Gulyay-gorod

The use of term gulyay-gorod is noted in sources from the 1530s, during the Russo-Kazan Wars, and it was understood not only as a type of wagon-fort, but also as siege towers.

[1] Giles Fletcher, the Elder, English ambassador to Russia, left an early Western description of the gulyay-gorod in his Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591).

In a wider sense the Russian term has come to be applied to foreign mobile fortifications, such as wagon forts of Hussites.

Photographs exist of a similar device that was captured by German forces from the Russians in 1914, at the beginning of World War 1.

[2] Russian armies would construct a gulyay-gorod from large wall-sized prefabricated shields (with holes for guns) installed on wheels or sleds, as a development of the wagon-fort concept.