Coupure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
During a siege a Coupure is a ditch or an earthenwork or wooden palisade built behind a breach in the walls of a fortress, or a city, made by the attacker's guns. Its purpose is to hinder and frustrate an attack made by the forlorn hope.
This was a strategy used many times by defenders of fortifications, for example, by the Irish defenders during the Siege of Clonmel (April - May 1650).
It can also be a passage through a glacis to create a sally port so that the defenders can launch a Sortie against the attackers.
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[edit] References
Stephen Francis Wyley A Dictionary of Military Architecture Fortification and Fieldworks from the Iron Age to the Eighteenth Century, Drawings by Steven Lowe
