Palisade Palisade A palisade—sometimes called a stakewall or a paling—is typically a fence or wall made from wooden stakes or tree trunks and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisade derives from "pale", from the Latin word "", meaning stake, specifically a stake used to support a fence. A palisade gangs these side by side to create a fence entirely made of pales. Typical construction consisted of small or mid-sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with no free space in between. The trunks were sharpened or pointed at the top, and were driven into the ground and sometimes reinforced with additional
Battle of Franklin (1864) constructed of dirt and rails, which was intended to be a barrier to traffic, not a full-fledged defensive earthwork. (The gap was also defended by the guns of Battery A, 1st Kentucky Artillery. The men of the 44th Missouri also extended the retrenchment line to the west along their front with hastily dug trenches.) The actual earthworks in the southern portion of the line were formidable. Attacking infantry would be confronted by a ditch about four feet wide and two to three feet deep, then a wall of earth and wooden fence rails four feet above normal ground level, and