STOCKADE, in Fortification, is the name given to a wall constructed by planting upright in the ground squared trunks of trees, or rough piles of timber, so as to enclose an area which is to be defended. The trunks or piles are planted close together ; and at intervals of three feet from one another loopholes are cut through them, or notches a few inches long are cut down, vertically, from the top, through which the defenders may direct a fire of musketry on the assailants. An Inclosure of timber so planted is sometimes called a Palanka, from a name which is said to have been given by the Turks, when they first entered Europe, to their field-redouts or small entrenched camps.
Stockades are still frequently constructed as temporary fortifications in countries which abound with timber, as in North America and the East Indies ; and among uncivilised nations, these, and rude parapets of earth, are the only kinds of fortification which have been executed. They were also, in general, the means employed by ancient armies while besieging towns, to protect themselves or to prevent the escape of the garrison. The walls with which the Peloponnesian surrounded Plat.-ea during too siege and the blockade of that city were stockades, consisting of palisades planted close together in a double line with a certain interval between the lines. (Thucydides, ii. 75.) The description of the pals, or hippahs, of New Zealand, given in the accounts of Captain Cook's voyages, would nearly serve for the stockades within which the natives of that country have on several recent occasions resisted the assault of a British force. It is stated that the
works consisted of trunks of trees planted close together, with a small inclination towards the interior space ; and that at intervals from one another, particularly at the angles of the works, there were scaffolds whose heights from the ground were three feet less than that of the top of the wall, so that the defenders were able to see the ground at the foot of the wall while they were concealed from the view of the enemy. In the interior there was usually a hollow place, in which the women and children, with the provisions, were deposited. The paha are generally on the summits of heights, and they are sometimes strengthened by outworks of a similar nature. Those of most recent construction are usually so placed as to allow of a ready retreat into "the bush." On the frontier' of the United States of North America, during a war, stockades consisting of roughly-hewn trunks of trees planted close together in upright positions and pierced with for musketry, are very frequently constructed for the purpose of inclosing an area which is to be defended ; and at each of the angles of the inclosure a sort of blockhouse, serving as a bastion to flank the stockade, is con structed with very thick logs of timber placed horizontally : these block-houses are sometimes formed with an upper story, the angles of which project over the sides of the lower one, so that by loop-boles in the projecting part of the floor a fire of musketry may be made upon the enemy when at the foot of the wall.