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Updated: June 8, 2025
Go with some engineer or old officer, and view with care the real fortifications of some strong place; and you will get a clearer idea of bastions, half-moons, horn-works, ravelins, glacis, etc., than all the masters in the world could give you upon paper. And thus much I would, by all means, have you know of both civil and military architecture.
"Keep right on till you come to the horn-works," I heard a voice whisper, and the words had little or no meaning to me, for I was not familiar with the names of different portions of a regular fort; but the sergeant seemed to understand the command, for he began to creep in a southerly direction, still keeping within the shadow of the wall, until we arrived where was a stockade.
His works were large, the ditch deep, flanked with innumerable bastions, ravelins, horn-works, forts, redoubts, batteries, and palisadoes, the incessant work of 8000 men for about fourteen days; besides that, the king was adding something or other to it every day, and the very posture of his camp was enough to tell a bigger army than Wallenstein's that he was not to be assaulted in his trenches.
On the following night, an outwork, called the Chapel of St Magdalene, was stormed and taken. The second parallel was soon completed, and some farther outworks carried; and the whole battering guns having at length been mounted, a breach was effected in the salient angle of one of the horn-works, and on the same night a lodgement was effected.
To which purpose the house must be built where they may have ground to cast bombs, to raise regular works, as batteries, bastions, half-moons, redoubts, horn-works, forts, and the like; with the convenience of water to draw round such works, to exercise the engineers in all the necessary experiments of draining and mining under ditches.
As he had already said, we were to scale the stockade in the horn-works, and then, making a détour to the westward, gain the cover of such shelter as might be found on the high lands, working well toward the ruins of Fort Newport before trying to strike across to and behind the line of earthworks which St. Leger had caused to be thrown up early in the siege.
"Did you stand quietly by while they went?" Jacob asked, in a tone of reproach. "I wasn't quite sich a fool as that, lad, even though I did advise 'em to go. I kept my eye on the gang, however, an' was hidden in the horn-works when they made the final plans.
We buried our comrades in the horn-works, just under the stockade they had defended so gallantly, and threw over the fence of logs fifty-two of Thayendanega's wolves who would take no further part in murder and rapine.
Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, but you do not consider, Trim, that the towers, in Solomon's days, were not such things as our bastions, flanked and defended by other works; this, Trim, was an invention since Solomon's death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his time; or such a fosse as we make with a cuvette in the middle of it, and with covered ways and counterscarps pallisadoed along it, to guard against a Coup de main: So that the seven men upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set there, not only to look out, but to defend it.
I believe that, by leaving through the horn-works, you can make your way to the rear of the British encampment without incurring any very grave danger, and if it is the desire of you lads to go with the sergeant you have my permission."
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