Fort Vaux

Fort Vaux (French: Fort de Vaux), in Vaux-Devant-Damloup, Meuse, France, was a polygonal fort forming part of the ring of 19 large defensive works intended to protect the city of Verdun. Built from 1881 to 1884 for 1,500,000 francs, it housed a garrison of 150 men. Vaux was the second fort to fall in the Battle of Verdun after Fort Douaumont, which was captured by a small German raiding party in February 1916 in the confusion of the French retreat from the Woëvre plain. Vaux had been modernised before 1914 with reinforced concrete top protection like Fort Douaumont and was not destroyed by German heavy artillery fire, which had included shelling by 420-millimetre (17 in) howitzers. The superstructure of the fort was badly damaged but the garrison, the deep interior corridors and stations were intact when the fort was attacked on 2 June by German Stormtroops.

The defence of Fort Vaux was marked by the heroism and endurance of the garrison, including Major Sylvain-Eugene Raynal. Under his command, the French garrison repulsed German assaults, including fighting underground from barricades inside the corridors, during the first big engagement inside a fort during the First World War. The last men of the French garrison gave up after running out of water (some of which was poisoned), ammunition, medical supplies and food. Raynal sent several messages by homing pigeon (including Le Vaillant), requesting relief for his soldiers. In his last message, Raynal wrote "This is my last pigeon".

ウィキペディア「Fort Vaux」より引用、CC BY-SA 4.0。

Fort Vauxは、アトラスの城の知名度ランキングで世界702位（全3,734件中）、フランスの276件では62位にランクされています。1881年に創建され、アトラスの年代判明済みの城の6%より古い城です（19世紀に創建されたアトラス収録の267件のひとつ）。フランスが他とどう比べられるかは、城の統計をご覧ください。

インタラクティブ地図で見る →

ウィキペディアで全文を読む ↗