Military Architecture at Mobile Bay

during the eighteenth century, but she continued to influence profoundly the destiny of Americans in ordering and controlling their land. For many decades after the Declaration of Independence, the United States relied heavily upon French talents in various phases of military, technical, and artistic development. The military prowess of the Marquis de Lafayette and Comte de Rochambeau is famous and appropriately commemorated. L'Enfant is well known for his plan of Washington, D.C., but little remembered for his services as an engineer during the Revolution and as the designer, later, of Fort Washington, Maryland. Less familiar, but certainly not without impact on the technology of the fledgling country were many other French engineers. Among them were Louis Le Beque Duportail, Colonel of American Engineers during the Revolution and later ministere de la guerre in his native country, and Anne Louis de Tousard, author of the American Artillerists Companion.1 All these engineers contributed to the development of a strong French tradition in military architecture in the United States -a tradition ultimately manifest in permanent and formidable building near key bays along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.