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Updated: June 12, 2025
The tents of the King could only be communicated with by paths laid with fascines which required to be renewed every day, as they sank down into the soil. The camps and quarters were no longer accessible; the trenches were full of mud and water, and it took often three days to remove cannon from one battery to another.
Pakenham's disaster was, however, not the result of imprudent hardihood, but purely the result of accident in the time of attack, and in the neglect of Colonel Mullens, to whom the duty of bringing up the fascines and ladders was entrusted. Pakenham well considered the difficulties which he had to encounter.
Which, by his Majesty's good arrangements, Munnich, willing enough to the contrary had it been feasible, found himself obliged to comply with. And he did attend, the Crown-Prince and he, on important occasions: but, alas, there was, so to speak, nothing to be consulted of. Fascines and hurdles lay useless; no attempt was made to relieve Philipsburg.
Whence as soon as an answer was brought that there was nothing in their power, that the Etrurians occupied the walls and the guards of the gates, first, terror was struck into the townsmen by laying waste their land; then, when the faith of the capitulation was more religiously observed than that of the alliance, the army was led up to the walls with fascines of bushes collected from the fields, and the ditches being filled, the scaling ladders were raised, and the town was taken at the first shout and attack.
Sometimes, in these cases, their way led them across swampy places where no solid footing could be found, and then the men would cut down an immense quantity of bushes and trees growing in the neighborhood, and make up the branches into bundles called fascines.
The leading corps formed up, to resist any attempt the enemy might make to repel the sortie; and the working parties began to destroy the enemy's work. Faggots dipped in tar were laid against the fascines and gabions and, in a short time, columns of fire and smoke rose from all parts of the works occupied. In an hour, the object of the sortie was effected.
The noise of artillery thundered from all sides of the camp; the smoke was so great, that it was hardly possible to distinguish friends from foes; nevertheless, the spirits of the Poles flagged not a moment; as fast as one rampart was wrested from them, they threw themselves within another, which was as speedily taken by the help of hurdles, fascines, ladders, and a courage as resistless as it was ferocious, merciless, and sanguinary.
Every company of troops had to prepare a certain number of fascines, which were piled on the side of the river, which had now exposed solid banks overgrown with the high reedy grass. This immensely long and thick grass, resembling sugar-canes, was exactly the material that we required.
In February, fresh activity was manifested among the besiegers. Vast numbers of mules were seen, bringing fascines to their works. At the end of March the Vernon store ship arrived and, a few hours later, four transports with the 97th Regiment, under the convoy of two frigates, came in.
On each side of this entrance commences a thick range of fascines, the two ranges spreading asunder as they extend to the distance of one hundred yards, beyond which openings are left at intervals; but the fascines soon become more thinly planted, and continue to spread apart to the right and left until each range has been extended about three hundred yards from the pound.
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