When their comrades, restrained with great difficulty by D'Artagnan, saw them lodged upon the bastions, they rushed forward likewise; and soon a furious assault was made upon the
counterscarp, upon which depended the safety of the place.
Places fortified, after the modern way, consist chiefly of Bastions, and Curtains, and Sometimes of Demi-bastions according to the Situation of the Ground, of Cavaliers, Ramparts, Fausse-brayes, Ditches,
Counterscarps, Cover'd Ways, Half Moons, Ravelins, Hornworks, Crownworks, Outworks, Esplanades, Redents, and Tenailles.
The only sections mentioned are located along the already partly rebuilt west wall and next to the Porta da traicao postern, and even so the measurements and specification deal only with relatively minor adjustments to scarps and
counterscarps at the foot of walls and towers.
During World War II, Operation Citadel (pinching off in 1943 the Soviet held salient centered around Kursk) failed because the Germans relied on the principles of the Blitzkrieg: speed was hampered by boobytraps, minefields, anti-tank diches, scarps and
counterscarps, hedgehogs, road blocks, barbed-wire entanglements and a myriad of other anti-tank and anti-personnel obstacles.
Others did fortify and rampire their walls, set up little fortresses, bastions, squared ravelins, digged trenches, cleansed countermines, fenced themselves with gabions, contrived platforms, emptied casemates, barricaded the false brays, erected the cavaliers, repaired the
counterscarps, plastered the curtains, lengthened ravelins, stopped parapets, morticed barbacans, assured the portcullises, fastened the hemes, sarasinesques, and cataracts, placed their sentries, and doubled their patrol.
(70) The outlines of the new detached and attached
counterscarps and/or bastioned works are a mixture of the various ideas explored in De Gomme's draughts.
Having discussed
counterscarp repairs at the Porta da traicao postern, the 1514 auto proceeds to detail scarps and
counterscarps at the foot of two mutually adjacent towers--Torre do sino and Torre dos bizcainhos (Tower of the Biscayans).
Secondly, Danzilho skimped somewhat on masonry sections not directly exposed to gunfire, particularly the wet ditch bottom and the
counterscarp, and probably reused stones from those portions of the thirteenth- to fifteenth-century walls that his workers pulled down in the process of modernizing the defences.