214 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
these at intervals round such parts of a coast as an enemy can land on, we 
obtain the advantages of comparatively cheap and simple defence, and inter¬ 
ference with the invader's base of operations, with the still greater one, that 
the destruction of one tower does not materially affect the others. And the 
enemy will either have to take the towers in detail, and thus give time to the 
invaded country; or by scattering their forces to capture several at once, they 
will weaken their powers of resisting any attack which the defending army 
might make upon them. Or, supposing,—as in these days of rail and telegraph 
we may easily suppose,—that sufficient notice had been obtained by the 
country attacked, to allow of the concentration of large bodies of troops on 
the spot where the enemy should land, what magnificent support would these 
towers afford to the defending army, what unequalled guns of position would 
their armament afford, and how great would the advantage be in having 
heavy artillery on the field in anticipation instead of having to delay the 
whole army, or to act with light pieces alone. 
But in these days of rifled cannon all these advantages would be reduced 
to nil, did we leave martello towers as they now are. Some time ago, the 
It. A. Institution issued photographs of the result of a few rounds from 
rifled guns upon some of our towers which afforded melancholy evidence of 
the truth of the statement, that old fortifications cannot resist new guns. 
But let us do as suggested in the former article; let us surround the tower with 
a short steep glacis, and a corresponding deep ditch, forming a powerful ram¬ 
part, and surmount the tower with a cupola, whose gun or guns -would sweep 
■with impunity the surrounding country, and could be depressed so as even to 
sweep the little glacis, should its capture be attempted by a coup - de-main; 
and we have a work whose capture would involve considerable delay,—whose 
fall would weaken the line of defence only by the unit of its own resistance, 
which would form a valuable support to the defending army, and which the 
invader would hardly dare to leave uninjured,, should he advance into the 
interior of the country. The details of placing the cupola on such a tower 
would be simply those of placing it on the deck of a vessel; its working 
would be simple, the small number of men required to serve the gun w r hen 
under so effectual a cover wrnuld leave ample magazine accommodation; the 
cupola itself would render the tower bomb-proof; the height of the glacis 
and its steepness would save the walls of the tower, and to a great degree 
also the lower part of the cupola from direct fire; and the only danger would 
be a chance shot striking the muzzle of the gun, or the cupola receiving some 
injury, which would interfere with its revolving, neither of which are con¬ 
tingencies so probable as to require special provision. To this, however, we 
shall again allude, when we discuss the effect which the enemy's bombardment 
would probably produce on the cupolas in a fortress. We shall merely 
mention in passing that a perusal of the reports of the experiments carried 
on with rifled ordnance at Eastbourne against a martello tower, and, in a 
less degree, the similar experiments at Bexhill with smooth-bores, wall satisfy 
any one that a tower unprotected by some sort of earthen bank or glacis is 
merely a target for the enemy's artillery. And the diminished expenditure 
of iron and gunpowder which is required with rifled guns to produce the 
same result against stonework, which a much greater amount w^as required 
to effect with smooth-bore ordnance, relieves an invading army of the 
necessity of carrying so enormous an amount of ammunition, as in former 
