Lunettenlinie

Lunettes, small earthen fortifications, appeared as outworks of a fortress or as part of a line. The name is derived from the French word for moon, 'lune', because the lunettes are crescent-shaped when viewed from above. The Beverwijk lunettes were built after the Anglo-Russian invasion in 1799. Beverwijk was chosen, because at the beginning of the 19th century Holland was still narrowest there (the current IJ-polders were still IJ-lakes) and therefore easy to defend.