BARRICADES are defense-works employed both in the military and naval services. Military engineers, and sappers and miners, are instructed in the art of barricading streets and roads with beams, chains, ehevaux-de-frise, and other obstacles, either in defending a town against besiegers, or in suppressing popular tumults. In a ship, a strong wooden rail, supported on stanchions, and extending across the foremost part of the quarter-deck, is called a barricade; during a naval action, the upper part of this barricade is sometimes stuffed with hammocks in a double rope-netting, to serve as a screen against the enemy's small-shot. B. have been made use of in street-fights since the middle ages, but they are best known in connection with the insurrections in the city of Paris. As early as 1358, the streets of Paris were barricaded against the dauphin, afterwards Charles V. A more noteworthy barricade-fight was that in 1588, when 4000 Swiss soldiers, marched into Paris by Henry III. to overawe the council of sixteen. would have been utterly destroyed by the populace, firing from behind B., had the court not consented to negotiation; and the result was, that the king fled next day. The next barricade-fight of importance in Paris was that of 1830, which resulted in the expulsion of the Bourbons from the throne of France, and the election of the citizen king, Louis Philippe. During the three days which this revolution lasted, the number of B. erected across the streets amounted to several thousands. They were formed of the most hetero geneous materials—overturned vehicles, trees, scaffolaing-poles, planks, building-mate rials, and street paving-stones, men, women, and children taking part iu their erection.
In Feb., 1848, the insurrection against Louis Philippe commenced with the erection of B. ;_ but the most celebrated and bloody barricade-fight was that between the populace and the provisional government, which, commencing on the night of the 23d June, 1848, lasted throughout the three following days, when the people had to surrender. The national losses by this fight were estimated at 30,000,000 francs; 16,000 persons were killed and wounded. and 8000 taken prisoners. The, emperor Napoleon III. has so widened and macadamized the principal streets of Paris since he ascended the throne, as to render the successful erection of B. next to impossible. There was a remarkable barricade-erection in London in 1821. The ministry desired that the body of queen Caroline should be conveyed out of the country to Germany, for interment, without the populace having the opportunity of making any demonstration. On the matter becoming known, a vast barricade was erected at the point where the Hampstead road joins the new road; and as nothing but the use of artillery could have forced the way, the officer in charge of the funeral cortege deemed it prudent to change his course, and pass through a more central part of the metropolis. During the revolutions of 1848, B. were success fully carried in Paris, Berlin, N ienna, and other places, by abandoning the attack in front, and breaking through the houses of contiguous streets, taking their defenders in the rear.