High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Carnot wall is a type of loop-holed wall built in the ditch of a fort or redoubt. It takes its name from the French mathematician, politician, and military engineer, Lazare Carnot. Such walls were introduced into the design of fortifications from the early nineteenth century. As conceived by Carnot they formed part of an innovative but controversial system of fortification intended to defend against artillery and infantry attack. Carnot walls were employed, together with other elements of Carnot`s system, in continental Europe in the years after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, especially by the Prussians, other Germans and Austrians. Their adoption was initially resisted by the French themselves and by the British.