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A wagon fort, wagon fortress, wagenburg, or corral, often referred to as circling the wagons, is a temporary fortification made of arranged into a rectangle, circle, or other shape and possibly joined with each other to produce an improvised military camp. It is also known as a laager (from Afrikaans), especially in historical African contexts, and a tabor (from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian) among the Cossacks.
Similar, ad hoc, defensive formations used in the United States were called corrals. These were traditionally used by 19th-century American settlers traveling to the West in convoys of .
The crew of each wagon consisted of 18 to 21 soldiers: 4 to 8 crossbowmen, 2 handgunners, 6 to 8 soldiers equipped with pikes or flails, 2 shield carriers, and 2 drivers. The wagons would normally form a square, and inside the square would usually be the cavalry. There were two principal stages of the battle using the wagon fort: defensive and counterattack. The defensive part would be a pounding of the enemy with artillery. The Hussite artillery was a primitive form of a howitzer, called in Czech language a houfnice, from which the English language word howitzer comes. Furthermore, they called their guns the Czech word píšťala (hand cannon), in that they were shaped like a pipe or a fife, from which the word pistol is possibly derived. When the enemy approached near enough, crossbowmen and hand-gunners emerge from the wagons and inflict more casualties at close range. There would even be stones stored in a pouch inside the wagons for throwing should the soldiers run out of ammunition. After this huge barrage, the enemy would be demoralized. The armies of the anti-Hussite crusaders were usually heavily armored . Hussite tactics were to disable the knights' horses so that the dismounted (and ponderous) knights would be easier targets. Once the commander saw fit, the second stage of battle would begin. Men with , flails, and would spring out and attack the weary enemy. Alongside this infantry, cavalry would leave the square and strike. The enemy would be eliminated, or very nearly so.
The wagon fort was later used by the crusading anti-Hussite armies at the Battle of Tachov (1427). Anti-Hussite German forces, unfamiliar with this type of strategy, were defeated. The Hussite wagon fort strategy failed at the Battle of Lipany (1434), where the Utraquist faction of Hussites defeated the Taborite faction. On a hill within a wagon fort, they were drawn into charging out prematurely, when their enemy pretended to retreat. The Utraquists would be reconciled with the Catholic Church afterward. Thus, the wagon fort's impact on Czech history ended. The first victory against the wagon fort at the Battle of Tachov showed that the best ways to defeat it were to prevent it from being erected in the first place or to get the men inside to charge out prematurely after a feint. Such solutions meant the fortification lost its prime advantage. The importance of the wagon fort in Czech history diminished, but the Czechs would continue to use the wagon forts in later conflicts. After the Hussite Wars, foreign powers such as the Hungarians and Poles who had confronted the destructive forces of Hussites, hired thousands of Czech mercenaries (such as into the Black Army of Hungary). Hungarian general John Hunyadi studied the Hussites' tactics, he applied its featuring elements in his army during the Hungarian–Ottoman Wars, including the use of war wagons as a mobile fortress called szekérvár in Hungarian. At the Battle of Varna in 1444, it is said that 600 Bohemian handgunners (men armed with early shoulder arms) defended a wagon fortification. The Germans would also use wagons for fortification. They used much cheaper materials than the Hussites, and different wagons for infantry and artillery. The Russians also used a type of movable fortress, called a guliai-gorod in the 16th century.)
A Danish peasant rebellion in 1441, culminating in the battle of St. Jørgensbjerg also used the war fortresses. The leader of the Danish peasants were led by Henrik Reventlow who had participated in the Hussite Wars and had learned of the war fortress by participating in Albert II's war against the Hussite. There he saw what a formidable defence the war fortress was, and then used it in the peasant rebellion. While it is not certain how the fortress was built, it still played a crucial role in defending Husby against a more well equipped army under Christopher of Bavaria. While the fortress did defend Husby initially, Henrik's army was defeated after much of his army had left. The casualties of the peasant army is speculated to be 6,000-25,000. Henrik was executed shortly after by Christoffer.
Another use of this tactic was the very similar deployed by Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. Likewise the laager. The wagon forts would form into squares, supporting each other. Were an assault made between two forts, marksmen from both would easily exploit the advantage and kill many of the enemy.
Leaguer was used in the British Army for temporary overnight camps made by armored formations.
The tactics were later copied by various armies of Central Europe, including the army of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the 16th and 17th centuries, these tactics were also mastered by the Cossacks, who used their tabors for the protection of marching troops as well.
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