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Naval guns were prepared to try, sappers and working parties were already on the road with thousands of sandbags. What did he think? But the decision had already been taken. He had never received any messages from the General, had not had time to write any. Messages had been sent him, he had wanted to send others himself.
The river was there, rolling at Napoleon's feet, like a natural and majestic barrier, fulfilling its function of holding him back from ruin; the enormous mass of his army surrounded him; on the opposite bank reigned silence and solitude. Several sappers who had crossed in a small boat, having landed, a Cossack came up to them, in charge of a patrol, who followed him at a short distance.
This, before the battle, had been tenanted by the staffs of many general officers and the corps of engineers and sappers, but now was entirely devoted to the wounded of either army; for Austrians and Russians were everywhere to be met with, receiving equal care and attention with our own troops.
Each of the sappers carried a bag of powder, and, covered by such shelter as the fire of the Sixtieth skirmishers could give them, they advanced to the gate. This gate stands close to an angle in the wall, and from the parapets a storm of musketry fire was poured upon them.
However, the bishop of Puy of blessed memory and Count Raymond of Saint-Gilles, pressing forward to weaken the city, attacked a tower near their own camp by digging tunnels to undermine its foundations. After the miners were in place to carry this out, they were given protection by men with bows and crossbows, by men swinging balearic ropes, and by others defending the sappers.
He could supply desks and tables the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them out at the shortest notice and he could produce stationery, but he drew the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings. The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the Army, have already been described.
I had gone down with them, and after I had seen Lucia in tears it appeared to me that the plaster would crack if it were taken from the support of the wall. I said so, and the sappers were withdrawn. After that I was the friend of the family, and many a flask of Chianti have I cracked with the father and many a sweet lesson have I had from the daughter.
Why, we have hardly ever seen the back of the ridge black for half-an-hour." "I know," said Eben, shaking his head, "but they are long-patienced fellows, these sappers not like cavalrymen or lazy Preventives, who want nothing better than to lie up with a pipe and a mutchkin!" "Some night we shall row over and see, Eben," said Stair, preparing to depart.
This was to be the blowing in of the Cashmere gate. The party selected for this hazardous operation consisted of Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, of the Engineers; Sergeants Carmichael, Burgess, and Smith; Bugler Hawthorne to sound the advance; and eight native sappers. This work was to have been done before dawn; but, through some mistake, it was daylight before they reached the spot.
There we made our first acquaintance with the army, which we undergraduates had derided as a crowd of slavish wastrels and empty-headed slackers. We met with tact and courtesy from the mercenary. A sergeant of the Sappers we discovered to be as fine a type of man as any in the wide earth. And we marvelled, too, at the smoothness of organisation, the lack of confusing hurry....
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