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Updated: June 9, 2025
What with the misery for her children, the poor, and the rain, her mind was like a wound exposed to dry in the air. At this point the cab stopped, for it was in danger of being crushed like an egg-shell. The wide Embankment which had had room for cannonballs and squadrons, had now shrunk to a cobbled lane steaming with smells of malt and oil and blocked by waggons.
Mushrooms and the swifter-growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise and fall from the earth like restlessly boiling water springs; the motions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannonballs; the sun will scour through the sky like a meteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, etc."
This report, which I had not read probably since its date till now, recalls to me vividly the whole scene of the affair at Blackburn's Ford, when for the first time in my life I saw cannonballs strike men and crash through the trees and saplings above and around us, and realized the always sickening confusion as one approaches a fight from the rear; then the night-march from Centreville, on the Warrenton road, standing for hours wondering what was meant; the deployment along the edge of the field that sloped down to Bull-Run, and waiting for Hunter's approach on the other aide from the direction of Sudley Springs, away off to our right; the terrible scare of a poor negro who was caught between our lines; the crossing of Bull Run, and the fear lest we should be fired on by our own men; the killing of Lieutenant-Colonel Haggerty, which occurred in plain sight; and the first scenes of a field strewed with dead men and horses.
This letter did not deter the grand duke from persisting in his defense; and this obstinacy exasperated the Emperor to such a degree that he at last gave orders to place two batteries in position, and within an hour cannonballs and shells rained upon the town.
He advised, however, that the whole population should be set to work throwing up an earthwork just outside each gate, in order to shelter these as far as possible from the effect of the enemy's cannonballs. Orders were at once given to this effect, and in an hour the whole population were at work carrying earth in baskets and piling it in front of the gates.
A few cannonballs had already fallen in the court of the Imperial palace when a flag of truce came out of the town to announce that the Archduchess Marie Louise had been unable to accompany her father, and was ill in the palace, and consequently exposed to danger from the artillery; and the Emperor immediately gave orders to change the direction of the firing so that the bombs and balls would pass over the palace.
These walls were built of cobble-stones cemented with mortar. Half-a-dozen cannonballs would have knocked them to pieces, although they constituted a formidable defence against infantry. When the Mormons evacuated the post, they burned all the buildings inside these quadrangles.
"Victorious armies," said they, "should be answered by cannonballs and not by insults as gross as they are ridiculous." This opinion was shared by all the foreigners at that time in Hamburg.
I have just had news that will no doubt seem very glorious in the news papers. But then newspapers are not subjected to cannonballs." "What do you mean?" answered De Breze. "I met, as I emerged from my apartment a few minutes ago, that fire-eater, Victor de Mauleon, who always contrives to know what passes at headquarters. He told me that preparations are being made for a great sortie.
They saw the green and white flag of Olancho creeping to the top of the mast before the Palace, the blue-jackets driving back the crowd, the gashes in the walls of the houses, where Mendoza's cannonballs had dug their way through the stucco, and the silk curtains, riddled with bullets, flapping from the balconies of the opera-house.
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