Fortress France

Discusses the gun-bearing fortifications and coastal defenses of France created between the world wars and challenges the premise that the defeat of France in World War II was the result of a misplaced reliance on the Maginot Line for its defense.

Guide to the French defenses encountered by the German blitzkrieg in 1940 Includes finely detailed plans, diagrams, and schematics of forts, blockhouses, turrets, artillery pieces, tanks, and more Between the world wars, France constructed a vast and complex array of defenses designed to prevent German forces from penetrating the French heartland as they had during World War I. Among these was the famous Maginot Line, the last of the great gun-bearing fortifications, but France also built defenses along its coasts and in its territories in North Africa. Fully illustrated with photos, maps, and drawings, Fortress France describes the design and construction of these fortifications, discusses French defensive doctrine and strategy, and explains why these efforts proved unable to stop the German attack in the spring of 1940.

"For at least the first hundred years of its existence, Quebec was New France; and the story of Quebec in that period is the story of all Canada. The fortress was the heart and soul of French enterprise in the New World. From the Castle of St. Louis, on the summit of Cape Diamond, went forth mandates, heard and obeyed in distant Louisiana. The monastic city on the St. Lawrence was the centre of the web of missions, which slowly spread from the dark Saguenay to Lake Superior. The fearful tragedies of Indian warfare had their birth in the early policy of Quebec. The fearless voyageurs, whose canoes glided into unknown waters, ever westward—towards Cathay, as they believed—made Quebec their base for exploration. And as time went on, the rock-built stronghold of the north became the nerve-centre of that half-century of conflict which left the flag of Britain waving in victory on the Plains of Abraham..." 'Old Québec: The Fortress of New France' is a historical novel on the history of the Canadian city of Quebec. The city is at the centre of many historical events that shaped the Candian nagion from its early days as a center of French occupation.

Following the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, European colonists brought their system of fortification to the New World in an attempt to ensure their safety and consolidate their conquests. French and British explorers came later to North America, and thus the establishment of their sizeable settlements only got under way during the 17th century. The inhabitants of New France built elaborate fortifications to protect their towns and cities. This book provides a detailed examination of the defenses of four of them: Québec, Montréal and Louisbourg in Canada, and New Orleans in Louisiana.

'New France' consisted of the area colonized and ruled by France in North America. This title takes a look at the lengthy chain of forts built by the French to guard the frontier in the American northeast, including Sorel, Chambly, St Jean, Carillon (Ticonderoga), Duquesne (Pittsburgh, PA), and Vincennes. These forts were of two types: the major stone forts, and other forts made of wood and earth, all of which varied widely in style from Vauban-type elements to cabins surrounded by a stockade. Some forts, such as Chambly, looked more like medieval castles in their earliest incarnations. René Chartrand examines the different types of forts built by the French, describing the strategic vision that led to their construction, their impact upon the British colonies and the Indian nations of the interior, and the French military technology that went into their construction.

About the walled city of Quebec cling more vivid and enduring memories than belong to any other city of the modern world. Her foundation marked a renaissance of religious zeal in France, and to the people from whom came the pioneers who suffered or were slain for her, she had the glamour of new-born empire, of a conquest renewing the glories of the days of Charlemagne. Visions of a hemisphere controlled from Versailles haunted the days of Francis the First, of the Grand Monarch, of Colbert and of Richelieu, and in the sky of national hope and over all was the Cross whose passion led the Church into the wilderness. The first emblem of sovereignty in the vast domain which Jacques Cartier claimed for Francis his royal master, was a cross whereon was inscribed—Franciscus Primus, Dei Gratiâ Francorum Rex, Regnat.In spite of cruel neglect due to internal troubles and that European strife in which the mother-land was engaged for so many generations, the eyes of Frenchmen turned to their over-sea dominions with imaginative hope, with conviction that the great continent of promise would renew in France the glories that were Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. How hard the patriotic colonists strove to retain those territories which Champlain, La Salle, Maisonneuve, Joliet, and so many others won through nameless toil and martyrdom, and how at last the broad lands passed to another race and another flag, not by fault or folly or lack of courage of the people, but by the criminal corruption of the ruling few, is the narrative which runs through these pages.