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Updated: May 23, 2025
Soldiers, waking from sound sleep, buckled on their cartridge-boxes, seized their guns, and took their places in the ranks before they were fairly awake. The drummers beat the long-roll, the buglers sounded the signal for saddling horses, the artillery-men got their guns ready, cavalry-men leaped into their saddles, baggage-wagons went thundering towards the river.
The officers were now perfectly resigned to their lot. The remnant of the Egyptian force had been converted into artillery-men, and all the Soudanis formed one regiment. While Mr.
Artillery-men were pushing the piece; it was in firing trim; the fore-carriage had been detached; two upheld the gun-carriage, four were at the wheels; others followed with the caisson. They could see the smoke of the burning lint-stock. "Fire!" shouted Enjolras.
The artillery-men rapidly performed their manoeuvres in force and placed this second piece in line with the first. This outlined the catastrophe. A few minutes later, the two pieces, rapidly served, were firing point-blank at the redoubt; the platoon firing of the line and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the artillery. Another cannonade was audible at some distance.
At lunch a few days later in Cracow, a young Austrian officer was telling me how they had once arranged that the artillery should fire twenty rounds, and on the twenty-first the infantry, without waiting for the usual bugle signal to storm, should charge the trenches. At the same instant the artillery-men were to move up their range a couple of hundred yards.
They poured into the Russian gunners and musketry battalions one volley of choicest quality, which had a shaking effect; then, with level bayonets, plunge on the batteries: which are all empty before we can leap into them; artillery-men, musketeer battalions, all on wing; general whirlpool spreading. And so, in ten minutes, the Muhlberg and its guns are ours.
If so, you may remember the feelings that were within your heart as you left the last friendly cover of woods, and double-quicked across the open space up hill, and saw the artillery-men waiting till you got close up before pulling the primer lanyards, so as to make sure work of you all.
There the captain persuaded the governor to let him have about twenty artillery-men and a lot of scaling-ladders; and having learned something more about the chief place in Banda, called Banda-Neira, he kept to the resolution he had all along in his mind, to try and get possession of it. In spite of the south-east monsoon, away we sailed, therefore, for the Java Sea.
Then, observing that the artillery-men stood at a great distance from their pieces, handling, loading, and discharging them with much timidity, he gave his attention to this, and so contrived that from that time onwards the artillery did harm to no one, whereas it had previously killed many of them, since they had not had judgment and knowledge enough to avoid suffering injury from the recoil.
He sapped the authority of all the great families in Asia Minor, whose hereditary influence could be a counterpoise to his own. Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of his religion, he brought again within the pale of his dominions. He augmented and fostered, as a counterbalancing force to the Janissaries, the corps of the Topjees or artillery-men. He amassed preparatory treasures.
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