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Updated: May 20, 2025
The keep, or inner castle, was hedged about with a double fence of plank the fences being six or seven feet apart, and the interstices filled in with earth, like gabions. On one side of the castle were the storesheds for merchandise and ammunition.
Stone casements were being roofed with earth, platforms were being prepared for guns, gabions were being set in position at the embrasures, sandbags were being carried to the parapets, stakes were being pointed for the many pieges-a-loups, and smooth earthworks were being planted with an infinity of spikes.
No longer Amberg and Rhinberg, and Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year, and the prospect of Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, the next, hurried on the blood: No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man's repose: No more could my uncle Toby, after passing the French lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of France, cross over the Oyes, and with all Picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of Paris, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory: No more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the Bastile, and awake with it streaming in his head.
Wadman's premises! cried my father, stepping back I suppose not: quoth my mother. I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts They are foolish things said my mother.
Philip's was so severe, and the cannon so well served on this quarter, that in a little time the enemy thought proper to change their plan of attack, and advance on the side of St. Philip's town, which ought to have been the first object of their consideration, especially as they could find little or no earth to fill their gabions, and open their trenches in the usual form.
Then the sun rose, annihilating the phantoms of the mist and shining on columns of marching men, endless lines of waggons, horse-batteries, foot artillery, cavalry, engineers with gabions and pontoons, and entire divisions of blue infantry, all pouring steadily toward Alexandria and the river, where lay the vast transport fleet at anchor, destined to carry them whither their Maker and commanding general willed that they should go.
His whole force toiled all night, digging, setting gabions, and dragging up cannon, some of which had been taken from Braddock. Before daybreak twenty heavy pieces had been brought to the spot, and nine were already in position. The work had been so rapid that the English imagined their enemies to number six thousand at least. The battery soon opened fire.
After a time some gabions were collected, and having been placed in position close to the loopholes, were lighted, but before the defenders could be smoked out, a mortar fired against the door blew it away, and the Russians surrendered.
Some of the vessels were laden with provisions, others with gabions, hurdles, branches, sacks of sand and of wool, and with other materials for the rapid throwing up of fortifications. It was two o'clock, half an hour before the chill dawn of a May morning, Sunday, the 26th of the month. The pale sight of a waning moon was faintly perceptible in the sky.
And yet the Directors in Holland wrote, in the following cruel terms, to the heroic governor: "It is an act which can never be justified, that a Director General should stand between the gabions, while the hostile frigates pass the fort, and the mouths of twenty pieces of cannon, and yet give no orders to prevent it.
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