Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
All round the inside of the star, tucked away under the parapets, were the rude shelters of the infantry, while a hornwork held the troops of cavalry.
'But I'll forgive ye, when the time comes, if ye'll do the Royals credit and, what's more, I'll never cast up that 'twas but a third battalion against a third-class place. Nor will I need to, he added, after a pause, 'if the general makes a throw for yon breach before clearing the hornwork. 'I wasn't thinkin' of the assault, explained the young corporal, simply, 'but of the women and children.
On the appearance of the English troops on the plain by the bakehouse, Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the regiment of Béarn, cried out with vehemence to M. de Vaudreuil 'that the hornwork would be taken in an instant by assault, sword in hand; that we all should be cut to pieces without quarter; and that nothing would save us but an immediate and general capitulation of Canada, giving it up to the English." Yet the river was wide and deep, and the hornwork was protected on the water side by strong palisades, with cannon.
This was the citadel. The town, through which alone it could be taken by force, lay under it, across the neck of the isthmus; and this again was protected on the landward side by a high rampart or curtain, strengthened by a tall bastion in its centre and covered by a regular hornwork pushed out from its front. So much for the extremities, seaward and landward.
He did not, however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or a hornwork.
"He was still at the hornwork when I left," answered the Abbe; "but many were clamouring around him, declaring that the place would be carried by assault almost immediately, and all of them cut to pieces without quarter; and that they had better surrender the city and colony at once than lose all their lives in an unavailing struggle."
The place was full of troops and Canadians in a wild panic. "It is impossible," says Johnstone, "to imagine the disorder and confusion I found in the hornwork. Consternation was general. M. de Vaudreuil listened to everybody, and was always of the opinion of him who spoke last.
Vaudreuil went from the hornwork to his quarters on the Beauport road and called a council of war. It was a tumultuous scene. A letter was despatched to Quebec to ask for advice of Montcalm. The dying General sent a brief message to the effect that there was a threefold choice, to fight again, retreat to Jacques-Cartier, or give up the colony. There was much in favor of fighting.
And he laid his hand, as Drayton might have said, on that stout bastion, hornwork, ravelin, or demilune, which formed the outworks to the citadel of his purple isle of man. "Naught but beer? Cheese, I suppose?" "Bread?" "Beef?" "Love!" cried Jack. "Yes, Love! Ay, you laugh; but my eyes are not so grown up with fat but what I can see what's fair as well as you."
Sergeant Wilkes, that amateur in siege-operations, had rightly prophesied from the first that the waste of life at the breaches would be wicked and useless until the hornwork had been silenced and some lodgment made there.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking