I love this kind of fort because it meant something. These days with nuclear weapons and bunker busting bombs there is just no fun anymore. I don't want to sound like a bloodthirsty moron, and I know the fighting would have sucked big time, but still. A well made and well supplied fort could withstand a ridiculously long siege; the architecture made an actual difference.

Also, I think when warfare was like this, and people could actually enter these forts and get an idea for how crappy the fighting would be, it might make them think twice before going to war. Again the architecture makes a difference. The tangible nature of these places is far more illustrative than the video one sees of a smart bomb just before impact, or many of the images we see from war zones around the world.

I completely concur.

I 'phased-out' when wandering through this place and spent a bit of time on the Queen's Staircase - the exhaustion was nasty. These stairs would witness the soldiers / pressed-into-service citizens carry enormous loads up to the fort out of direct fire from the harbour.