The fougasse : the stone mortar of Malta

Abstract

"They have invented a kind of Ordinance of their own, unknown to all the world be sides" wrote Lord Brydone in his account of his travels through Malta in 1770, after he had found out, to his no small amazement, that the rock on the Island was "...not only cut into fortifications, but likewise into artillery to defend these fortifications, being hollowed out in many places into the form of immense mortars". These unusual lithic weapons, what Lord Brydone later also terms a tremendous invention, were in actual fact simple rock-hewn conical pits designed to fire large quantities of stone onto approaching enemy ships. Lord Brydone, although justifiably impressed, seems not to have been very well versed in military matters, for the principle of the fougasse, as this kind of weapon is popularly known, was well established then. Many military treatises of the period, and even earlier, particular those dealing with the conduct of sieges and the preparation of field defences, such as, for example Pietro Paolo Floriani's Difesa et Offesa delle Piazze (1654), Pietro Sardis Corno Dogale della Architettura militare (Venezia - 1639) and Les fortifications du Chevalier Antoine de Ville (Lyon - 1641), discussed the minutiae of how and where to build one or more of the many variants of this type of defensive weapon.