Plan and profiles of the redoubt Leiden

Title Leupe: Teekening van het Fort Leyden en de nieuw aangelegde Batterie, in de Proventie Suriname.

Just as in the case of Purmerend, it quickly became apparent that Leiden, built according to the original design, was far too weak to offer any serious opposition to a naval attack on the colony launched via the mouth of the Surinam River. In connection to the 1786 plans for the ‘Line of Obstruction’, which should keep enemy fleets from being able to sail up the Surinam River, (see VEL2013), this supplementary design was produced for two outer batteries near the redoubt Leiden as extra protection for the proposed barrier in the Surinam River. The implementation of the original design was largely followed after 1790, as can be seen on the map on this map by First Lieutenant Joseph Tilhenn of the Artillery, but according to a more modest version. For instance, the one battery projected at some distance on the coast was indeed built, but the second, right next to Leiden, was abandoned, as was the small ravelin planned by Hottinger and his collaborators on the landward side of the redoubt. The map probably dates from shortly after the completion of battery De Friderici, as it was later called, in 1794.

North is up.

Scale-bars of 100 Rods of 12 Rhineland feet = [approximately 1 : 1,120] / [profiles] 100 Rhineland feet = [approximately 1 : 235].