United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"True," said I, "one generally has a certain respect for the man one fights." "Then there's Old Bony." "Have you ever seen him?" "I have, sir; I were captured outside the Lines of Torres Vedras, and I saw Old Bony eating his breakfast off a drum-head wi' one hand and a-writing a dispatch wi' the other a little fat man not so high as my shoulder, look you.
Sir Arthur Wellesley, always on watch on the heights, was already on the move to follow and crush those who had been unable to make him lose an inch of ground; but Sir Henry Burrard had arrived, and the command passed into his hands. He was opposed to all thought of pursuit. Junot took the road to Torres Vedras.
The Friers also and the poore people that came vnto him, promised, that within two dayes the gentlemen and others of the Countrey would come plentifully in: within which two dayes came many more Priests, and some very few gentlemen on horsebacke; but not til we came to Torres Vedras: where they that noted the course of things how they passed, might somewhat discouer the weaknesse of that people.
"But let us for a moment take so much for granted, and now consider this: fortifications are unquestionably building in the region of Torres Vedras, and Wellington guards the secret so jealously that not even the British either here or in England are aware of their nature. That is why the Cabinet in London takes for granted an embarkation in September.
Indeed, in his speech, "The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States," he erected a whole Torres Vedras line of fortifications, on which legislative Massenas dashed themselves in vain, and, however strong in numbers in respect to the power of voting him down, recoiled defeated in every attempt to reason him down.
Such was Manassas in public opinion when McDowell undertook to attack this formidable American Torres Vedras, and this with the scanty and almost unorganized means in men and artillery allotted to him by the senile wisdom of General Scott. General McDowell obtained the promise that Beauregard alone was to be before him.
Yet you will observe that he had been placed in possession of two facts: that the plans of the lines of Torres Vedras were kept locked up in Sir Terence's own room in the strong-box, no doubt and that Sir Terence always carried the key on a gold chain worn round his neck. Miss Armytage laughed. "Whatever I might do, I should not be guilty of prying into matters that my husband kept hidden."
The resistance and nerve strength of the British troops were almost superhuman; and in spite of losses which might have demoralized any army, however splendid in valour, they fought on with that dogged spirit which filled the trenches at Badajoz and held the lines of Torres Vedras, a hundred years before, when the British race seemed to be stronger than its modern generation.
"Your supeyrior officer!" O'Grady murmured. "My superior officer, certainly," Terence went on, with a smile; "but who, having, as he says, never looked at a map since he left school while I have naturally studied one every evening since we started from Torres Vedras can therefore know no more about the situation than does Tim Hoolan.
The spirit of "L'Etat c'est moi" survived in Mirabeau's "never name to me that bete of a word 'impossible';" in the first Napoleon's threat to the Austrian ambassador, "I will break your empire like this vase"; in Nelson turning his blind eye to the signal of retreat at Copenhagen, and Wellington fencing Torres Vedras against the world: it lingered in Nicholas the Czar, and has found perhaps its latest political representative in Prince Bismarck.
Word Of The Day