POSEN AND STRASBURG. 
483 
CURRENT EORIIFICATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS 
AT THE 
GERMAN FORTRESSES OF POSEN AND STRASBURG. 
BT 
COLONEL H. A. SMYTH, E.A. 
Posen, the capital and cathedral city of the region which constituted the 
ancient Polish dukedom of the same name—astride of the Wartha river, 
which, though important as an obstacle, is of small account as a means of 
communication, owing to its shallows, floods, and irregularities—acquires, 
in these days, with regard to the eastern frontiers of Germany, an import¬ 
ance proportionate with the increasing appreciation of the value of railway 
communications in war. It covers the intersection of the principal east- 
and-west railway line of Germany with one of the principal north-and-south 
lines. Thus those from Hamburg, Bremen, and Cologne, through Berlin, 
and those from Metz and Strasburg, through Leipzig and Dresden, con¬ 
verge towards it from the west, passing out eastwardly to the frontier 
fortresses of Thorn and Konigsberg, which latter rests on the Baltic; whilst 
the lines from Stralsund and Stettin, and from Dantzic, on the north, 
coming together in Posen, pass out southwardly to Breslau (the manu¬ 
facturing centre of Eastern Germany), thence to Glatz (its most southern 
fortress), and over the southern frontier to the Adriatic, the Danube, and 
the Black Sea. So is provision made for rapid concentration of men and 
means—the kernel of that doctrine of superior mobility which Frederick the 
Great so well illustrated, and which his successors so essentially recognise. 
Its strategic position with regard to the eastern frontier (the whole length 
of which, from the Baltic on the north to the chain of the Riesen Gebirge 
on the south, lies naturally open), with Thorn and Konigsberg on its left 
front, and the reconstituted fortress of Glogan on its right rear, gives it a 
commanding potentiality upon the flank of any operation which might be 
undertaken against North Germany from the east. 
The place was thoroughly fortified by Prussia between the years 1828 
and 1854, commencing with detached forts on the more important positions, 
and concluding with the enceinte which connected them all together; and 
may be held to have exhibited the latest developments of the Prussian 
system of fortification up to the commencement of the rifled-arm period. A 
recognition of the features which the fortress then offered, as well as of 
those which are now to be added to it, should enable us to arrive at a fair 
