Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
Twenty Polish patriots were confined in the casemates, awaiting execution; men of education, honourable men, men with wives and children, condemned to be hanged because they had conspired together a foolish, ineffectual conspiracy against what they regarded as the tyranny of Russia, for the liberty of their country.
It was a desolate and gloomy-looking place to Tom, who had always lived among green fields, and the beautiful surroundings of a New England rural district. If the fort itself looked dreary, how much more so were the casemates in which the company was quartered! But Tom's philosophy was proof against the unpleasant impression, and his joke was as loud and hearty as that of any of his companions.
At present, Antibes is the frontier of France towards Italy, pretty strongly fortified, and garrisoned by a battalion of soldiers. The town is small and inconsiderable: but the basin of the harbour is surrounded to seaward by a curious bulwark founded upon piles driven in the water, consisting of a wall, ramparts, casemates, and quay.
This plan was all arranged, and about to be carried out, but it was discovered the day before its completion. The Prussian commander doubled the guard before the casemates in which three thousand Russian prisoners were confined, and arrested the Russian officers.
It was surrounded with a regular counterscarp, bastions, and casemates, while the proximity of the ocean and the humid nature of the soil ensured it a network of foss and canal on every side.
Our Lord the Sun was on the verge of rising for His day, and all things were plainly shown. Before me were the monstrous walls of the capital, with the heads of its pyramids and higher buildings showing above them. And on the walls, the sentries walked calmly their appointed paces, or took shelter against arrows in the casemates provided for them.
They halted for some hours, the men sleeping, the officers amusing themselves by guessing conundrums; but as day dawned, they entered Paris through a breach in the defences. The young officer says, "I shall never forget the sight. The fortifications had been riddled with balls; the casemates were broken in.
It was roofless, but an inner chamber had been constructed a cellar, so to speak under the ground-floor, with a roof of its own of rammed earth many feet thick, supported by heavy beams. This was one of the famous casemates invented by Todleben, impervious to shot and shell, and affording a safe shelter to the troops.
Our brave artillerymen had not the patience to let them approach, but at once directed at them a hot fire, especially from the Mole battery, under Don Francisco Grandi. It has a moat, casemates, loopholes, and twelve bouches a feu for plunging fire.
He must descend with his heart full of charity, and severity at the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those impenetrable casemates where crawl, pell-mell, those who bleed and those who deal the blow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and those who devour, those who endure evil and those who inflict it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking