Friedrich Engels 
British Defenses 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 6020, 10. August 1860 

British Defenses. 

The plan for the National Defenses of England, just laid before Parliament, 
proposes to confine all the outlay to the fortification of the dock-yards, 
together with some minor works, barely sufficient to protect the larger 
harbors of the country from insult by small hostile squadrons, and with the 
erection of strong and extensive forts at Dover and Portland, for the purpose 
of securing sheltered anchorage to fleets and detached vessels. The whole 
of the money is to be spent on the circumference of the country, on the 
coast-line accessible to an enemy's fleet; and as it is impossible to defend 
the whole length of coast, a few important points, especially the naval arse- 
nals and dock-yards, are selected. The interior of the country is to be left 
entirely to its own resources. 

Now, when England once confesses that her wooden walls no longer 
protect her, and that she must have recourse to fortification as a means of 
national defense, it stands to reason that she should first shelter from attack 
her naval arsenals—the cradles of her fleet. That Portsmouth, Plymouth, 
Pembroke, Sheerness, and Woolwich (or whatever place maybe selected in 
its stead), should be made so strong as to be able to beat off any attack by 
sea, and to hold out for a reasonable time against a regular siege by land, 
nobody will doubt. But it is perfectly ridiculous to call the providing for this 
danger a system of national defense. In fact, in order to elevate the scheme 
to this dignity, it appears to have been necessary to make it far more com- 
plicated and expensive than was required for the mere protection of the 
dock-yards. 

A country like France or Spain, which is exposed to invasion on its land 
frontier as much as to naval attacks and descents on its coast, is obliged to 
make its naval depots fortresses of the first rank. Toulon, Carthagena, 
Genoa, even Cherbourg, may be subjected to the combined attack which 

British Defenses 

destroyed the arsenals and dock-yards of Sevastopol. They ought, therefore, 
to have a very strong land-front with detached forts to keep the dock-yards 
out of range of abombardment. But this does not apply to England. Suppos- 
ing even that a naval defeat had for a moment placed in doubt England's 
maritime supremacy; even then an invading army, landed on British soil, 
could never depend upon the liberty of its communications, and must, there- 
fore, act rapidly and decisively. This invading army would not be in a state 
to undertake aregular siege; and if it was, nobody in his senses would expect 
the invader to go and settle down quietly before Portsmouth and to waste 
his resources in a lengthened siege, instead of marching straight upon Lon- 
don, and at once provoking a decision on the main issue while his moral and 
material ascendency is at its night. If it comes to that, that troops and material 
can be safely landed in England sufficient to attack London, and at the same 
time to besiege Portsmouth, then England is at the brink of ruin, and no 
land-forts around Portsmouth can save her. As with Portsmouth, so with the 
other naval arsenals. Let the sea-fronts be made as strong as they can; but 
on the land-fronts, everything is superfluous which goes beyond keeping off 
the enemy far enough to protect the dock-yard from bombardment, and 
securing it against a fortnight's regular siege. But if we are to judge from the 
estimates, and from some plans respecting the proposed defenses of Ports- 
mouth, which have got into The London Times, there is to be a great waste 
of brick and mortar, of ditch and parapet, of money and, in case of war, of 
men too. The engineering staff appear positively to revel in this luxury of 
planning fortifications which, to them, has so long been a forbidden joy. 
England is menaced with a vegetation of forts and batteries springing up as 
rapidly as mushrooms, and as rank as the creepers of a tropical forest. The 
Government seem to insist upon it that there must be something to show for 
the money; but that will be the principal use of all these splendid structures. 
So long as the dock-yards are not safe against a coup de main, so long 
invasions might be undertaken, with the sole aim of destroying one of them, 
and then retiring. Thus they serve, so to say, as safety-valves for London. 
But as soon as they are secured against an attack by main force, and even 
against a regular attack, for fourteen days—and this is evidently necessary- 
there is no other object left for an invasion except London. All minor ends 
are secured; local invasions are no longer to any purpose; an invasion must 
go in for the chance of annihilating England or suffer annihilation in its turn. 
Thus, the very fact of the fortification of the dock-yards weakens London. 
It compels the invading power to concentrate all its strength on the attempt 
at once upon London. London, we are told by Lord Palmerston, must be 
defended in the field. Suppose this to be so; the stronger the army, the safer 
London will be. But where is that strong army to come from, if Portsmouth, 

