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Near the top of the mountain long schanzes or walls were built to offer a place of security for the burghers, while on the top were miles of walls to attract and to inveigle the enemy to approach the lower wall more closely. The plan was magnificent, but the British forces evaded the Biggarsberg in their advance movements, and the entrenchments were never bathed in human blood.
General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all the howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other of the entrenchments. During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the wood on the village and turn the enemy's position. General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first fortification.
"There wait the wives, to welcome the living victors." "Or search their lords among the dead!" answered Harold. "Who, Haco, if we fall, will search for us?" As the word left his lips, he saw, under a lonely thorn-tree, and scarce out of bowshot from the entrenchments, a woman seated. The King looked hard at the bended, hooded form. "Poor wretch!" he murmured, "her heart is in the battle!"
Let no one doubt of the sequel when this emanation of what is firmest in us is launched to strike down the daughter of Unreason and Sentimentalism: such being Folly's parentage, when it is respectable. Our modern system of combating her is too long defensive, and carried on too ploddingly with concrete engines of war in the attack. She has time to get behind entrenchments.
Great, therefore, was the surprise, when he led his forces without the entrenchments, with the observation that the breasts of Englishmen were their best bulwarks. He knew his forces, that they had confidence in him; and he could not have shown better his confidence in them, and his feeling that the time had now at length come to assume the offensive.
He now considered that he would be more useful in Havre, where fresh entrenchments would soon become necessary. The woman, one of the so-called "gay" sisterhood, was noted for her precocious stoutness, which had gained her the nickname of "Boule de Suif" "ball of fat."
The army marched to Valley Forge on December 17, 1777, and in midwinter everything from houses to entrenchments had still to be created. At once there was busy activity in cutting down trees for the log huts. They were built nearly square, sixteen feet by fourteen, in rows, with the door opening on improvised streets.
Troops landed in the face of an enemy; a fine disposition; a march sustained by a powerful cannonade by moving field artillery, fixed batteries, floating batteries, and broadsides of ships at anchor, all operating separately and well disposed; a deployment from the march to form for the attack of the entrenchments and redoubt; a vigorous defence; a storm with bayonets; a large and fine town set on fire by shells.
But when, after doing all he could to provoke the enemy to fight, by drawing entrenchments round their camp and by burning the country before them, he could by no means bring them to venture out, after their frequent defeats before, he rose up and marched to Artaxata, the royal city of Tigranes, where his wives and young children were kept, judging that Tigranes would never suffer that to go without the hazard of a battle.
So did we, who would have preferred, in a manner of speaking, death. But Kelmar was not to be put by. He edged Mrs. Hanson into a corner, where for a long time he threatened her with his forefinger, like a character in Dickens; and the poor woman, driven to her entrenchments, at last remembered with a shriek that there were still some houses at the tunnel.
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