Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
Among the men and women who voluntarily flocked to the work by thousands, were Adam, the smith, his apprentices, and Ruth. The former, with his journeymen, wielded the spade under the direction of a skilful engineer, the girl, with other women, braided gabions from willow-rods. She had lived through sorrowful days.
Behind him came troops of matchlock-men, who picked off every one of our men who showed their noses above the ramparts: and a great host of blackamoors with scaling-ladders, bundles to fill the ditch, fascines, gabions, culverins, demilunes, counterscarps, and all the other appurtenances of offensive war. On they came: my guns and men were ready for them. You will ask how my pieces were loaded?
His abrupt cry, "Halt, or I fire!" rang sharply on the air, and his musket was thrust through the window, aiming in intimidation down alongside the parapet, where upon the exterior slope of the rampart the beautiful Carolina girl, the French wife of the Scotch settler, had contrived to creep through the embrasure below the muzzle of the cannon, for the ground had sunk a trifle there with the weight of the piece or through some defect of the gabions that helped build up the "cheek," and she now stood at full height on the berm, above the red clay slope of the scarp, signing to Choo-qualee-qualoo with one hand, and with the other motioning toward the muzzle of his firelock, mutely imploring him to desist.
I was surprised to find that, at a distance of less than an eighth of a mile from the latter place, the military had fixed their gabions, sapped right up the glacis, and to within four or five yards of the fosse. The trenches had been cut across the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing, however, like enough of the parapet and the earthwork above had been thrown down to fill up the fosse.
Their fire was well directed, and the front of our column suffered severely. The fascines and gabions were thrown in; but they were as a drop of water in the mighty deep: the fire became hotter, and my little band of heroes plunged into the water, followed by our two companies, and part of the 75th regiment.
I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer. He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; "when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he never left the batteries."
The intervening ground had already been stripped of its hedges, and the trees cut down to form gabions, fascines, and platforms for the cannon. Thousands of men were at work; but in some parts they were clustered much more thickly than in others, and Vincent had no difficulty in determining where the principal batteries were in course of construction along this portion of the position.
He collected forty-five batteaux, each capable of transporting eighty men, and built two floating batteries of great strength and light draught of water. Fascines, gabions, carts, bales of hay, intrenching-tools, and two thousand bandages, with all other contingent supplies, were gathered, and placed under a guard of picked men.
With a sudden rush our men had leaped on the advance trenches and driven the Russians from their position in the quarries. Then, rapidly turning the gabions of the trenches, they prepared to hold the ground they had taken. They were not to maintain their conquest unmolested, for soon the Russians poured down masses of troops to retake it.
I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer. He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; "when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he never left the batteries."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking