wild ancestors
of Britain and Scandinavia; whose only system seems,
with few exceptions, to have been that by which they
fortified their cattle against the wolf. Even the theory
of the Flank is not so new as has been often supposed by
those who only know of it as connected with modern
fortification. Almost all the real principles of this art
will be found in ancient works or ancient writers; allow-
ing for those modifications in the forms, which have been
necessarily introduced in consequence of the adoption of
new projectiles for the attack and the defence. Vegetius
distinctly lays down both the principles of the Flank and
its uses. Babylon, long ago, and Jerusalem, somewhat
later, were evidently fortified on this system. Even the
principle of Commands is detailed by Vitruvius, where
the Terreplein of the wall, which is crenellated, is suc-
ceeded by more elevated redoubts and places of arms
within the town, in case of an escalade and a lodgment.
It was from the Romans, that these principles descended to
our ancestors, and to modern Europe in general ; till the
introduction of cannon produced, a little before 1500, the
substitution of the angular bastion for the round or
square tower, and made those other additions and
changes which experience proved to be useful or ne-
cessary. I remarked before, that the Fausse Bray itself,
was a defence of the Gothic ages ;
and that the advanced
Covered way occurred even in the most ancient of our
field works, the Vitrified forts and the ordinary Dunes.
All these facts serve to render the imperfection of the
Highland fortresses the more remarkable : particularly
when it is considered that the condition of the people