Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett
Tennessee State Library and Archives
Civil War Resources
Civil War Source Book
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| Face: | The two sides of a work that converge to form a salient angle. The faces of field works were the stretches of parapet extending from one angle in the work to the next and were designed to provide a direct fire on an attacking body of troops as they advanced up the glacis. |
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| Fascine: | A long cylindrical bundle of closely-bound thin saplings. The saplings were usually referred to as green brushwood and were approximately one to two inches in diameter. Fascine was used as revetment for sustaining the slopes of a battery or parapet wall or to cover excessively wet ground. The most common type of fascine (one of three types below) was called battery or long fascine (also called saucissons) and was made in bundles 18 feet long by ten inches in diameter, weighing about 140 pounds. Trench fascine was made four to six feet long and was used for crowning a line of gabions in a sap or trench. These were made by sawing the long fascine into three parts. Water fascine, used as cover for marshy ground, was 18 inches in diameter and six to nine feet in length. Fascine could also be used as fill for crossing an enemy ditch during an attack. Five men could construct long fascine in one hour, including the cutting of wood. |
| Fascine Choker: | A device composed of two five-foot-long wooden poles with one end of each connected to a chain and used to tighten the fascine into bundles by looping the chain around the saplings and tightening with leverage from the poles. The fascine were then tied with tough withes or gads, prepared by twisting small sapling so as to render them flexible or easily bent into knots. |
| Fascine Horse: | A "machine" used to hold saplings in a bundle to form fascines. Driving stakes into the ground, obliquely, in pairs so that each pair crossed at the same height made the horse. They were then firmly lashed together to form an X-shaped support and repeated every eighteen inches until the desired length of the horse had been attained. |
| Field Engineering: | The practice of making temporary military fortifications and military roads, the planning and construction of military bridges, and the attack and defeat of military works. This included all the various duties of engineer troops, either in the operation of a campaign, or in the dispositions on the battlefield. |
| Field Fortification: | Field fortification was the art of engineering and strengthening a position for temporary use with available materials. Military engineers developed field works along the same principals as permanent fortifications, but were given greater latitude in their application in the field. |
| Field Works: | Most field works were commonly called entrenchments during the Civil War. These were temporary fortifications constructed of available materials and used to defend important positions, or bodies of troops, against a sudden assault from superior forces. Field works were usually confined to a single campaign and used to strengthen positions that were to be occupied for short periods of time. Most field works could be constructed by troops in a single day. Field works can be divided into two major categories: Major field works were constructed to serve as both protection and as an obstacle, while minor field works were intended only for protective cover. The primary distinguishing feature was the placement of the ditch. Major field works contained a ditch around the exterior of the parapet, whereas minor works usually had no exterior ditch or a ditch on the interior of the parapet. As per the regulations of the day major works included redans, lunettes and redoubts, while minor works usually referred to rifle pits, blockhouses, and stockades. |
| Flank: | The right or left side of a position or body of troops. Flanks are also the re-entering sides of a lunette or bastion. |
| Flying Bridge: | A floating vessel (usually some type of wooden raft) that was propelled from one bank to the other by the current of the stream. The usual procedure to create a "ferry" of this kind was to attach the head of the boat, by means of a cable and anchor, to some point near the middle of the stream. By steering obliquely to the current, the boat could cross from shore to shore along the same arc. |
| Flying Sap: | Refers to the rapid construction of the type of siege trenches referred to as saps. |
| Fort: | An enclosed work of higher class than a field work, consisting of either a detached work or a work constructed within the framework of a large fortified area. During the Civil War the term was often used to mean any important position, no matter what type of military engineering was used in its construction. |
| Fortification: | The military art of strengthening a position to resist an attack from a superior force. If the fortification was to be placed in a position of great importance and the materials were of durable quality, it is called a permanent fortification; if not it is called a field or temporary fortification. A position can be strengthened by the use of natural resources such as rivers, forests and hills or by artificial means using earth, timber, and stone for temporary or permanent works. |
| Fougass: | Fougass was a small mine placed in a pit or shaft dug in the ground. It could be hidden in the ditch of a work with a thin covering of dirt or debris. It could also be placed and detonated anywhere advancing troops were forced to cross. An obstacle was often placed over it, such as chevaux de frize or abatis, in order that the attackers were occupied long enough for the charge to be detonated by means of a long fuse. Sometimes a fougass was made by using several loaded artillery shells placed in a watertight box with a charge of powder under them. Another type of mine used during the war was the contact mine. It consisted of a small powder charge with a mercury fulminate detonator arranged to explode under the pressure of a man’s foot. The term "torpedo," as it was used in the 1860s, referred to another type of explosive mine fired by use of mechanical or electrical detonators. Both sides denounced mines as illegal and immoral at different times but continued to use them, though few were ever manufactured. |
| Fortress: | A fortified town or city, or any large fortification so strongly fortified as to be capable of resisting a large and sustained attack. Fortress Rosecrans in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was one of the largest earthen fortifications in the state and contained over 200 acres within its walls. |
| Fraise: | A fraise is an obstacle formed by means of constructing a palisade, placed horizontally or slightly inclined at the edge of the berm of a ditch, so as to be concealed by the counter scarp crest. |