Plan and profiles of the redoubt Leiden

Title Leupe: Project ter verbetering van de Post Leyden.

Just as in the case of the redoubt Purmerend, it quickly became apparent that the redoubt Leiden was far too weak to offer any serious opposition to a naval attack through the mouth of the Suriname River. An emergency plan put together either in 1766 or at the begining of 1767 tried to achieve that the small fort became a bit stronger (see Dircks’ map on VEL1999), but did little to improve the underlying structural and strategical defects. Therefore, in March 1768, the Directors of the Society of Surinam commissioned the military engineer Hendrik Lotsy to make a completely new design. Their chief condition was 'that it would make it impossible for enemy ships to sail up the Suriname and the Commewijne Rivers, without having first made themselves master of this post, which a foe would be unable to do without having first laid formal siege to it; and that its defence would require no more than 30 twelve-pounder cannons, 6 Howitzers, and a garrison of 250 infantry men and 50 artillery men with all their needs'. Lotsy designed the fort with with three earth ravelins (B, C, D) and a central brick fortification (A, given apart in detail on VEL2056), all surrounded by moats. On the basis of prices in the Republic, he estimated the total cost at 80,000 guilders, not counting extra expenditure in case pile-driving would be necessary for the brick inner fort. The Society of Surinam found this too expensive and therefore it was never built. To assist the assessment of the project by the Directors, in 1769 two wooden scale models of the planned redoubt were made, both of which are in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

North is lower right.

Scale-bar of 130 Toises = 180 “strepen”.