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| Cromwell's Tower on Tresco, Isle of Scilly. Built c. 1651 (see www.vauban.co.uk/kingdoms-under-siege for further information). |
The 17th century was a watershed in European history: it was the century when the superstitions of the medieval period were largely laid to rest and replaced by scientific reasoning. The origins of the great transformations of the 18th and 19th centuries (the Enlightenment, and the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions) are firmly in the 17th century. The transformation on the battlefield was no less dramatic – military engineering which was regarded as an ‘art’ during the 16th century was very much a science by the end of the 17th ...