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The enemy was hidden in the shade of the jungle, while they, for every thicket they gained, had to fight in the open, crawling through grass which was as hot as a steam bath, and with their flesh and clothing torn by thorns and the sword-like blade of the Spanish "bayonet." The glare of the sun was full in their eyes and as fierce as a lime-light.
Against the furious bull-like rushes of his opponent, he opposed a quickness and agility that more than counterbalanced his enemy's weight It was a contest of a bull against a panther, and the panther won. For perhaps two minutes the fight continued. Then with a lightning thrust Frank's bayonet found its mark, and the German staggered for a moment, fell headlong and lay still.
And indeed poor Brown was lying at the foot of the parapet with a spear completely through his body, his first and last battle ended. The spears and swords of the savages did not break or bend, or lose their edge over the first bone they touched, like the weapons of their civilised opponents. Fitzgerald came up, and the sergeant showed him the twisted bayonet.
One day the queen stood at her window, looking out sadly into the garden of the Tuileries, when a soldier, standing under the window, with his bayonet upon his gun, looked up to her and said, "I wish, Austrian woman, that I had your head upon my bayonet here, that I might pitch it over the wall to the dogs in the street." And this man was placed under her window ostensibly for her protection!
A minie ball cut the staff of the flag in two just above Billy's head. He caught the colours as they came swaying down, Allan jerked a musket from a dead man's grasp, and together he and Billy somehow fastened the flag to the bayonet and lifted it high. The line halted under a momentary cover, made by the rising side of a hollow rimmed by a few young locust trees. Cleave came along it.
Who will sing the arrival of General Moussy, and of the French corps on the last day of that first battle of Ypres, when a motley gathering of cooks and laborers with staff officers and dismounted cavalry, in shining helmets, flung themselves pellmell into a bayonet charge with no bayonets, to relieve the hard-pressed English division under General Bulfin? And did it.
If the French army did not take many prisoners during the battle of Friedland, it was a different matter the next day and the days following; for the Russians, pursued with a bayonet at their backs, thrown into complete disorder and utterly exhausted, were abandoning their ranks and lying down in the fields, where we captured a great number. We also collected a large quantity of artillery.
"When the German sentinel discovered that the 'man' confronting him was only a child, he threw back his head and laughed silently, his bulky form shaking with merriment. That laugh cost the Boche his liberty. Like a flash little Remi swept the bayonet aside and jerked the rifle from the sentry's hands. He sprang back and pointed the rifle at his amazed adversary.
He had always asserted that he would be killed in the first battle, and so strong was this conviction upon him, that he failed to keep in line of battle on another occasion, and had been censured by his officers for cowardice. In this battle he was ordered in charge of a Sergeant, with instructions that he be carried in battle at the point of the bayonet.
He declared the action a hasty one, and finally avoided the issue in the only way possible, by absenting himself when the vote was taken. And yet, eight days later, at the close of the royal sitting, he bade the grand master of ceremonies: "Go and tell your master we are here by the power of the people, and that we are only to be driven out by that of the bayonet."
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