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Updated: June 23, 2025
Above this was a heavy chevaux-de-frise and barbed-wire entanglement, partly sunk and concealed from view; in many places pitted and covered with brushwood. Above this, following approximately a thirty-foot contour, came a line of trenches for infantry, and fifty yards behind a second line of trenches, commanding a further elevation of fifty feet.
Ask her one hundred times what is the matter with her, Switzerland replies by an ultimatum, like the Diet or the Conference of London. Nothing is the matter with her: she is tired: she is going to sleep. The more you insist, the more she erects bastions of ignorance, the more she isolates herself by chevaux-de-frise. If you get impatient, Caroline begins to dream! You grumble, you are lost.
"Twelve!" sings out the steeple of Glogau; and in grim whisper the word is, "VORWARTS!" and the three-winged avalanche is in motion. They reach their glacises, their ditches, covered ways, correct as mathematics; tear out chevaux-de-frise, hew down palisades, in the given number of minutes: Swift, ye Regiment's-carpenters; smite your best!
The American Congress, which had sat at Philadelphia until General Howe approached the town, had taken extensive measures for rendering the passage impracticable. Three rows of chevaux-de-frise, composed of immense beams of timber bolted and fastened together and stuck with iron spikes, were sunk across the channel, and these lines were protected by batteries.
The frigates, in advance of the fleet, had not yet succeeded in their endeavours to effect a passage through the lower double row of chevaux-de-frise. Though no longer protected by the fort at Billingsport, they were defended by the water force above, and the work was found more difficult than had been expected.
No more long sweeps of grassy plain or slope; they were amid the débris of rocks which hedge in the upper heights of the great plateau; they were struggling through it like a forlorn hope through chevaux-de-frise. The morning sun came upon them over treeless ridges of sandstone, and disappeared at evening behind ridges equally naked and arid.
Colonel Johnston proceeded to set up additional defences for the dépôt, and within a month two lunettes were completed with ditches and chevaux-de-frise, in each of which was mounted a piece of artillery.
From various parts of our lines the houses inside of Atlanta were plainly visible, though between us were the strong parapets, with ditch, fraise, chevaux-de-frise, and abatis, prepared long in advance by Colonel Jeremy F. Gilmer, formerly of the United States Engineers. McPherson had the Fifteenth Corps astride the Augusta Railroad, and the Seventeenth deployed on its left.
On one occasion I recollect going with the mate in the long-boat some distance up the river Peiho, a rushing, turbid stream at the mouth of which the Chinese had fixed a very chevaux-de-frise of spikes, upon which they had fondly hoped our men-of-war would impale themselves, forgetting that the depth of water scarcely permitted the approach of a shallow gunboat.
Their orders were that if any attempt was made to force the gate the guns were to be fired at once, and they were to fall back to that part of the magazine where Lieutenant Willoughby and I were posted. The principal gate of the magazine was similarly defended by two guns and by the chevaux-de-frise laid down in the inside.
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