United States or Solomon Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As yet, however, the milder punishment was held sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced. The tendencies to treason were still incipient they were tendencies only, which had as yet shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action of the government doubtful.
Fortune that day offered him everything for an overwhelming victory, one that might have ranked with the decisive actions of the world's history, and he threw it away under circumstances peculiarly disgraceful and humiliating. Never did commander in chief so richly deserve to be shot on his own deck.
What must he do to get a decisive share in the surging, rolling tumult about him? The visionary boy was transformed into the practical man. Frenchmen were fighting and winning glory everywhere, and among the men who were reaping laurels were some whom he had known and even despised at Brienne Sergeant Pichegru, for instance.
"I am doing the King a service," he said: "I am rescuing him from false friends: and, as to my place, that shall never be a gag to prevent me from speaking my mind." The motion was made, but completely failed. In truth the proposition, that mere accusation, never prosecuted to conviction, ought to be considered as a decisive proof of guilt, was shocking to natural justice.
He despatched his brother, Yoshisuke, with twenty thousand men, remaining himself to cover the rear of the expedition. But Otoko-yama surrendered before this succour reached it, and the Nitta brothers then combined their forces to operate against the Ashikaga. Nothing decisive resulted, and in September, 1338, Yoshisada fell in an insignificant combat near the fortress of Fujishima in Echizen.
A defeat sustained by the government there did not necessarily imperil the possession of the provinces. Brabant, on the contrary, was the heart of the Netherlands. Should the Prince achieve a decisive triumph then and there, he would be master of the nation's fate. The Viceroy knew himself to be odious, and he reigned by terror.
No one thought of disputing the authority of the Honourable, and they all rose. In a few minutes there was silence in the hut, save for the oracular breathing of Prince Levis and the sparks from the fire. But the Honourable did not sleep well; he lay and watched the fire through most of the night. The day was clear, glowing, decisive.
"Mon Dieu! nothing stimulates the comprehension so much as the loss of a pocketbook and the desire to recover it. And it seems to me that if you will give me two of your men, we may be able...." "Oh! I beg of you, monsieur le commissaire," cried Madame Renaud, "listen to Mon. Berlat." The intervention of my excellent friend was decisive.
And yet Gleeson seriously asked himself whether it was not possible to shoot one, and leaping upon the other, overcome and carry him off before his friends could interfere. In referring to it afterward he admitted its absurdity, and yet he would have made the attempt but for a trifling discovery when almost in the act of taking the decisive step.
A piece of strategy of that kind might have won a decisive battle in an old-time war, but I confess that it did not occur to me to ask who planned it when I heard the story. Strategists became so common on the Somme that everybody took them as much for granted as that every battalion had a commander. Mametz was not taken with the first attack.
Word Of The Day