Written by Frederick Engels about 14 September 1857 and published unsigned in The New American Cyclopaedia. A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, edited by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, vol. II (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1858), pp. 615-616. Text of the Cyclopaedia, from the public-domain scan in the Internet Archive (newamericancycl16danagoog), with the OCR corrected against the page images; collated paragraph by paragraph with the German version in Marx/Engels, Werke, vol. 14 (Berlin, 1961), p. 84, and found complete. Traducción al español
BARBETTE. In a battery, guns are said to be placed en barbette when they stand high enough to fire over the crest of the parapet instead of, as usual, through embrasures. To raise the guns to this height, various means are adopted. In field fortifications, an earthwork platform behind the parapet forms the station of the gun. In a permanent fortification, the common high sliding carriage or the traversing platform raises the gun to the required level. Guns placed en barbette have not the same cover from the enemy’s fire as those firing through embrasures; they are, therefore, disposed in this manner where the parapet cannot afford to be weakened by the cutting off embrasures, or where it is desirable to extend their range more to the right and left than would be possible with embrasures. On this account, guns are placed en barbette in field fortifications; in the salient angles of works; and in strand batteries destined to act against ships, especially if the parapet is of masonry. To protect them from enfilading fire, traverses and bonnets are constructed when necessary.