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Despair and blankness fell upon us, until Count Saxe, seeing a great, weird Thing standing gaunt and black in the white moonlight this Thing, the gallows tree cried out cheerfully: "See, my lads, yonder are likely to be some short ladders; these we will splice with rope, and so make the scalade!" And it was done, Count Saxe himself being the first man on the rampart.
Had he given the assault on the first night after his arrival, when the town was filled with terror and confusion, and destitute of regular troops, in all probability it would have been easily taken by scalade; but the reduction of it was rendered impracticable by his delay.
Accordingly Camillus, having divided his army, orders his colleague to lead round his troops to that side which the enemy already possessed, and to assault the walls; not so much from any hope that the city could be taken by scalade, as that, by turning away the enemy's attention to that quarter, both the townsmen who were wearied with fighting might have some relaxation of their toil, and that he himself might have an opportunity of entering the city without a contest.
'Twas surely a prodigious fault on the part of the Marquis of Montcalm, to accept a battle from Wolfe on equal terms, for the British General had no artillery, and when we had made our famous scalade of the heights, and were on the Plains of Abraham, we were a little nearer the city, certainly, but as far off as ever from being within it.
Then Pavia was won by scalade; and the city of Milan submitted to the infant, though the Austrian garrison still maintained the citadel; all Piedmont, on both sides of the Po, as far as Turin, was reduced, and even that capital threatened with a siege; so that by the month of October the territories belonging to the house of Austria, in Italy, were wholly subdued; and the king of Sardinia stripped of all his dominions; yet he continued firm and true to his engagements, and deaf to all proposals of a separate accommodation.
While intent on the prospect of peace, they executed with less energy the duties of war, and kept armed guards in that quarter only where the breach had been made in the wall, neglecting all the rest; Quinctius made an assault by night on the side where it was least apprehended, and carried the town by scalade.
Aide-de-Camp canters up a third time: 'Feldmarschall Munnich is for trying a scalade; hopes General Keith will do his best to co-operate! 'Forward, then! answers Keith; advances close to the glacis; finds a wet ditch twelve feet broad, and has not a stick of engineer furniture.
Friedrich has learned, by intercepted letters, that something great is to be done on Wednesday, 18th: he sends Rothenburg with reinforcement to Einsiedel, lest a scalade of Prag should be on the cards. Rothenburg is right welcome in the lines of Prag, though with reinforcement still ineffectual; but it is not Prag that is meant, nor is Wednesday the day.
The Volscians, a nation more spirited to renew hostilities than to carry on war, being defeated in the fight, make for the walls of Satricum in a precipitate flight; and their reliance in their walls not being sufficiently strong, when the city, encompassed by a continuous line of troops, was now on the point of being taken by scalade, they surrendered to the number of four thousand soldiers, besides the unarmed multitude.
He tried some small prefatory Siege or scalade of Pesth; could not do it; and came his ways home again, as the best course.
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