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Updated: May 31, 2025
The French had covered the front with a chain of chevaux de frise, but this was not considered a sufficient obstacle, so that concertina wire and "gooseberries" had to be put out in front of the chevaux de frise. The wiring parties had a very difficult task, as they had to work about forty yards away from the enemy, who were often engaged on similar work.
The road through the forest reaches the highest points, because it is at the highest points that the Chinese forts are situated, either on the road or on some elevated clearing near it. The forts are stockades inclosed in wooden palisades, and guarded by chevaux de frise of sharp-cut bamboo. The barracks are a few native straw-thatched wooden huts.
Logs up-ended here and there, rising from the bristling surface slowly, like so many arms from lower depths. Above, the water eddied back foaming; logs shot down from the rollways, paused at the slackwater, and finally hit with a hollow and resounding BOOM! against the tail of the jam. A moment later they too up-ended, so becoming an integral part of the "chevaux de frise."
From beneath this wonderful chevaux de frise foamed the current of the river, irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass. A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies to the reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by one into the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had been doing this for a week.
It was this virginity of seclusion that had been charming to her girlhood; fenced in between the impenetrable hedge of scrub-oaks on the one side, and the lifting green walls of breakers tipped with chevaux de frise of white foam on the other, she had known a perfect security for her sports and fancies that had captivated her town-bred instincts and native fastidiousness.
If I may walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose thank you, madam and provided me with a pin from the chevaux de frise in her bodice and again, madam, I thank you: you wear the very cuirass of matronly virtue I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my history. It is a somewhat curious one."
There should have been snow on the ground to make the picture seasonable and complete, but the Western Barbarian had lived long enough in England to know that, except in the pages of a holiday supplement, this was rarely the accompaniment of a Christmas landscape, and he cheerfully accepted, on the 24th of December, the background of a low, brooding sky, on which the delicate tracery of leafless sprays and blacker chevaux de frise of pine was faintly etched, as a consistent setting to the turrets and peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Castle.
For example, had you read, in the course of two or three folios of Pretensions, those, among others, of the two Kings of England and Prussia to Oost Frise, it is impossible, that you should have remembered them; but now, that they are become the debated object at the Diet at Ratisbon, and the topic of all political conversations, if you consult both books and persons concerning them, and inform yourself thoroughly, you will never forget them as long as you live.
He knew the pictures in every detail, and he could have recited without a mistake the few lines of explanation at the bottom of each page; but the book still possessed a capacity to thrill, and he turned over the pages not pausing over Crecy or Poitiers or Blenheim or Dettingen; but enjoying the storming of Badajoz with soldiers impaled on chevaux de frise and lingering over the rich uniforms and plumed helmets in the picture of Joseph Bonaparte's flight at Vittoria.
I should order some large trees to be cut down, and dragged by a strong force of natives to the spot, and there so arranged that their branches will point downward and form a chevaux de frise in the hollow way; leaving until the last moment a passage between them, but having at hand a number of young saplings, to fill up the gap. There are, I suppose, other places at which the enemy could land?"
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