La Citadelle
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Transcript
The Citadelle is the culmination of Québec's military geography. The British built the present star-shaped fortress mainly between 1819 and 1832, after the War of 1812 renewed fears of attack from the United States.
That is the irony: the fortress most visitors associate with the conquest of New France is largely a later British project. Earlier French and British works existed here, but the surviving complex belongs to a nineteenth-century world of artillery and imperial anxiety.
Today the Citadelle is home to the Royal 22e Régiment, a French-speaking regiment of the Canadian Army.
A British imperial fortress is therefore now strongly associated with French-Canadian military identity.
The view explains the site better than any diagram. Whoever holds Cap Diamant watches the river corridor below.