Editing Citadel (section)

===1600 to the present===
In times of war, the citadel in many cases afforded retreat to the people living in the areas around the town. However, citadels were often used also to protect a garrison or political power from the inhabitants of the town where it was located, being designed to ensure loyalty from the town that they defended. This was used, for example, during the [[Dutch Wars]] of 1664–1667, King [[Charles II of England]] constructed a Royal Citadel at [[Royal Citadel, Plymouth|Plymouth]], an important channel port which needed to be defended from a possible naval attack. However, due to Plymouth's support for the [[Roundhead|Parliamentarians]], in the then-recent [[English Civil War]], the Plymouth Citadel was so designed that its guns could fire on the town as well as on the sea approaches.

[[Barcelona]] had a great citadel built in 1714 to intimidate the [[Catalan people|Catalans]] against repeating their mid-17th- and early-18th-century rebellions against the Spanish central government.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Vargas |first1=Michael |title=Constructing Catalan Identity |date=2018 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-3-319-76744-4 |pages=89 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y4lXDwAAQBAJ&q=citadel+in+barcelona+built+after+catalonia+attack&pg=PA89}}</ref> In the 19th century, when the political climate had liberalized enough to permit it, the people of Barcelona had the citadel torn down, and replaced it with the city's main central park, the [[Parc de la Ciutadella]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Vargas |first1=Michael |title=Constructing Catalan Identity |date=2018 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-3-319-76744-4 |pages=90 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y4lXDwAAQBAJ&q=citadel+in+barcelona+built+after+catalonia+attack&pg=PA89}}</ref> A similar example is the [[Citadella]] in [[Budapest]], Hungary.

The attack on the [[Bastille]] in the [[French Revolution]] – though afterwards remembered mainly for the release of the handful of prisoners incarcerated there – was to considerable degree motivated by the structure's being a Royal citadel in the midst of revolutionary Paris.

Similarly, after [[Garibaldi]]'s overthrow of [[House of Bourbon|Bourbon]] rule in [[Palermo]], during the 1860 [[Unification of Italy]], Palermo's Castellamare Citadel – a symbol of the hated and oppressive former rule – was ceremoniously demolished.

Following Belgium gaining its independence in 1830, a Dutch garrison under General [[David Hendrik Chassé]] held out in [[Antwerp Citadel]] between 1830 and 1832, while the city had already become part of independent Belgium.

The [[Siege of the Alcázar]] in the [[Spanish Civil War]], in which the Nationalists held out against a much larger Republican force for two months until relieved, shows that in some cases a citadel can be effective even in modern warfare; a similar case is the [[Battle of Huế]] during the [[Vietnam War]], where a [[North Vietnamese Army]] division held the citadel of Huế for 26 days against roughly their own numbers of much better-equipped US and South Vietnamese troops.