escalades

Escalade (plural escalades) is a military term for the act of scaling or climbing over a defensive wall or fortification to initiate an assault. In siege warfare, the technique involved deploying ladders, ramps, or siege towers to breach walls, and it was often combined with other methods such as mining or bombardment as part of a coordinated attack. The term derives from the French escalade, from escalader “to scale a wall,” with roots linked to échelle “ladder.”

In English-language historical writing, escalade can also refer to the actual breaches carried out using such climbing methods. The plural escalades can denote multiple such assaults or episodes. A notable historical use is L’Escalade, the 1602 surprise siege of Geneva, commemorated by an annual festival; in that context the word has entered local and national memory as a name for an assault by scaling the city walls.

Beyond historical contexts, escalade is used in discussions of mountaineering or rock climbing to describe the act of ascending a cliff or rock face by hand and footholds, though climbers more commonly use terms like ascent or climb rather than escalade. The term is largely archaic in modern conventional warfare, replaced by more specific terms describing siege techniques.

In modern times, escalade is also encountered as a proper noun in brand names or titles unrelated to the original meaning, but the singular Escalade is the widely known model name of a luxury SUV produced by Cadillac; usage of escalades as a plural is uncommon in that context. Overall, escalades are primarily of historical interest, illustrating how defenders and attackers planned to overcome fortifications during siege warfare.