Gabions were the eighteenth-century engineer's essential building block — large cylindrical wicker baskets filled with earth on site, stacked together to form rapidly-constructed redoubts, gun emplacements, and approach-trench parapets. They were cheap (wicker woven from local saplings), fast (a working party could fill several in an hour), and effective at stopping musket balls and slowing solid shot. At Yorktown in October 1781 both armies built their works almost entirely from gabions: the British defenders' Redoubts 9 and 10 above the York River, the French and American parallel trenches closing on them, and the gun emplacements that hammered Cornwallis's lines flat through the final week of the siege. This W. Britain section combines the gabion wall with an abatis of sharpened tree limbs in front — making it a complete defensive position for the French Royal Deux-Ponts officer (Captain von Closen led the regiment at Yorktown and the storming of Redoubt 9), the British 43rd Foot defending the works from behind, or a gun emplacement for the Regal Enterprises Knox's Artillery Regiment firing over the wicker baskets.

Set Number: 51012 / W. Britain Scenic / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1-piece set / 6"L x 2.5"D x 1.5"H