Written by Frederick Engels about January 28, 1858, and published unsigned in The New American Cyclopaedia, edited by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana (New York, D. Appleton and Co.), vol. III (1858), p. 175. Text of the Cyclopaedia from the public-domain scans in the Internet Archive (newamericancycl21danagoog), read by OCR and corrected against the page images; collated paragraph by paragraph with the German version in Marx/Engels, Werke, vol. 14 (Berlin, 1961), p. 244, and found complete; authorship after the Werke. Traducción al español
BERME, in fortification, a horizontal bank of ground left standing between the upper interior edge of the ditch and the exterior slope of the parapet of a work. It is generally made about 3 feet wide. Its principal object is to strengthen the parapet, and to prevent the earth of which it is composed from rolling down into the ditch, after heavy rain, thaw, &c. It may also serve sometimes as an exterior communication round the works. It is, however, not to be overlooked that the berme serves as a very convenient resting and collecting place for storming and scaling parties, in consequence of which it is entirely done away with in many systems of permanent fortification, and in others protected by a crenellated wall, so as to form a covered line of fire for infantry. In field fortification, or the construction of siege-batteries, with a ditch in front, a berme is generally unavoidable, as the scarp of the ditch is scarcely ever revetted, and without such an intermediate space, both scarp and parapet would soon crumble under the changes of the weather.