Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
Hurried orders came to abandon the meadows, and the troops ascended a line of hills between two villages, Chestres and Falaise, some two or three miles apart, and took position there. Already the engineers were at work digging rifle-pits and throwing up epaulments; while over to the left the artillery had occupied the summit of a rounded eminence.
The ground to the east, as far as the wood of la Garenne, beneath Illy village, was held by the 3d division, while the 1st, which had lost heavily at Beaumont, formed a second line. All night long the engineers had been busy with pick and shovel, and even after the Prussians had opened fire they were still digging away at their shelter trenches and throwing up epaulments.
At first, it was believed that the whole affair was to be decided by artillery; but, notwithstanding the formidable calibre of the British guns, mortars, and howitzers, and the admirable way in which they were served, aided by a rocket battery, it could not have been expected that they could have silenced the fire of 70 pieces behind well-constructed batteries of earth, planks, and fascines, or dislodge troops covered either by redoubts, epaulments, or within a treble line of trenches.
He told his men that the wind would hold good for a week, and, gipsy or no, he certainly knew as much about the wind as is good for a sailor to know. Alone in his chart-room he worked it out like this, mark two hours to the good for surprise and finding the tracks and delay in starting, say three hours if the guns were mounted in their epaulments, then the Arabs should start at seven.
The Third had to assault the same troops and position that they had failed to dislodge some hours before. Major William Wallace was in command of the skirmishers. The heavy siege pieces at Fort Sanders had been hammering away at us all day, as well as the many field batteries that bristled along the epaulments around Knoxville.
One hundred and forty Federal guns, many of large calibre, placed in epaulments on the Stafford Heights, frowned down upon Fredericksburg, and before the sun rose the Federal bridge builders were at work on the opposite shore.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking