Photos of Vauban Fortifications

http://lechenet.free.fr/Reportages/vauban/vauban.htm

I truly wish I'd had this site available 30 years ago when writing my Senior Thesis!
A major comment, when you view the photos, look at the green stuff! Most of Vauban's works were earth works on which he deliberately planted trees and bushes to make them very difficult for the enemy to figure out the best sites for siege batteries ... much of the stone work in these photos are obviously from pre-Vauban eras!

BTW, if you don't know ... the "portrait" used for me in Blogspot is actually one of Vauban ... one of my heroes. Not only a great engineer, a brave soldier, but also a daring proponent of the idea that one should tax folks who HAVE money rather than the peasants (this last idea forced Louis XIV to retire him).

:)
Arthur

another view

Bill Protz found this excellent regional view and posted it on the Empire vs. Elector blog.
It shows some details which had bothered me and some names I hadn't been able to locate.
Among other things, my games between the Limburgers and the Frankfurters will need more hills :)
A

from:
http://www.hoeckmann.de/deutschland/hessensued.htm

There's a discussion on the EvE blog about how to generate a map of our imagi-nations.
I've argued that we use a "real" map and just plug in the country names without worrying about borders.
The picture above is just southern Hesse, and AFTER the post Napoleonic reduction of autonomous states. (Historical Frankfurt, btw, is the tiny red blob about middle / right.
A century earlier, the wild juxtaposition of land claims and heritages would make any deeper precision on a "real" map impossible anyway.
So, some dozen different princes claim the same spot ... your point is?
And it would make a handy excuse for a wargame, and could just as handily ignored!
:)
Arthur