United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Our flying squadrons heard the bugle and turned to look; and when they saw the Maid's banner speeding in the other direction and the enemy scrambling ahead of it in disorder, their courage returned and they came scouring after us. La Hire heard it and hurried his force forward and caught up with us just as we were planting our banner again before the ramparts of the Augustins.
Wherever the white flag was seen, a superhuman strength seemed to take possession of the men; and after a fierce battle of three hours, the bastile of St. Loup was won by the French. The bastile des Augustins fell next, and here Joan was slightly wounded in the foot; but she resolved to attack the only remaining hold of the English the following day.
Ere the shades of night fell, not only was Les Augustins ours, but its stores of food and ammunition had been safely transported into the city, and the place so destroyed and dismantled that never again could it be a source of peril to the town.
Besides the cathedral and three other parish churches, there are two convents of Dominican friars, four of Franciscans, two of Augustins, two of the order of Mercy, and one belonging to the brothers of Charity, with an hospital, seven nunneries, a female penitentiary, a foundling hospital, a college for the nobility formerly under the direction of the Jesuits, and a Tridentine seminary.
It was with no inconsiderable emotion that Chicot again recognized La Rue des Augustins, so quiet and deserted, the angle formed by the block of houses which preceded his own, and lastly, his own dear house itself, with its triangular roof, its worm-eaten balcony, and its gutters ornamented with waterspouts.
We made assault after assault, through the smoke and flame and the deafening cannon-blasts, and at last as the sun was sinking we carried the place with a rush, and planted our standard on its walls. The Augustins was ours. The Tourelles must be ours, too, if we would free the bridge and raise the siege. We had achieved one great undertaking, Joan was determined to accomplish the other.
Nobody in the quartier could quite recollect when it was that the new Public Letter-Writer first set up in business at the angle formed by the Quai des Augustins and the Rue Dauphine, immediately facing the Pont Neuf; but there he certainly was on the 28th day of February, 1793, when Agnes, with eyes swollen with tears, a market basket on her arm, and a look of dreary despair on her young face, turned that selfsame angle on her way to the Pont Neuf, and nearly fell over the rickety construction which sheltered him and his stock-in-trade.
But the other French and Scots, perceiving the banner in such a peril, turned again from their flight, and men who once turn back to blows again are ill to deal with. Striking, then, and crying, Montjoie! St. Denis! and St. Andrew for Scotland! they made the English give ground, till they were within the palisade of Les Augustins, where they deemed them safe enough.
The Ambassador Extraordinary then went to the apartments of the Empress of Austria, whence he went to visit the Archduke Charles to tell him that Napoleon wished to be represented by him at the wedding to be celebrated by proxy, March 11, by the Archbishop of Vienna, at the Church of the Augustins.
As the great man ceased speaking, the carriage drew up on the Quai des Augustins; the young lawyer thanked his generous patron for the two lifts he had conferred on him, and then knocked at his door pretty loudly, for the bitter wind blew cold about his calves.
Word Of The Day