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Defile (geography)

 

 
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Defile (geography)
 
 
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Defile is a geographic term for a narrow pass or gorge between mountains or hills. It has its origins as a military description of a pass through which troops can march only in a narrow column
Column (formation)

A military column is a tactical formation of that can be applied to individual soldiers marching together in one or more file s in which the file is significantly longer than the width of rank in the formation....
 or with a narrow front. On emerging from a defile (or something similar) into open country, soldiers are said to debouch (debouch can also be used to describe water that flows out of a defile into a wider place such as a lake) and so a fortification at the end of a defile is sometimes known as a debouch.

In a traditional military formation soldiers march in rank
Rank (formation)

A Rank is a line of military personnel, drawn up in line abreast .Commonly, troops called to 'On the right, fall in!' do so by forming in line abreast, determining their initial position in relation to a marker....
 (the depth of the formation) and file
File (formation)

A file is a military term for a number of troops drawn up in line ahead, i.e. one behind the other in a column . The number of files is the measure of the width of a formation of troops in several rank one behind the other....
s (the width of the formation), so if a column of soldiers approach a narrow pass the formation must narrow which means that files on the outside must be ordered to the rear (or to some other position) so that the column has fewer files and more ranks.






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Defile is a geographic term for a narrow pass or gorge between mountains or hills. It has its origins as a military description of a pass through which troops can march only in a narrow column
Column (formation)

A military column is a tactical formation of that can be applied to individual soldiers marching together in one or more file s in which the file is significantly longer than the width of rank in the formation....
 or with a narrow front. On emerging from a defile (or something similar) into open country, soldiers are said to debouch (debouch can also be used to describe water that flows out of a defile into a wider place such as a lake) and so a fortification at the end of a defile is sometimes known as a debouch.

In a traditional military formation soldiers march in rank
Rank (formation)

A Rank is a line of military personnel, drawn up in line abreast .Commonly, troops called to 'On the right, fall in!' do so by forming in line abreast, determining their initial position in relation to a marker....
 (the depth of the formation) and file
File (formation)

A file is a military term for a number of troops drawn up in line ahead, i.e. one behind the other in a column . The number of files is the measure of the width of a formation of troops in several rank one behind the other....
s (the width of the formation), so if a column of soldiers approach a narrow pass the formation must narrow which means that files on the outside must be ordered to the rear (or to some other position) so that the column has fewer files and more ranks. The French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 verb for this order is défilé, from which the English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 verb comes, as does the physical description for a valley that forces this manoeuvre.

Defiles of military significance can also be formed by other physical features that flank a pass or path and cause it to narrow, for example impassable woods and rivers. At the Battle of Agincourt
Battle of Agincourt

The Battle of Agincourt was an English victory against a much larger French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday 25 October 1415 ...
 a defile formed by the woods of Agincourt and Tramecourt caused a choke point
Choke point

In military strategy, a choke point is a geographical feature on land such as a valley or defile , or at sea such as a strait which an armed force is forced to pass, sometimes on a substantially narrower front, and therefore greatly decreasing its combat power, in order to reach its objective ....
 for the French army and aided the English in their victory over the French.

Some defiles have a permanent strategic importance and become known by that term in military literature. For example the military historian William Siborne
William Siborne

William Siborne, Sibourne or Siborn was a British officer and military historian....
 names such a geographic feature in France near the frontier with Germany in his book Waterloo Campaign 1815

See also

  • Canyon
    Canyon

    A canyon, or gorge, is a deep valley between cliffs often carved from the landscape by a river. Most canyons were formed by a process of long-time erosion from a plateau level....
  • Gully
    Gully

    A gully is a landform created by running water erosion sharply into soil, typically on a hillside. Gullies resemble large ditches or small valleys, but are metres to tens of metres in depth and width....
  • Ravine
    Ravine

    A ravine is a very small valley, which is often the product of streamcutting erosion. Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gully, although smaller than valleys....
  • Valley
    Valley

    In geology, a valley is a Depression with predominant extent in one direction. A very deep river valley may be called a canyon or gorge....