Today, it is common to come across gabions along our roads, roundabouts or car parks. However, before being used in landscaping, its use was first purely military. Even today, the gabion continues to be popular and deployed to protect soldiers around the world.
Gabion Defense takes stock of the rich military history of gabions.
15th century: appearance of wicker gabions
Although there are traces of defensive gabions in antiquity, their military use was truly democratized at the end of the 15th century, under the influence of Vauban, Louis XIV's emblematic Minister of War.
Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban was born in May 1633 in Saint-Léger-de-Foucherets in the Yonne. Coming from the minor Burgundian nobility, he is the best known of French military engineers. Thus, everyone knows the saying: " city besieged by Vauban, city taken, city defended by Vauban, city impregnable ".
The defensive gabion is then a defensive system composed of a bottomless basket made of woven wicker, filled with earth or rubble. Already at the time, the device was recognized for its ballistic qualities and Vauban used aligned gabions to protect French soldiers from artillery fire.
At the very beginning of the 16th century, in his "Treatise on sieges and attacks on places", Marshal Vauban describes precisely the art and manner of building a gabion wall:
" After which the sapper who leads the head, begins by making room for his first gabion which he places on his plate, and arranges it with his hand, hook and pitchfork as best he can, placing the top underneath, so that the point of the stakes of the gabions overflowing the top, can be used to hold the fascines with which it is loaded. This done, he fills it with earth, throwing it diagonally forward, and standing a little behind so as not to uncover himself. As he fills the first gabion, he strikes from time to time with his mallet or pickaxe against it, to pile up the earth.
This first filled, he places a second on the same alignment, which he arranges and fills like the previous one; and after, a third with the same precautions, which he fills in the same way; after this third, a fourth, always keeping himself covered and bent behind those which are filled, which always continues in this way; but because the joints of the gabions are very dangerous before the undermining is completed, they will have to be closed with two to three earth bags placed end to end on each joint, which the second sapper arranges, after the third and the fourth have passed them to him.
When the twentieth or thirtieth gabion is laid and filled, the bags are taken from the tail to be placed in front, in order to save them: so that a hundred well-managed earth bags can be enough to conduct a sap from the beginning of the siege to the end."
19th century: the use of defensive gabions extends beyond French borders
In 1861, illustrations of the Battle of Fort Sumter (Charleston Bay), which marked the beginning of the American Civil War, show the adoption of the defensive gabion by the Americans. A few years later, photos of the same fort dating from 1865 once again demonstrate the usefulness of this modular device, particularly suitable for urgently reinforcing the protection of temporary infrastructures.
20th century: the defensive gabion is used in France during trench warfare
During the First World War, the gabion was mainly used to raise and reinforce the trench and, ultimately, to protect its occupants.
It was still used in its traditional form from the winter of 1914, when the buried trenches were not usable (for example flooded).
21st century: the democratization of the modern gabion
Today, while the principle of the defense gabion remains as relevant as ever, its design and implementation have undergone significant changes. Thus, the use of reinforced metal grids instead of wicker baskets has made modern gabions more resistant, while considerably facilitating their manufacture and deployment. In addition, their ability to be stacked securely and efficiently - in particular thanks to the innovations led by Gabion Défense - allows for better modularity and offers enhanced protection to exposed sites.
