59 
NOTES OF TWO LECTURES 
ON 
FIELD FORTIFICATION, 
Delivered at the School of Gunnery, Shoeburyness. 
BY 
MAJOR RABAN, R.E. 
Part I. 
The art of field fortification, that art by which we hope to enable a 
force in some way " inferior ” to meet successfully a force in some way, 
whether in numbers, organisation, or arms, " superior ” to it, has 
received its greatest modern development in connection with the pre¬ 
paration of the battle-field. For although the fortification of special 
features of ground, and of localities, such as woods, villages, country 
houses or farm buildings, is no new feature in warfare or even in 
pitched battles, yet field fortification, until recent times, formed no 
essential feature in battles. So long as the range of fire-arms was 
comparatively limited, and the stress of their fire so far tolerable that 
actions could seldom be decided without a resort to the tactics of 
shock, the greater part of the troops engaged in a battle, not only on 
the side of the attack, but also on that of the defence, were formed and 
manoeuvred in "dense” formations. Thus the battle of earlier days 
presents to us an army "drawn up” in regular-and solid formations 
on selected ground, and sometimes, but not by any means invariably, 
on ground fortified in places, awaiting the attack of an enemy advanc¬ 
ing also in regular and solid formations. But as the stress of modern 
fire has driven us to seek in " dispersed” orders of attack a means of 
"assembling forward” to within a striking distance, the superior force 
of the attacker, so on the side of the defence it has forced us to extend 
our fortification over a large area of the battle-field, in order to afford 
to the " inferior ” force the greatest amount of cover and protection 
possible. 
In tracing the history of this development, it is interesting to note 
how, in the earlier forms of hasty intrenchments for battle-fields, it was 
always laid down as an absolutely necessary condition of their design 
that they should not prevent the advance of troops (including Field 
Artillery) in formation. Thus, we have our " service ” shelter-trench, 
1 foot 6 inches in depth (even though it was contemplated to some- 
2. VOL. XIX. 9 
