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Updated: June 4, 2025
But all at once, doors and posterns opened, and from all sides poured out armed men, if not with the fierce impetuosity of the French, with a firmness which rendered them massive as a rolling wall. It was the Flemings, who advanced in close ranks, and compact masses, above which the cannon continued to thunder, although with more noise than effect.
Meanwhile, on the 24th of May, the posterns were observed to open, and the women to issue forth one after another, with their children and the old men; they came gliding towards the king's encampment, but "he ordered them to be driven back by force; and further, knowing that they had sown beans near the counterscarps of their town, a detachment was sent out to cut them down as soon as they began to come up, and likewise a little corn that they had sown in some dry spots of their marshes."
This was one of two secret posterns. On the inside of the wall, when closed, its location was easily noticeable on account of its hinges, latches, and braces; on the outside it looked like any other log in the wall. Their work being completed, the boys asked permission of the adjutant to stand outside the wall and watch for the mail.
Piles of wood are now heaped against the timber posterns of the building, and set on fire. The huge pine-beams of the azotea catch the blaze, burn, crackle, and fall inwards, and in a short while the Presidio becomes a mass of smoking ruins! But the red warriors have not waited for this. The revenge of their leader is not yet complete. It is not to the soldiers alone that he owes vengeance.
Crossing the stream, we struck into the sylvan cul-de-sac, and arrived in a few minutes at an edifice with strong walls, towers, and posterns, that looked more like a secluded and fortified manor-house in the seventeenth century than a convent; for in more troubled times, such establishments, though tolerated by the old Turkish government, were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders.
They made two great attacks: the first by throwing planks across the moat, and placing ladders at three places; the second by trying, again, to storm with ladders, while other bands tried to force their way in at this gateway, and at the two posterns. "Of course they have burned all the farina to the ground, but the cattle were all safely driven in here, before they arrived.
One young as this would scarce be found distant from the warriors of his tribe; and that the more especially, as he was taken in the commission of an ambush." "I hope thy people are not without good provision of arms, and other sufficient muniments of resistance. I trust the palisadoes are firm, and the posterns ingeniously defended."
The high garden-walls, with the mysterious posterns, the huge horse-chestnuts looking over the leaded tops of the classical arbours with which the grounds of an adjacent villa were adorned; the great gate-posts of the main entrances, the school-house itself, looking grimly down from a great height, all these held strange mysteries for the boy, sinking unconsciously into his spirit.
The city is two miles long from east to west, and only a mile and a quarter wide from the bridge to the walls; the latter, twelve feet in height, ten feet thick at their base, are built of adobes, a kind of brick dried in the sun, and made of potter's clay mingled with a great quantity of chopped straw: these walls are calculated to resist earthquakes; the enclosure, pierced with seven gates and three posterns, terminates at its south-east extremity by the little citadel of Santa Caterina.
The city gates are at this day eight, besides posterns, viz.: 1, Aldgate; 2, Bishopsgate; 3, Moorgate; 4, Cripplegate; 5, Aldersgate; 6, Newgate; 7, Ludgate; and, 8, The Bridgegate. Aldgate, or Ealdgate, in the east, is of great antiquity, even as old as the days of King Edgar, who mentions it in a charter to the knights of Knighton-Guild.
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