WIP-Renaissance forts-Awhayji Resources

[Falconius]

Why'd you include nooks behind the towers?

I've no idea how many people it'd take to simply maintain that fort let alone man it, but I'd imagine it'd employ quite a few. All that masonry, that ditch and the grounds. No access to lawnmowers. I'd guess a groundskeeper and maybe 5-10 permanent labourers for him, probably a carpenter, a full time mason/manager guy, who'd hire laborers when needed. If it includes stocking food and ammo, there'd be a commander, a quarter master, a master of arms, a blacksmith and possibly an armourer. All with associated assistants and apprentices. If it included stock it'd have to be guarded as well, which could probably done with 15-30 soldiers. To actually garrison the place, a couple of hundred.

Edit: I forgot about a cook. They'd definitely have a cook and the cook would have 2-4 helpers, and if garrisoned more like 12-20.

[4maram]

I don't understand what are you referring to when you say "nooks behind the towers".

I'll asume that you are meaning bastions for towers, and the nook bexind the tower may be two things:

1.- The emplacement for a cannon behind the orillon.
That cannon defends the curtain wall, the opposite (on this curtain) bastion wall, and the blind spot that can form just in front of the bastion. Here's a depiction of its angle of shooting line:

5P17RV1.1_AoF_Pos1.PNG

2.-The part of the bastion that connects with the path on the curtain.
It's just there because the ramps through which the cannons and pretty much everythig that gets to to the bastions or curtains has to go through any of those ramps, that will be connected on the inner side of the corners of the curtains. To ease the travel, there's not any door.
You may think that this is foolish, because if the enemy was able to enter the citadel there would be little to defend from there. Building something to block that possibility would make the overall defense to be less effective, up to the point where it would be worse to have that there than not having it.


About the cuantity of people needed to run the citadel. I'm already assuming that there would be needed a BIG number. no less than 500 people.

Look:

A 36-pounder required a 14-man crew, comprising one chief gunner, 12 gunners, and one powder-boy.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-pounder_long_gun

Suposing we put in every position available one of these guns, the minimum population required to defend the citadel would be of 14*40 = 560 people. Not counting cooks, soldiers, officers, petty officers, messengers, scouts, stables managers, etc.

This fortification won't be found in the middle of nowhere. You will find it near a city and defending a strategic spot.

[4maram]

Hi, I got more data for the 5-pointed star fort.

From real data, they used a 500 strong crew for the fort, and each bastion had only 4 cannons, and 8 places available to put a cannon.
If a cannon was needed elsewere, they moved it, probably over wooden or stone rails. Each cannon montage weighted almost 3 tons (as in 2972 Kg).
I'm assumming they used 4 36-pounders, so that makes a total of 20 36-ps, which makes a cannon crew of (14-per cannon) 280 people, 20 of them officers, and another 20 kids dedicated to the ferrying of the gunpowder cartridges from the mini-powder keg to their cannon.

Behind each orillon, there was one mini-powder keg reserved for each cannon of that half of the bastion, and a stash of cannonballs that was transported by crane to the cannon. Give it 2 men per crane, 10 orillons make another 20 men for that task. That can be reduced to 10 men, 2 per bastion, intermittently servicing one crane or the other.

That leaves 310 people dedicated to the servicing of the cannons and their reload.
The rest 190 make soldiers, cavalry, officers and servicing/food crew.