United States or Central African Republic ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The battles of the last week of July had been looked at it in the best light possible indecisive. Our men had held their own, it is true, but an invading army can not afford to simply hold its own. Anything short of an absolute success is to it disguised defeat.

One Sunday afternoon in the sad spring of 1864, during the terrible days of the war, he came in to correct a poem. "I am ashamed," he said, "to be troubled by so slight a thing when battles are raging about us; but I have written: Where Genoa's deckless caravels were blown. Now Columbus sailed from Palos, and I must change the verse before it is too late."

The management of the war was the main subject under discussion. The English troops had covered themselves with glory in the battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkermann. But the sacrifice was great. Thousands were slain and homes made desolate, while the British army was suffering greatly, and the sick and wounded were needing attention.

Zealously attached to the Prince de Conde from inclination, he was a witness, and, if we may be allowed to say it, his companion, in the glory he had acquired at the celebrated battles of Lens, Norlinguen, and Fribourg; and the details he so frequently gave of them were far from diminishing their lustre.

She still had much of the natural democracy of children, and she admired these new friends who knew so much more than she did, who had lived, had suffered, had come away from horrible battles covered with wounds, the scars of which they would bear into the grave battles they had lost; yet they had not given up, but had lived on, smiling, courageous, kind of heart.

Langland hated them. Chaucer held them up to scorn. Wickliffe denounced them with a righteous wrath. Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, carried on open war against them. All these leaders of the chosen bands that fight the battles of God had arrived at man's estate when the Black Death came, and all survived it.

Here is Eleanor, my honored mother, discourteously shut up in a tower in danger of being broken down by engines of war, and sending forth nothing but cries and tears. Here is Arthur, my fair nephew, who some day will be an honor to chivalry, going straight forward, fancying nothing can hurt him, looking on battles as feasts and sports.

By G d, there is another perplexing matter for my already over-taxed time, and yet the senseless people expect Generals to move large armies, and plan big battles, when their hands are full of these d d business details that cannot be neglected or delayed."

There are hundreds of men to-day penniless, who were, during the war, hurled from their affluent positions by incorrect accounts of battles that shook the money-market, and the gold gamblers, with their hoofs, trampled these honest men into the mire. And many a window was hoisted at the hour of midnight as the boy shouted: "Extra! Extra!"

The theatre of these childish conflicts, which in their pale innocence reflected the great battles that were at that time steeping Germany in blood, was generally a plain extending from the town of Wonsiedel to the mountain of St. Catherine, which had ruins at its top, and amid the ruins a tower in excellent preservation.