A reduit is a fortified structure such as a citadel or a keep into which the defending troops can retreat when the outer defences are breached.[Oxford English Dictionary, reduit "2. A keep or stronghold into which a garrison may retreat if the outworks are taken, thereby prolonging the defence of the place".] The term is also used to describe an area of a country that, through a ring of heavy or through enhancing through fortification the defences offered by natural features such as mountains, will be defended even when the rest of the country is occupied by a hostile power.[
. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1904.
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1948 Times 31 Dec. 3/3 "The obsolete conception of a national reduit has been abandoned in favour of an extra-territorial base established in the Belgian Congo".
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2003 Macpherson Amer. Intelligence War-time London vi. 177 "As for the Reduit (or Redoubt), this was the rumoured area for 'a last-ditch stand' in the Bavarian, Austrian and Italian Alps".
National Reduit
In English the term
National redoubt is fairly commonly used. A
redoubt is an outlying fortification, so its use to describe the
Alpine Fortress in the German and Austrian
Alps is an accurate description.
[ However another term that is sometimes used in English and more frequently used in French is "national reduit" ( réduit national) to describe the holding of the centre of a country while abandoning outlying territory.
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Examples of this usage are:
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National Redoubt (), a ring of forts built around Antwerp built between 1859 and 1914, was to be Belgium's national redoubt.
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National Redoubt (, ) was a strategy by which the Swiss would first seek to hold an invading army on the border. If that failed, the army would launch a delaying war, allowing the bulk of the Swiss forces to withdraw to a defensible perimeter in the Swiss Alps.
[http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/109-the-schweizer-reduit-hard-core-switzerland/ Strange Maps]
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Réduit des Flandres, during the Battle of France of the Second World War, around the Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk.
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Réduit Breton, also during the Battle of France in a later phase, in the peninsula of Brittany.
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