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Updated: May 13, 2025
Some of the provincial militia came on first, but soon gave way, for our general, as you can guess, monsieur, had not only strengthened the fort with a formidable rampart some eight feet high, but had studded the approach to it with an abatis of prodigious trunks and branches of trees, which not only seemed, but actually proved impenetrable.
What can it be? We shall see. While Tyler's Artillery has been cannonading the Rebel left, under Evans, at Stone Bridge, fully impressed with the prevailing Union belief that the bridge is not only protected by strong masked batteries, heavy supports of Infantry, and by abatis as well as other defenses, but is also mined and ready to be blown up at the approach of our troops, when in reality the bridge is not mined, and the Rebel force in men and guns at that point has been greatly weakened in anticipation of Beauregard's projected advance upon Centreville, the Union column, under Hunter and Heintzelman, is advancing from Centreville, in the scorching heat and suffocating dust of this tropical July morning, slowly, but surely, along the Warrenton Pike and the cross-road to Sudley Springs Ford a distance of some eight miles of weary and toilsome marching for raw troops in such a temperature in this order: Burnside's Brigade, followed by Andrew Porter's Brigade, both of Hunter's Division; then Franklin's Brigade, followed by Willcox's Brigade, both of Heintzelman's Division.
On came the regulars as briskly and bravely as our men could have done, but it was only to be shot down in scores and hundreds by our sharpshooters sheltered behind the earthworks, who picked them off as they crossed the open and tried in vain to struggle through the abatis.
We're almost through, and then we'll salivate them whelps of damnation." A bullet came so nigh Si's face that it seemed to burn him, and then he heard it strike. Jim Humphreys fell without a groan a bullet through his brain. "Don't mind that. Forward, boys," shouted Si. "Here's the end of the abatis." Gid Mackall fell, and Harry Joslyn turned to help him. "Don't mind him.
It was a region also to disgust the very soul of a cavalryman; for the low, scrubby growth lined the narrow roads almost as effectually as the most scientifically prepared abatis. Graham's surmise was correct.
It was hard to persuade one's self that in front and rear were the forces of deadly war. "We soon reached an eminence from which we saw what dispelled at once the illusion of sylvan solitude. The sun had been shining an hour or two, and the bridge before us and the road beyond were defended by abatis and other obstructions.
I then told General Blair that it was certain destruction to us if we passed over the abatis upon the open ground where there had once been a corn-field; that we could never reach the base of the hill. He turned to me and said, "Can't you take your regiment up there?"
The osage orange-trees which we had used for abatis had been evenly cut away by the bullets, and the tough fibres hung in a fringe of white strings, the upper line quite even, and just a little lower than the top of the parapet.
Soltikof's head-quarter, I rather understand, is on the right wing; probably in Kunersdorf itself, or beyond that Village; there, at least, our highly important Russian right wing is; there, elaborately fortified; and, half a mile farther, ends, on the edge of steep dells; the Russian brink of which is strongly fringed with cannon, while beyond, on the farther brink, they have built an abatis; so making assurance doubly sure.
At night they huddled together for warmth by the fire in the trenches. When they charged, their naked feet left blood-marks on the abatis through which they went at the enemy. That is not an exaggeration, reader. These facts are of record. And that was a part only. It was not only famine and hardship which they underwent, but the incessant combats and mortal tedium of the trenches.
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