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Updated: June 6, 2025
Count Solms, on the other hand, came from the besieging camp into the ravelin to investigate the sudden uproar. To his profound astonishment he was met there, after a brief interval, by a deputation from the city, asking for terms of surrender. The envoys had already been for some little time looking in vain for a responsible person with whom to treat.
For what dread of want or poverty that can reach or harass the student can compare with what the soldier feels, who finds himself beleaguered in some stronghold mounting guard in some ravelin or cavalier, knows that the enemy is pushing a mine towards the post where he is stationed, and cannot under any circumstances retire or fly from the imminent danger that threatens him?
A very few of them will suffice to indicate the general aspect of the operations. On the extreme southwest of Ostend had been in peaceful times a polder the general term to designate a pasture out of which the sea-water had been pumped and the forts in that quarter were accordingly called by that name, as Polder Half-moon, Polder Ravelin, or great and little Polder Bulwark, as the case might be.
On the 18th April, the enemy assailed the great western Ravelin, and after a sanguinary hand-to-hand action, in which great numbers of officers and soldiers were lost on both sides, he carried the fort; the Spaniards, Italians, Germans, and Walloons vieing with each other in deeds of extraordinary daring, and overcoming at last the resistance of the garrison. This was an important success.
Old men, feeble women, tender children, united with the able-bodied to accomplish this work, by which they hoped still to maintain themselves after the ravelin had fallen: On the 31st of January, after two or three days' cannonade against the gates of the Cross and of Saint John, and the intervening curtains, Don Frederic ordered a midnight assault.
Sebastian Tappin, the heroic defender of the place, had been shot through the shoulder at the taking of the Parma ravelin, and had been afterwards severely injured at the capture of the demilune. At the fall of the city he was mortally wounded, and carried a prisoner to the hostile camp, only to expire. The governor, Swartsenberg, also lost his life.
With this interchange of cruelties the siege may be said to have opened. Don Frederic had stationed himself in a position opposite to the gate of the Cross, which was not very strong, but fortified by a ravelin. Intending to make a very short siege of it, he established his batteries immediately, and on the 18th, 19th, and 20th December directed a furious cannonade against the Cross-gate, the St.
They were met in the breach, however, by the unflinching defenders of the city, and, after a fierce combat of some hours, were obliged to retire; remaining masters, however, of the moat, and of the ruined portion of the ravelin. This was upon the 3rd of April. Five days afterwards, a general assault was ordered.
The Turks vied with the British in activity, making frequent night attacks on the trenches, and generally succeeding in carrying off a number of fascines, which were greatly needed, and were of special utility in the construction of the ravelin.
As this was the principal attack of which my uncle Toby was an eye-witness at Namur, the army of the besiegers being cut off, by the confluence of the Maes and Sambre, from seeing much of each other's operations, my uncle Toby was generally more eloquent and particular in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp, the glacis and covered-way, the half-moon and ravelin, as to make his company fully comprehend where and what he was about.
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