Friedrich Engels 

Plymouth, Chatham, and Sheerness, and, perhaps, Pembroke, are converted 
into first-rate fortresses of the size of Cherbourg, Genoa, Coblentz, or 
Cologne, requiring garrisons of from 15,000 to 20,000 men to defend them? 
Thus, the stronger you make the dock-yards, the weaker you render London 
and the country. And this is what you call national defenses. 

In any case, one lost battle would decide the fate of London; and, con- 
sidering the immense commercial centralization of the country, andthe dead 
lock to which the occupation of London would bring all the industrial and 
commercial machinery of England, there can be no doubt that one battle 
would decide the fate of the whole kingdom. And, thus while twelve millions 
are proposed to be spent on the security of the dock-yards, the very heart 
of the country is to remain unprotected, and is left to hinge on the result of 
one battle! 

There is no good in mincing the matter. Let the dock-yards, by all means, 
be fortified in a rational manner, which could be done for less than half the 
money now proposed to be squandered upon them; but if you want national 
defenses, set at once about fortifying London. It is no use saying, as Palmer- 
ston does, that this is impossible. It is the same talk that was heard when 
Paris was to be fortified. The surface inclosed in the continuous rampart 
round Paris is not much less than that occupied by London; the line of forts 
encirchng Paris has an extent of 27 miles, and a circle round London six miles 
from Charing Cross would give a periphery of 37 miles. This circle might 
very well represent the average distance of the forts from the center; and 
ten miles more will not render the line too long, if a proper system of radial 

and circular railway communication f acilitates the rapid movements of the 25 

reserves. Of course, London cannot be defended in the off-hand way, 
proposed in the Cornhill Maganne, where six large forts are to do all; the 
number of forts must be twenty at least; but, on the other hand, London need 
not be fortified in the pedantic style of Paris, for it will never have to stand 
a siege. To defend it against a coup-de-main, against the resources which an 

invading army can bring against it within a fortnight after landing, is all that 
is required. The continuous inclosure may be dispensed with; the villages 
and groups of houses on the outskirts may be made to serve inits stead quite 
effectually, if the plan of defense be properly prepared beforehand. 

With London thus fortified, and the dock-yards strengthened on the sea 
fronts and protected on the land fronts against a forcible, irregular attack, 
and even a slight siege, England might defy any invasion, and the whole might 
be done for something like fifteen milhons sterling. The dock-yards would 
not absorb, in all, more than 70,000 regulars and 15,000 volunteers; while the 
whole rest of the line, the mihtia, and the volunteers—say 80,000 Une and 
militia, and 100,000 volunteers—would defend the intrenched camp around 

British Defenses 

London, or accept battle in front of it; and while the whole country north 
of London would remain at full liberty to organize fresh bodies of volunteers 
and depots for the line and rnilitia. The enemy would in all cases be compelled 
to act; he could not, evenif he would, then escape the attraction of the great 
intrenched camp of London, and he would have only the choice either to 
attack it and be beaten, or to wait, and thereby increase every day the dif- 
ficulties of his position. 

Instead of this, the Government plan of national defenses would bring 
matters to this pass, that if the forces of England consisted of 90,000 line 
and militia and 115,000 volunteers, the garrisons would, at least, absorb 
25,000 regulars and 35,000 volunteers, leaving for the field in which to defend 
London, 65,000 regulars and 80,000 volunteers, while 35,000 men who might 
be very badly wanted on the day of battle, would be sitting quietly and 
unmenaced behind stone walls which nobody had thought of attacking. But 
not only would this army be weakened by 35,000 men, it would be deprived 
of a fortified position out of which it could not be driven except by a regular 
siege; it would have to expose its 80,000 badly officered and inexperienced 
volunteers to a fightin the open field, and it would thus fight in circumstances 
very much less favorable than the army placed as above described.