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Updated: May 25, 2025
The rivulet fell into the river Moskwa half a mile beyond Borodino. Field-works had been thrown up at several points, and near the centre were two strong redoubts commanding Borodino and the high-road. Other strong works had been erected at important points.
And scarcely had the different divisions of their motley army become arrayed and fixed in their line of battle, which consisted of the regulars within their strong field-works on the elevated plain on the left, and the Canadians and tories behind their more imperfect defences stretching from the former across the meadow on the right scarcely had this been done, before their line of pickets, which had been placed among the trees at the eastern termination of the field, suddenly broke from their station, and came disorderly rushing back to the encampment.
Millions of mosquitoes, against which we had no protection whatever, attacked us as we began to entrench, but officers and men all worked with a will, and by dawn we had almost completed what was probably the best system of field-works so far constructed on this front. How we wished we might see the enemy advance over the river and attempt to deploy within range of our rifles!
Johnston carefully and systematically maintained this defensive, and in Virginia, after Lee had tried the policy of attack in the Wilderness, he became as cautiously defensive as Johnston. Grant was slower than Sherman in learning the unprofitableness of attacking field-works, and his campaign was by far the more costly one.
We found there a long, roughly constructed wooden jetty running far enough out from the shore to give a depth of about six feet alongside its head, at low water, which greatly facilitated our landing; and, ashore, we discovered certain artfully concealed field-works of such a character that, armed with a few heavy guns, they might have pretty effectually covered a landing, unless interfered with by a very powerful force.
To modern artillery and engineering the siege would have been easy, despite the rocky hardness of the ground, since the Knights had not had time to construct those field-works upon the surrounding heights which were essential to the safety of the forts.
Late in the year the Bellevite and Bronx were ordered to operate at Tampa Bay, where it was believed that several vessels were loading with cotton. On the arrival of the ships off the bay, a boat expedition was organized to ascertain what vessels were in the vicinity. But the entrance was protected by a battery, and it was supposed that there were field-works in several places on the shores.
And so, some twenty miles north of Ypres, on a plain which in the seventeenth century was so studded with earthen redoubts and serrated by long lines of field-works and ditches that the whole countryside between Ypres and Dunkirk was virtually one vast entrenched camp, we come to the town of Furnes, another of the places on which time has laid its heavy hand.
The opening period of the campaign had developed the conditions of warfare in so broken and difficult a country, and they were only emphasized by the later experiences of both armies. Positions for defence could be intrenched with field-works whilst the hostile army was feeling its way forward through dense forests and over mountain ridges.
The Junction was fortified with some slight field-works and fifteen heavy guns, supported by a garrison of two thousand; while the main body was camped in a line of seven miles' length behind Bull Run, a winding, sluggish stream flowing southeasterly toward the Potomac. The distance was about thirty-two miles southwest of Washington.
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