Maritime Fortress, the Last Walls
- castles
- coasts
- ancient time
- vestiges
- invasions
- seas
- naval forts
- naval
- defend
- warships
- forts
- French coast
- protect
- France
- battlefields
They stand watch along the French coast like guardians of the seas from an ancient time. Like the castles that punctuate the territory, the naval forts are the clearly visible vestiges of a time when France had to protect itself from foreign invasions...In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the great naval powers such as the Netherlands and England were equipping themselves with ever more powerful warships and the oceans were veritable battlefields, France had to defend its coasts.